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I am primarily concerned if this will drain my battery if I leave personal hotspot on. Is it worth the mental time to turn off the hotspot in order to conserve battery?

I run iOS 6 on an iPhone 4s.

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Is this about just leaving hotspot on but no devices connected or some other long term situation? –  bmike Sep 27 '12 at 20:23
Yes, exactly. I just want it running all the time on the phone and I don't want to turn it on when I need to use it and turn off afterwards. –  Regmi Sep 27 '12 at 21:16
A search on google: "does hotspot standby drain iphone battery" gives you many answers. In particular I found this one to be useful: discussions.apple.com/thread/3907928?start=0&tstart=0 Apparently, which iOS and how some of the mail is configured etc all goes into how fast the hotspot drains the battery. Good luck. –  tea cook Sep 28 '12 at 12:20
@bmike Thanks for rewriting the question. makes much more sense now. :) –  Regmi Sep 28 '12 at 16:53

1 Answer 1

up vote 7 down vote accepted

It does drain your battery; whether it's worth it for you to turn it off is up to you and how long your battery last.

Also something worth noting is that by leaving it on and walking around other people can see your hotspot and might try to connect. Even if they're unsuccessful it will drain your battery even faster. If they are successful who knows what they might do while connected.

In general though, any app on your phone that sends/receive data is going to drain your battery more than an app that doesn't.

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This is a solid answer, I'd just like to add that while you are ON as a hotspot, you may forget that you have it on, open your laptop at home, and unwittingly use your Cellular Data, which could easily hurt your wallet real bad fast. –  Metagrapher Sep 28 '12 at 15:43
@Metagrapher This is exactly what happened when I went home and my MBA connected through my phone instead of using the regular wifi! –  Regmi Sep 28 '12 at 16:52
You can, however, make your home network the preferred network so that when you are at home you connect to that rather than your phone's hotspot. –  Metagrapher Oct 4 '12 at 16:06
Did just that. Thanks @Metagrapher. –  Regmi Dec 8 '12 at 17:36

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