• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Why wifi sleep to "never"?

P

pm1066

Android Enthusiast
Can someone explain why the recommended wifi setting is never to sleep? It seems like form a smart actions perspective, shutting wifi poof when the screen goes off would make sense.

I suspect the argument is something like turning off your car at a stop light costs more gas than just idling, because the surge of fuel needed to restart the engine is more than the gas you burn idling for 30 seconds or less. But, if you idle for more than 30 seconds, it is better to shut the engine off. So what is wifi's "30 seconds or more"?
 
Since I use wifi exclusively when I'm at home, I set mine to never sleep because when I pick it up I want to be able to go to the net without waiting for it to reconnect.
 
Your analogy is spot on about idling but the thing with wi-fi is that every time you wake your phone up it scans and connects. Leaving it connected when your in a wi-fi spot will save battery because it's not always scanning and connecting when you wake up your phone

I've used the setting since day 2
 
I take a different approach- I set a timeframe smart action to turn the WIFI on during my commute home, and off when I leave in the morning. This way as soon as I walk in the door it connects and I'm good to go. This also prevents the wifi from constantly scanning all day for open connections and draining the battery. Of course I can always override when I'm in a wifi hotspot.
 
Isn't wifi sleep policy different than actually toggling on or off the wifi...I though the sleep policy was to tell the wifi to always stay connected when in the wifi is in the "on" position as opposed to "sleeping" when the phone is at idle (but wifi is still "on")....The sleep policy doesn't do anything when wifi is off...correct me if I am wrong....you want it set to "never sleep" so it doesn't have to reconnect to wifi every time you use a wifi enabled function...keeping it on "never sleep" will increase battery life if you use wifi alot just like the car starting analogy.
 
IDEAL41 said:
Isn't wifi sleep policy different than actually toggling on or off the wifi...I though the sleep policy was to tell the wifi to always stay connected when in the wifi is in the "on" position as opposed to "sleeping" when the phone is at idle (but wifi is still "on")....The sleep policy doesn't do anything when wifi is off...correct me if I am wrong....you want it set to "never sleep" so it doesn't have to reconnect to wifi every time you use a wifi enabled function...keeping it on "never sleep" will increase battery life if you use wifi alot just like the car starting analogy.
Click to expand...

Of coursemsleep is different than on/off. When wifi is on and you turn the screen off if wifimsleep policynis set to nrvwr it is not going to stop runnin.
 
My problem is with all this is this: I have a SA that actually shuts off wifi after 2 minutes of nothing. When I touch the phone, or turn on the screen, wifi turns back on and reconnects literally within 5 seconds to my home network. I just don't see how five seconds of reconnect makes up for say a couple hours of it being on and doing nothing.

Or, if the phone can nearly instantly reconnect from dead off, how does not sleeping buy me anything?
 
my old galaxy i7500...with 2.3 gb rom on it...the secret to that old chunk of plastic getting any battery life while on wifi was to keep wifi sleep policy to never...I have used that fuzzy logic on my razr now and I notice no significant battery difference between wifi and 3g/4g when idling. my 1.5 cents:)
 
Its about squeezing every ounce of performance out of the battery. Will it add hours? Of course not. Will to save some juice? Absolutely.

At the end of the day its not going to dramatically increase battery life but if you want to squeeze out a little more juice (be it 5 minutes or 5 seconds) have it never sleep.

Anytime the phone has to do something (scan or sync) it uses battery. The less you do it the better the battery life.
 
Remember that if wifi goes to sleep 3g/4g will wake up and statt eating up battery faster than wifi would have.

When the phone is asleep it stillmuses data from time to time.
 
Remember that if wifi goes to sleep 3g/4g will wake up and start eating up battery faster than wifi would have.

When the phone is asleep it still uses data from time to time.
 
Szadzik said:
Remember that if wifi goes to sleep 3g/4g will wake up and start eating up battery faster than wifi would have.

When the phone is asleep it still uses data from time to time.
Click to expand...

True, but--keep in mind the rule I have set up shuts off cell data and wifi. And again, seriously, how does literally 2 seconds of scanning eat more battery than say 5 minutes of just idle connection? Is there any actual data to back up the power usage in both cases?
 
OK unless I'm missing something where do you go to put wifi to never sleep or just keeping it on means never sleep.
 
pm1066 said:
True, but--keep in mind the rule I have set up shuts off cell data and wifi. And again, seriously, how does literally 2 seconds of scanning eat more battery than say 5 minutes of just idle connection? Is there any actual data to back up the power usage in both cases?
Click to expand...

Disabling all data means no emails, pointless to me.

BigBruDa3rd said:
OK unless I'm missing something where do you go to put wifi to never sleep or just keeping it on means never sleep.
Click to expand...

Wireless and network settings-wifi settings-menu-advanced
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom