Power consumption: Bluetooth, GPS & Wi-Fi?

[valnar]

So I have a widget that lets me turn on/off bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, syncing and screen brightness. I know that for saving the battery, the best bang for the buck is turning down the screen. But what about the three connectivity options? Between Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS, which consumes the most power just being "on"? Which uses the most power being active?

In somebody were to rate bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi in terms of power consumption, what order would that be?

'Just trying to get a feel for what I need to turn off and for how long, or to just leave on all the time.

[keiichi25]

I believe Bluetooth and WiFi use about the same amount of power. Both have receive and transmit data channels, and both are actively 'receiving' new signals. GPS, to my understand, is 'receive only' for the most part, looking for signals via line of sight to GPS satellites and correlating from those satellites your position.

[valnar]

I believe Bluetooth and WiFi use about the same amount of power. Both have receive and transmit data channels, and both are actively 'receiving' new signals. GPS, to my understand, is 'receive only' for the most part, looking for signals via line of sight to GPS satellites and correlating from those satellites your position.

Thank you.

So does leaving GPS enabled all the time (assuming Maps is not running) consume any power? Anyone know?

[Erich_F]

So does leaving GPS enabled all the time (assuming Maps is not running) consume any power? Anyone know?

According to my unit, the GPS has only been using about 2% of the power consumption, and I have been playing with it a bit. As long as the GPS signal icon is not present in the Notification Bar, the GPS is not operating and consuming power.

My WiFi has been consuming about 7-10%.


Erich

[godanigo]

So does leaving GPS enabled all the time (assuming Maps is not running) consume any power? Anyone know?

According to my unit, the GPS has only been using about 2% of the power consumption, and I have been playing with it a bit. As long as the GPS signal icon is not present in the Notification Bar, the GPS is not operating and consuming power.

My WiFi has been consuming about 7-10%.


Erich

Yes to what he said about the GPS, it's just fine to leave it enabled as long as it's not running constantly. Wifi is probably similar but I would recommend disabling it unless you are actually using it, just in case.

[atall64]

I have used my bluetooth once several weeks ago. Whenever I check to see what apps are running I find it running and I manually turn off. Are there other apps that use the bluetooth that turn it on and drain the battery?

[RW-1]

Though i leave it off until I wish to use it, I think one can leave GPS on.

It is simply a matter of if you have malcoded apps that access the GPS.

To give an example, google maps itself had an update to correct it "not" turning off the GPS after one closed it.

So having it on, is only about it being available, not necessarily in use, as determined by the icon.

Wifi I definately manually control, as by default it will take time to search for new networks, I know we can disable, but overall with the widget, I find it is only another click to turn on stuff before beginning to use the stuff that would assess it.

[wsbsteven]

At 4:40 in this video they have a graph of the battery usage of components on an Android phone. This is pre droid times and it uses a GSM phone instead of CDMA so usage will not be the same but it gives you an idea.