Want Better Battery Life? Try This. . .

[jisley10]

The past couple of days I have been testing out a free application called Juice Defender. While many of you may be familiar with this app, I was just introduced to it by a friend of mine claiming to get 2 days out of his Fascinate with ease. While I was skeptical I thought I would give it a try.

After doing some pretty rigorous testing I must say I am thoroughly impressed by my increased battery life. On average before using Juice Defender I was getting around 14-20 hours of battery life. (I'm a pretty heavy user) While using Juice Defender on default settings I am now getting between 24-36 hours of battery life.

The way the app works in default is it essentially turns off your 3G/Data Connection while your phone is locked to prevent it constantly trying to pull information from services like twitter, gmail, facebook, etc. . . and instead turns the 3G/Data Connection on every 15 minutes for 1 minute to update these services. This does not block your Messaging app, which does not need your data connection to work in the background. Though Default settings have worked well for me there are also ways to customize the program to your liking for various things such as; changing the frequency of syncing, (5min, 15min, 30min, 1hr) the length of time the syncing takes place, (30sec, 1min, 2min, 5min), and various wifi controls. I recommend at least checking out some of the customizable settings but once again Default has worked well for me.

Though this app has been very effective I have noticed some drawbacks. For one I have seen my phone slow down "a little" from what it was before running Juice Defender. While this is minimal, it is slightly noticeable. Also if you need up to the minute Gmail notifications this program may not be for you. Your email does sync properly in the scheduled window but it can be 15-30 minutes from the original sent time depending on your choosing of frequency of syncing. Same goes for Facebook and Twitter. One other thing I have noticed is that Multimedia messages that have been received while the phone is locked must be downloaded after the screen is unlocked, syncing doesn't seem to download these messages while locked. It's a minor problem but the messages aren't lost.

All in all I just wanted to share this find with my fellow Fascinate users to maybe help them get a little more "Juice" out of their device, not to help someone "sell" a free app. If there any pros or cons you find out about the app, post them here and let me know.

Here's what it looks like:
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x293/jisley10/snap20110110_090330.png
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x293/jisley10/snap20110110_090104.png
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x293/jisley10/snap20110110_085804.png

 

[bgl321]

Thanks jisley10! Anyone else use this? Would love to get some more battery life!

 

[voghan]

A friend at work uses this on his Evo and swears by it. I just have been hesitant to try because I'm good with 15-20 hours of battery life since I plug in every night.

 

[jisley10]

A friend at work uses this on his Evo and swears by it. I just have been hesitant to try because I'm good with 15-20 hours of battery life since I plug in every night.

I was pretty skeptical myself until I gave it a shot. I noticed before I used Juice Defender when my phone was locked it was still draining the battery 3-5% per hour. While using Juice Defender I only seem to lose 1-2%.

 

[bboykin87]

I have used this app on my evo a few times but I end up removing it because it ends up jacking up my 3G and I keep getting the Data registration/password error (or something like that) and 3G won't come back on until after a reboot.

 

[jisley10]

I have used this app on my evo a few times but I end up removing it because it ends up jacking up my 3G and I keep getting the Data registration/password error (or something like that) and 3G won't come back on until after a reboot.

That's strange, I haven't experienced that problem so far on my Fascinate. I'll definitely keep an eye out and put up an update if this problem does occur though. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Johnly]

A far better alternative than task killers. I used juice defender a half year ago. While it didn't double my battery life, it did help. I get a full 16 from my X but I may try old juice defender again : )

 

[bboykin87]

That's strange, I haven't experienced that problem so far on my Fascinate. I'll definitely keep an eye out and put up an update if this problem does occur though. Thanks for the heads up.

It would work fine for a few day, maybe even a week or two but 3G would get jacked up eventually and I'd have to uninstall it again, but there has been so much progress with the various ROMs and kernels lately with a lot of devs devoting their resources on improving battery life I haven't found a need for it anymore

 

[spectre72]

After doing some pretty rigorous testing I must say I am thoroughly impressed by my increased battery life. On average before using Juice Defender I was getting around 14-20 hours of battery life. (I'm a pretty heavy user) While using Juice Defender on default settings I am now getting between 24-36 hours of battery life.

