Related
*Disclaimer* This is all from a personal experience and testing/research from a long time android user, what I have discovered over time and has helped me and some friends. This will work whether your rooted OR not. I kept it as basic as I can so everyone can benefit. If you dont like what you read and disagree, or want to add something PM me, Ill change/add and give credit to you. Hopefully, this can grow with the community.
*Rooted Section Will be Added*
*When I charge my battery I usually drain it all the way down or as much as i can (around 20% left) then charge plugged in till green, then power down and charge for another hour or so. Not sure if this matters or not but seems to help me out try it!*
This guide will help you if your rooted or non-rooted, all the apps I talk about I honestly have no ties to the devs. I don't use any SUPER AWESOME AMAZING BATTERY SAVER 5000 apps or anything like that. Those mostly just turn ur radios off and on and kill apps in the background. In my experience a lot of them cause syncing issues with my e-mail and other notifications. I like to receive my information instantly not have an app waiting for me to turn my screen on to check for updates.
About my personal setup: Basically, I want my phone to last me all day but still perform well with a heavy use, WITHOUT needing to constantly change settings to save battery. With what I have here Im able to keep my Sensation running for a full day of moderate-heavy use (7:30am to around 10pm) with its STOCK battery (Did damn well on my Evo 4G too). Days of very minor use Ive gone into the second day with 60% + battery. Yes, I use all my home screens and have a good amount of widgets, I love sense and its widgets. I play games, surf the web, do a lot of texting, listen to a lot of music, decent amount of fbing and email, usually take a few pictures a day. Half my day is wifi/other is mobile data.
Here goes the real basics, mostly common sense here not trying to insult anyone. Feel free to browse thru it quick (green text) if your not totally new to the android scene, whats after it will be a good read for noobs and vets.
*I use the power control widget, make getting to a lot of settings quicker. Why waste battery digging thru menus?*
Basics:
-Screen brightness: (duh ) these pretty screens eat battery brighter=quicker drain naturally and from my experience leaving it on Auto Brightness kills more battery too. Each time your phone pulls information from the sensor to decide on how bright it should adjust itself too.
-GPS: If GPS is on it should not effect battery unless an app is using it and you see the GPS icon on your notification bar. I noticed a very slight increase in mA discharge when i had it enabled, to be safe leave it off if you dont use it extremely frequently.
Location thru mobile networks: Not to hard on battery. I leave mine on it does add drain but it takes away from my weather widgets updating when Im traveling.
-Bluetooth: Moderate battery drain. I honestly don't use it at all myself but if you do try your best to keep it off when not in use.
-Wifi: Android has gotten a lot better at managing wifi over the past few years. It doesn't drain that bad on battery and it shuts off/on periodically on its own when screen is off depending on whats using it.
Google Back-Up: Takes a little juice here and there no biggie. I dont use it just because I like to fresh install my apps when I try a new rom, run into less problems that way.
2G/3G/4G: This varies phone to phone, the slower speed the better battery life. If you know your not going to be using 4G for a while turn it off. I leave mine on 4G or wifi all day with my sensation. When I had Sprint and my Evo I would leave it off most of the time. Depending on your carrier and how their data works this is a big one. T-Mobile seems to handle well, Sprint and Verizon's 4G Ive seen eat an insane amount of battery.
Sync/Background Data: I lumped them together because sync is pretty much reliant on background data. These kill a lot of your battery in general. It syncs your apps (email, facebook, google data, contacts, etc.), the periodic checks your apps do to check for and download new emails and notifications, using background data (data still transmits when screens off). I always leave these on and still manage great battery life, I like things instant if I wanted to wait Id just wait till i got in front of a PC. Sync and Background data are the settings most battery saving apps control because they really can help your battery if you turn it off. You can control what core apps sync in settings>accounts and sync. Or the power widget that 95% of android phones have has it on there. I recommend minimizing the amount of apps you allow background data with, example: WeatherBug first launch it asks if it can automatically update itself in the background for apps were thats not necessary hit no.
Radio/Airplane Mode: Pretty self explanatory, turns off your connection to your wireless provider. No point in ever turning it off in my eyes, your phones no longer a phone.
