Mobile phone turned on 5G more power consumption? The real machine review is coming: about 23% more power consumption
Two or three years ago, when 5G was still in the popularization stage, many people were saying that "5G increased power consumption", mainly in addition to faster download speeds, 5G seemed to only bring greater heat and power consumption. Xiaomi President Lu Weibing said in 2020 that when the 5G network is fully turned on, 5G will consume about 20% more power than 4G. In order to ensure battery life, some people will actively turn off 5G on their mobile phones and use the 4G mobile network to "surf the Internet" every day.
Has it changed today? It seems to have changed, as if it has not changed again. On the one hand, 5G only specifies "killer applications" or network speed test software, and in most scenarios, 5G is still "little perception" and "increased power consumption" for mobile phone users. On the other hand, the iterative improvement of 5G chips has also made the heat and power consumption caused by 5G in mobile phones smaller.
But even so, 5G still consumes more power than 4G, but how much more? It seems that no one has made it clear.
Just recently, Ookla, the parent company of Speedtest, one of the 5G "killer apps", released a comparison of the power consumption of the flagship chip of the Android camp under 4G and 5G networks. The results show that the latest generation of flagship chips of Qualcomm and MediaTek significantly improves the power consumption disadvantage under 5G connection, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (X70 baseband) model and Dimensity 9200 (T800 baseband) model still consume 6% and 7% more power than 4G connection under 5G connection, respectively.
Photo: Ookla
Taking the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 model as an example, the power under 5G connection is reduced from 100% to 69%, and the power consumption is 31%; With a 4G connection, the power is reduced from 100% to 75%, consuming 25% of the power.
However, this result is still controversial, some netizens pointed out that the results are different from the body feeling, and Speedtest's test method is also special. They analyze directly based on Android's Speedtest Intelligence data (a record of data saved when users test their internet speed on Speedtest), roughly identifying all devices that have 100% charge in the morning (6 a.m. to 12 p.m.), comparing it to the lowest battery level in the afternoon (12 noon to 6 p.m.), and then aggregating the data.
However, Speedtest did not announce more specific operational details, such as whether the comparison of 5G and 4G connections is based on the same model, the same place and time, which will affect the reference value of the entire test results.
So why don't we test it ourselves to see how much power consumption 5G will "increase" and if it is necessary to shut it down?
Xiaomi Mi 13 under 4G directly saves 23% of the battery
First of all, we decided to use the Xiaomi Mi 13 Standard Edition with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 as a test model, after all, it was the best selling domestic flagship in the world last quarter. As a test machine, the purchase dates of the two Xiaomi Mi 13 are not much different, which means that the battery health is similar and the system version number is also the same.
Before the test, we inserted a 5G package card from China Telecom, one of which was set to 4G connection only, the other kept the default 5G connection (automatically switched to 4G when the 5G signal is weak), and also performed a restart and set to automatic brightness.
Secondly, in order to simulate the daily use of mobile phones, we selected 4 main scenarios of office buildings, shopping malls, subways, and residential areas, taking into account the usage habits of ordinary users, mobile network needs and testing process, and chose to conduct power consumption comparison tests through online video playback (B station and Douyin), social media browsing (Weibo) and standby (directly locking the screen in the App interface).
The test will start at 98%, the two phones will test all the items simultaneously, and the final stage will continue to play online video until the test machine under the 5G connection automatically shuts down when the battery is low.
Photo: Ray Technology
In a word, we will use Xiaomi Mi 13 in 5G connection mode and Xiaomi Mi 13 in 4G connection mode to watch videos and brush Weibo in 4G connection mode at the same time in 4 scenes in offices, shopping malls, subways, and residential areas, the core is the power consumption of 5G compared to 4G in the same time period.
So let's first reveal a question: how much more power will 5G consume than 4G? Or to put it another way, when there is no power and shutdown under the 5G connection, how much power will be left under the 4G connection?
The answer is that when the Xiaomi Mi 13 under the 5G connection has automatically shut down due to the low power of 2%, the Xiaomi Mi 13 under the 4G connection still has 25% of the power, and the difference between the two is a full 23%.
But how did such a big gap fall? Let's go back to everyday life first.
