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A person that is not expert in computers & technology (including smartphones) bought a Galaxy Mini S3 and asked me some help. He is very old of age.

The problem with this phone is that Wifi drains away lots of power. The battery barely survives half a day. Disabling wifi multiplies the battery duration. It is normal that disabling wifi helps battery survive, but the difference with this phone is dramatic (my S3 "large" lasts more).

The basic idea is to disable wifi when not needed, something that I do every time I go out of home playing Ingress. But that user is not an expert and hardly can be taught how and when to enable/disable wifi. He needs Viber, which he learned how to use, when home. When out of home, no wifi is needed.

I would like to ask if there is any application that can be used to turn wifi on and off depending on the location of the device, possibly avoiding draining battery because of the GPS. I was thinking about coarse location based on cell tower.

I was also thinking about the old Microsoft On.X.

Or, can any other trick be used to make battery last a little longer with wifi on?

An important thing I found: I let the user use the phone mainly in standby for an almost full discharge. Battery meter said that Android OS consumed 62% of battery. Wifi was only consuming 6%.

This morning the phone was fully charged. After about 4 hours the battery level, with wifi manually turned off, was of 98%.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Tasker is an app that can be used to automate changing settings on your device, based on various events like when you leave range of a wifi AP, or when you enter a geographic area.

You can have a look through the Tasker tag here for some idea of the jobs it can be used for, and how to configure it.

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  • I second this suggestion. Using "Cell Near" for evaluating the location (instead of GPS or Net location) will help not wasting battery on that, as the current CellID is known at anytime (as long as not in airplane mode) for telephony either (it's the ID of the cell tower used). I use it this way with Tasker for years now, works excellent. Just from time to time it might require a fresh "cell scan", when the carrier updated their hardware :)
    – Izzy
    Commented May 16, 2013 at 14:29
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Thanking GAThrawn and Izzy for the feedback I also want to post two scripts in On.X's Javascript-like syntax

1st script: enable wifi only when home (inspired by a Microsoft script)

// Initializing variables 
var action = "enter" /* arrive */;
var region = { name : "Home",latitude : XXXX,longitude : XXXX,location : XXXXX } ;
var action2 = "exit" /* leave */;
// End of variables initializing 
//Create New region is necescary to set the radius
var myLocation = device.regions.createRegion({
   name: region.name,
   latitude: region.latitude,
   longitude: region.longitude,
   radius: 100
});

myLocation.on(action, function(){
    device.network.wifiEnabled = true;
});

myLocation.on(action2, function(){
    device.network.wifiEnabled = false;
});
device.regions.startMonitoring(myLocation);

2nd script, also useful, toggles wifi on charge (supposing the phone is charged at home)

var batteryChargingEvent = "startedCharging";
var batteryChargedEvent = "stoppedCharging";

device.battery.on(batteryChargingEvent, function (signal)
 {
     device.network.wifiEnabled = true;
 });

 device.battery.on(batteryChargedEvent, function (signal)
 {
     device.network.wifiEnabled = false;
 });

Using both shouldn't be a problem unless one uses a portable charger

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You could also look into an extended life battery (usually larger with a custom backplate.) Not really solving the problem, but definitely an option, and maybe simpler.

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