What has really helped me with my battery life (non-basics):
There is a lot to be said when it comes down to 2.2+ android phones and whether they need a task killer anymore or not. Since Ive had a lot of android phones and a few now that are 2.2+ Ive done a lot of testing. I usually go about a 2 weeks on one idea or new task killer and keep a close eye on battery drainage using Battery Monitor Widget, free app in the market. It tells you exactly how much of your battery is being drained without killing battery itself. Each phone/rom settles at a different average mA lower the better. In my experience if I can keep my phone anywhere under 100mA when idle im doing good. This held true on both the Evo 4G and my Sensation. Some ASOP roms i could get down to the 30's but for sense under 100mA is good. Keep in mind you will get the occasionally spike here and there its just android and/or apps in the background. You can view the a chart of the battery data in Battery Monitor.
Instead of boring you guys with each task killer Ive used and its results, Ill just get down to what I found out in the end.
Basically, the way android 2.2+ works it really isn't necessary to run a task killer it does a decent job removing apps from memory when you need more memory. But at the same time I found running a task killer periodically (BUT not killing frequently used apps) results in a lower average mA drain leading to overall better battery life.
The best application I have used has to go Automatic Task Killer , trust me Ive used a lot from the top free ones to a few of the more popular paid ones. What this task killer does is kill a selection of apps you allow it too every time your phones screen shuts off and goes idle. On Automatic Task Killer's first boot your shown a screen of every application that could at some point run in the background on your phone. This part sucks a little bit but it is worth it, you need to select which of the apps you want to allow it to kill automatically. It does not kill foreground apps the ones you currently have open on the screen aka a browser or a game. Example your playing NFS: Shift and your boss walks by so you quickly pause and hit the power button turning off the screen, next time you turn the screen on it will kill all other allowed background apps but your game will still be up front and center.
Now the trick is to go thru and set it to kill apps you know your phone won't automatically just restart or you don't use 90% of the time. So don't select things like Dialer, Contacts, Clock, Calendar, Messages or apps you constantly use/check such as a third party SMS app or your main E-Mail Client or third party keyboards (various by person and what you use most). Letting the app automatically kill those is just going to lead to worse battery life because your phone will just restart it each time leading to more CPU cycles (not what you want and part of the reason some consider task killers bad things).
Also, when using any task killer and killing the proper apps sense runs smoother, a big deal with sense 3.0.
So hopefully with a little messing around you can get a good setup where your phone lasts you all day without having to constantly keep changing settings and watching your battery life. All while everything stays syncing and instant. Hope this helps!
*ROOT Section (now that we have s-off )
Everything posted above can be done on any rom, rooted or none. There has been a lot of posts on "freezing apps" that you dont need or typically use, which does in fact really help battery life. Since, we (by we i mean sensation users) now have a permanent root this is my tiny second part of the guide for rooted devices.
I dont freeze my apps I prefer them to be gone for good if its something I dont see myself using or its bloat that came with my phone/rom. Since 98% of us will be using custom roms now this usually isnt an issue since most dev's r good at what they do and remove all the bs we dont need or normally use. Still there is some apps we may not want on our phones so for that I use SystemApp Remover . Its a great App for people who dont want to have to worry about going in manually and getting rid of system apps.
Its just basically an Uninstaller that allows you to access any and every app on the phone for you to uninstall (thats y roots needed). For me I just go in an drop the apps I know i wont use. A lot of roms come with carrier add-ons and such, those I normally delete as well as a few HTC sense widgets and apps I see no need for. It will free up space and increase your phones battery life with most things you delete.
Now, be careful. You are prompted upon opening SystemApp Remover that messing in system apps is dangerous and it is. If your not sure what something is DONT touch it, simply do a google search or ask around to see if its safe to remove first.
Re-calibrate Battery: After you flash a new rom or start using a new battery, you should use your recovery (CWM or other) to Wipe Battery Stats. Before you do this make sure your battery is at 100% and has been on the charger for over an hour with the fully charged green led on. This will allow your device to better drain your battery and can really help battery life.
So hopefully with a little messing around you can get a good setup where your phone lasts you all day without having to constantly keep changing settings and watching your battery life. All while everything stays syncing and instant. Hope this helps!
Thanks to people who have contributed:
-JadeSoturi
thanks for sharing the experience
i'm trying Automatic Task Killer
devine might said:
thanks for sharing the experience
i'm trying Automatic Task Killer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no problem. let me kno how it goes for you
very good info! would also help if you specify which versions of android.....
