Running Snapdragon Battery Guru alongside Tasker

[CrossClown]

I recently just got my GS4, about 3 days ago to be precise, and I've been looking for ways to really get some serious battery life. So far what I'm getting from the phone is ridiculously good when I compare it to my former Droid Razr that was only using 3G. Yesterday, I unplugged the GS4 from the charger (100%) at around 8am and by 12:30pm, I would have about 95% battery life. With location services on and with LTE on, alongside a whole day of texting and 10 minutes of navigation and googling product reviews for about 5 minutes, I managed to only get the battery down to 60-63% by 7pm. So that really made me happy. I downloaded Snapdragon Battery Guru yesterday at around 4:30pm because I've read about how some people have managed to get an extra 3-4 hours from it (assuming they were constant with their use while it was on learning mode) so I figured I'd give it a shot. Juice Defender Ultimate didn't do much for me on my Droid Razr which blows. Anyway, I was thinking, should snapdragon battery guru actually work for me, would downloading Tasker and setting that up alongside the battery guru help with increasing battery life even more? I mean, on my razr I was running Juice Defender and Smart Actions and it was a semi-beautiful arrangement. If anyone has done something like this, please do share your experience or just share your opinion on it.

P.S. I did order the spare samsung battery just because it was 50% off.lol

 

[garublador]

I had an issue where BatteryGuru went rogue and drained my battery once so I got rid of it. To be fair it was right after the OTA update but before I did a factory reset to get all of the features of the update, so it might have been a fluke. Before that I had been running it for a few weeks with good, results (or at least it didn't make my battery life worse). After the OTA update and without BatteryGuru I'm seeing at least as good of battery life as I was before the update with BatteryGuru. As far as I can tell it mostly just stops certain apps from updating as often. I just leave my WiFi on all the time and didn't let BatteryGuru mess with it, either. It's never been a function that appears to drain battery for me, anyway, and it helps with finding location without GPS. For me whether or not I'm at 40% or 45% at the end of the day doesn't matter so I'm not considering installing it again unless I see battery problems.

tl:dr - I'd say to keep it running to see if it helps but I didn't see any miracles happen.

Whether or not Tasker will help will depend on your usage. The stuff you normally on and off automatically with it to save battery are things that I never have noticed to take a lot of battery, so I don't think it would make a big difference to me. I use it mostly for the functionality and suspect it has a negative (but pretty small) affect on my battery life. Of course it also makes sure my ringer is off at work, is quiet at night, that my iTunes is always synched with my phone, it monitors the battery of my tablet on my phone and reminds me to plug it in if it gets low, I can highlight something in Chrome on my PC and either send it to the clipboard of my phone or do a Google search for it on my phone, it reminds me of what I need when I go to a store and automatically switches to speaker phone if I take the phone away from my face and hold it flat, so I don't mind the small battery hit I might see.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I recently just got my GS4, about 3 days ago to be precise, and I've been looking for ways to really get some serious battery life. So far what I'm getting from the phone is ridiculously good when I compare it to my former Droid Razr that was only using 3G. Yesterday, I unplugged the GS4 from the charger (100%) at around 8am and by 12:30pm, I would have about 95% battery life. With location services on and with LTE on, alongside a whole day of texting and 10 minutes of navigation and googling product reviews for about 5 minutes, I managed to only get the battery down to 60-63% by 7pm. So that really made me happy. I downloaded Snapdragon Battery Guru yesterday at around 4:30pm because I've read about how some people have managed to get an extra 3-4 hours from it (assuming they were constant with their use while it was on learning mode) so I figured I'd give it a shot. Juice Defender Ultimate didn't do much for me on my Droid Razr which blows. Anyway, I was thinking, should snapdragon battery guru actually work for me, would downloading Tasker and setting that up alongside the battery guru help with increasing battery life even more? I mean, on my razr I was running Juice Defender and Smart Actions and it was a semi-beautiful arrangement. If anyone has done something like this, please do share your experience or just share your opinion on it.

