Summary: I observed that when the MK wifi is left turned on, the battery only lasts two days max, meanwhile, when turned off, the phone lasts 6+ days as advertised. The purpose of this thread is to confirm if this is the case for other users and try to understand why the wifi chip uses so much power while on stand by.
Battery starting charge for both tests: 80%
Testing stopped when battery drains under 30%
Currently running MuditaOS K 1.4.0
Sideloaded apps CalmCast & Simple ABP both forced exit during this test. No other apps were installed.
Activities: During the duration of this test, there was minimal to no app usage. The weather, alarm, and calendar apps were left to run normally in the background. Meanwhile, all other apps were forced exit. In addition, bluetooth was turned off while LTE was turned on during the whole duration of this test, allowing weather updates to work while the wifi was off.
Wifi data usage of the device during the test, according to the router: 96KB (as mentioned, there was no user activity during the test - this value may not be the most accurate, but it gives you some idea)
Wifi bands used during this test: 2.4 GHz & 5Ghz
Distance from nearest access point: 5-10ft direct line of sight
Test 1 - Wifi turned off
Sat evening 80%
Sun 66%
Mon 56%
Tues 47%
Wed 38%
Thu 28%
Test 2 - Wifi turned on
Fri evening 80%
Sat 34%
Sun 12%
I am not sure what to make of this, because I look at my iPhone which was also mostly untouched during this week but it has wifi turned on with all sorts of background apps running, yet the battery lasted around 3 days. Why is the MK wifi chip so bad in terms of energy usage? Is this a hardware or software issue? Is it just me?
I can relate. I haven’t been able to get more than 3 days, and typically it’s 2 days before needing a charge. Didn’t matter if I had 6 apps installed or running stock. Same issue. I read in another thread to turn off wifi and use offline+ when sleeping, and that’s been the biggest help.
That said, I’m still only squeezing 4 days out, but ONLY IF I can remember my offline+ at night.
Thank you for this feedback @nary
I will definitely pass this on to the team to investigate.
I personally do not have this issue, but it’s interesting how you documented this.
I always have my WiFi on at home- in certain parts of my house the network coverage is really low (in any phone) so I make use of WiFi calling.
This benchmark started by accident, I was disappointed by the longevity of the battery, and found myself force exiting apps to figure out which app was draining so much power and finding it was none of them. So I thought ‘is it the wifi?’, I already had bluetooth turned off since I prefer to use wired headphones so I was very surprised to see the next morning (Sun) that the battery was still sitting at around 77%. I tried using my usual apps, listening to music, etc and the battery was not draining as quickly as before - which is also the reason why between Sat and Sun in Test 1, there was more battery drain compared to the latter days. I found this interesting enough that I decided to see how long the battery would last if I were to leave the phone untouched the next few days - I still took it with me when I walk my dog, but otherwise it just sat on the table and I marked the battery level on the board before I went to sleep.
I work in IT so I know the importance of providing as much info as possible. In case it also matters, my home is wired with Ubiquity Unifi networking with U6 LR, U6 IW, and U6 Mesh access points. Not sure if it is a particular wifi band that the MK is struggling on, but I’ll let your engineers figure that out. I can confirm that my home has solid wifi coverage with no issues in terms of wireless interference.
I recognize that the measurement is very much informal and not accurate, but the point is obvious, the battery lasts comically so much longer with wifi turned off.
