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  • What consumes more battery - 3G or WiFi?

    Ankita Katdare

    Administrator

    Updated: Oct 26, 2024
    Views: 1.6K
    In my experience of travelling with a smartphone whose battery is dying, I've found that is the phone's using 3G, the battery dies faster as against when it is on WiFi. What should be the reason behind this? Is it the constant cell switching, or the hardware or what?

    Have you had similar experience? Want to know what CEans think.
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Replies

  • Rajni Jain

    Member • Aug 25, 2015

    My limited knowledge and logic says it's combination of things that impact. You go in a low signal strength or fluctuating signal area (no matter 3G or Wi-Fi) that will consume the max battery.

    In a strong signal area 3G will consume more as fluctuation will always be more in 3G rather than Wi-Fi.

    In our area Airtel had some issues few days back and giving low signal strength and my phone battery was going down in as early as 10 hours. With good signal strength it lasts uptill 24 hours.
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  • Abhishek Rawal

    Member • Aug 25, 2015

    1) Power transmission of typical WiFi is 32mW, while that of 3G is 251mW <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">dBm - Wikipedia</a>
    2) Range is another parameter. Wifi's range is low so it requires less power than that of 3G Antennas which are not as close as that of WiFi.
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  • Bhumika107

    Member • Aug 25, 2015

    I find 3g to be consuming my battery faster than Wifi. Not going into the depth of technical details like signal and power, but just by plain experience of using both these technologies in the same handset, I found that when in idle state, 3g consumes battery faster than WiFi. However if there is frequent usage of phone, both the technologies will affect battery.
    An example: When I am out, at just 5% battery, I usually switch from 3g to gsm and it actually works. Battery doesn't get used up faster. But if I don't no matter I use my cell or not, battery gets used up. With Wifi at home, battery stays at 5% from night till morning when phone is in idle state.
    Again, as I said this is just plain experience that I am sharing here. May or may not be correct. Just a perspective 😀
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