[Q] 2G / 3G switching - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey,
I have a simple question. I want to save my battery. I would like to know how "2G/3G" feature works. A lot of apps and customization provides this setting. How does it work?
I want to switch to 3G only when I use internet actively BUT for pushing notifications and background updates + these cases when screen is off to use just 2G. Is there any other possibility except some Tasker, Locale or AutomateIt tasks?

devcager said:
Hey,
I have a simple question. I want to save my battery. I would like to know how "2G/3G" feature works. A lot of apps and customization provides this setting. How does it work?
I want to switch to 3G only when I use internet actively BUT for pushing notifications and background updates + these cases when screen is off to use just 2G. Is there any other possibility except some Tasker, Locale or AutomateIt tasks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the battery you would save here would be minimal or none at all as the phones radio will still be receiving signal. As with any task killer they tend to eat up the battery they save. If you want to double your battery life look at getting a power skin case, they run about 45 dollars but my phone last about 12 hours with it. It does make your phone pretty hefty though..
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App

Related

Any app to force EDGE when screen off?

Are there any apps out there which force edge when screen off, turning off the 3G or HSPA (mytouch 4g) radios to conserve energy?
I know there are quite a few apps out there like batteryfu, juice defender, etc which can completely turn off mobile data when the screen turns off, but i use a lot of IM programs so that's not really a solution for me.
i think 2g/3g toggle should work. does as you ask.
Sent from my Ideos using XDA App
superpower. you can find it on the market, and these forums. free.
irish22022 said:
superpower. you can find it on the market, and these forums. free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Yes i tried super power, but thing is every time i come out of sleep i lose ALL radio (including cell) and it takes maybe 10 seconds to re-establish connection. Not sure if this is expected behaviour, but i know i toggle between EDGE and HSPA pretty seamlessly normally when i'm in and out of service areas...
yes there is an app do like this , "sleepybattary" i think this was its name , search for it on the market

Juice Defender settings

What settings do you use for Juice Defender. I've been messing with this app but is unsure on what is the best settings to use.
I had it on balanced and it said it was saving me 1.22x batterylife and one day I switched it to custom and I swear I changed very little and now it shows 1.89.
Give that a try.
I am a bit skeptical on these battery saving apps. They run in the background, using more memory and battery.
I'll mess with it a bit more...
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e
I only use Juice Defender to shut off mobile data when Wifi is turned on and when certain apps run... otherwise, I dont let it shut off my data or wifi because the phone has fantastic battery power, so I let it stay on 24/7.
I use it to turn WiFi and data on or off by location.. night mode and on custom stewing and get about a day and a half on a charge with pretty heavy use
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App
caliber177 said:
I only use Juice Defender to shut off mobile data when Wifi is turned on and when certain apps run... otherwise, I dont let it shut off my data or wifi because the phone has fantastic battery power, so I let it stay on 24/7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mind sharing your settings?
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App
Actually juice defender does a very good job for the battery life mainly on stand-by. If you are unsure of the settings i suggest using the ,,balanced,, option. But here are some of my tips (i use a lot of 3g internet on my phone, so the settings are a little more internet-permissive )
About tab: I selected here turn data network on screen wake-up ( i use the friends stream network, mainly for twitter updates and i like to have a 3g connection rigt after i wake-up the screen (default is turn on 3g when you unlock)
Control tab: I didn.t change here anything, the default settings are good
Schedule : I choose some peak times here ( from 12 - 16 weekdays) when the 3g stays always on, even if i turn off the phone - i recive alot of emails during this time (also i set up mail peak times during this interval to 1h update)
This is what i changed on my device. It may not suit you or any other user, but as i said, personally i noticed a good change in battery life in standby (this is what Juice Defender actually does by turning off data connection when not needed, simple but effective)
I use the dim screen option, set at 55%, and min at 80%, max at 150% and enabled the dimmer option under about
I'm using mainly the default settings and so far so good.
The only issue i have found is that i could not install an .apk from SD card when juicedefender is active. I had to disable it in order for the "install" button to work! Any ideas?
I love juice defender, it says it gets me 1.90x more battery.
i use custom setting and i have night time where it disables most things between certain times when im asleep, the apps i tell it turn things like twitter and stocks not to access internet at all, as i dont even use them.
its very clever and i have just looked at the advanced options and there is so much more you can do. need to learn a bit more about it before i used advanced.
Thanks for the replies. I'll mess around and test it a bit more.

