Change the Wi-Fi sleep policy in Android

If you're noticing your Wi-Fi connection turning off when you put your phone on standby, your Wi-Fi is likely set to turn off with your screen. This saves your battery but costs you data use; any applications like Gmail, Facebook, news, weather and others that sync in the background will be forced on to the mobile data network. Likewise, if you're downloading a file or an application and you turn your screen off, the download will continue on the mobile network.

Here's how to change the setting.

Tap the Menu key and go to Settings. Choose Wireless and networks then Wi-Fi settings. Tap the Menu key again and choose Advanced. Finally, tap on Wi-Fi sleep policy.

The options you see here will vary depending on the specific Android handset you have. We're seeing options to put our Wi-Fi connection to sleep: When the screen turns off, Never when plugged in and Never.

We're going to choose Never; rather than have the phone decide when Wi-Fi should be shut off, we'll do that ourselves with the Power control widget which you can see here, on the homescreen.

That's how you change the Wi-Fi sleep policy on your Android phone.