Sometimes you are away from a charger and want to conserve what you have left, or are trying to run a resource heavy app without glitches (satnav) or trying to get a big update/download faster.
I thought we could post tips that either help with speed of the device or with saving battery - particularly if you know of apps or settings that slow the running down or eat battery.
I know these are quite obvious but I'll list some anyway to get us started
Turn these off for extra speed and batt :
Wireless General
GPS (you can leave location by network on for most stuff like weather apps)
Wifi - turning it off while you're out and about saves lots o batt. I also keep network notification off completely unless I'm in a new location looking for a wifi fix.
Bluetooth - set for off and undiscoverable
Mobile network - Set it to 2G for a big boost in battery life (and I've found, if the 3G is rubbish - I know, obvious, but I recently spent 20 mins moaning of no signal at all to send a tx at a gig, then realised I could flick to 2G and was away!!)
Data Sync
Google - You can turn of Auto sync and just sync manually when you choose
Background Data - Turning this off gives a huge battery boost, but gmail won't arrive in real time, so if you're expecting important mail don't turn it off.
On the sync option, if you know contacts and calendar are not changing that often you can uncheck these and sync manually every now and then
Apps that use Data Sync
Weather - check how often the app refreshes and set it to a longer time - some weather apps are by default set to refresh every 30 mins and this might not be needed most of the time.
Twitter and Facebook widgets and apps - again check the refresh periods, also notifications will Use batt more than no notifications.
Same probably applies for Exchange Sync but I don't use it.
Sound/Display - these things will save batt when you need it.
I think having Ring AND vibe will be more batt intensive, so maybe knock off the vibrate when you want to save battery
Keep Brightness low and lower screen timeout.
Turn off Auto rotation and animations and Notification Flash
Turning keypad tones off etc will save a bit too. It all adds up.
Turning Off TouchFLO
When running CoPilot, it helps to turn off wifi and some have reported that if you can toggle the Sense UI to the ordinary Android 3 screen home this helps too (Tho I've personally not had problems) To turn off Sense UI or Touchflo 7Screen home, you need to first go to settings-applications-manage applications and look for TouchFLO then clear defaults. After this, when you go to home, you'll be offered a choice of home or TouchFlo. To toggle back to Touchflo, press the home button again. To return it to default, just check the Use by default for this action, and then make your choice.
Post anything you've found to help or hinder speed, or to drain or boost battery life
Ta Dayzee xx
Is there a widget to switch from 3G to 2G?
no, that is not a setting that can be done on a widget. all the ones that are around and claim to do it just jump you straight into mobile settings so you can toggle it yourself in two clicks instead of four....
But there is the Mobile Network one - HTC built in - when that is turned off, you can still get calls, and send txts. I use this toggle to do that - also can you not set a shortcut to do 3g to 2g only using bettercut? I'm sure you can, because you have that option in settings and bettercut can make a shortcut to any settings toggle.
Dayzee
Edit - Bettercut doesn't work with Hero Well, certainly not for creating and adding a shortcut to a system setting - will let the devs know...
Is it my imagination or does having the people widget on a home screen makes the device a little sluggish?
Is anyone else using touchdown? Not sure if that is slowing my device down and using battery a lot too?
Toggle Settings is a good app for controlling Daisys suggestions above, taskiller or Advanced Task Manager are essential for closing unwanted apps.
Couple of notes about apps that close stuff down like Taskiller and Task Manager - they can slow your fone down immediately after an end all, as the apps that need to run like TouchFlo have to restart - which they do, all by themselves - but it makes the fone prone to laggyness and force closing if you try to open stuff straight after.
If you get one that allows exclusions (I know advanced Task Manager does but dunno on others) then exclude TouchFLO and you'll get less proba after close all.
Also there were reports that one of the Taskiller apps messed with the long press home functions. Not sure on this tho...
Dayzee said:
If you get one that allows exclusions (I know advanced Task Manager does but dunno on others) then exclude TouchFLO and you'll get less proba after close all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With Taskkiller you also have the option to exclude programs. It also has a widget you can tap to close all (except the ignored programs) The free version only allows two apps to be ignored. Exclude TouchFlo is a good suggestion.
