Wifi vs 3G

[VerizonLover]

Hi! I'm new here, and have a question: Why is it that wifi eats more battery than 3g?

 

[Roze]

Hi Verizon Lover...hmmm well I want to know what phone you have and is this something you're experiencing? I'm not sure why your WIFI would use more battery than 3G since from what I've heard, WIFI uses less battery.

 

[Kekkle]

It's just the technology.
Without going in too much details:

WiFi uses more battery than 3G when actively receiving/sending data.
3G uses more battery than WiFi when idle.

 

[Ozymandias88]

But you should remember your wifi will (probbably) be faster so even though it uses more power it takes (much) less time to transfer the same data so (usually) leads to less power consumed overall.

Of course if you have a HTC desire and your wireless is claiming to take up around 30% of your battery use then I've noticed that on my girlfriends too. I think it might be a mistake because I have a nexus (which uses the same radio chip) and even though my wireless is on constantly it only takes up about 2% of my battery use.