Having wifi activated consumes battery? Consume while off? How much?

The WiFi connection and the mobile data connection influence the battery consumption, although it is somewhat insignificant. The problem is not the fact that the button or “light” of the wifi is on (something that generates minimal or negligible battery consumption). The significant battery drain is actually indirect and comes from the applications that use the Wi-Fi connection.

For example, as you can see in the images below, on my Huawei the WiFi has barely consumed 2% of the battery despite having been activated for almost 13 hours in a row. That is, the WiFi practically does not use battery in this sense and under normal conditions you should not worry about having it activated all the time.

Does the WiFi consume a lot of battery?

However, things can be different when you are connected to a WiFi network with a bad signal or even when you are not connected to a WiFi at all, as Android is usually constantly scanning WiFi networks. In both cases, a slightly higher battery consumption can be generated than mentioned. Anyway, you should go to the system settings, “Battery”, “Battery use”, to check that the battery consumption of the WiFi is within a normal range, as indicated above.

Applications

Both the Android battery monitor and third-party monitors (EJ: Gsam Battery Monitor) should assign battery usage to apps, even if they constantly use WiFi to connect to the Internet.

As I explained at the beginning, the true battery consumption, indirectly related to WiFi, can be caused by applications, because they tend to connect to the internet constantly to synchronize and download data (even when the user is not using them). Facebook It is one of the applications that eats the most battery in this way, as well as Messenger and other instant messaging applications that frequently go online to download messages or update news.

However, this battery consumption should be assigned to these applications in the system battery monitor and not to the WiFi. If you are seeing high battery drain from the WiFi, then there is probably a problem with the connection. In the best and most common cases, it is usually because you have a bad WiFi signal. You should check if other connected equipment suffers from the same problem, to determine if the cause is the router.

How to reduce battery consumption

I insist, since the battery consumption of the WiFi is negligible, despite having it activated all the time there should be no greater expense, unless there is a problem with the connection.

Some devices such as Huawei factory include an option to disable WiFi when the screen is turned off, in Settings, Battery, More battery settings.

If the problem is that you see apps that consume a lot of battery on the system monitor, it may be because you use them intensively (something obviously normal) or that they are probably connecting to the internet frequently. In this case, you can try disabling the WiFi manually or automatically, from the system settings or with third-party apps using apps like LeanDroid, available for free in the Play Store. Another option is to block Internet access to those particular problematic apps, with apps like NetGuard or Firewall WITHOUT Root.