That is amazing! I'm lucky to get 6-7 hours on my Fascinate with a standard battery. That is just using it for mostly email, texting (4-5 msg per day), and periodic checks of the news sites (usa today, fox, cnn, etc.)

 

[jisley10]

That is amazing! I'm lucky to get 6-7 hours on my Fascinate with a standard battery. That is just using it for mostly email, texting (4-5 msg per day), and periodic checks of the news sites (usa today, fox, cnn, etc.)

6-7 hours is pretty ridiculous. Unless you are leaving wifi on constantly or playing some sort of heavy CPU/GPU intensive games I would look to replace your battery. It's worth a shot to see if this app could help any.

 

[jisley10]

It would work fine for a few day, maybe even a week or two but 3G would get jacked up eventually and I'd have to uninstall it again, but there has been so much progress with the various ROMs and kernels lately with a lot of devs devoting their resources on improving battery life I haven't found a need for it anymore

By "jacked up" what do you mean?

 

[voghan]

At worst I get 12 hours on my phone if I'm listening to music and on the internet all day long. I'm using an under volted kernel now that makes a big difference for me.

 

[Sabban]

I use juice defender and I like it, battery definatly lasts longer. I've recommended it to acouple people

 

[bboykin87]

By "jacked up" what do you mean?

3G would go out and not come back on until a reboot, i would get the error about registration/password or something to that effect i think it's error 067 (on sprint), I would have to uninstall/disable the app to get my 3G working properly again. My gf has had similar problems with it on her Intercept, so maybe it's a Sprint thing, I dunno...

Edit: However I will say when it did work properly it did so with excellent results, so for anyone who has it on their phone and has had no problems, good for you, just wanted to put my experiences out there in case someone has similar problems they can look at juice defender as being a possible culprit in their troubleshooting efforts. Great app, just didn't play nice with my phone/setup

 

[Chris Kerrigan]

Going to move this to the Applications forum. Better suited there.

 

[reisb]

Anyone know if this works with Touchdown Exchange?

I would assume not since I don't have Push activesync working. My touchdown checks email once per hour.

I'm assuming I would never check for new email if phone was locked since chances of having the 1 minute juicedefender is on being same time Touchdown refreshes are non existant.

 

[TheANARCHY]

So I gave it a shot and it works pretty good for me. I did a very basic rundown test using the music player to get an idea of it's worth and if it would have an impact. Putting a repeat loop (and turning the volume down) I sat the phone down and checked it at 1 hr intervals w/ Juice defender and without. 7 hrs later without JD my battery showed in the orange. Turning on JD and the results were much different. Just a slice of the battery was down. I'd say that's a pretty dramatic increase. I'm gonna test it on a few other apps and under heavy usage to see how it holds up but so far pretty solid. Thanks for the heads up on this on.

 

[jisley10]

So I gave it a shot and it works pretty good for me. I did a very basic rundown test using the music player to get an idea of it's worth and if it would have an impact. Putting a repeat loop (and turning the volume down) I sat the phone down and checked it at 1 hr intervals w/ Juice defender and without. 7 hrs later without JD my battery showed in the orange. Turning on JD and the results were much different. Just a slice of the battery was down. I'd say that's a pretty dramatic increase. I'm gonna test it on a few other apps and under heavy usage to see how it holds up but so far pretty solid. Thanks for the heads up on this on.

No prob!

 

[chaddymoff]

I don't have an exact timeframe, but have definitely seen improvement on the past 24 hours since readint this post. What a great app. Many, many options that I haven't tweaked yet, but no doubt it has saved battery life.

 

[jisley10]

I don't have an exact timeframe, but have definitely seen improvement on the past 24 hours since readint this post. What a great app. Many, many options that I haven't tweaked yet, but no doubt it has saved battery life.

Glad to hear. Hopefully a few people will post some things that they have found out about the app that I am unaware of whether it be good or bad.