[CrackBerry Question]

what uses less battery?

Wifi or 4G/3G

and

4G or 3G?

thank you

[Matty]

Wi-Fi == Lowest Battery Dain
3G == Optimal
4G == Biggest Battery Drain

I stick to Wi-Fi & 3G most of the time. 4G is great for very fast downloads, but it chows your battery.

Posted via BlackBerry Q5 on 10.3.1.2576

[fanisk]

Wifi hands down!

Sent from my BlackBerry Passport

[Troy Tiscareno]

Generally, the closer and/or stronger a signal is at the handset, the less battery it will use, because it will require both less energy and processing to receive and hold on to the signal AND less power to transmit back (remember - cell phone radios work in both directions). In nearly all cases, WiFi is going to be stronger (or it won't be useable, by design) than cell signals.

The other thing that affects power usage is data throughput - the more data coming through, the more processing is needed, and the more power. There are some other factors such as protocol efficiency, but these have much less impact than the first two factors.

Thus, Matty is generally correct: WiFi uses the least, then 3G, then 4G. In the real world, it doesn't always work this way, though. For example, if your nearest usable 3G tower is 5 miles away, but there's an LTE tower 1 mile away, staying on LTE would likely use a lot less power.

Currently, cell phones generally have to have BOTH 3G and 4G radios working at the same time - 3G for phone calls and SMS, and LTE for data. But there are already a few phones out that support VoLTE (Voice over LTE), which means they no longer need 3G. They all still support 3G in case the phone leaves LTE coverage, but as legacy 3G networks are phased out, and as all newer phones support VoLTE, a couple of years from now your phone will stay on LTE at all times, and will get better battery life by not having to also maintain a 3G connection as well.