P.S. I did order the spare samsung battery just because it was 50% off.lol

I've been very happy with battery ever since I bought this phone. I mean, I expect the battery to drain when I'm actively using the phone, but it's nice to finally own a device where I don't have to worry about how fast the battery is draining when it's just sitting there doing nothing! I remember my old HTC Thunderbolt used to lose 10%/hour just by sitting there!!!

I've been using Battery Guru since I got it, and used it with my last device as well. Just how much savings it can get you depends on how aggressively you set it up (once the learning phase is over). It basically works by reducing the amount of apps syncing constantly in the background...you'll be able to pick and choose which apps it controls and to what degree. I'm not real big on battery saving apps, but I kinda like Battery Guru because it doesn't actually "kill" apps, it just controls how often they refresh/sync. It also uses location cues to turn your wifi on and off automatically, which works surprisingly well.

I, for one, like to get as much out of my battery as I can, but I refuse to do two things: 1. Cripple my device by disabling features that should be able use; 2. Constantly worry about manually toggling features such as wifi, GPS, bluetooth, or tweaking my brightness every time I turn the phone on, etc.

Setting up some profiles in Tasker may not be a bad idea. I've used Tasker for different things on other phones, but haven't setup anything on my S4 with it yet.

 

[CrossClown]

Yeah the one thing I don't want to do is disable a ridiculous amount of stuff on my device just to get more battery life out of it. I've read about how people are managing to get 2 days off their phones with light/moderate use which astonishes me. I'll give tasker a shot and see if it could peacefully cohabitate with Snapdragon Battery Guru, assuming the battery guru does a good job. I'm not expecting too much from Snapdragon Battery Guru but another hour of battery would definitely be better than nothing. The only time I'm really a super heavy use of a phone (based on my Droid Razr) was when I wasn't home. When I'm home, the phone will either sit on standby or I'll be answering texts/phone calls, and I'll occasionally use one of my apps for something. I'll definitely install Tasker after Guru finishes it's learning.

Is Google Services eating much of the battery life for you guys while the phone is on standby? Whenever I wake my phone I always check to see what was eating battery and Services is usually at the top of the list at 57% but then it drops down to around 10% a few minutes after I take if off standby. I know it has to be Google Maps (wakelock detector is showing me that networklocationlocator and networklocationcallbackrunner are culprits, as well as Alarm Manager but I don't really care for that). Surprisingly Battery Guru is also doing some wakelock stuff but again that's Alarm Manager. It's not SUPER bad since cpuspy tells me my phone is in deep sleep for 85-90% of the time it's on standby which is pretty good.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Yeah the one thing I don't want to do is disable a ridiculous amount of stuff on my device just to get more battery life out of it. I've read about how people are managing to get 2 days off their phones with light/moderate use which astonishes me. I'll give tasker a shot and see if it could peacefully cohabitate with Snapdragon Battery Guru, assuming the battery guru does a good job. I'm not expecting too much from Snapdragon Battery Guru but another hour of battery would definitely be better than nothing. The only time I'm really a super heavy use of a phone (based on my Droid Razr) was when I wasn't home. When I'm home, the phone will either sit on standby or I'll be answering texts/phone calls, and I'll occasionally use one of my apps for something. I'll definitely install Tasker after Guru finishes it's learning.

Is Google Services eating much of the battery life for you guys while the phone is on standby? Whenever I wake my phone I always check to see what was eating battery and Services is usually at the top of the list at 57% but then it drops down to around 10% a few minutes after I take if off standby. I know it has to be Google Maps (wakelock detector is showing me that networklocationlocator and networklocationcallbackrunner are culprits, as well as Alarm Manager but I don't really care for that). Surprisingly Battery Guru is also doing some wakelock stuff but again that's Alarm Manager. It's not SUPER bad since cpuspy tells me my phone is in deep sleep for 85-90% of the time it's on standby which is pretty good.

Do you have Google Now enabled? If you do, that's going to cause Google Services and Maps to run in the background a lot more. As I said before, I'm not willing to cripple my device on a regular basis just to get manageable battery life out of it, but I found I really didn't use Google Now, so I just turned it off. Google Services is a very general item though, and chances are if you're not running a lot of other apps it will naturally be high on your battery usage list...but that doesn't necessary indicate a problem, it can be very normal depending on how fast your battery is actually draining.

