Recent content by abackholm

All: We are about to finalize a large project on analyzing applications' background data use behavior, and using that to optimize the usage to extend battery life. Plus, providing online privacy and mobile data control as other free functionality. I believe this is very much a unique way to...

Re: Way to go Samsung! You can, of course, get back to the Nokia era, by turning off all the background activity (e.g. restrict background data) in your device. Without actual use, the modern phones are amazing - consuming something in the order of 5-6mA or even less - which would mean that...

We found integrating with Facebook SDK useful, as you can track the demographics of users easier - Facebook knows sometimes scaringly much about their users.

I'm quite often seeing posts in the FB widget on the home screen, and when clicking them, they take me to just a random spot in the Facebook newsfeed. Doing it the second time (when FB newsfeed has updated) it works fine. Anyone knows how to keep the FB app updated to avoid this?

Samsung has done quite impressive work with their Exynos chip. I bet they were happy to get away from Snapdragon, at least business-wise.

I think (or, maybe more of a hope) that the non-removable battery will not be that big of an issue in S6 with improved power consumption of the hardware, and as applications start making use of Lollipop's battery-enhancing capabilities (project Volta etc). With my S4 and shattered glass, I think...

Do you know if the edges are just to display information, or does it work as a touch screen as well? I could imagine some good new user interfaces (e.g. sliders on edges) that could take advantage of the touch feature.

Re: S6 or M9 Samsung seemed to launch quite a decent phone, without too much extra bloatware. Going definitely to a good direction - I'd give them a chance.

Even with syncing off and FB Messenger uninstalled, the FB client does maintain an always-on connection to the Facebook servers. Depending on your network type (it's especially bad in 3G and older LTE networks) and coverage (maintaining the connection gets really battery-expensive in poor...

The other option (for the battery drain) could be to "restrict background data" from Settings > Connections > Data Usage. That has the same downside as using a browser, though, which is that push messages (such as new FB messages, Skype calls etc) don't come through, but it may be completely...

Especially if you are in 3G or one of the older LTE networks, the frequent background chatter of Facebook, especially Messenger, and others will drain battery pretty quickly even if you don't use the phone. The challenge with Stamina and other blocking techniques is that they may block incoming...

This may come appear as a promo, but we recently came out what we believe to be quite unique approach to saving battery on Android that could be of interest - managing the background traffic in a way that does not block instant messages etc coming through, i.e. much less intrusive than turning...