Green Power vs JuiceDefender

Hello everyone!
I was just wondering between these two apps...
Which one works better for you and if will be great if you can share your configuration!!
Also, does anyone knows is any of these two disable whatsapp and gmail notifications?
Many thanks for sharing!
Cheers!
IMHO
I can answer about Green Power Premium:
It doesn't have such option like disable notifications. He does such thing like disables data connection for amount of time you chose (for me it is 15min) and then enables data connection for amount of time you choose (for me it is 2min)
Now my Galaxy Note works 2 times longer (from 10h to 20h)
katinsh said:
I can answer about Green Power Premium:
It doesn't have such option like disable notifications. He does such thing like disables data connection for amount of time you chose (for me it is 15min) and then enables data connection for amount of time you choose (for me it is 2min)
Now my Galaxy Note works 2 times longer (from 10h to 20h)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW! double time!!
thanks for sharing!
I have been trying both, and while both of them seem to deliver a noticeable reduction in power draw (actually in my case a dramatic reduction), of the two I'd have to give my vote to GreenPower (I'm using the full version). The power reduction is at least as good as Juice Defender Ultimate, and the premium version is significantly cheaper.
Both work by turning various features (mainly Wi-fi/3g/BlueTooth) on and off automatically, but as result can cause delays in things like receiving push-mail and that kind of thing. With Juice-Defender I found this to be quite noticeable, but I'd have to say that with Green-Power I haven't really noticed it slowing down messaging or anything else.......
I've used them both - and deleted them both. I'd rather manage power myself.
i am using 2x Battery for me this is the best. simple and clean.
I usually use JuiceDefender but decided to try out Green Power. I really like it but I have a hard time getting my phone to sleep properly on GP.
i use widgetsoid and just enable my connection when i want it (wifi/3g)
i could never find the proper app that did exactly what i wanted- rather just have control.
going that was and using the phone an average amount my battery goes from 100 -> 75 from the time i wake up (7am) to the time i got to bed (12-1 am)
the 2500mah battery is pretty good!
With JuiceDefender I can get my phone to sleep 95%+ of the time but with GreenPower, my cpu is only sleep 40%+. Can anyone give me tips to get my cpu to sleep more to preserve battery?
katinsh said:
I can answer about Green Power Premium:
It doesn't have such option like disable notifications. He does such thing like disables data connection for amount of time you chose (for me it is 15min) and then enables data connection for amount of time you choose (for me it is 2min)
Now my Galaxy Note works 2 times longer (from 10h to 20h)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just out of interest, what happens when you browse the web and GreenPower has turned off the Data Connection?
Or you're watching a youtube video and it decides its time to turn off data?
Tried both versions and found green power premium to work better for me. (Price was a good point too.)
However the next day I found that if I left my phone for a while (Around 1 1/2 to 2 hours), the display would not turn on and If I called the phone it would not ring. Only way to fix this was to press the power button for 10 seconds to reset the phone.
Uninstalled green power to see if this was the cause and hasn't happened since.
Was wondering if something similar has happened to other people?
I had to go back to JuiceDefender since I couldn't get my phone to go into deep sleep with GreenPower.
Hi, i went for Green Power. I found it simpler to configure, more focused on the job. Juice Defender has to much possible settings and complexity, this makes it a great tool but might also lead to poor efficiency.
I have never used green power before but im on juice defender. I have experienced auto turn off by the note due to a set cpu settings that govern lower clock to cpu at a certain condition. Due to the big display on note i think lower cpu clock wont do it. Because of that the device turned off itself. Upon failure to operate. Hope this solves your problem
I have tried JuiceDefender but ultimately prefer to do everything manually. Some how I always feel the auto manage apps will have everything off precisely when you need it. I use the SwitchPro widget to quickly enable/disable the various radios from my home screen and it works great.
@ Aldragor
I have/had the same problem. In the beginning I thought that my launcher would be the cause for this problem, but after I disabled my Green Power Premium it hasn't happend since now.
Juice defender ultimate, the feature of switching 2g 3g on stock ROM alone was worth the price!
After figuring out how to config GreenPower properly, I went back to it.
I used JuiceDefender and thought it was great.... when it worked. However, I used it mostly as a scheduler with about 15% battery saving which I took as the icing on the cake.
I want all connections on during the day (peak) so I can take skype calls, etc.. When I'm home, I just want to periodically check for mails, etc (so have connection enable every 15min) and when I go to bed I don't want to be disturbed by emails, messages, etc but still want phone/sms on in case there is an emergency. And most of all, I didn't want to have to manually do that every day.
Problem was that it never really stuck to the schedules. This was the ultimate version but it was a crack as they never offered the ultimate on a trial. I wanted to evaluate the ultimate and buy if it did the job. So, it might have been a bad crack which caused the problem, but I guess I'll never know as I don't want to risk wasting the money if the schedule problem persists.
I am a lover of juice, it keeps he juice in and right

Best battery-saving app 2012?