23% of the power, how does 5G "spend" more?
Scenario 1: Office building
The office building where Lei Technology is located is an office park, and the coverage of 5G and 4G base stations is relatively comprehensive, and the signal in the elevator is relatively poor. Our test location was in the office and the hallway, and the time was in the early afternoon, so the temperature in the corridor was significantly higher than in the air-conditioned office, but it did not affect the comparison test.
The test results of power consumption show that the power consumption is 11% under 5G in 1 hour, and 9% under 4G, which is 2% more power consumption.
In terms of experience, the two test machines are basically the same. Occasionally there will be 5G refreshes or faster loads, but the difference is also small; In 4K online video playback (station B), a large fast forward may occur for a short "buffering...", and the buffer time of 5G tends to be shorter and more difficult to perceive than 4G. However, on the whole, the gap between the actual experience of 5G and 4G in this link is still relatively weak.
Scenario 2: Shopping mall
Photo: Ray Technology
The test in the mall has two parts. The first part is in the afternoon, the entire mall has almost no traffic, playing online videos from station B (20 minutes) and Douyin (10 minutes) in restaurants, and the power consumption of 30 minutes under 5G/4G is 5% and 4% respectively.
The second part is at night, when the flow of people in the mall is very large, and it is difficult to find a place to sit, the same is to play B station and Douyin online video, this time the half-hour power consumption under 5G/4G reached 8% and 7% respectively.
Why is there a significant difference in power consumption between the two tests? It may be because the surge in the flow of people has brought more equipment to connect with the base station, resulting in the equipment needing to increase power and strengthen the signal reception capacity to "grab the signal", but in any case, this does not affect the comparison of the two test machines.
Scenario 3: Subway
As for the subway part, we took Guangzhou's famous "Death Line 3", and the online video of Station B was played throughout the carriage, and the round trip lasted a total of 1 hour. At the time of the test, although the fiercest evening rush hour had passed, many people still poured into the subway station, including everyone in the carriage who was generally using mobile phones.
Photo: Ray Technology
According to the test results, after nearly 1 hour of playback, the 5G mode test machine consumes 13% of the power, and the 4G mode test machine consumes 9% of the power, a difference of 4%. It is worth mentioning that Guangzhou's 5G base station coverage is actually very extensive, but in the high-speed operation of subway vehicles, 5G will often cut to 4G, and when it is close to the station, it will switch back to 5G, and when it leaves, it will cut to 4G again.
Frequent switching will inevitably affect the power consumption performance, which may be why the power consumption gap between 5G/4G in the subway scenario is large. In addition, this switch also slightly affects the network connection experience, if it is just when 5G cuts to 4G fast forward, it is easy to encounter a short pause in the cache, and the experience is not as stable as the full 4G connection.
Scenario 4: Cell
It should be noted in advance that the network conditions of different communities and urban villages may vary greatly, and we chose a relatively old community this time, with a small area and a small flow of people, opposite the main campus of a university, and a large book logistics center nearby.
Photo: Ray Technology
During the test process, I watched station B, Douyin, and Weibo. After 1 hour of measurement, the power consumption under 5G is 14%, and the power consumption is 12% under 4G, with a difference of 2%.
Then we also specifically tested the power consumption comparison of lock screen standby without returning to the desktop. The results show that after 1 hour of standby, 5% power consumption at 5G and 3% power consumption at 4G are consumed. In addition, in the next day's test (power unified 60%), if it is a restart without background application running, 5G still consumes "some" more power than 4G, specifically 6 hours of standby, 5G/4G consumes 2% and 1% respectively.
As for the final stage of "automatic shutdown when low power is detected", as the power is getting lower and lower, the difference in power consumption between 5G and 4G modes is increasing: the first hour is 13% and 10%, respectively, a difference of 3%; The second hour is 15% and 9%, respectively, a difference of 6%. Then after about 10 minutes, the Mi 13 in 5G mode automatically shut down because of 2% low power, and the Xiaomi 13 in 4G mode:
There is also 25% of the charge.
