Hi everyone,
Coming from Windows Mobile & iPhone system, I realized Android system doesn't automatically enable/disable 3G, thus it drains the battery if I leave it on, or have to go through the inconvenience to manually enabling it before starting browser, chat, or Facebook.
Since this is only my 4th day on the Streak, I'd like to ask if anyone knows there's a widget or app like this?
With many thanks,
Tom.
Tasker is a pretty useful app for that kind of stuff, I have it configured to turn on airplane mode on launching certain apps, but you can just as easily set it to turn on data and have it default to data off.
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
tom_tui said:
Hi everyone,
Coming from Windows Mobile & iPhone system, I realized Android system doesn't automatically enable/disable 3G, thus it drains the battery if I leave it on, or have to go through the inconvenience to manually enabling it before starting browser, chat, or Facebook.
Since this is only my 4th day on the Streak, I'd like to ask if anyone knows there's a widget or app like this?
With many thanks,
Tom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If i am not wrong the windows/iPhone never enable 3G or 2G automatically. you have to toggle 3G on and off manually
Two ways to do this. first, if it's a widget you want, there's one built in. Long press the home "room" and select widgets. Then select the Power control Widget. It gives you single button push for bluetooth, wifi, gps, active sync, and brightness control.
The other way is press on the little tray that has the battery and other icons in it, and you will see the button to turn wifi on or off, as well as bluetooth.
Juice Defender does what you want. It disables 3g when asleep, turning on periodically to check for email and stuff and enables 3g when your phone is awake. Very customisable too!
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
You can automate this with 3GBattery.
3GBattery|Google Play
Related
I really want to improve the battery life of my Hero as at the moment it only lasts about a day.
What would you say are the best 'battery life saving tips'
Thanks!
I don't have 10 saving tips, but turning off wifi and roaming internet will probably save some battery power and only use them when needed. lock screen after a 1 minute is probably another tip that will go along way.
ddind to what tweedie suggested: Turn GPS off when not using.
All those tips might make battery last 5 minutes longer or thereabout!
Personally I have found that the following settings suit me:
Internet- always on (for calendar and email updates)
Phone set to 2G (GSM)- I switch to 3G manually when actively using internet
Bluetooth off unless I'm actively using it
Wi-Fi off unless I'm actively using it
GPS off unless I'm actively using it
Just to let you know - turning GPS off or on is reliant on the application you use.
ie, if you turn GPS on and dont use a program which requires GPS, then GPS wont be activated.
But for my two cents which i've read around:
- Turn off automatic weather updates
- Turn most schedule feeds to be at least 1 hour (twitter, email, facebook etc). The more the longer your battery will last
- Turn off 3G if not actively using internet (as mentioned above)
- Install "Spare Parts" to check which program is eating your battery the most and consider if its worth it or not
- Turn off contact sync after your initial setup on your phone. No need to keep syncing contacts when it doesn't change too often
Advanced Task Killer - Download and properly close apps down after using them. Shortcut on home for quick access
APNDroid - Disable data services (3G/GPRS/EDGE). Home screen widget for quick access
Battery Widget - Handy home screen widget showing battery life and also gives options for enabling/disabling WIFI, GPS and Bluetooth. Also display settings.
Disable auto synchronization on things like people (facebook integration), mail etc.
Screen timeout - 1 minute is normally adequate, but I suppose there's no harm in turning it down to as low as 15 seconds, just depends on how you use it.
Turning off animations? - Don't know about this but surely it won't use as much memory so can't be a bad thing. (Spare parts)
Basically everything is off unless I need it, then I switch it on.
Adam
Wifi. With wifi on all day and barely any usage of 2G, I'm down to the red zone. Without wifi and 2G all day with text, emails, web browsing, etc, I'm only down to about 80%.
I don't want to be too critical but many Smart Actions I found here or other Razr forums tend to be very restrictive on your use.
