Samsung Galaxy S3 mini — Can I set the phone to periodically turn on the WiFi instead of leaving it active all the time?

Not sure if there is a way to do this but I would be inetersted to know as well. I always put my phone on airplane mode while I sleep, just to save battery.

There are various settings to optimise WiFi usage in stock android (settings/WiFi/advanced), but not that option. You could use an app like Juice Defender to do this though apps like this may cause higher battery usage on Android 4.0+ as they interfere with the optimisations. You're best bet is to do it per app; most apps will have the option to either receive push notifications immediately or a schedule for updating.

I am sure you must be having Power saver mode try switching the power saver mode to ON. Rest like @Sinkster said you can try using battery saver application like Juice defender, Du battery saver or Easy Battery Saver. Some of them provide options like periodically cleaning up the background application, switch the Wifi or Mobile network off at night and...... try using Easy Battery Saver.

I have a widget on my homescreen (Power Toggles) so I can switch everything with one tap

There is an app, Snapdragon BatteryGuru but it's just for Qualcomm SOCs, It will automatically detect your wifi hotspots location, and turn your wifi on and off.

you could download the tasker application from the google play store and set it to periodically turn your wifi off/on or when a certain event occurs. For turning wifi on and off i'm not sure if you'll need root access because i have root access and can use everything within the app

Tasker is the best, but you can also set profiles either with an app or custom ROM (like CyanogenMod) to disable Wi-Fi and other things during Sleep times (or whatever profile you choose to create).

You can also set your Wi-Fi connection to avoid poor connections (in the settings) and to not always be available for Google's Location Reporting scanning in your Advanced Wi-Fi settings.

elfelix42

I was wondering if I could save battery by doing this with some app/tweak/magic ritual.

I want to receive push notifications but I don't want my battery to die faster.

Any tips? Thanks in advance

Very simple; either turn off the data connection itself or, like I do and enable Airplane mode, turn wifi back on and no chance of any data being used.

There are apps that aim to save battery life by turning Wi-Fi on and off periodically. So you wouldn't get your push notifications immediately, but you'd get them every 10 minutes or so.

There's AutoData: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symbuzzer.autodata&hl=en and there's Auto WiFi: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmstyles.autowifi&hl=en, for example.

Let us know how you get on.