4G not as hard on the battery as everyone says?

[busted bones]

So I now have a job where I'm in a major 4G area and have a full connection. I left my 4G on today just to see what happens and it didn't drain my battery anywhere near as bad as the 3G connection does. Is this normal for others experience? I noticed it puts 4G to sleep mode when I'm not using it and wonder if that affects the battery life.

So what are your experiences like when it comes to leaving the data connection on?

 

[KOLIO]

Same here when in a strong 4G area, battery drain is no worse, & possibly less than 3G.

In fact, the 4G WIMAX connection is much stronger & faster than almost any standard WI-FI I've encountered in a public setting(STARBUCKS,Work,etc....).

I'm guessing as w/regular WI-FI,the closer you are to a tower, the better.

Perhaps if there were more towers available for WIMAX, SPRINT wouldn't be so quick to transition to an LTE only network.

 

[busted bones]

Same here when in a strong 4G area, battery drain is no worse, & possibly less than 3G.

In fact, the 4G WIMAX connection is much stronger & faster than almost any standard WI-FI I've encountered in a public setting(STARBUCKS,Work,etc....).

I'm guessing as w/regular WI-FI,the closer you are to a tower, the better.

Perhaps if there were more towers available for WIMAX, SPRINT wouldn't be so quick to transition to an LTE only network.

That's a good point about the towers. It seems to make WiMax as fast as base LTE is just too expensive. The WiMax first stage topped out for us around 10 Mbps where as LTE had people hitting mid to high 20's. To up WiMax, from what I've read, it seems like to get better speed would require phones with 2 radios, one as a send only and one as a receive only(making them more expensive) and a tower upgrade, which is again another expense.