Com'on, you bought an expensive fancy phone which uses the fastest 4G LTE network, you paid some premium on those joy. It is never a Verizon LTE Razr if you turn 4G off.
So my bottom line is :
1.I want to be able to surf web/watch youtube/check email on 4G or wifi network when I want to (as opposed to wait for 5 seconds because it was off when screen was off)
And
2. I want to have reasonable battery life.
After some testing, Smart Actions that work on my Razr is
1. At Home: when it detect my wifi, it will switch there.
2. In call: When there is incoming call, turn off Data Connection and Screen turn to 0% brightness. (This is CDMA network, so you can't surf and use data at the same time anyway. Or do you really do a lot of such things? If so, please ignore this)
This #2 will help if you have constant phone conversation of about 30 mins daily. You won't want to burn unnecessary juicy while you are only talking.
3. At work where no wifi is available (for security reasons), I turn it off. I sit in office most of the time of the day, so you won't want wifi keep scanning and eating juice. I used TImeFrame to identify this, not geo location because wifi will need to be turned off.
4. In the night, using the night saver sample, I turned off cell data and background sync.
5. Low battery saver: surprisingly, in this action I only turned it to 0% screen brightness. Why? Just imagine you are using it as GPS or some important task on the road, you dont want to lose the GPS/Data if the battery dropped below a threshhold?
6. Most helpful action:
No Action At Work.
If you are working in office most of the time, your cellphone is quietly sitting on your desk mainly. So if you specify
1. at work
2. movement detection found nothing moving
then disable background sync. it will save the juice and when you turn on the screen to check email, the 4G is always there.
The whole idea , is not to disable data connection whenever you turn off screen. Many times you will have background downloads and sometimes when you turn on the screen, the phone takes some time to restore the data connection. which makes you staring at your phone can wait for a while. quite unfortunate if you have an Iphone user sitting beside you immediately pull the data out, right? =)
Personal settings, hopefully it helps you. It will easily give you 12 hours of usage. and for my charge now: 10 hours later it is at 80%, of course it has 6 hours of night standby.
Let's discuss more TESTED smart actions here? =)
note: if your phone is in your pocket a lot during a working day, don't use motion detection and you know why...
You can use voice and data simultaneously when on 4g. Just fyi.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk
Yup, it's definitely useful too.
Example: talking to friend on phone about hanging out, go to home screen open Google maps to check when the next bus comes, while still talking to friend
Sent from my XT910 using XDA App
"Movement Detection"
Is there such an option? Been looking for it, can't find it.
opensourcefan said:
"Movement Detection"
Is there such an option? Been looking for it, can't find it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's motion
+ you need to update to get it
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
Copy that, update req Glad moto is updating though, it could be a uber powerful app.
opensourcefan said:
Copy that, update req Glad moto is updating though, it could be a uber powerful app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Think if they make it more granular it will be great
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
thank you for the tips.
I normally use wifi and thus mobile data is normally off. On my previous phone, I used extended controls which worked really well. I like having widget on the screen to turn the mobile data on or off, really not into screwing around with settings.
With the RAZR, with extended controls, the data off option seems to still allow the phone to "think" there is a mobile connection. I see the sync symbol appear and I think that this searching for a data connection is killing the battery life somehow.
I have now tried various widgets like APNDroid, extended controls, etc and they all seem to have the same effect. I think it is because they just rename the APN versus completely turning off the data.
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on this issue? Thank you in advance.
Rob
I think you can set up smart actions to toggle it off for you whenever you connect to Wi-Fi. And then to toggle it back on when you leave the Wi-Fi area.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda premium
Thanks for the suggestion Gary. Thought about smart actions but I leave mobile data off all the time until I need it.
Sent from my XT910 using XDA App
I was using the smart actions our Razrs and with the mobile data off it wasn't downloading Voicemails or pictures in text messages until the mobile data was turned back on. Not sure if its something with our setup or not, but I disabled the smart action until I investigate it further.