Ce said:
With Taskkiller you also have the option to exclude programs. It also has a widget you can tap to close all (except the ignored programs) The free version only allows two apps to be ignored. Exclude TouchFlo is a good suggestion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try TaskPanel, it's free and doesn't seem to have any restrictions in its exclude list. You can also add a memory threshold when TaskPanel should automatically kill applications (configured through a separate list). And finally, it registers itself as an ongoing task and starts up automatically.
TaskPanel ist great... Thanks for that Tip. Have it running in the Background and now it Kills processes that are not in my Exclude List everytime the RAM goes below 50Meg.
My Hero is now (almost) Lag-Free.
Full charge at 7am and at 5pm, battery still at 94%.
How?
Turn off background data.
jhericurls said:
Full charge at 7am and at 5pm, battery still at 94%.
How?
Turn off background data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Background data? As in what? Mobile network?
jhericurls said:
Full charge at 7am and at 5pm, battery still at 94%.
How?
Turn off background data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Surely that disables all the sync services etc which is really what the phone is all about!
Also the Market won't work unless background data is enabled... It will save battery but a said, many services won't work unless you update manually.
I switched this off when in France so I didn't eat up my roaming data bundle.
The Jones said:
Is it my imagination or does having the people widget on a home screen makes the device a little sluggish?
Is anyone else using touchdown? Not sure if that is slowing my device down and using battery a lot too?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ive also noticed this also with the people widget after i removed it as well as the Clock # 8 it severely reduced the lagginess of my Hero
Hi Dayzee & co.,
If you're looking for a good way to save battery power without having to turn wifi on and off manually, check out "Y5 battery saver"
Y5 - Battery Saver is an AndroidTM application which saves your battery by turning the Wifi off in locations where you have never been connected before. The application turns Wifi back on when you are back to known location. It will remember the locations automatically. All you have to do is turn the Wifi on and connect to the known Wifi network for the first time
Really cool, and works like a charm. Ok, you need to have your GPS turned on, but at least that one is useful everywhere you are (except inside buildings, fair enough)... whereas wifi isn't. Furthermore, wifi uses up more battery than GPS.
Concerning Advanced Task Killer (awesome!), you might want to check out this thread if you're sick of having to restart your phone each time you have to sync. In a few words: always put HTC sync in the Ignore list of the program. Unchecking it won't do.
Cheers!
Stop using Peep (set it all to manual update), remove the widget and start using Twidroid.
As well as a huge reduction in battery draw, you'll find your Hero is far more responsive than is ever was before.
The last few days my Hero has not been sluggish and the battery life has increased dramatically. Set to 30 mins update just like Peep was.
Here's my tip, that works really well, for me. I've tried a myriad of task managers, but finally settled for TaskPanel. It doesn't really matter what you use, I suppose, but I found it to be one of the clearest. Furthermore, advanced task killer's and taskillers "kill all" commands seemed to randomly kill the TouchFlo process as well, even though it was "ignored"...
I've come to the conclusion that cpu load rarely is a problem on this phone (in terms of finding a reason to possible lag), unless you are watching videos (which you probably won't, since it appears to be impossible to encode videos so they don't at least slow down a bit every five seconds) or listening to music.
Instead it's the amount of memory you have free for apps to use. I have no idea why, since I also live by the credo "memory free is memory wasted", so ideally my phone would have 5 megs of ram free and everything would work great. Now for some reason, my Hero desktop starts to lag substantially (as well as other gui-elements, such as long scrolling lists) whenever my memory goes below 40 megs.
I always hated the "favourite people" widget by Htc, so I closed it day one. Maybe that's why my htc experience has been pretty positive. I also closed the desktop widgets for SMS-messages and Mail, since they can't show MMS:es or HTML-mail and since they are both ridiculously slow at flicking from one message to the next. I also threw away the novelty clocks by Htc, since they animate too often and that slows down the interface while they are moving. Instead I opted for the iPhone-like clock "digital clock widget". Just don't force kill it, since it will stop updating and you will be stuck with a beautiful clock that shows the right time once every day.
So basically, my formula for a fluid hero experience is:
* Check your free memory with TaskPanel every now and then. If it goes below 50, prepare for slowdown. If it goes below 40, go on a killingspree.
