Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe from pocketnow com and i've got an android quick tip for you today for this one I'm going to be using the t-mobile mytouch 4G but the same battery saving technique that I'm about to show you will apply to almost every Android powered phone on the market let's go look ok so this Android quick tip is basically setting a more conservative Wi-Fi sleep policy so of course this has to do with Wi-Fi but I'm showing you on this phone for a particular reason you see the t-mobile mytouch 4G is one of t mobile's phones that comes with Wi-Fi calling enabled in fact it kind of encourages you to set up Wi-Fi calling when you connect to Wi-Fi access point right off the bat which is good but that also means that you might have some some battery life impact now I've advised you in the past to turn on Wi-Fi to use Wi-Fi whenever possible because even having Wi-Fi on looking for a connection point will save you a lot of battery life when you're surfing over Wi-Fi or browsing over Wi-Fi or streaming music over Wi-Fi are watching video over Wi-Fi rather than watching it over HSPA or whatever your data connection might be while all of that holds true what doesn't really make sense at least first glance is why you'd need to leave Wi-Fi on all the time I mean for example if we're at pocket now calm and I turn off the screen I don't need my Wi-Fi on anymore now it might be nice if I kept my Wi-Fi antenna alive so that when i turn the screen back on and went back to pocket now calm and wanted to go to the next page I didn't have to renegotiate for you know an IP address and all that stuff but that gets into a lot of networking that we don't need to worry about what wouldn't be good is if when i turn my screen off my Wi-Fi stays on all the time but with Wi-Fi calling it has to do that and why does it have to do that well basically if you're going to receive a phone call over Wi-Fi your Wi-Fi has to be on to be able to receive it makes sense right but let's go take a look and see exactly what i'm talking about any Android phone you should be able to go to your home screen hit menu go to settings go to wireless and networks from there go to Wi-Fi settings from there make sure your Wi-Fi is turned on go to menu advanced and this will take a minute because it's connecting right now if yours was already connected it would go right there really quickly best Wi-Fi performance if your Wi-Fi is kind of slow if your access points kind of far away turning that on will help get you better performance but it's also going to consume some more battery power so be advised about that setting but what we're really after here is this Wi-Fi sleep policy open that up and you can see by default on the t-mobile mytouch 4G it's set to never sleep now what is sleeping basically it's just turning Wi-Fi off I don't like that but again if you are using Wi-Fi calling you need to have that but there's the trick if you're not using Wi-Fi calling you don't need to have that so let's change it to never when plugged in now why never one plugged in meaning it's never going to sleep it's never going to turn the Wi-Fi off when it's plugged in well to me that's great that's perfect when I'm plugged in I'm charging up in most cases and I'm able to stream down any podcasts any RSS feeds news feeds anything like that that I have scheduled to happen at night can come over Wi-Fi where it's much faster and it's not going to impact my battery life obviously because I'm plugged in well more conservative still is after 15 minutes so now when i turn my screen off Wi-Fi is going to be on for 15 minutes and then it's going to turn off now that's not the way it is on all phones for example let's come over here to the epic 4g we're going to go ahead and do the same thing if i can find where it is on these capacitive buttons that hide until you press them go into settings wireless and networks Wi-Fi settings menu advanced Wi-Fi sleep policy and right here you can see it will sleep Wi-Fi when the screen turns off not after 15 minutes but as soon as that screen turns off or Never when it's plugged in or never in this one defaults to when the screen is turned off now after 15 minutes and immediately when the screen turns off that seems like an awful big gap so let's see another phone see how it does it this of course is the g2 and we are going to go into settings wireless I'm going to go to Wi-Fi settings and this is a little bit slow to respond right now because i just woke it up and it's very very overclocked normally it's a lot faster at responding go into advanced again the Wi-Fi sleep policy and again overclocking your phone can mean that some things respond slower than you'd expect them to and you can see the settings we have here again immediately when the screen turns off never when plugged in and never so it's the same as the epic 4g so how can you use this technique to save battery power basically as long as you don't have your Wi-Fi set to never sleep move it to never one plugged in or when the screen turns off or after 15 minutes after the screen turns up you should be fine the impact that you're going to have of course is you may not be able to get some of those Wi-Fi calls or if you are well if you're not under a cellular data network then obviously you don't have any data connection so at that point if you find yourself in that circumstance you may want to set it to never as well but in any event as soon as you turn your screen back on your Wi-Fi policy is going to kick back on you're going to connect again and everything should be just fine and dandy but doing this will save you in my experience about two to three hours of battery life on the mytouch 4G every day otherwise if you have this at never you might not make it through a full business day I usually did but then had to plug in on my commute on my way home otherwise I would lose all of my battery light on the phone would turn off so really quick really simple kind of very deep in the OS way to save some battery life simply making sure that your wife I can sleep when you don't need it to be awake kind of neat let me know how much battery life that saves you and if you've got any other options in your Wi-Fi sleep policy dialogue I'd be interested to know what phone you have and what settings you have in there as well as which one you use on a normal everyday basis leave that down below of course subscribe to our video channel so you can keep up to date with more Android quick tips and for pocket now i'm joe levi