Thanks for the info, hope it will increase my battery life to last a day
Airfaire said:
very good info! would also help if you specify which versions of android.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im on my sensation so 2.3.3. Been getting a lot of hate on the sensation forums since task killers are officially deemed no longer needed, but this method really helps me with battery life hoping itd help some of u too
Watchdog> then any task killer
ADR6300
Hmm, ill try auto task killer as well, tried a few others.
I use JuiceDefender, I like it. It manages my connectivity pretty well and it does help.
This is excellent, many thanks. As a converted WM 6.5 user I have to say, I am enjoying android considerably more and I prefer it to the Metro interface of WP7. It's nice to know the little tricks to get the most out of it. Thanks again. ^_^
DarkSwanKnight said:
I use JuiceDefender, I like it. It manages my connectivity pretty well and it does help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same here, JD works pretty good
TastyTorge said:
same here, JD works pretty good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Worth getting the full one or will the free version do?
Sent from my HTC HD2 running TyphooN CyanogenMod 7 via XDA Premium App
Thanks
Thanks for the info, and for sharing, i will try the different methods
i havent really bothered with task killers but ive found reducing the brightness and disabling data and sync makes my battery last alot longer. i just re enable when i need them.
also, i downloaded setcpu and added a profile for while the screen is off. that helps alot. the drain is about 5% with the screen off after every 3 or 4 hours.
Very good info thanks
You had me impressed until you mentioned task killers. Absolutely horrible...
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G
Martin_Toy said:
Worth getting the full one or will the free version do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Full version is much better.
It's killer app indeed. I think many of it's features should be natively included in android.
Options like "Turn off 3G/EDGE when connected to Wi-Fi", "Turn off all radios when screen is off", "Turn off Wi-Fi after x minutes if it doesn't connect to a network", "Set screen brightess to minimal when battery is low", etc....it wouldn't be that hard to implement and battery life, perhaps most criticized aspect of Android, would improve immensely.
fpu
floating_point_unit said:
Full version is much better.
It's killer app indeed. I think many of it's features should be natively included in android.
Options like "Turn off 3G/EDGE when connected to Wi-Fi", "Turn off all radios when screen is off", "Turn off Wi-Fi after x minutes if it doesn't connect to a network", "Set screen brightess to minimal when battery is low", etc....it wouldn't be that hard to implement and battery life, perhaps most criticized aspect of Android, would improve immensely.
fpu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your mobile network DOES turn off when connected to wifi, and if all radios turned off when the screen went off, how would you ever get calls or emails with the phone in your pocket? The wifi after x minutes would be a nice feature, but I don't like things touching my screen brightness.
Thank you for your information.
Hey guys,
So after many months with the XT720 and alot of flashing and trying to get the most out of my battery, i've come up with a few conclusions about battery life in general and how to extend it. I thought I'd share here. This is mostly aimed at people who are new to android and have not experimented like some of the more advanced users we have on this forum. Hope you find this helpful and please feel free to make additions.
General Battery Info
The XT720 was my first android phone, and I came from a long line of typical nokia phones whose batteries would last for ages. I had no idea the kind of power an android device would use. When I started out using it, i was surprised at how quickly the battery would die. You'd think with advancing software we'd have better batteries but sadly batteries are lagging behind in technology. Generally speaking you can expect the following battery life from your XT720.
Heavy use: 10-14 hours
Moderate use: 16-20 hours
Light use: 1 day - 1 day 12 hrs.
Note: New batteries improve with each charge cycle. It is recommended to go through a few complete charge cycles when you buy a new phone. After that, complete discharges are not recommended and its smart to start charging your phone when it hits the 20-25% mark.
How to improve battery life
1: Battery Calibration
If you've ever flashed a new ROM, you must have noticed a sharp decline in battery performance. This is partly due to old battery statistics left behind from your old ROM. Android is a smart OS and collects information over time. The more you use it, the more accurate it gets. In the same way it collects information from your battery usage and reports your battery percentages according to that. When you flash a new ROM, sometimes android thinks that your battery is 100% when its really lower than that and that causes relative reduced battery performance. To deal with that it is recommended that you use a nifty free app called Battery Calibration from the android market. What this does it removes the old battery stats and allows your new ROM to create its own battery stats. Charge your battery to full, use the battery calibration. Drain once till phone turns off by itself and charge to full again. You will notice a sharp increase in battery life.