* Register TaskPanel as an "ongoing service", so it shows up in your notification drawer. Now, if you can see your notification drawer (which you can't in the browser), then instead of clicking home to close stuff, open TaskPanel (or whatever) and kill the app you are about to stop using.
* With multitasking comes responsibility. Odds are, if you ever owned an iPhone, this is something you were *****in and moanin about. "Gimme multitasking, gimme!". Well now you've got it and so, learn to use it. Everything that is slow, badly programmed or a resource hog has gotta go, unless you really really need it. Beautiful clock animating slowly? Too bad! Ditch it.
Somebody said Android wold be very good at managing resources by itself and that sounds reasonable. However, I read numerous comments about people finding this to not be the case. Maybe in version 2.0. But for now I'm stuck killing of processes myself. It works for me and makes my UI snappy. And I can keep 3-5 apps running at the same time (that are my own choices, not mandatory apps that come with the UI) without problem. I regularly have babbler, androidirc, taskpanel, market, ebuddy, redditisfun running at the same time without problem. Just kill off apps you are not going to use for a long time.
Ok, sorry to be rambling, but this is my take on the situation. It might get resolved with the Hero update or with the 2.0 version of Android. Don't know, but until then, we need some tools and wild speculation won't solve anything. If you made it through the whole message, I would appreciate your comments - especially any positive experiences you have from "letting Android do its own cleaning". It sounds a little fishy that it would be bad a first, but after about a week, things will get really snappy? What if I boot my phone? Will I have to wait a week again for things to become fast?
-JJ
Speed and battery boosting Tips
Dayzee said:
Sometimes you are away from a charger and want to conserve what you have left, or are trying to run a resource heavy app without glitches (satnav) or trying to get a big update/download faster.
I thought we could post tips that either help with speed of the device or with saving battery - particularly if you know of apps or settings that slow the running down or eat battery.
I know these are quite obvious but I'll list some anyway to get us started
Turn these off for extra speed and batt :
Wireless General
GPS (you can leave location by network on for most stuff like weather apps)
Wifi - turning it off while you're out and about saves lots o batt. I also keep network notification off completely unless I'm in a new location looking for a wifi fix.
Bluetooth - set for off and undiscoverable
Mobile network - Set it to 2G for a big boost in battery life (and I've found, if the 3G is rubbish - I know, obvious, but I recently spent 20 mins moaning of no signal at all to send a tx at a gig, then realised I could flick to 2G and was away!!)
Data Sync
Google - You can turn of Auto sync and just sync manually when you choose
Background Data - Turning this off gives a huge battery boost, but gmail won't arrive in real time, so if you're expecting important mail don't turn it off.
On the sync option, if you know contacts and calendar are not changing that often you can uncheck these and sync manually every now and then
Apps that use Data Sync
Weather - check how often the app refreshes and set it to a longer time - some weather apps are by default set to refresh every 30 mins and this might not be needed most of the time.
Twitter and Facebook widgets and apps - again check the refresh periods, also notifications will Use batt more than no notifications.
Same probably applies for Exchange Sync but I don't use it.
Sound/Display - these things will save batt when you need it.
I think having Ring AND vibe will be more batt intensive, so maybe knock off the vibrate when you want to save battery
Keep Brightness low and lower screen timeout.
Turn off Auto rotation and animations and Notification Flash
Turning keypad tones off etc will save a bit too. It all adds up.
Turning Off TouchFLO
When running CoPilot, it helps to turn off wifi and some have reported that if you can toggle the Sense UI to the ordinary Android 3 screen home this helps too (Tho I've personally not had problems) To turn off Sense UI or Touchflo 7Screen home, you need to first go to settings-applications-manage applications and look for TouchFLO then clear defaults. After this, when you go to home, you'll be offered a choice of home or TouchFlo. To toggle back to Touchflo, press the home button again. To return it to default, just check the Use by default for this action, and then make your choice.
Post anything you've found to help or hinder speed, or to drain or boost battery life
Ta Dayzee xx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
turning off allmost every things,then what reson to have a smart phone and spend 600$ for the device better, turn off your hero and keep in the pocket and turn it back on to use...keep in pocket with power off till next use.this is not the sulution .turning off everythings ........rether go with motorola razer v3.
