I'm playing with Noridc's SoC eval board. I'm measuring the current draw of the SoC with a 0.5 ohm resistor and a Touchstone Semi TS1100-200 current sense amp.
For some reason in advertising mode, the test code draws and extra 3.5mA half the time. The period is 625ms.
Oh, I know that 3.5mA is: the LED indicating it's trying to connect. The duty cycle and period match.
When you zoom in you can see it advertise the three channels in succession. It does this every 30ms.
Once it's connected, it draws almost no current. It only appears to send packets when the data changes. The state machine smartly doesn't needlessly re-send.
That's not much power for an ARM plus a transeciever.