Like probably everyone here, one of the things that annoyed me most about smartphones is battery life.... going from a 'feature' phone that could sit in standby for a couple of weeks between charges to one that would gorge on its charge in a day (or less), it was a bit of an adjustment, and one that I immediately tried to improve. I mean, this little phone had a 2100 mah battery in there! At first, I tried dedicated 'battery saver' apps, but they were only mildly effective, and they lacked the customization I wanted... I knew I could do better if I had the opportunity to go into the guts... So I looked around and discovered automation apps.... they would effectively do what those dedicated apps are doing, but I had full and total control of what and when it did.
After learning a bit about Android, I quickly learned that battery management basically boiled down to one thing; getting the processor to sleep and keeping it there. Short of turning it off, when the phone is sleeping, it is sipping power. Left to its own devices, most every smartphone will act like a newborn baby... waking up constantly even when you don't want it to... I learned about wakelocks... calls to the OS designed to wake up the phone and KEEP it awake so an app can do it's thing... and oh... there were plenty. Google Search, Gmail, Facebook, etc.. you name it... those apps would constantly wake the phone up to take care of some task or another... sapping power each and every time.
I also learning about managing data connections.. and how sitting on a strong Wifi signal will use next to no power (and connecting to a poor WiFi hotspot will conversely suck it dry) and that limiting when the phone is active on the 3/4 mobile data. So I figured that I only had to do a couple of (seemingly) simple tasks to reduce the screen-off awake time:
1) Limit when background sync is running. There are plenty of apps that will poll CONSTANTLY when the phone is sleeping... Google Now is probably the poster child for this...it is the champion of sync-related wakelocks (and even with sync off, Google Location Services comes kicking down the door... so I've turned that off, which is sad since that allows Google Now to really shine)... It is the Secretariat of wakelocks. But Gmail, Facebook, pretty much any app that has to sync with something online will throw WLs. I currently turn off sync when my screen goes out, and turn it on for 30 seconds every 15 minutes to allow apps like Gmail to check for anything new.
2) Disable my WiFi when I and not near a hotspot and poll occasionally to see if there is a known AP nearby (10 second poll every 15 minutes).
3) Go into a modified kind of 'Airplane Mode' overnight when I sleep (turn off everything except the phone radio).
(I also played with the CPU governor, thinking if I can force choke the cpu into lower CPU modes, I can save some cycles, but that ended up doing as much harm as good)
So far, I've tried three... AutomateitPro, Tasker and Llama. AutomateitPro was a good app, but the interface was a the least intuitive of the bunch, and on my phone... it was quite buggy... force closing on some tasks, lagging, etc... So it was down to two ends of the automation spectrum; Tasker and Llama.
Tasker is, of course, the most well known and used auto app out there... With a couple of 3rd party plug ins loaded, you pretty much have full and total control over most every function of the phone. The interface has a bit of a learning curve, but I come from the world of SW development, so it only took a little playing around with to get the tasks I needed.
Llama is a lesser known app out there, and it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Tasker has. But it still supports a wide variety of functions and you are not going to find an easier and more intuitive interface... it is a breeze to configure.
Left to its own devices, my phone (Samsung Galaxy Stellar), with everything on, will slowly nibble around 4% an hour, even higher if I leave GLS on. So even with light usage, and the screen off for most of the day, I'd been running on fumes before the day was out, throwing it on the charger became part of my routine when I got home from work.... So that sucked.
Tasker, once set up, did a good job of reducing that... during the day, usage dropped to around 2.5% an hour. At night, it would drop to 1.5%/hr... So averaged out over a day, my screen-off battery usage dropped close to 50%... which was awesome. But there was one thing that bugged me a bit... Looking at the battery stats, the AlarmManager was now numero uno when it came to wakeups and it had a noticable affect on power usage and Tasker was responsible for a significant majority of those alarms. Much like the parasitic loss on an turbo or supercharged engine, Tasker appeared to be working quite hard behind the scenes to do its thing. Try as I might, playing around with how the tasks run, I couldn't reduce those alarms. Still, 50% less is 50% less.
I kind of knew going in that I will probably find that Llama had a lighter touch than Tasker. It has nowhere near the feature set of Tasker, so I figured that would also translate to less noise as it worked in the background. And the data I found most certainly backed that up. Over the course of the day, with tasks that performed pretty much identically as Tasker, my phone's standby battery drain dropped to 1.5-1.8%. At night, it dropped to a staggering 0.5%. Looking at the stats, Llama generated a tiny fraction of the alarms Tasker did... showing up far down the list.... doing its thing with virtually no impact on battery usage.
So that worked out to a 400% improvement in standby battery consumption. W00T! That rocks. Even with Tasker, I found my self charging daily... but with Llama calling the shots, I can go 2 or 3 days (depending on usage) if needed.
