A few battery tips many may or may not know.
First off, I don't use battery tweaks such as Battery Defender or Juice Defender. Apps like those can help, but they can also create problems. Personally, I prefer to run lean and not need to play with those or turning on and off my radio. I bought a smartphone and prefer to use it like one.This doesn't mean I don't use any apps that could use my battery, just that I chose my apps carefully and tune them so they use as little as possible. This is what this article will focus on.
First up lets discuss some common myths about what does and not use up your battery.
Bloat.
Yeah, these will drain your system fast. Do we really need to get into this? If you are rooted, ditch this garbage. If not.. there is little you can do there.
Social media.
This one is an obvious one to many and one of the worst offenders. These update constantly and will drain your battery extremely fast, especially if you have a lot of friends. If you plan on using these, just face the facts, your battery will suffer. Try and keep the number of social media apps to a minimum and see if you can adjust the frequency of updates. Above all else, try not to use a widget with them as that means it will have to download everything all the time in order to update the widget.
Weather Apps.
Believe it or not, these do not use that much juice since they only do it every so often and it's very little info. These operate similar, however they can usually be adjusted so they only update at specific intervals and when you unlock your phone. If you live in a place where the weather can change on a dime, you may want a bit faster and other places a bit less. I find every 30 minutes and when I unlock to work fine. Try and find one you like and stick with it and make sure it's only doing weather, you will see why in a moment. Weather widgets aren't the same as social media widget, they only display and download a very limited amount of info and are therefore much more efficient.
News Apps
The Google app for this combines news and weather.
This isn't such a good idea. The weather portion is fine, but the news portion, especially when used as a widget is constantly updating news feeds just like social media. If you use news apps, don't use them as widgets. Preferably use apps that update when you open them.
Live wallpaper.
These got a bad rap a while back, but tests have shown they use almost nothing more than normal wallpaper. When idle, they are doing nothing. When your phone is unlocked, yes, they can use a little more, but that is small compared to the power being used by everything else. Simple animated wallpaper is fine, however, ones that update from online or constantly rotate the background will hurt you.
Launchers
Yes, your Launcher,
Some launchers are terrible, some are not. I find Launcher Pro and stock launchers to be more efficient than many others. ADW seems to use a lot of power and is what ships on many roms. Which brings us to...
Roms.
Yeah, they can vary as well. However, many have the wrong idea. Harmonia 2 is more efficient than some other IHO roms because of the launcher. Not so much because of a bunch of things I have done to it. I did remove some bloat as well, but for the most part, Harmonia 2 will use battery pretty similar to other IHO roms if you swap the launchers. Compare it to a Froyo rom however and things change. The worst Froyo roms are only a touch worse than the average IHO rom. The best Froyo though, will be have better battery life than any IHO rom for the simple reason that Gingerbread, and more specifically, CyanogenMod, simply has more to process. However , that doesn't mean that the difference is huge. My advice on this is to find the rom that has the features you want and do what you can from there.
Overclocking
Believe it or not, it can actually increase your battery life a little. It can also hurt you A LOT.
Unfortunately, this requires an entire thread all it's own,
Some tricks to improve what you have.
Obviously you can cut back social media, and find a good weather app, turn off news widgets and change your launcher. Those go a long way, but not far enough, you see there is a MUCH bigger threat to your battery than all of these combined.
Constantly running apps.
Reboot your phone, then go into settings, apps, and look at what apps are currently running.
Now, some will say that a running app is hurting nothing. Sorry. No.
The theory is that ?Android does a good job of idling apps?. That is true, however they are still using memory. Memory that could be better served on making apps you want running, run more efficient.
But there is still a big a problem.
Why is the app running? Does it need to be? Is it sending information back to the app creator? Is it downloading ads? Or is it just running because the app creator is an idiot? Free apps are the worst for this as many are siphoning your data, using your GPS, wifi,, and downloading ads all at the same time. Still think apps running ?idle? no longer matter? Your Facebook app sits idle most of the time too...
There are some wonderful free apps, and some absolutely terrible ones. When you download them, you should watch what the permissions are, that can tell you a lot, but also, watch and see if they self start and stay running in the background after you close them. Many file managers now come with task killers that run 24/7. Why do you need the entire app running to run a task manager?
Which brings up something else... Why do you need a task manager.
For those without root, I do believe task managers can be useful to shut down misbehaving apps that drain your battery (please don't turn this into a task manager discussion, there are pros and cons either way). For those with root. WHY?! If you have an app misbehaving REMOVE IT and get one that doesn't misbehave. I believe there is almost no good reason for a task manager on a rooted phone. Get rid of the bad app, and you no longer need the task manager.
On the other hand, if you are rooted, I highly recommend ad blockers.
Devs, don't say I suck, I run ad supported websites, and earn an income from ads, I still recommend the blockers. They lower your network throughput, and make browsing much nicer as many ad supported items and websites go overboard with them. It stinks they ruin it for everyone but they have. They also block malicious ads, which is where most malware on computers is coming from these days.