I still don't see the point of using task managers and killing tasks. I just let the OS manage everything for me.
My Hero run very well indeed since I worked out that Peep was a real battery and resource hog.
I've just been for a 4 mile walk and used My Tracks to track the walk, Twidroid, Browser hot linked from tweets in Twidroid, answered a phone call and responded to a number of texts.
Looked at My Tracks a number of times to see what it was doing and to look at the satellite map. I like to point out things on the phone screen to the kids that they can see in real life - geeky but they think its cool.
Kept checking on how fast we were walking etc...
So screen was active quite a bit.
All over the space of 1hr 15mins with the GPS running all the time.
Hero never lagged once, battery used was around 10% (at a guess, maybe 12%).
Overall very impressed.
Coming from a Blackberry, I used to use "Phone Only Mode" (Phone only goes off, if and when, it is a phone call) Is there any app or widget that can accomplish this? At night E-mail notifications and Facebook constantly wake me up. I would put it on silent, but I don't want to miss any important calls. Thanks in advance for any help on this matter,
Russ
Look for any apps that set up profiles by time. That should help u. Like from so and so time till the morning shut everything down but ringtone
98classic said:
Look for any apps that set up profiles by time. That should help u. Like from so and so time till the morning shut everything down but ringtone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I'll look into it.
I use AudioManager to quickly turn down the notifications and/or ring tones all from a single slider screen, but there are several similar apps that will allow you to set up sound profiles and quickly change via location (Locale) or via a widget.
rUsTyRuSs said:
Coming from a Blackberry, I used to use "Phone Only Mode" (Phone only goes off, if and when, it is a phone call) Is there any app or widget that can accomplish this? At night E-mail notifications and Facebook constantly wake me up. I would put it on silent, but I don't want to miss any important calls. Thanks in advance for any help on this matter,
Russ
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just disable the auto sync of data. then only the phone works,,,
I've been using bedside for 2 years and it rocks. You can setup white lists for texts, calls or whatever.
I love Tasker. It does cost a small bit but the customizable profiles are awesome. If you just want something for use at night, bedside may be good enough, but definitely look into Tasker if you want to automate anything else (for example,I have it set to start the GPS when I launch Google maps and to shut it off when I exit.
____________
Any typos or other oddities in this post are brought to you by the letters G & T, the number 9000, and Swype.
Nothing compares to a BB's sound profiles or email
Tasker is nice, but it'd take a few weeks to set up just one profile and it's confusing as all hell. I just need something to set my phone to vibrate while I'm at work, and turn on 4G, and disable 4G when I get home(all time based, I don't need locale) and turn on wifi and ringer volume all the way up.
So is there a more simple app that can preform the more basic actions of tasker?
I use something called quick profile. I manually change it when I get in and out of the car, but I have 2 profiles. "car" and "out of car" car turns off wifi and turns bluetooth on and makes some adjustments to the brightness and volumes. it's really simple and very quick. the paid version will let you make shortcuts to profiles on your home screen, but...I don't mind the extra click. hope that help.
I've been using "Setting Profiles". Allows for setting changes based on locations, time of day, day of week, actions (like in the car dock or connected to a specific bluetooth device). Was pretty easy to set up.
I've also use "Llama"...functions similarly and also not difficult to setup.
Two questions, mainly an is it just me set of questions:
My phone lags when you first hit the power button to wake it up, mostly only the first time, but it's for over a second and it's kind of disconcerting. Is this normal? I noticed it stock and on Beans now. Is there something that can be done, or am I just the weird one...
Lightflow doesn't work very well. It doesn't control sounds worth a damn, and the quiet hours feature is afu. Just wanted to see if I'm doing it wrong...
The lockscreen wake lag is normal, people say it's the deep sleep that the phone goes into to save power.
Light flow doesn't work, but Light Manager works very well - it's free and on the play store.
EDIT - saw that you were talking about sounds controls and quiet hours - didn't know Lightflow had that stuff. I use profiles for that sort of thing. You can easily create Quick Commands for things like "home" "work" "car" and "night." I find this feature really useful, because with one swipe of the pen and a quick drawing of a symbol, it'll change settings for sound, bluetooth, wifi, allshare cast, gps, mobile data, etc. all at once.