Yeah, the not downloading MMS thing is fairly common when you turn off data. I don't receive many MMS so it is not something that I really concerned myself about.
After searching for some time now, I found that juice defender has a mobile data widget which is doing what I need. I do not have juice defender enabled but installed it just for the widget. In the widget list it is called "Toggle: mobile data". Seems to get the job done.
I will look into using the other features of juice defender as I have heard many good things about it. I am guessing it is similar to smart actions but maybe not as user friendly.
Many thanks.
Juice Defender was awesome on my Samsung Epic. I haven't looked at all the smart actions yet so I don't know if most of the features of juice defender can be accomplished with that or not.
Wasn't sure about the MMS, just wanted to mention in case it was an issue.
Good luck!
RobHunt said:
Yeah, the not downloading MMS thing is fairly common when you turn off data. I don't receive many MMS so it is not something that I really concerned myself about.
After searching for some time now, I found that juice defender has a mobile data widget which is doing what I need. I do not have juice defender enabled but installed it just for the widget. In the widget list it is called "Toggle: mobile data". Seems to get the job done.
I will look into using the other features of juice defender as I have heard many good things about it. I am guessing it is similar to smart actions but maybe not as user friendly.
Many thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just had the best battery life ever from this phone. Only real changes were the juice defender widget and setting almost all apps to close using task manager. Normal day at work, about 10 hours, used to come home with about 40-50% battery, today it was at 90% after work.
Sent from my XT910 using XDA App
What's wrong with the stock Mobile Data Toggle widget?
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
Which widget is that one? I see airplane, GPS, wifi, etc but nothing for data specifically. It would be awesome to use a stock widget and have the same results.
Sent from my XT910 using XDA App
This one. Is it not present in VZW firmware? Could certainly explain why it's grouped separately from the rest of the stock toggle widgets if so.
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
Strange ... I do not see that widget in my list.
When you turn data off using that widget, does the data icon in your taskbar completely disappear or just go to an inactive state (icon grey all the time)?
With all the widgets I have tried so far, the data icon just goes inactive (icon grey all the time) but using the juice defender widget the data icon disappears completely from the taskbar.
When I had the data inactive (icon grey all the time), I would see the phone attempting to sync and this led me to believe that there is likely several things trying to find a connection. During that time, my battery life sucked hard, was worried that if my work day lasted too long that my phone would die (and I don't use my phone much during the day + wifi, BT, sound, etc all off). Since using the JD widget, I am rocking 80-90% remaining at the end of my work day so far.
Other items I have done to save battery are:
SetCPU profile - nothing special, just min CPU (300-300) for screen off, recharging or low battery
Task Manager - autoclose everything 2 min after screen off except the widgets I want running
Screen Brightness - about 30 or 40%
Data completely disappears when the switch is toggled. It's the same effect as disabling packet data from within the settings menu (normally under wireless & networks, RAZR has it under data manager).
I've seen that grey icon too. Suspect the blue/grey icon colours represent the heartbeat connection to Google, just like the green/grey icons in stock Gingerbread. So grey data icon = connected to network with no throughput, which an APN change could well accomplish.
I will investigate the possibility of extracting the widget, but assume it has been left out due to differences between CDMA/LTE & GSM/UMTS.
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
I'm using JD and my data is blue (just the 3G /4G words) but no bars when I have my wifi on. I am using advanced mode with Location if that helps.
I have no complaints about battery drain either. Pretty constant use today and at about 35% after 11 hours.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk
Link
One of the top power saving tips for android roms on any device is turning wifi off when the screen is off. Our touchpads are not capable of this on their own yet, that is where this app comes in.
Just install/open and the app will do the rest for you. The only con that I have found is that it takes 5-10 seconds for it to enable wifi when you awake if for sleep.
Market Description:
GreenPower battery saver: No need to charge your battery so often!
GreenPower battery saver brings many extra hours to your battery life!