First off, I don't use battery tweaks such as Battery Defender or Juice Defender. Apps like those can help, but they can also create problems. Personally, I prefer to run lean and not need to play with those or turning on and off my radio. I bought a smartphone and prefer to use it like one.This doesn't mean I don't use any apps that could use my battery, just that I chose my apps carefully and tune them so they use as little as possible. This is what this article will focus on.
First up lets discuss some common myths about what does and not use up your battery.
Bloat.
Yeah, these will drain your system fast. Do we really need to get into this? If you are rooted, ditch this garbage. If not.. there is little you can do there.
Social media.
This one is an obvious one to many and one of the worst offenders. These update constantly and will drain your battery extremely fast, especially if you have a lot of friends. If you plan on using these, just face the facts, your battery will suffer. Try and keep the number of social media apps to a minimum and see if you can adjust the frequency of updates. Above all else, try not to use a widget with them as that means it will have to download everything all the time in order to update the widget.
Weather Apps.
Believe it or not, these do not use that much juice since they only do it every so often and it's very little info. These operate similar, however they can usually be adjusted so they only update at specific intervals and when you unlock your phone. If you live in a place where the weather can change on a dime, you may want a bit faster and other places a bit less. I find every 30 minutes and when I unlock to work fine. Try and find one you like and stick with it and make sure it's only doing weather, you will see why in a moment. Weather widgets aren't the same as social media widget, they only display and download a very limited amount of info and are therefore much more efficient.
News Apps
The Google app for this combines news and weather.
This isn't such a good idea. The weather portion is fine, but the news portion, especially when used as a widget is constantly updating news feeds just like social media. If you use news apps, don't use them as widgets. Preferably use apps that update when you open them.
Live wallpaper.
These got a bad rap a while back, but tests have shown they use almost nothing more than normal wallpaper. When idle, they are doing nothing. When your phone is unlocked, yes, they can use a little more, but that is small compared to the power being used by everything else. Simple animated wallpaper is fine, however, ones that update from online or constantly rotate the background will hurt you.
Launchers
Yes, your Launcher,
Some launchers are terrible, some are not. I find Launcher Pro and stock launchers to be more efficient than many others. ADW seems to use a lot of power and is what ships on many roms. Which brings us to...
Roms.
Yeah, they can vary as well. However, many have the wrong idea. Harmonia 2 is more efficient than some other IHO roms because of the launcher. Not so much because of a bunch of things I have done to it. I did remove some bloat as well, but for the most part, Harmonia 2 will use battery pretty similar to other IHO roms if you swap the launchers. Compare it to a Froyo rom however and things change. The worst Froyo roms are only a touch worse than the average IHO rom. The best Froyo though, will be have better battery life than any IHO rom for the simple reason that Gingerbread, and more specifically, CyanogenMod, simply has more to process. However , that doesn't mean that the difference is huge. My advice on this is to find the rom that has the features you want and do what you can from there.
Overclocking
Believe it or not, it can actually increase your battery life a little. It can also hurt you A LOT.
Unfortunately, this requires an entire thread all it's own,
Some tricks to improve what you have.
Obviously you can cut back social media, and find a good weather app, turn off news widgets and change your launcher. Those go a long way, but not far enough, you see there is a MUCH bigger threat to your battery than all of these combined.
Constantly running apps.
Reboot your phone, then go into settings, apps, and look at what apps are currently running.
Now, some will say that a running app is hurting nothing. Sorry. No.
The theory is that ?Android does a good job of idling apps?. That is true, however they are still using memory. Memory that could be better served on making apps you want running, run more efficient.
But there is still a big a problem.
Why is the app running? Does it need to be? Is it sending information back to the app creator? Is it downloading ads? Or is it just running because the app creator is an idiot? Free apps are the worst for this as many are siphoning your data, using your GPS, wifi,, and downloading ads all at the same time. Still think apps running ?idle? no longer matter? Your Facebook app sits idle most of the time too...
There are some wonderful free apps, and some absolutely terrible ones. When you download them, you should watch what the permissions are, that can tell you a lot, but also, watch and see if they self start and stay running in the background after you close them. Many file managers now come with task killers that run 24/7. Why do you need the entire app running to run a task manager?
Which brings up something else... Why do you need a task manager.
For those without root, I do believe task managers can be useful to shut down misbehaving apps that drain your battery (please don't turn this into a task manager discussion, there are pros and cons either way). For those with root. WHY?! If you have an app misbehaving REMOVE IT and get one that doesn't misbehave. I believe there is almost no good reason for a task manager on a rooted phone. Get rid of the bad app, and you no longer need the task manager.
On the other hand, if you are rooted, I highly recommend ad blockers.
Devs, don't say I suck, I run ad supported websites, and earn an income from ads, I still recommend the blockers. They lower your network throughput, and make browsing much nicer as many ad supported items and websites go overboard with them. It stinks they ruin it for everyone but they have. They also block malicious ads, which is where most malware on computers is coming from these days.
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