So for features and raw power, Tasker is King, but if you want an efficient little powerhouse, check out Llama.
After learning a bit about Android, I quickly learned that battery management basically boiled down to one thing; getting the processor to sleep and keeping it there. Short of turning it off, when the phone is sleeping, it is sipping power. Left to its own devices, most every smartphone will act like a newborn baby... waking up constantly even when you don't want it to... I learned about wakelocks... calls to the OS designed to wake up the phone and KEEP it awake so an app can do it's thing... and oh... there were plenty. Google Search, Gmail, Facebook, etc.. you name it... those apps would constantly wake the phone up to take care of some task or another... sapping power each and every time.
I also learning about managing data connections.. and how sitting on a strong Wifi signal will use next to no power (and connecting to a poor WiFi hotspot will conversely suck it dry) and that limiting when the phone is active on the 3/4 mobile data. So I figured that I only had to do a couple of (seemingly) simple tasks to reduce the screen-off awake time:
1) Limit when background sync is running. There are plenty of apps that will poll CONSTANTLY when the phone is sleeping... Google Now is probably the poster child for this...it is the champion of sync-related wakelocks (and even with sync off, Google Location Services comes kicking down the door... so I've turned that off, which is sad since that allows Google Now to really shine)... It is the Secretariat of wakelocks. But Gmail, Facebook, pretty much any app that has to sync with something online will throw WLs. I currently turn off sync when my screen goes out, and turn it on for 30 seconds every 15 minutes to allow apps like Gmail to check for anything new.
2) Disable my WiFi when I and not near a hotspot and poll occasionally to see if there is a known AP nearby (10 second poll every 15 minutes).
3) Go into a modified kind of 'Airplane Mode' overnight when I sleep (turn off everything except the phone radio).
(I also played with the CPU governor, thinking if I can force choke the cpu into lower CPU modes, I can save some cycles, but that ended up doing as much harm as good)
So far, I've tried three... AutomateitPro, Tasker and Llama. AutomateitPro was a good app, but the interface was a the least intuitive of the bunch, and on my phone... it was quite buggy... force closing on some tasks, lagging, etc... So it was down to two ends of the automation spectrum; Tasker and Llama.
Tasker is, of course, the most well known and used auto app out there... With a couple of 3rd party plug ins loaded, you pretty much have full and total control over most every function of the phone. The interface has a bit of a learning curve, but I come from the world of SW development, so it only took a little playing around with to get the tasks I needed.
Llama is a lesser known app out there, and it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Tasker has. But it still supports a wide variety of functions and you are not going to find an easier and more intuitive interface... it is a breeze to configure.
Left to its own devices, my phone (Samsung Galaxy Stellar), with everything on, will slowly nibble around 4% an hour, even higher if I leave GLS on. So even with light usage, and the screen off for most of the day, I'd been running on fumes before the day was out, throwing it on the charger became part of my routine when I got home from work.... So that sucked.
Tasker, once set up, did a good job of reducing that... during the day, usage dropped to around 2.5% an hour. At night, it would drop to 1.5%/hr... So averaged out over a day, my screen-off battery usage dropped close to 50%... which was awesome. But there was one thing that bugged me a bit... Looking at the battery stats, the AlarmManager was now numero uno when it came to wakeups and it had a noticable affect on power usage and Tasker was responsible for a significant majority of those alarms. Much like the parasitic loss on an turbo or supercharged engine, Tasker appeared to be working quite hard behind the scenes to do its thing. Try as I might, playing around with how the tasks run, I couldn't reduce those alarms. Still, 50% less is 50% less.
I kind of knew going in that I will probably find that Llama had a lighter touch than Tasker. It has nowhere near the feature set of Tasker, so I figured that would also translate to less noise as it worked in the background. And the data I found most certainly backed that up. Over the course of the day, with tasks that performed pretty much identically as Tasker, my phone's standby battery drain dropped to 1.5-1.8%. At night, it dropped to a staggering 0.5%. Looking at the stats, Llama generated a tiny fraction of the alarms Tasker did... showing up far down the list.... doing its thing with virtually no impact on battery usage.
So that worked out to a 400% improvement in standby battery consumption. W00T! That rocks. Even with Tasker, I found my self charging daily... but with Llama calling the shots, I can go 2 or 3 days (depending on usage) if needed.
So for features and raw power, Tasker is King, but if you want an efficient little powerhouse, check out Llama.
Plus, the less the phone uses when it sleeps, the more screen time I can get. I don't want my phone eating through a 1/3 or 1/2 of a full charge just sitting there at my desk while I am at work. It is an inefficiancy that I don't like. The only one that should be draining that battery is me basically.
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