Wifi Calling draining battery?

[rdunlap]

I've been getting really fast berry drain lately since switching to T-Mobile. I've been trying to figure out what's responsible and I've found quite a few articles referencing battery drain to wifi calling. I wanted to see if anyone is also having this issue or knows more information.

Thanks!

 

[Mlrollin91]

Couldn't tell you about TMO WiFi Calling, but on AT&T, WiFi Calling uses much less battery than straight cellular. Maybe because WiFi Calling on AT&T only kicks in when you have low service and on TMO it kicks in as soon as you are connected to WiFi?

 

[chscag]

I've been using T-Mobile Wifi calling with all my iPhones and have found that it actually saves the battery compared to making calls via cellular. What does eat into the battery is Blue Tooth and app background updating. Of course if you have wireless headphones you need to keep BT on.

 

[rdunlap]

how long have u been using this iPhone? with wifi on draining the battery fast, you can check your battery actual capacity to see if it's lower than the design capacity

I checked this last night. My battery capacity is at 94% still so doesn't seem to be the issue. It's ever since I switched to T-Mobile the battery is draining a lot faster than usual. Not sure why my Messages app is taking so much battery though ...

 

[chscag]

Those apps using more battery are also doing background updating. Which means even if you're not actively using Messages or Facebook, or whatever, that they're updating in the background and using battery. I only have a few apps that I allow to update in the background.

 

[nburwell]

I've been using T-Mobile Wifi calling with all my iPhones and have found that it actually saves the battery compared to making calls via cellular. What does eat into the battery is Blue Tooth and app background updating. Of course if you have wireless headphones you need to keep BT on.

Same situation with me. Both my SE and 6s have not experienced any significant battery drain since switching to TMO last month. If anything I have seen an incremental increase in battery life since switching.

 

[cynics]

Weaker cell reception will cause battery drain. Do you feel you are getting weaker cell reception than your previous cell provider?

 

[zorinlynx]

I had to turn off AT&T wifi calling because it just wasn't reliable. Calls would stutter and I wouldn't be able to understand the person I was talking to when Wi-Fi calling was active. Ever since I've turned it off I haven't had anymore problems with calls.

It was great when I was in an area with NO cel signal but even a marginal cel signal was better than wifi calling 99% of the time.

 

[Wizec]

In case this helps someone else, I was experiencing severe idle time (screen off) battery drain on my iPhone XS and after weeks of troubleshooting, finally got around to disabling the “Calls on Other Devices” feature of WiFi Calling which stopped the battery drain. I don’t use that feature enough anyway, though occasionally it was handy to answer calls on my iPad Pro 2017.

At any rate, I’d much rather have great idle battery life on my iPhone XS than have the ability to answer calls on my iPad...