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:
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
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:
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
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