While driving in the car, I'd like the display to always stay on without the need to push any buttons.
Is there some toggle button app that can be used to lock display on?
It does not look like driving mode prevents display from turning off and the biggest screen timeout that one can configure is 10 minutes.
igory_1999 said:
While driving in the car, I'd like the display to always stay on without the need to push any buttons.
Is there some toggle button app that can be used to lock display on?
It does not look like driving mode prevents display from turning off and the biggest screen timeout that one can configure is 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could do this with an app like Llama, just create two actions - one sets screen timeout to max (I think it's like 4,000 something minutes on my phone), the other sets timeout to your normal setting (I use 30 seconds). You could then create Llama shortcuts on your home screen to access those two commands, or launch them from the program directly if home screen space is at a premium.
I do something similar but configure the two settings to automatically apply when I plug (max timeout) or unplug (normal timeout) my phone. If I put my phone in the mount in my car, I end up plugging it in so it does the trick for me automatically.
Let me know if you need more help and I can write up the actual events and settings I use in Llama if you need.
grussinko said:
You could do this with an app like Llama, just create two actions - one sets screen timeout to max (I think it's like 4,000 something minutes on my phone), the other sets timeout to your normal setting (I use 30 seconds). You could then create Llama shortcuts on your home screen to access those two commands, or launch them from the program directly if home screen space is at a premium.
I do something similar but configure the two settings to automatically apply when I plug (max timeout) or unplug (normal timeout) my phone. If I put my phone in the mount in my car, I end up plugging it in so it does the trick for me automatically.
Let me know if you need more help and I can write up the actual events and settings I use in Llama if you need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool! I did not know that Llama can do so much. At first glance, I thought that it can only control sound.
On Llama website I do not see any description how to write your own Llama scripts. I guess, people learn by exporting/importing profiles generated using GUI?
igory_1999 said:
Cool! I did not know that Llama can do so much. At first glance, I thought that it can only control sound.
On Llama website I do not see any description how to write your own Llama scripts. I guess, people learn by exporting/importing profiles generated using GUI?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any settings I use I've created through the GUI. I only use a portion of what it's capable of, but a few of the events I have set up:
Turn on wifi when it detects I'm at home, work, parents' house, sister's house, etc. Turn off wifi when I leave any of those areas.
The screen timeout settings I noted previously. Also have it turn up brightness when plugged in. I have additional conditions set so that it doesn't max the brightness automatically during certain times, basically so that if I plug it in after dark in the car or in bed it won't blind me.
Automatically set a quiet profile at night and a vibrate profile when I'm at work.
Have it turn on Wifi hotspot when I'm at a particular hotel I travel to for work where there's no free wifi.
To create the automatic brighness event, create a new event where the condition "charging or unplugged" is set to one of the "charging" options and the action "screen timeout" is set to "never", then create a second event where the condition is "on battery" and the action is "set timeout to xx seconds". You can add additional conditions on time, location, etc., the best thing to do is just sift through the various conditions. Most are self-explanatory but they have a little help icon next to each that gives more info as well.
grussinko said:
Any settings I use I've created through the GUI. I only use a portion of what it's capable of, but a few of the events I have set up:
Turn on wifi when it detects I'm at home, work, parents' house, sister's house, etc. Turn off wifi when I leave any of those areas.
The screen timeout settings I noted previously. Also have it turn up brightness when plugged in. I have additional conditions set so that it doesn't max the brightness automatically during certain times, basically so that if I plug it in after dark in the car or in bed it won't blind me.
Automatically set a quiet profile at night and a vibrate profile when I'm at work.
Have it turn on Wifi hotspot when I'm at a particular hotel I travel to for work where there's no free wifi.
To create the automatic brighness event, create a new event where the condition "charging or unplugged" is set to one of the "charging" options and the action "screen timeout" is set to "never", then create a second event where the condition is "on battery" and the action is "set timeout to xx seconds". You can add additional conditions on time, location, etc., the best thing to do is just sift through the various conditions. Most are self-explanatory but they have a little help icon next to each that gives more info as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems to be working. I guess, this is a good way to deal with my second problem as well: kill annoying poweramp when bluetooth connects to my car. I tried first to do it without delay but it did not work. Perhaps, introducing 10-15 second delay might help.