Help 3G coming on when phone is asleep

[fearfeasog]

(hey all, please forgive me if this issue has been addressed elsewhere-my search was a bust. happy if you just point me in the right direction...)

so i just got my OP V a few days ago. It's still stock, but now with a 16GB SD and a handful of downloaded aps, including:

G+
Facebook
Gmail
color Touch (a photo editing thing i'm trying out)
Go Chat
Google Sky Map
Scrabble
Sense analog clock
Skype
Voice Recorded
The Weather Channel
Quick Settings

so what's happening is that, even though the 3G is turned off via Quick Settings, after i wake up the phone i notice that the 3G icon is present on the notification bar for about half of a second, then disappears. wasn't doing this yesterday, that i noticed.

(fwiw i did do the radio reset thing, you know--dialing *#*#4636#*#* . and the airplane mode toggle.)

has this happened to anyone else? and anyone have a guess as to which ap, if any, may be the cause? i may try uninstalling my apps in the reverse order i installed them, and see when it stops...

thanks, ff

 

[fearfeasog]

update--over at android central there's a thread about wifi sleeping when the screen is off. that did the trick. but one poster said that 3G actually uses less power at low data rates than wifi, so that it actually saves battery for your phone to switch to 3G when the screen is off. the only caveat being that it may take a ton of power to re-establish a connection when you wake the screen up. anyway, here's a link to the post (hope this works):

Wifi sleep policy? Don't get it. - Page 2 - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

what do you think? is they right or wrong?

 

[smankins]

I can leave WiFi on all day at home on my phone and not have any problems with battery life. If I were to swap to 3G my battery would die about halfway through the day. However, I have a poor 3g signal so the phone is always searching for the 3g signal and that kills your battery. I have my setting to always stay on wifi even when the phone "sleeps" and it is no problem.

 

[AndyOpie150]

I don't have PC any more. When at the house i use WiFi for speed. When outside the house I use 3G. I get longer battery off charge times with 3g.
I usually just turn all my settings off when I go to bed.

 

[Thorsten]

3G actually uses less power at low data rates than wifi, so that it actually saves battery for your phone to switch to 3G when the screen is off.

what do you think?

I think the quoted claim (3G uses less power than WiFi per se) is pretty meaning less in the real world, even if it were true in a lab setting where equally strong WiFi and 3G settings could be engineered.

Countless Android users have observed their phones