Speedify Battery Usage Overview
This article explains how Speedify affects battery life on your device and what you can do to reduce battery usage if needed.
What You Should Know About Battery Usage
Speedify is designed to be battery efficient. It turns off radios whenever they are not needed and minimizes how much data your device sends and receives. In lab testing, the difference in battery drain between running Speedify and not running Speedify was minimal.
There is one thing worth noting: when Speedify is connected, your phone's Settings app will attribute all Wi-Fi and 4G/5G cellular internet traffic to Speedify, rather than to the individual apps using it. This means you may see Speedify listed as using 20% or 40% of your battery, but that number is not accurate on its own. What matters is the total effect on your overall battery life.
If you want to reduce battery usage further, you can set your 4G/5G cellular connection to Backup mode in Speedify. This way, Speedify only uses cellular if your Wi-Fi connection drops, rather than actively combining both connections for faster upload and download speeds.
Lab Test Results
Speedify tested real-world battery usage by streaming video on several devices, including a Samsung Galaxy S4 and an iPhone 7 Plus. Each device streamed either a 30-minute or 60-minute video in full HD using Xfinity On Demand or YouTube, while connected to an 80 Mbps (megabits per second) Wi-Fi network.
Each device was tested in three configurations:
- Without Speedify: The device used only the Wi-Fi network.
- Speedify, Cellular Normal: Speedify was running and could use the 4G/5G cellular connection alongside Wi-Fi if needed.
- Speedify, Cellular Backup: Speedify was running, but the 4G/5G cellular connection would only activate if Wi-Fi failed.
The lab test setup used for battery measurements.
Results
| Device | Test | Without Speedify | Speedify, Cellular Normal | Speedify, Cellular Backup | Impact, Cellular Normal | Impact, Cellular Backup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 7 Plus | Xfinity On Demand, 30 min | 5% | 6% | 5% | +1% | 0% |
| Galaxy S4 | YouTube, 60 min | 23% | 24% | 23% | +1% | 0% |
| iPhone 6 Plus | YouTube, 60 min | 16% | 16% | 16% | 0% | 0% |
With the 4G/5G cellular connection set to Normal, Speedify used around 1% more battery over 30 minutes of continuous streaming. With cellular set to Backup, there was no measurable difference in battery usage.
Did you know - You can change your connection preferences in Speedify, including how often and how much Speedify can use a particular connection? See Connection Settings to learn how to configure your connections.