Regarding WiFi 6 Target Wake Time feature

[magoood]

I'm about to purchase a new phone with WiFi 6 support which leads me also to thinking about upgrading my WiFi router to a one that supports WiFi 6 to take advantage of the improved speed throughput and another nice feature called "Target Wake Time" which, in brief, will save more battery - compared to older WiFi generations - through efficient communication between the new router and my phone that will help the Wi-Fi radio from my phone to enter a low-powered sleep state, since Wi-Fi 6 routers are capable of accurately predicting when they will transmit another batch of data to any given client.

My question is: Will I get these 2 main benefits on my newer phone even if I'm the only client who supports WiFi 6 and the rest of clients are sill on the older WiFi generation?

In other words, do I need all clients to support WiFi 6 to get all the benefits I mentioned on my newer phone, or at least 1 older device connected to my WiFi 6 router will force it to work in backward compatibility mode for the sake of the older clients?

[Philip]

You do not need all clients to be Wi-Fi 6 to get the benefits of its faster speed, sleep mode, etc. You only need the router and your one client to support it.

That said, I am not sure the Wi-Fi battery saving will be very noticeable on a cell phone. That sleep mode is more beneficial to IoT devices that do not need constant connectivity, cell phones can power down the Wi-Fi radio when you turn off the screen even with older Wi-Fi generations. To save battery, newer cell phones have more power-efficient chipsets and can have bigger batteries with newer technologies (Li-polymer) that help longer battery life. Lower brightness settings and resolutions (HD vs QHD/UHD) can also save battery, etc.