Power consumption Bluetooth 4 vs 3.5mm

Question

I'm in my work car a lot and my only option currently for getting music/podcasts to my car speakers is a 3.5mm AUX port on the dash. I was wondering what the power consumption difference between Bluetooth 4 and that AUX port are?

I'd like to buy a Bluetooth 4 adapter for the AUX port and run it that way if it will save me battery life on my phone as it's easier to have it connect automatically than having to plug it in and I don't overuse the headphone port on the phone.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Solution

From personal experience, I have to say that wired devices use less power. Having Bluetooth enabled on my wireless devices drain them so quickly that I now avoid Bluetooth altogether.

Noting that this is only one sample by a user, an iPhone 5's battery capacity percentage (which supports Bluetooth 4.0) is shown here to lose 2.0-2.4% per hour playing audio through the headphone jack with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off, and 2.6% with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on. In comparison, playing audio over Bluetooth with Wi-Fi off consumed 3.4% of the battery capacity per hour.

These results are somewhat questionable, since the author claims that playing audio over Wi-Fi (with Bluetooth on) only consumes 2.4% per hour, similar to playing audio through the headphone jack, and less than playing audio over Bluetooth. It is well documented* that "Bluetooth is ... shown to be about 30% more energy efficient than WiFi to perform occupancy data transmission".

Still, this would be an easy thing to test with your hardware.

*Putra, G.D., et. al., 2017, Comparison of energy consumption in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Communication in a Smart Building, Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC), 2017 IEEE 7th Annual, Las Vegas

Comments

[Apache]

Don't have specific data, but by just keeping your bluetooth radio turned on will draw power. But I doubt a battery replacement would cost more than a jack replacement (can you even replace it on a phone? I mean... it's basically soldered to the mainboard.)