The Bluetooth LE protocol is significantly more power efficient than Bluetooth Classic. Several chipsets makers, including Texas Instruments[17] and Nordic Semiconductor now supply chipsets optimized for iBeacon use. Power consumption depends on iBeacon configuration parameters of advertising interval and transmit power. A study on 16 different iBeacon vendors reports that battery life can range between 1–24 months. Apple's recommended setting of 100ms advertising interval with a coin cell battery provides for 1–3 months of life, which increases to 2–3 years as advertising interval is increased to 900ms.[18]
Battery consumption of the phones is a factor that must be taken into account when deploying beacon enabled apps. A recent report has shown that older phones tend to draw more battery in the vicinity of iBeacons, while the newer phones can be more efficient in the same environment.[19] In addition to the time spent by the phone scanning, number of scans and number of beacons in the vicinity are also significant factors for battery drain, as pointed out by the Aislelabs report.[20] In a follow up report, Aislelabs found a drastic improvement in battery consumption for iPhone5S, iPhone 5C versus the older model iPhone 4S. At 10 surrounding iBeacons, iPhone 4S can consume up to 11% of battery per hour whereas iPhone5S consumes a little less than 5% battery per hour. [21] An energy efficient iBeacon application needs to consider these aspects in order to strike a good balance between app responsiveness and battery consumption.