Which is the best battery-saving app 2012?
Mugen power
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium
Hi,
In my little experience, there is no software that makes alot of diference, normaly what i do is:
disable motion
insert *#9900# and disable Fast dormacy - check is your network needs this
disable sync for accounts
disable GPS
disable wifi gps
disable wifi when not using
set brightness level to auto
set wifi sleep policy to when pluged in
Of course there are a couple more things you could do, and again this is what i do cant say it will work as good for you.
rooting.
Tasker
With it one can automate almost everything on the phone.
It's almost like programming i use it all the time and there are a lot of examples on this forum. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1110775
Juice Defender Ultimate + Battery Saver Pro (by Antutu).
I tryed a few battery saver apps but no longer use them as i found if i turn auto sync off, change wifi sleep policy to never, untick network notification, and use task manger frequently to kill unused apps my battery lasts a lot longer. I also use easy task killer and set it to kill all apps every 30 mins. im using king cobra v1.1 for evo 3d gsm and the battery life is amazing!! just swapping battery's over now and its nearly 9pm!!
If any one needs any help rooting or unrooting the evo 3d gsm hboot 1.4.9.0018 let me know as i have done it a few times now. I unrooted my phone back to ***locked*** s-on with no traces of rooting, then checked for ota updates, wouldnt of installed them tho even if there was one!! then downgraded back too 1.4.9.0007 and rooted it again with revolutionary.
---------- Post added at 09:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 PM ----------
forgot to mention auto brightness is a must. and i also calibrate battery after installing roms . can anyone please tell me if calibrating the battery every time it gets to 100% is good or bad? thanks.
When you use an xperia mini pro like me, with just 970 mAh, you get to try all possible battery savers... and unfortunetly no one of them makes the exception... actually as said evilchild, they don't make difference...
just disable everything that may drain your battery, your launcher effects too can be in cause, get rid of unuseful apps, put your brightness to lowest levels or just get it to auto if your rom use it... choose the best profile for your CPU... and with this you are good for 10 new hours in your daily battery life.
I'm not sure a 'battery-saving' app is real.
They just disable some features that we can manually do that. They just make it automatically disabled.
But, 2x Battery is good. It could disable Wifi or mobile data while the display is off.
one touch battery saver is awesome. create a widget to enable/disable wifi,gps,sync,brightness,bt,data ect with one touch!. free on google play
lonestrider said:
I'm not sure a 'battery-saving' app is real.
They just disable some features that we can manually do that. They just make it automatically disabled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
SmXtrem said:
+1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. There's a thread somewhere which gives real battery saving tips
I tried some apps, but I didn't found one which really improved the battery.
In my opinion the best method is to reduce the brightness.
juice
Juice Defender Ultimate + Battery Saver Pro
lonestrider said:
I'm not sure a 'battery-saving' app is real.
They just disable some features that we can manually do that. They just make it automatically disabled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
From the apps I tried out and used, almost all of them just disabled certain things, or tweaked settings that I could have done on my own, and eventually did do.
I found it easier to just go on a sub forum for the phone I had at the time and look up tweaks, tips etc.. I'd say doing this helped me more than any app I found previously, and was easy to do.
Dolphin companion is good and gives more remaining of time.
I use juice defender and the setting: "Only 2G"
3G takes a lot of battery..
Matheus-007 said:
Juice Defender Ultimate + Battery Saver Pro (by Antutu).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i try yah friend.. i use script exacly but not best i think... thanks..
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium
None. There are no working saving battery apps, not a single one.
What a battery saving application can do is to change the phone configuration to a lower energy one, just like lowing brightness, disabling data packages and such, to sum up, things you can do by yourself and you'll save the battery that that application consumes.
The best way to save battery is to make a proper use of your phone:
-Disable gps when you don't need it.
-Turn off bluetooth when not needed.
-Keep screen brightness low at all time.
-Disable data packages before going to sleep and enable them again when you wake up.
-Keep your phone clean by periodically uninstalling apps that you don't use anymore and that make unnecesary use of memory, cpu and battery energy.
-Check your battery use statistics and keep an eye on applications that are using energy unefficiently, and replace them with better alternatives. Facebook and facebook messenger are clear examples.
-Some people say that connecting to 2G networks instead of 3G helps as well.
-Activate wifi at home, it seems to eat less battery than connected to 3G.
There are more tips out there, just gogle it and make a responsible use of your phone. Keeping phone clean and lowing brightness will probably make the biggest difference.
Moreover, if android S.O. is on the top of the list of battery use, your phone's software entered a weird condition. Reboot it and if it persist, consider a factory reset.
I hope this helps
I just started evaluating Juice Defender Ultimate to see if it can save battery life, but there are many options that I don't fully understand. I have attached a screenshot of the Notificatin pulldown window from my Galaxy Nexus which shows the JD status. There are 9 objects just to the right of the JD shield. They include 3 icons, 3 colored circles and 3 lines of text. Can anyone explain what each of them mean? I have checked the JD online info, without luck.
My best guess is:
the up/down icon represents mobile data
the red circle next to the up/down icon means mobile data is disabled
the radiation icon represents WiFi
the green circle next to the radiation icon means WiFi is enabled
the 3G icon represents 3g mode
the red circle next to the 3g icon means 3g is disabled and 2g is enabled
As mentioned, these are just my best guesses. I have no idea what the 3 lines of text mean?
Pete

