Battery Draining at night

[Tim K]

Oh wow, thank you for the explanation. Can you please clarify for the following scenarios:

1- Outside of home. There are free WiFi available, example close to coffee shops. But I decide not to connect to these networks and use 3G instead. Should the "WiFi ON" still consume some energy? I suppose yes as you explained above.

Technically, yes, but really I don't think you'd notice. I NEVER turn WiFi off, ever. And I get plenty of battery life. Wifi barely even registers on my battery usage. I've had WiFi on for 6 hours and its consumed 2% of my battery life.... and that's with several hours of actual wifi use streaming Sirius at home.

2- Inside home, but in a corner where WiFi reception is weak. The icon shows 1 or even zero bar. Is it still economic to leave WiFI on? BTW, I continue to receive data pretty OK. How do I know if the data came from WiFi or the phone network?

Yes, leave it on. If the phone can connect to wifi and get the data that way, it will. If it cannot get wifi reception it will defer to 3g/4g to get the data. Let the phone decide. You want it to use wifi as much as possible, and it will try to do so if possible.

 

[Demache]

Technically, yes, but really I don't think you'd notice. I NEVER turn WiFi off, ever. And I get plenty of battery life. Wifi barely even registers on my battery usage. I've had WiFi on for 6 hours and its consumed 2% of my battery life.... and that's with several hours of actual wifi use streaming Sirius at home.



Yes, leave it on. If the phone can connect to wifi and get the data that way, it will. If it cannot get wifi reception it will defer to 3g/4g to get the data. Let the phone decide. You want it to use wifi as much as possible, and it will try to do so if possible.

I turn Wifi off when I'm out and about....but only because the OPEN WIFI NETWORKS FOUND notification is annoying.

Its like "thank you Android for being so helpful but I'm driving across town, I'm not interested in using wifi right now".

EDIT: Just remembered there is an option to turn that off. Derp.

 

[colchiro]

batteries are cheap.

Leave wifi on when home, turn BT off when you're not using it and charge at night.

Turn wifi off when it's not available (like at work). 4g on or off depends on your signal. I get better life with it on b/c I have pretty good 4g in my area and the radio doesn't have to be on much.

 

[val88]

My advice is to not be too concern for a few weeks. When I first got my GN it was draining like crazy overnight. Twice I charged full and woke up to a near dead phone. A few things will happen. One, ICS seems to figure out how to better utilize your battery over time. I had my phone sent out once for repair and when I got it back the battery life sucked again for 2 weeks then it got better. Second, you will slowly find things turned on that you don't need.

For me (not saying its true for everyone), when I turned off GPS it made a big difference. Keeping my phone on 3G and going 4G only when I need to download is a big big difference because my phone can't maintain 4G so its constantly bouncing back and forth.

If you have google backup on, it might be doing backups at night. Slowly install apps. So that if one of them is misbehaving you have a better idea which one it is.

My phone now uses about 8% of my battery over night.

 

[Sandroidfan]

If you have google backup on, it might be doing backups at night. Slowly install apps. So that if one of them is misbehaving you have a better idea which one it is.

My phone now uses about 8% of my battery over night.

Do you see big difference in battery life with google backup on/off? I always had it on, but recently my battery drain over night got worse. With Wifi on it used to be under 2% per hour, but now it's closer to 3% per hour at night.

 

[Tim K]

Just leave the phone plugged in overnight. While its true that leaving Lithium Ion batteries at 100% all the time will destroy battery life, its not worth micro-managing for the risk of having the phone nearly dead by morning.

This is not a concern. The device actually manages the level of charge and does not hold a 100% charge. Once the charge hits 100%, the phone stops charging and actually lets the charge drain down close to 90% before bumping back up a few percent. It will continue this throughout the night, so don't worry about leaving it plugged in. This will do NO harm to the battery and will just make you crazy trying to micromanage your battery life.

Read this article for an in-depth look at what your battery is really doing when its recharging.