Unlike other battery savers that require regular user manual actions, GreenPower is fully automatic: Once configured, it runs and saves your battery by itself. It does so by smartly managing Wifi, Mobile data & Bluetooth (*): Turning them off when you don't need them, but ensure minimum disturbance: Automatic turned ON when needed by you or by other apps (e.g retrieving mails).
Similar but easier cleaner and faster than JuiceDefender!
"GreenPower mainly does one thing, but does it so well and so flexibly that the benefits reaped are considerable." (InfoWorld)
"GreenPower is a simple and easy to use power and network management software" (Engadget Chinese edition)
"GreenPower Premium is a remarkable tool. Battery saver, time saver, top notch!" (AndroidPit)
HIGHLIGHTS
- Handles WIFI, Mobile Data (2G, 3G, some 4G) & BLUETOOTH
- Supports most phone types (both GSM & CDMA) and most carriers
- Supports Android ICE CREAM SANDWICH, HONEYCOMB, GINGERBREAD & FROYO
- Mobile Data toggling using clean Internal API or APN renaming (you can chose)
- Most features below available in Free version unless marked with (*)
INSTALL AND FORGET
Or take time to configure to get the most out of it!
24H MONEY BACK GUARANTEE (premium)
Google's 15 minutes trying time is too short for such an app. Try Premium for 24H and get a refund if you didn't like it.
FEATURES
- Wifi mgmt: Based on schedule, screen state, power connected, signal level...
- Mobile data mgmt: Based on schedule, screen state, power connected...
- Mobile data mgmt: Either Internal API or APN renaming
- BLUETOOTH (*) mgmt: Based on devices connected or in range, screen state, power etc
- Traffic check: Configurable to prevent disturbing other apps
- Apps Whitelist (*): To keep data on when using specific apps (like music streaming)
- Simple WIDGET (*): To quickly pause or resume
- NIGHT (*) mode fully configurable, Airplane mode...
- Tasker & Locale Plug-in (*)
- Compatible with Cerberus 2.0
- Very lightweight and fast app
- Easy and clean interface
- Fully configurable settings
- Settings backup / restore
- 20 Languages (changeable at run time)
- And more...
SUPPORT
- Dedicated Forum for support issues
- Support from the developer. I'm answering each issue.
- Regular updates with bug fixes and new features
PREMIUM version specific features:
- Bluetooth support
- Widget
- Night mode
- Tasker & Locale Plug-in
- Apps whitelist
- No ads
- The good feeling to support an independent developer ;-)
Tags: battery saver, battery booster, juice defender, batteryfu, apndroid, 2x battery saver
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no affiliation with this app, just wanted to pass it along to those who want some power management. I haven't bought the premium version, but probably will after a week or so of testing.
Im going to try this with AOKP 31. So what you are saying, is the bug where if i have wifi set to off, it never comes back again, will be fixed with this app? I wont have to turn wifi off and then back on again to reconnect after sleep?
nightanole said:
Im going to try this with AOKP 31. So what you are saying, is the bug where if i have wifi set to off, it never comes back again, will be fixed with this app? I wont have to turn wifi off and then back on again to reconnect after sleep?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You'll leave your wifi setting to "always" be on and let the app manage it.
When the screen shuts off, the app will turn off your wifi. When you turn your screen back on, it turns your wifi back on.
Like I said above, it is slow to turn back on (sometimes takes up to 10 seconds), but yes it will turn it back on for you.
If you have ever used Juice Defender before, this app is like that in a simpler form.
Just what I wanted. Works just like you said. Hopefully it doesn't have battery drain from running in the background. But so far I am happy that it kills wifi when the screen is off and starts it back up on screen on.
I tried it (free version initially and then purchase and got a refund within 15 mins) but then settled for Juice Defender instead. Both are good but I found the extra customisation, etc. available with JD the deciding factor.
I've got JD Ultimate and its definitely saving me battery life on both my phone and Touchpad. Its also got a handy 'night mode' feature that automatically switches my tab into silent mode at bedtime and back into noisy mode around the time I wake up!