Juice Defender of any use?

Is there any practical reason to install these battery-saving apps? Most of them I have seen just tweak the menu options of your phone you can already access manually and give no additional functionality to the phone itself that you couldn't already do.
Is this any different? Or will it just sit in the background consuming battery life itself just to run its "function"?
I've always had horrible time with these "battery saver" apps
Just let android do its thing
Turn brightness down, turn off GPS, BT and 4G/LTE when not in use and lower the intervals of background updates (and by that i mean turn the time up higher lol) on apps and your battery should last longer
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
I used Juice Defender for awhile and realized it wasn't what I wanted. I tried Easy Battery Saver and that really helped out a lot.
What it did was to disable all internet, GPS etc when not in use or screen locked. It really helped out a lot in helping to save battery
I don't find they help much anyway and will just drain your battery faster, I think they're kinda designed for the average user who keeps everything on and don't know how to do all the things alot of us who are more better with Android already do.
Just Another★Gamer said:
I don't find they help much anyway and will just drain your battery faster, I think they're kinda designed for the average user who keeps everything on and don't know how to do all the things alot of us who are more better with Android already do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, juicedefender ultimate saves me a serious amount of battery, no joke.
Sent from my LG-P930 using xda premium
I had a conpletely bad experience with juice defender. After using a little, came tto know that it of no use. It is battery drainer. :-/
Sent from my LG-E730 using Tapatalk 2
It offers some useful functions (such as the delayed screen lock), but I found that it messed up critical functions on my phone and didn't save much on battery.
rani9990 said:
No, juicedefender ultimate saves me a serious amount of battery, no joke.
Sent from my LG-P930 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All I had is bad experience with battery savers and they drain alot more then they save for me plus I already turned off all online stuff like Wifi, bt, 3G, mobile data etc.
Juice defender pro is doing a great job for me. Recommended! No joke at all.
Also it has come to my attention that it has a feature of learning. The more time you have it in your phone then it will do a better job to save you battery. Also alot of settings to do depending on how much juice you want to save.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
On my phone, I used to run Juice Defender all the time. After awhile, I realized all it was doing was turning 3G off when my screen was off and turning it back on when the phone woke up. Since I wasn't necessarily using 3G every time I woke up my phone, I got into the habit of just turning 3G off and on only when I need it and stay on Wi-Fi as much as possible. After uninstalling Juice Defender and growing accustomed to found this, my battery life has improved at least 3x and I have never looked back. Just my 2¢.
Sent from my AOKP Swagged Out Nook Color
Yep, I also stopped using JD a long time ago. There are much better ways of saving battery than adding one more application - if you know what you're doing. Using JD is less work, but it's not the best way.
If you are toggling wifi, data, gps etc by your self you dont need JD. I used it sometime but I have habit to control all toggles myself and just found JD interfering with my choice and it shows it saves some 1.8X battery but I didnt find it that much.
I have tried many of them; in my use/ my phone (Nexus S, unrooted, stock JB) is Battery Stretch far the best, really almost doubling battery life.. JD, etc did save some juice, but far less, than Battery stretch. Just my 2c.
Personally I'd call my level of use on Android to be near expert. Not really a developer here, but I'm a very proficient user.
I'd say Juice Defender is totally full of crap.
So what can it do? It turns off "3G?" I swear this misnomer came from the US or something. We somehow equate 3G with data. I thought it meant it would throttle me back to 2G while the screen was off, but all it does is turn data off. Now here's a question: What the hell is the point of a smartphone with its data off? If you like social networking, email, communication, you WANT those notifications to come through. So what does turning data off while your screen do? You might as well turn off data manually and then turn it back on when your screen is on.
