Does battery saving apps really work?

[Omer San Gabriel]

As said in the title... Does it really work? Apps like DU Battery Saver, JuiceDefender and Battery Doctor. Or it just drains more battery?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[mobilecrackers]

large screen phones I don't think so.that application might work in low quality phones but not the large screen phones

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[Tsepz_GP]

I once tried JuiceDefender in 2011 on my Galaxy S2 at the time, didn't see a difference TBH, never tried again.

Some advice:
Go to Power Save Mode, Enable it, and tick Screen Power Saving, that's what I've done.

You can also turn on CPU Power Saving, all this put together with the app Greenify is an excellent power saving technique.

 

[alexcolka]

I don't see any improvements with this kind of apps, by the contrary drained more battery in my case. Having a closer look to the apps that use the location settings improved a lot my battery life.

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[Tahoe916]

I recently switched from Juicedefender to Greenpower premium, its doing much better at reducing my battery usage.

I'm at 83% right now with 7 hours on the battery. It may help though that I put in a new battery I bought.

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[Almeuit]

I don't like them. They didn't help me at all when I tried them a long time ago.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[Sanjay Chandra]

Best power saving technique is to use the power saving mode given by Samsung/OEMs because it works both on hardware and software level rather than normal apps which just control brightness and stuff which doesn't help in better battery in any way.

If you really want better battery life, don't constantly off and on location services. Keep it either on or off.

If you travel, put off location services because it constantly tries to watch the wifi hotspots and networks and try to report location to google which might use up battery life a lot.

Poor signal coupled with your phone trying to load stuff is the number one reason which causes battery drain most of the time.

Don't clear RAM because resuming apps on RAM is much better battery saver than restarting the apps again and again.

I never use any anti virus apps or battery savers or cache cleaners (which half of the time mess up things than fix them).

Don't clear cache unless you are out of storage or didn't clear it for a month.

Half the time, people make battery life worse by cleaning cache or clearing RAM which puts more pressure on the processor to reloading things.

Let the system do its work. Android automatically does everything for you. OEMs provide power saving mode optimized for that hardware.

P.S I once installed RAM usage meter on my iPad and I was shocked to see that system constantly takes up 80-90% of the RAM all the time.
I didn't even notice it until I installed the app. Android and iOS automatically manage your RAM.
Free RAM = waste RAM. No use of having 500MB free RAM because its useless without using it.

Linux and mobile OS works different from Windows PC. So, free RAM in windows is different from free RAM in Linux. (google search it)

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[alexcolka]

Really nice explanation, I agree with this way of using the phone.

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[Murph5150]

Battery Guru has seemed to slightly improve my battery life. But I can already tell that my battery is starting to lose its life from time and charging cycles.

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[Tahoe916]

The apps claiming to save battery are not all the same, I agree with Sanjay that clearing RAM isn't going to help much. Maybe if you have a poorly behaving app but those are best off being removed.

The only battery saving app method I think helps is where the app keeps your wifi, mobile data (and bluetooth if you can) off when the phone is on standby, and turns it on only on a scheduled basis and when you turn the screen on. I set mine to every hour. You still get calls and SMS messages. It's just not good if you have a background app you need running all the time, like voice over IP, but you may be ok with setting a more frequent rate like every 5 minutes, but with less battery savings. Me and a friend had seen about 20% more battery life doing this. If your phone is not in standby much then I'd expect much less benefit. It also addressed periodic severe battery drain when I was inside buildings with a very weak signal and the phone actually got hot as it kept trying to connect.

I haven't tried the built in power savings and have great battery life for now. I already have haptic off. I don't know about the screen power savings, my concern has been more about the excessive drain on standby. The CPU power savings would probably help but I don't like the idea of buying a high end phone and crippling the processor. Maybe if it only slows it down while in standby? I don't get that impression though.

 

[Sanjay Chandra]

How much phone usage are you getting ?

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[Not Quite Right]

Short answer no. You know what does work? Plugging your phone in ...

 

[dm3ready]

Battery Guru has seemed to slightly improve my battery life. But I can already tell that my battery is starting to lose its life from time and charging cycles.

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I agree. I use Battery Guru because it was designed by the same company that made my processor: Snapdragon. (I have the SGH-i337)

 

[Tahoe916]

Yesterday I was at 42% after 15h 19m with the screen on for 1 hr 32min. Right now I'm at 49% after 11h 51m with 1h 49m on the screen. I use it very little as a phone, mostly SMS and apps. I've some real frustrating battery issues in the past so I've tried so many things. It would sometimes get really hot with a fast drain lasting barely 8 hours. Unfortunately I switched to a new battery at the same time I switched to the Greenpower app, so I don't know which of the two is more responsible for it being much better now.

How much phone usage are you getting ?

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[waynemxwell]

Battery saver apps cheating smartphone users which make brightness low as possible which may increase stand by time.the problem is these saver apps run in background consumes more battery.Im using core prime which has samsung's ultra power saving mode which last battery to days.....apps like clean master speed up charging time and clean junk

 

[iggy67]

I took my phone to the AT&T store where I got it and they said to restart it in recovery mode and scroll down in the menu to wipe cache partition, run it and than reboot back to normal mode. The said to do this if it starts being slow or you notice any battery drain. Also they said do not download any battery savers or task killers because they don't work. They said a app to for monitoring usage is Watchdog it watches for misbehaving apps
and if it finds one it will alert you.

 

[CAB1024]

I wouldn't believe anything an AT&T rep told me. In fact I'd assume the opposite were true.

I know that CM's Battery Saver both extended my battery time, but more importantly, reduced my charging time dramatically on my Galaxy Note 2.

But I cam here to find a comparison of effectiveness of the better apps. I'm going to try Battery Guru now, since as a previous poster said, it's made by the same maker of the phone's chip.

 

[CAB1024]

I take that back -- it's not compatible with my phone...

 

[charitytowin]

Just because he works at an AT&T store doesn't mean he doesn't read tons about phones and such. don't be a hater

 

[CAB1024]

YMMV...

Just installed DU Battery Saver. Don't like it, and several feature are paid-only for the PRO version. Switching back to BatteryDoctor and going to try to recoup the last half-hour of my life.