The 5G experience is not necessarily better, but it certainly consumes a lot of power
The fact that 5G is more power-hungry for mobile phones is well known, but before the test, it was not expected that after a day of testing, 5G and 4G would eventually accumulate a gap of up to 23%. Although most people do not need to turn off the computer to charge every day, coupled with different mobile phone manufacturers' different definitions of electricity at the system level, actual life may not be so different.
However, it can still be expected that in daily use, 5G will generally consume a lot of power.
If viewed from different use locations, in places where the signal is relatively stable, the power consumption gap between the two 5G/4G test machines is about 2% per hour; However, in places where the 5G signal is not very stable, such as on the subway, due to frequent switching between 5G and 4G, the power consumption of the test machine connected to 5G by default will become significantly larger, and the power consumption gap between the two test machines will increase to 4% per hour.
Of course, considering that everyone's light screen use time, scenes and habits will be different, the specific impact on power consumption and battery life will also be different. But from the test results alone, 5G will inevitably have a big impact on the daily power consumption of mobile phones.
More importantly, what does greater power consumption get in exchange?
In 2019, the coverage of Guangzhou's 5G network was not large, and I specifically experienced Huawei Mate 30 Pro - equipped with the first SoC Kirin 990 with integrated 5G baseband - the gap between daily use under 5G and 4G, social media browsing, video loading These scenarios are indeed a little smoother, but that's all.
Download is really fast, figure / ray technology
Today, in 2023, the 5G experience hasn't changed much. For mobile phone users, the core problem of 5G is still "not very useful", only when downloading large files can you clearly feel the experience improvement brought by "fast", other times and 4G experience is very little different, and in fact, downloading large files is more in the WiFi environment or desktop devices.
At the same time, even in a city of Guangzhou's size, 4G must be more stable and, of course, more power-efficient.
There is no new experience in 5G, and the key to 4G is battery life
In general, according to our tests, 5G has some slight advantages over 4G in daily experience, but there are obvious disadvantages in power consumption. But for mobile phone users, will 5G only "increase power consumption"? Or, should we turn off 5G?
Probably not. On the one hand, many netizens have reported that as the investment focus of telecom operators has shifted to 5G in recent years, the 4G signal coverage in some places may not be as good as 5G, which is obviously the priority of signal and stability at this time. In addition, mobile phone manufacturers generally configure automatic 5G by default, that is, connect to 5G when the 5G signal is good, and connect to 4G when it is not good, so as to prioritize the stability of the network.
In fact, now the 5G switch of the mobile phone is becoming more and more difficult to find, Xiaomi 13 turns off the 5G switch separately in the mobile network, OPPO hides the 5G switch in the "power saving mode" and "developer options", vivo is to enter the "engineering mode" first. It is impossible to even rule out the possibility that one day in the future, the 5G switch will disappear completely into the phone.
Photo: Pexels
However, before that, if you are often anxious about the battery life of your mobile phone or travel on business, and the charging conditions are inconvenient, it is indeed recommended to turn off 5G on the premise that the 4G network coverage is no problem to reduce power consumption. On the contrary, if there is not much battery life anxiety and charging equipment is also available at the place of work, there may not be much need to turn off 5G every day, after all, when there is a dense number of connected devices, such as the Spring Festival or music festivals, the characteristics of 5G "big connection" can provide a more stable network experience.
But don't expect too much from 5G. At the beginning of 5G commercialization in 2019, Miao Wei, former minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said, "80% of the real application scenarios of 5G should be used in the field of industrial Internet." Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, also stressed in June this year that "5G capabilities have not yet been fully reflected in consumer applications."
Although 5G networks have achieved universal coverage in China, and the number of users of 5G mobile phones has exceeded 600 million, most ordinary consumers do not have a high perception of 5G. Looking into it, there is actually a question that has not been answered since the commercial use of 5G: What is the 5G killer application?
Self-driving cars, VR, cloud gaming, cloud phones, cloud computers... These were once considered 5G killer applications, which are either in a very early stage of development or commercially controversial. The fact is that at least at this stage, 5G has not brought much change to mobile phone users, and there is still a long way to go from "5G changes society".
In this case, we might as well be more concerned about the reduction of mobile phone plan tariffs and power consumption.