Android Power

So over the Christmas period, I had the time to update all my Android Apps. It had started to pain me as there seemed to be so many so often and those ones that required a Manual Update, "why" I asked, and therefore had to look. Anyway, it took time, was low on priorities, had no real down sides for not doing, so was neglected.

But, since I've updated everything, I've found that I'm getting considerably more battery life out of my HTC Desire, yes it's about 3 years old, runs T-Mod Express 3.2.1 and still is great. Obviously depending on use, I'm getting what I consider to be some great battery life for this phone. These are the best after I started noticing the difference, but the average is probably about 27 hours (1d 3h on battery), which is about a 5 or 6 hour improvement. Obviously the 1d 11h screen shot shows that it's nearly 9am, so the phone has gone two nights which are low usage times, but the other two have spanned two day times!

Other things that have helped, but only really given me an extra hour or two of battery life are Smart Toggle, I recommend it, although I feel that I'm still trialling it. And although I don't use the ad-blocker detailed in this lifehacker article, it got the cogs going to find another that I do use by Big Tin Can who I have worked with the past.

 

Now I hate the poor battery of smart phones as much as the next person and can recount stories of my nokia running for a week between charges and believe things have to change. And we are seeing some potential changes. The E-Ink system used by Amazons Kindle is being played with as detailed by C-Net a while ago and words again from C-Net this week about Ubuntu coming to mobile phones as an OS.

The fact of the matter is that they are going to have to enhance battery technology pretty seriously to keep up with the increasing range of apps, people are developing apps for anything these days, although this is for iPad rather than a smart phone, it illustrates my point! So this coupled with the fact that better batteries WILL mean that developers will cut development costs by not making apps as power saving as they can and allow lazy developers to get away with not even trying, I think means that we are going to have to put up with 1 to 3 day smart phone battery power for a while.

Some new Android Apps sucked my battery dry!

So my Android went shopping and I installed a few new Android Apps recently and noticeably got a lot less battery life from my phone. As a bench mark, my phone gives me roughly 30 hours from full charge to fully discharged. I would suggest I was a moderate user, with only a couple of calls per day, numerous texts/WhatsApps and Google Maps whenever I leave my front door, at least it seems and is a habit I want to shake!

An article from Life Hacker caught my attention and drew me towards Call Flakes. It looked like it could be pretty useful as it gives you an immediate reminder after every call or text with options to Email, Text, Add Calendar entry etc. So if the result of the call was some sort of follow-up, Call Flakes will prompt you to action it straight away.
This is nice and I quite liked it after a phone conversation, but the texts killed me. Call Flakes allows you to read the text, but then still leaves the actual text unread. A little mark unread would be nice. The real killer was that when I'm out, I have my phone secured with the system lock. When you receive a text, Call Flakes breaks through this, turns your screen on and I couldn't see how to resole this. Un-installed! If they sort these, they should also add options for WhatsApp and other popular messaging apps. However, I didn't think this was what drained my battery.

Okay, so I'm a Geek and things like Sound Meter just interest me. I was able to set the volume adjustment on my TV accurately  You know! Each channel is at a slightly different volume and usually in the settings there is a manual adjustment to reduce the volume of the channel or raise it slightly away from the default. Otherwise I've not found much use for it, although I intend to go out this weekend and use it to determine if I'm going to enter certain bars or not. A pet hate is going into a bar/pub/restaurant/whatever and not being able to talk/hear people you're with. This app has stayed and I don't think is what drained my battery!


Viber, well known and established alternative to Skype that suggests that it's better than Skype! I'm sure Skype suggests that it's better than Viber in some ways too. I'm not really interested in small differences, I'm interested in being contactable. I have both on my phone, but I leave Skype off as it definitely drains the battery. Viber specifically says that you can leave it on and it won't drain your battery. Bold statement I feel. I've kept the app and am monitoring it and actually am not sure that it does have much or an effect on the battery at all. I've been checking the battery usage (Menu --> Settings --> Applications --> Battery Use) and it's not been listed once. I'm wondering if this is accurate, but for now, it stays!

Now I installed Auto Speaker because is was reviewed in Life Hacker and seemed like it would be really useful as I'm always fumbling around with the speaker button when on hold and a number of times it doesn't work immediately, so I end up pressing it twice and getting frustrated, so this could have been a solution. Sadly not for me, or maybe not for my HTC Desire. Firstly, it doesn't always work. Luckily the speaker is on the back of the phone, so when I picked the phone up after being on hold and put it to my ear, I could tell the sound was still coming out the speaker. I couldn't really fumble around to sort it out during the call, so just left it. A couple of times it's also gone straight onto Speaker from dialling, which Auto Speaker suggests it  won't do for obvious reasons. Lastly, while monitoring my battery use, Auto Speaker is right up there at the top! It uses more power than the voice calls themselves. In fact, only WiFi and Screen On use more power than Auto Speaker, so watch out guys and girls, this is a baddie! Or at least not optimised for the HTC Desire! To be honest, I should have known, I mean, just look that that tacky icon!