Furthermore, if you're interested in saving battery, use wifi in places where data sucks. The minute you turn wifi on, data is switched off. You don't need Juice Defender to figure this one out.
I can see 2G/3G auto toggle being useful, but this can be installed separately as the 2G/3G toggle app for CyanogenMod.
You should be able to tweak your battery to max it out without the use of any 3rd party apps or rooting or anything like that. Tons of newbies install a bunch of apps and as a result here's what could be draining for example:
- Google+ instant upload
- Dropbox instant upload (wow way to duplicate Google+ and effectively double your data use and battery consumption)
- Pulse news sync
- Google currents sync
- Gtalk 24/7 push
- Google latitude
People always say turn off GPS but I ask why? Are you leaving your maps on for 10 minutes at a time? I use location services a few seconds at a time. Show up to work? Checkin at foursquare. Walk into a bar? Checkin to foursquare. About to go home? Take a look at Google Maps. All that takes 1-2 minutes tops. How much battery should that even consume? 1%? Turning off GPS means what? I consume 0.5%? Woohoo. BIG SAVINGS there bro. Furthermore you gotta remember to turn it back on if you ever want to use navigation, and if anything having GPS accuracy helps when using location services like for Foursquare of Facebook checkins. You could find that venue as one nearby rather than scrolling around trying to find it because the cell tower puts you a mile away. You save time like that too.
Screen is the big one. Autobrightness should work well on most stock ROMs and even most stable ROMs. IF you're using your phone outdoors expect that screen to drain like mad, but indoors it should be fine.
Honestly, JuiceDefender accomplishes its task by crippling your smartphone. That's not what a smartphone was built for. You should be able to use all its features and get through a day unless you're on your phone 5 hours straight surfing. Then expect it to die soon. No juicedefender will save you there.
I think the point of JD is that you don't need 3g data on all the time, you can set it to enable 3g data every min/5 mins/30 mins/hour etc for a set time, if background processes are sycn'ing (gmail, facebook, twitter etc) it will wait until the sync is done, this means its up to you when you sync data, I sync evey 15 mins and it works really well. When you switch the screen on, data is automatically enabled, i have set it to use wifi when in range, or 3g when out of range (again its automatic) JD does save you battery and it does it all on its own, millions of downloads can't be wrong
Sent via TCP/IP
And that's exactly what Battery stretch does - with a much smaller footprint/memory/battery load than JD!
Just give it a try - I have tried all of them- and judge it for yourself
Another one to check out is 3GBattery, very basic but maybe that was the point too
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...wxLDEsImNvbS5teXN0aXF1ZS50aHJlZWdiYXR0ZXJ5Il0.
Juice Defender is a fickle mistress. It does what you want, but it can get in the way. I use it when I know I'm going to be away from power most of the day and I either forgot my Sparq or it won't be practical. When properly configured Juice Defender bloody works. I usually end the day with a 2.4x boost when I use it. Normally my phone needs a pick-me-up after about 8-9 hours. With Juice Defender I had 35% left after an 18 hour day. The only difference was Juice Defender and using Screen Filter to drop the brightness. Had about 3.5 hours of screen on time.
Juice Defender's bread and butter is its data toggle tool, and there are some things to keep in mind with it to make the most of it.
When the data state on the phone goes from not connected to connected programs that can sync want to sync. This adds a lot of data use and cpu cycles. Because of this I've used the Application Specific control rather than having data toggle on at screen on/unlock. I don't want data coming on because I reply to a text. Data comes on when I call up an app that needs it, and data runs in the background for Music and Spotify only.
There's the argument of crippling a smartphone, but honestly, 99% of communications that come over the data network aren't urgent. Urgent communications are calls or texts. No power is more crippling to a smartphone than no data.
It's an absolutely fantastic app, but the memory footprint is huge! Even really fast devices like my evo lte slow down a little over time

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