I always leave GPS and bluetooth on all the time, and don't really seem to take a hit from it. As you mentioned in your post, I can often on weekends (when I'm not using my phone as much and connected to wifi) get close to 2 days on a single charge with no problem...so it's definitely possible.

Here's a sample screenshot I took a few weeks ago...

 

[CrossClown]

I disabled Google Now the first day I got it which was about 4-ish days ago since I initially tried and I didn't like it at all what so ever. That's what I figured about google services so I kinda just stopped caring as long as my battery doesn't drain. I think I'll grab tasker today since Snapdragon finishes its learning later tonight. Hopefully, it completely maximizes my battery.

 

[garublador]

I disabled Google Now the first day I got it which was about 4-ish days ago since I initially tried and I didn't like it at all what so ever. That's what I figured about google services so I kinda just stopped caring as long as my battery doesn't drain. I think I'll grab tasker today since Snapdragon finishes its learning later tonight. Hopefully, it completely maximizes my battery.

I'll point out again that unless you use your phone a specific way, there's a good chance that Tasker won't really help. Looking at paintdrinkingpete's screenshot you'll see that WiFi is only taking up 3% of his drain. For Tasker to optimize that you'll either have to use a location based profile, which may take up more battery keeping track of your location than it will save by turning off WiFi, or find some other way to manually turn on and off settings, which is pretty easy to do without Tasker. If there's some real specific way you use your phone there may be a way to use Tasker to help, but my experience is that Tasker is designed to make your phone more convenient to use and to add functionality, not to help save battery life. I'm a huge fan of Tasker and what it can do so I don't want people expecting something out of it they won't get and then think it's not a good app.

I will point out that there is a plugin for Tasker called AutoLocation that uses the Google Location API rather than what's built into Tasker. I've only had it on for a little bit but so far it's way better. I'm not sure what affect it has on battery life. However, there is an option for it to keep track of your location using no battery. I believe it piggy backs off other apps using the Location service to get your location rather than asking for your location itself. However, if you have all of the other services that might use this Location API turned off then that won't really help. I also haven't tried it to see how well it works in this mode. Right now I'm seeing what my battery life is like using a different mode.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I'll point out again that unless you use your phone a specific way, there's a good chance that Tasker won't really help. Looking at paintdrinkingpete's screenshot you'll see that WiFi is only taking up 3% of his drain. For Tasker to optimize that you'll either have to use a location based profile, which may take up more battery keeping track of your location than it will save by turning off WiFi, or find some other way to manually turn on and off settings, which is pretty easy to do without Tasker. If there's some real specific way you use your phone there may be a way to use Tasker to help, but my experience is that Tasker is designed to make your phone more convenient to use and to add functionality, not to help save battery life. I'm a huge fan of Tasker and what it can do so I don't want people expecting something out of it they won't get and then think it's not a good app.

I will point out that there is a plugin for Tasker called AutoLocation that uses the Google Location API rather than what's built into Tasker. I've only had it on for a little bit but so far it's way better. I'm not sure what affect it has on battery life. However, there is an option for it to keep track of your location using no battery. I believe it piggy backs off other apps using the Location service to get your location rather than asking for your location itself. However, if you have all of the other services that might use this Location API turned off then that won't really help. I also haven't tried it to see how well it works in this mode. Right now I'm seeing what my battery life is like using a different mode.

And to add to that, Battery Guru already handles turning wifi on/off based on both location and time of day cues...and in my experience, does it quite well.

As I mentioned before, I've used Tasker in the past, but have been happy enough with my battery life as is with my S4 that I haven't even taken the time fiddle with it on this phone. With my old S3, I did have tasker setup to switch my lockscreen from swipe to PIN whenever I wasn't at work or at home...and that is something I'd like to try to do again when I get the chance. I like having security enabled on my phone when out in public where it could get lost or stolen, but don't like having to deal with a PIN when I'm at home and have little risk of anything happening to my phone.

 

[anon(8249685)]

Useless app. Why do i need location services on. It's draining the battery like crazy.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[anon(8249685)]

Useless app. Why do i need location services on. It's draining the battery like crazy.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk