Discovery of relationship between poor battery life and wifi connectivity status

[E Lizzle]

The other day, I noticed that my wife's 822 had nearly 3 days of reported battery time remaining whereas mine had about 5 hours. I was fairly shocked by her time remaining, as I usually get ~20 hours out of a full charge, and she uses her phone for gaming throughout the day. After screwing around with some stuff through this week, and thinking about the differences between her operating environment and mine, I offer this theory:

If WiFi is turned on, and you spend a lot of time in an area that has WiFi connectivity that the phone can NOT connect to (for me, this is work), it results in a substantial battery drain. This is even true if the phone has "automatically connect to hotspots" and "notify me when new networks are found" both turned off.

Details: In my case, I have my home wifi set up in the phone, and the phone is set to ignore other wifi. At work, the wifi hubs are there, but they are not open for normal use - my phone can not connect to them. Now, on my wife's phone, she too has wifi turned on all day, but the difference is that her phone is able to connect to the hub there. That's the only real difference between our phones and operating environment. When I leave wifi enabled, I get 20 hours on a charge, she gets a multiple days on a charge.. When I disable it, I'm now at the end of the workday where I'd be at 50% battery, only I'm at 90% battery still. Usually at this time my phone would show 6 hours remaining, right now it's showing 4 days remaining. I've been able to reproduce this consistently with no other changing factors.

-E

 

[bozza72]

Thanks for sharing, i think il have to try this out myself

 

[James8561]

always switch off wifi before going out

 

[weareinfinite]

Thanks! I'll be really curious to see if this helps my battery life. (L920)

 

[irvin792]

Thanks I will try this, now I wish they could make a switch we could just hit once to toggle WiFi on and off on the start screen rather than a shortcut

 

[bozza72]

Thanks I will try this, now I wish they could make a switch we could just hit once to toggle WiFi on and off on the start screen rather than a shortcut

And another one for data

 

[Squadromeo]

I have experienced the same issue as the OP and came to a similair conclusion.

Like James8561 said above, I just switch off wifi when leaving the house.

 

[irvin792]

And another one for data

indeed , sad that this seemingly cannot be done.....new kernel and native code and all