2. Battery Managment
We all know that android has its own battery management built in but it usually doesnt give complete information about the phone. For that you need to dive deeper into the settings. Usually if you experience battery drain its because of a rogue app and believe it or not some common apps you wont think off drain unnecessary battery. To see your complete Battery Stats input this code into the dialer.
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to a bunch of options. What you're interested in is Battery History. When you tap that it will show you two drop down menu's.
1) Other Usage
2) Since last unplugged
Other usage shows you how long your phone has been running and how long it has been asleep. Also shows you how long your wifi has been on and running and how long your screen has been on. It is important to see how long your phone has been running. For example if your phone has an uptime of 20 hours and its been running 5 hours out of that. Your run time is 25%. Which is very good. Sometimes an app can run even when your phone screen is off. This will represent a longer run time even when you have your phone lying on a desk or something. See this setting and correlate with the amount you have used your phone. Does it seem normal? If no then use the first drop down menu and select
Partial Wake:
Partial wake is basically, any app which takes your phone out of sleep mode to use the CPU even when youre screen is off. These are apps which need to sync or use the phone resources. In this you will see a list of apps and how much they have caused a partial wake lock. See anything unsual? For me one app that caused unsual drainage was latitute. Yes, i had simply signed into it and i didnt know it was updating my location every 5 minutes. Extreme battery drain for me even when my phone was idle. See which app was draining your battery and either tweak the settings or remove altogether.
GPS, Sensors, CPU:
You can also see these in the first drop down menu. Certain apps like screeble use the sensors alot, and hence cause drain. Obviously games, camera, will stress the CPU. See if anything is causing drain in that and adjust accordingly.
Miscellaneous Information
After you have dealt with rogue apps that you don't use that drain youre battery your battery life will depend on how you use your phone. But hopefull these tips will help you with increasing your battery life. I do have some more information on different settings and supposed battery saving applications.
Autosync: When you enable auto sync, you allow google and other accounts to sync on a regular basis. This is important for people who need to use push email etc. It does not drain battery IF you tweak what you need synced. In google for example you can have your contacts, calendar, google+, google reader, gmail all to sync by default. If you just need email, please untick the rest. This will help you save battery life. Increase your update times for facebook and google+ if you dont recieve many updates all the time or turn them off altogether. If you have many services syncing at the same time you will get battery drain.
Wifi Sleep Policy: This is sort of a hidden menu. If you go into wireless & networks >> Wifi settings >> settings key >> advanced >> wifi sleep policy. This has three settings. Never close down wifi, never close when charging, or close with screen off. If you choose never your wifi will always be on, which will in turn crunch the **** out of your battery. If you use it off with screen off, remember it takes about 5 minutes to turn the wifi off. I personally use the never with plugged in. Its an intermediate. So when im plugged in wifi always stays on and when im not it follows the screen off protocol.
Wifi Vs Mobile Data: Having mobile data on all the time, does not drain battery. The only time the battery gets drained is when the data connection is active i.e you have many apps on autosync youll see your battery going down. If you arent doing anything and your phone is connected to Edge or 3G your battery will drain regularly. 2G networks drain less than 3G keep that in mind. If you are actively using your connection, wifi will take less battery because speeds are faster and you will be using it for a little time. Also your signal strength has alot of effect on battery. If you have crappy 3G signals your radio will actively be searching for a connection the same goes for wifi. That is important to keep in mind.
Control Background data: By selecting this option you can allow or disallow apps to connect to data without any permission. Some apps require this like the android market. If you uncheck this apps wont be able to sync automatically in the background.
Milestone Overclocking: This is fairly obvious. The higher you overclock with higher vsel the more battery drain you will have. Some use set cpu with profiles but I found that if i set the setcpu too low while idle It takes time for the cpu to charge up when i recieve a call or turn the screen on. Ringtones lag etc etc. I let android do my CPU management and its fine. and comfortable setting would be 850 MHZ, 56 vsel but you can change according to your phone usage.
Juice Defender/ Screebl / Task killers:
In my personal experience with juice defender ultimate I found that with the above precautions juice defender didnt make much of a difference and actually used more battery. First off theres an extra process going on in the back. Second activating and deactivating the connection everytime the screen goes off uses more juice because your radio has to search for the signal hundreds of times as compared to not having it in the first place. Screebl is good if you dont want your screen to annoyingly turn off while youre doing something but it surely doesnt save battery life. Task killers are a no no for android. They kill tasks which start up anyways, its better to use autokiller memory optimizer which tweaks androids internal memory settings and allows for more free ram without killing processes without reason.
System Apps:
Some system apps run uselessly in the background specially with stock ROM's this is called bloatware. Remove all unused system apps with titanium backup to stop them from running in the background for no reason at all.
A final word
Finally after all this tweaking, just use your phone as normal. Dont worry about the battery all the time checking how much its drained, itll mess your head up and make you enjoy your phone less. Battery temperature also changes battery life. Keep your phone out of the sun or in hot places.
Thanks, good article.
Very detailed and useful
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App
Thanks for this interessting article!
Could you make a list of the bloatware that can be safely removed?
I figured this would just list all the usual stuff I've heard. I'm glad to say I was wrong! A bunch of useful info here I now plan to put to use. Many thanks
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Thanks guys, glad you people found it useful.
syrenz said:
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes! Can't believe I missed that one out. In the start id use the lowest brightness setting, which would be fine indoors. But outside it was impossible to see the phone because of its insanely reflective glass. Since we have an ambient light sensor I use it on automatic and it does a good job. Full bright strains my eyes abit thats why I dont keep it on full bright So for people really wanting to save the juice you can keep your brightness on the lowest level. Also when you take the phone out of your pocket and use it, its better to put the phone to sleep with the power button than let it timeout by itself. Those 10-15 seconds for each time you use phone count towards many minutes of unused display time in the end and does make a difference.
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
androidlover123 said:
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Using your phone while charging does not affect your battery life, and is neither good nor bad. It is perfectly normal to use your phone while charging and is sometimes recommended while doing battery intensive tasks for example navigating while driving, wifi tethering, playing memory intensive games and finally outputing video through HDMI.
2. Overcharging was a phenomenom is older lithium ion battery. New batteries have bypass circuits. So when your phone reaches complete charge, it does not charge any further. So you should not be worried about overcharging your XT720.
Hope this helps.
Excelent article and good quality info. Thanks and best regards!
awesome article! Great information. Thanks a lot for putting that together. I have already started using a few of the tips mentioned.
u da maaan dude, thanks for a very detailed and informative article
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
I'm a coder and brand new to Android (obviously I'm not a mobile app coder.) Had my S3 for 3 weeks now. No MAJOR battery drain issues but I like to maximize it anyway.
I've got Llama setup to do stuff like turn Wifi off when I leave home and turn GPS off when I turn driving mode off. Lots of other actions/events involving account sync on/off, bluetooth on/off. GSAM last time I looked was giving me a 20-hour average battery life which is probably optimistic as I have been use the phone less than normal.
Anyhoo... I was disabling some location settings in Maps as I noticed Maps is getting triggered when not using the phone (probably mainly by Google Now trying to build my location history) and I thought, wouldn't it be nice if my GPS turned on automatically when I launched Maps and turned off when I closed it? Surprised Android doesn't have this option built-in. But seems only solution is Tasker?
So my question is, knowing Tasker is more complicated to use, are there some MAJOR other benefits that I most likely will discover to using Tasker instead of Llama? Or, if I really don't care much about the GPS auto-toggle, should I just keep life simple and stay with Llama? Is there a problem with using both - as in, will I get more of a battery drain running both or is one more battery efficient (the app itself) over the other?
-- add --
Duh, just saw the first condition in Llama is "Active Application" the problem is, I only want the GPS to turn on when I manually launch the app myself. I hope an app trying to use Maps in the background doesn't trigger the GPS on. Guess I'll find out.
My question still applies. I know you can do more in Tasker, but what MAJOR/COMMON things can you do with it that you can't with Llama?
-- add --
I forgot why this isn't possible. Google doesn't want to allow ANY apps to turn GPS on/off automatically due to privacy issues. Is there a setting to let the user decide this? Make me feel like they're treating me like an idiot!
Secure Settings
Have a look at Secure Settings its a brilliant helper app to Llama, it will allow you to do all the GPS settings.
