Wifi vs 3g battery life/benefits

[andadroid]

Hi everyone,
I live on a university campus, so we have decent wifi everywhere. Just need to get permissions for my droid. However I usually turn off my droid's wifi to save battery. So the question is, what is the cost/benefit analysis on this? Stay on wifi or turn it off and switch to 3g when I'm not online?

 

[ttaylor0024]

It depends. If you end the day with 50%+ on your battery, you will be fine with wifi on the whole day as well as 3G. If you use a widget, its nothing to switch it off as the droid saves your log in info.

 

[andadroid]

Thanks. I'll use the widget and just do wifi for the web.

 

[bigbee]

I've found that leaving Wi-Fi in the always-on mode (under the advanced settings that can be accessed via the menu button when using the Wireless & networks screen) runs down the battery much faster than the default mode (in which Wi-Fi is only activated when the screen is on) or 3G-only. This may seem obvious, but I had hoped that power consumption for monitoring of the Wi-Fi network would be similar to that for the 3G data network; they are apparently not even close. That being said, you should try using the the default Wi-Fi mode and compare battery life, latency, and throughput to 3G and see if the tradeoffs are worth it for you.

 

[andadroid]

Thanks bigbee. Once I get the droid recognized on the server I'll test it out. 3g is hit or miss where I am, so I assumed the constant searching would drain battery. However from your experience it sounds like 3g search is less draining than wifi. I'll just have to test.
Thanks again.