thisisnascar
Well-Known Member
At home, I have the option of using WiFi, 4G or 3G. Which of these transports would provide the longest battery life for general usage?
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Which Method to Save the Most Battery
- Thread starter thisisnascar
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- motorola droid razr
Use Wifi, and turn off your data connection. That way your phone will have internet and voice call capability, without wasting battery constantly searching for and maintaining a 3G or 4G signal. To turn off data just go to your settings, then Data Manager. At the top you have the option called "Data Enabled". Just uncheck that box while you are at home and you will save a significant amount of battery. Just make sure you turn Wifi off when leaving the house, and turn data back on. Hope this helps!
-Albin
I believe there is also a Smart Action profile for turning off mobile data when connected to wifi. That way it should be more or less seemless. When you get to your home/work/wifi-hotspot the wifi connects and the phone turns off the mobile data. When you leave the wifi hotspot the mobile data turns back on.
carracerz14
Android Expert
Wifi automatically disables mobile data. Wifi has highest priority. But turn it off if you aren't connected to wifi, because then it wastes battery searching for wifi
I have that set up on my phone. Works seamlessly.
thisisnascar
Well-Known Member
kevindroid
Android Expert
i do believe the dark side to be the i phone from the context of the statement. android requires an app named tasker which can configure that and much much much more! there are other apps i use tasker for automation. hope this solves your problem. enjoy
carracerz14
Android Expert
The only problem with this is that if you try to send or receive a mms it won't work because data is off, you'll either have to turn off wifi or turn off the smart action. Since I am on wifi 90 percent of the day it makes more sense to just leave it normal. The amount of battery drain by having wifi and data on is probably negligible.
Start smart action app.
Click green + sign on upper right
Start from scratch
click + on triggers
click wifi connection
highlight any
save
click + next to actions
tap cellular data
highlight disable
name your rule at top
click add rule at bottom
Yes you are partly correct, but not entirely. The active data service is indicated by the blue symbol, immediately letting you know whether the 4G, 3G, or WiFi is pulling data. The problem is, even when WiFi is blue and 3G/4G is grey, the 4G will continue to search for and maintain the data signal. You can tell pretty simply by the way that the device will jump between 3G and 4G sometimes, even when WiFi is the active connection.
With that being said, actually physically turning off data will disable the data search function, ultimately saving battery. The same can be said about WiFi. Even when WiFi is in a grey state, the fact that it is on means that it is refreshing the available servers every 60 to 90 seconds (depends on device). So when you leave the house, or anywhere else that you might connect to WiFi, be sure to disable it!
Instead of dealing with Smart Actions, which I don't particularly like running constantly, I prefer to use a toggle widget called "Extended Controls". It is just like the toggle widget that comes with the phone, but with way more custom options. I use the extended control widget on my home screen to manage screen brightness, volume, silent on/off, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, all very quickly and easily. I prefer to have manual, immediate control over these functions at all times, because Smart actions can't possible cover the constantly changing needs I might have.
Hope this helps, and btw, Extended Controls is worth every penny!