So I have had this great debate for years now. I want so very badly to use tasker, but it just fails me. Profiles that have only a time context fire early, or not at all. I almost missed work once. Tasker seems to work wonderfully for most people but for me, across a Droid X, THunderbolt, Gnex, and now GS3 tasker is just unreliable. Profiles take too long to fire, if they fire at all and the battery drain is fairly significant despite we designed profiles and tasks.
Llama on the other hand does exactly what it is supposed to. Profiles fire quickly and accurately. Location profiles, compared to the nightmare task offers, are ridiculously simple. IF here DO this, WHEN leave DO that.
Llama is more reliable with better battery life, but does offer substantially LESS.
Here is my master solution:
I run all location and automation via Llama. BUT, I make tasker tasks for car menus, and extended tasks like security etc. Llama turns on tasker, then fires an "app shortcut" to a tasker task. Then Llama closes tasker.
All the best of Llama AND tasker, without having to run both simultaneously.
garvus said:
So I have had this great debate for years now. I want so very badly to use tasker, but it just fails me. Profiles that have only a time context fire early, or not at all. I almost missed work once. Tasker seems to work wonderfully for most people but for me, across a Droid X, THunderbolt, Gnex, and now GS3 tasker is just unreliable. Profiles take too long to fire, if they fire at all and the battery drain is fairly significant despite we designed profiles and tasks.
Llama on the other hand does exactly what it is supposed to. Profiles fire quickly and accurately. Location profiles, compared to the nightmare task offers, are ridiculously simple. IF here DO this, WHEN leave DO that.
Llama is more reliable with better battery life, but does offer substantially LESS.
Here is my master solution:
I run all location and automation via Llama. BUT, I make tasker tasks for car menus, and extended tasks like security etc. Llama turns on tasker, then fires an "app shortcut" to a tasker task. Then Llama closes tasker.
All the best of Llama AND tasker, without having to run both simultaneously.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do turn on and off tasker with llama?
So i got installing all the battery saver apps, greenify etc... they all close apps and not much else, my version comes from the mind of an electronics engineer view point...
hardware drains power NOT some little app running in the background! (Purely software programmer logic... )
So my app grabs what states wifi/gps/bt/modem at the time the screen goes off...
When the screen comes on, it re enables them! Eg go bed with 95% wake up with 94% put in your pocket it just does it...
The 2nd feature is the lost/stolen phone feature while the app itself can not get your gps data (no permissions for it) it can switch gps on/off...
So you send "on" without the surrounding quotes, the app will then switch on gps/wifi/modem/bt... it then disables itself
Now you can use wheres my droid or any other location finding app to easily pinpoint your lost or stolen phone (try getting a location with gps/agps/data disabled which people often do to save power!)
(Includes option to keep wifi/gps untouched from the app)
as for ads!... the ui has 1 ad, no popups or notifications ... and when activated the activity with the ad on is destroyed and can't touch battery life ... at all
Craig's Root Battery Saver!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=saver.battery.craigs.craigsbatterysaver
Well done
Holy crap! Someone replied (first for me here lol)
Thanks!
To be honest, your app is great when it comes to save battery, but in my opinion your approach is plain wrong in terms of the main purpose of a smartphone - receiving notifications in a timely manner, not when you turn on the screen manually. The same purpose can be achieved by using DS Battery Saver, which will in addition turn on mobile data once per specific time interval to receive push notifications.
And you should reconsider your opinion about "software does not drain battery but hardware does". Check this great thread for example. I am using a combination of different apps (Greenify, Amplify, Power Nap) to tame aggressive services/alarms/wakelocks and I am able to achieve a battery drain close to 0.0% per hour while screen is turned off with WiFi, mobile data and location turned on the whole time without losing instant notifications.
The app supports wake up notifications (well, will... the app's not quite finished yet, been too busy to get everything finished)
If you had gone to the playstore you'd have seen
Also you might want to reconsider what i said..... hardware drains it not software!
You refer to wake locks ... well believe it or not, wake locks turn on hardware which drains the battery, i program microcontrollers with the esp8266 / bluetooth / compass / etc ...
Software can only drain the battery if it's purposely trying to max out the cpu, and if it did you'd know it's malware... there are wakelock detectors too
Craig Capel said:
The app supports wake up notifications (well, will... the app's not quite finished yet, been too busy to get everything finished)
If you had gone to the playstore you'd have seen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I came across this, therefore my reference to DS Battery Saver, that already is capable of exact those things. Nevertheless, your app is doing what it was designed for - saving battery (and this is pretty good, indeed).
Craig Capel said:
Also you might want to reconsider what i said..... hardware drains it not software!
You refer to wake locks ... well believe it or not, wake locks turn on hardware which drains the battery, i program microcontrollers with the esp8266 / bluetooth / compass / etc ...
Software can only drain the battery if it's purposely trying to max out the cpu, and if it did you'd know it's malware... there are wakelock detectors too
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I am familiar with what wakelocks are. But without software, that produces a wakelock, there would be no noticable drain, right? Thus we can go round and round here, I guess. From my point of view the most battery drain on an Android device is the result of poorly programmed software (which results in an unneccessary wakelock) and alarms waking up your device, not from ****ty hardware. You can hunt down those wakelocks/alarms by using apps like Better Battery Stats or Wakelock Detector and reduce them to a minimum without losing functionality. Therefore I consider this as a better approach.
But without software, that produces a wakelock, there would be no noticable drain, right? Thus we can go round and round here, I guess. From my point of view the most battery drain on an Android device is the result of poorly programmed software
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless the software drains it by intensive cpu work, anything else has to be hardware, if i power a gps module, talk to it via uart to enable/disable it... then it's hardware doing it not software..
Take Qualcomm, the newer cpus support an embedded DSP
https://gigaom.com/2014/12/12/5-things-to-expect-from-qualcomms-flagship-mobile-chip-in-2015/
Qualcomm*made that feature possible*in the Snapdragon 800*with its DSP, and they’re pushing hot words even farther. New devices will have the ability to passively listen, using only a small amount of power, for more than just the word “OK.” Qualcomm calls this feature Snapdragon Sense.
The first feature it will enable is a much faster Shazam search. So if you find yourself too slow on the draw when trying to identify unfamiliar music, you’ll love this: When you boot up Shazam, it’ll already have been listening just a little bit, so it can identify the song in a few seconds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As hardware gets smaller and uses less power, then things like the embedded dsp chip will allow you to use wakelocks without little drainage, but were no where near that yet...
think of it like this... software simply carries instructions which can turn on hardware via a field effect transistor, that binary 1 value shows up as 3v logic and the fet begins to conduct between the drain and source, this sets a flip flop and the hardware starts wasting power...
Or to put it another way after the software enables the hardware via a gpio the software stops, or better still, show me software draining the battery with all hardware services disabled... it can't
Good
Does it really work ..
Don't you believe the title? (Really works!)
Craig Capel said:
As hardware gets smaller and uses less power, then things like the embedded dsp chip will allow you to use wakelocks without little drainage, but were no where near that yet...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True words. I can also see your other points and do agree with them. But as you said, we are not even close to a system where wakelocks do not drain as much as they currently do. Would we have such a system, your app wouldn't be required, I guess. Therefore taming the unneccessary wakelocks is a good way to achieve a great battery life without losing functionality for the moment.
Awesome
Awesome!!!
Can't open the settings and this sound makes me rly angry lol. Why it makes this sound? (even my phone is silence)
Gesendet von meinem ONE A2001 mit Tapatalk
There are no settings... work in progress (says so in the play store readme)
I've had the flu for the past week so i've not been developing much... expect updates shortly to remove the "settings" option which annoyingly is placed there by default... i never put it there
The sound is cool no? ... it plays a low volume sound to indicate the app is working!
Alright, update includes support for android 4.1 for gps now... i'm slowly working my way through android oddities and different techniques to switch hardware / on and off and with 5 phones to use 4 of them use kitkat!
Had to stop for a break i've had the flu all week, throwing up constantly, later on i'll add the finishing touches to wake up notifications as right now it's extreme power saving mode...
Stay tuned.... oh and i found a bug supporting lollipop, fixed that too, so if you have lollipop and it never worked, it should now ...
Antibiotics did the trick! It was sadly not the flu but some rare bug...
I've almost finished the autowakeup every x minutes 5, 10, 20 min intervals..
Unless someone here can think up a value or maybe add it as an option.
.
I removed the blocking side of things prior i used a thread/sleep now i use a timer event this stops the lag when unlocking the device on older models...
nive work :good:
I dumped the smart check (as far as i can tell anroid never fails, so i removed it)
It should now be seamless between lock screen and the main screen without any more lock up due to the threading...
Enjoy!
great!! will try it. thanks!