I've been using llama (available on the market) for some power management. It's not explicitly designed for that purpose, but you can create profiles based on location and have it turn off the wifi if you haven't used it for a while, that sort of thing. It's kind of like a simpler version of Tasker.
Neat idea but not a new concept whatsoever. The App Tasker does this and a WHOLE lot more. What you describe above is what a profile or two in Tasker can do.
DNak206 said:
Neat idea but not a new concept whatsoever. The App Tasker does this and a WHOLE lot more. What you describe above is what a profile or two in Tasker can do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll have to check App Tasker out. We need to share battery saving info like this because in my opinion that is an area we are lacking with our Touchpads.
rootnik said:
I'll have to check App Tasker out. We need to share battery saving info like this because in my opinion that is an area we are lacking with our Touchpads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're kidding right?! My batt lasts ages - its one of the great features of the Touchpad. I can put videos on for my son in the car for 6-8 hours and still have 20%+ juice left afterwards for him to play Angry Birds when reach our destination! Or, spend all day surfing the net and playing games before it needs a recharge.
Obviously I don't leave my WiFi on while I'm not using it or doing something that doesn't need me to be online.
Also, one if the biggest battery drains is usually the screen. Turn the brightness down and it'll last loads longer!
Good find. Thanks.
I downloaded this and gave it a try. Didn't really notice any difference in battery tbh.
now this may be a dumb question since i don't consider myself new to android, i've changed three android tablets so far, rooted my phone, installed and tweaked dozen of roms on it, so i know some relativelly average things about android, but this one puzzles me:
on both my tablet and phone i have facebook and gmail applications. they are basically the same .apks since i have a backup of them on a sd card and if i format one device, i often use restire the apps from the sd card.
and you know how you get an instant notification on your phone if you receive a fb message or an e-mail? that doesn't happen on my tablet. it seems that a couple of minutes after i turn off the display on my tablet, it drops the wifi connection (a power save thing i suppose).
is there any way to ensure a constant wifi connection on my tablet so that i receive email/fb notifications in real time and just not after i turn the display on?
this may be only an unchecked box in my network settings, but i really haven't noticed it
thanks for your help on advance
Sent from my PMP5570C using Tapatalk HD
Go to Settings > Wireless & network settings > Press Menu > Advanced, and change Wi-Fi sleep policy to Never (or Never when plugged in, to avoid drain your battery)
thank you! i'll try to keep it turned on constantly, and see what the battery drain will be
Sent from my PMP5570C using Tapatalk HD
noup... i gave up after a few days... the battery drain is too big... even when it's pluged in, the charging process takes a lot since i'm almost constantly using it, in such a case, it almost doesn't charge
Sent from my PMP5570C using Tapatalk HD
Have u tried using tasker?
U can use that app to like turn on Wi-Fi every half hour for a minute or so to check for notifications, and then turn off.
All automated
no, but that's an excellent idea! thank you for the suggestion! will install it and give it a try
Sent from my PMP5570C using Tapatalk HD
hey... i need help with tasker... i seem to have programmed it to connect to wifi every 30 minutes, to check facebook, gmail and tapatalk, and the profile is on, according to on/off switch in tasker itself. but when i check notification icon, it says "no active" profiles.
also, i would like to write you how my profile looks like, but i don't know how i realize that tasker is a powerful app, with a lot of options, but they seem so complicated when trying to adjust them. :/
Sent from my PMP5570C using Tapatalk HD
Hmm...first try installing tasker as a system app and see if that fixes it. Also check accessibility settings as it may be listed there.
If the above doesn't work then it may be a problem with your profile.
Nbsss said:
Hmm...first try installing tasker as a system app and see if that fixes it. Also check accessibility settings as it may be listed there.
If the above doesn't work then it may be a problem with your profile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well the problem with your first solution is that my tablet isn't roited so i can't install tasker in system/app, the other is that it might be a problem with my profile, but i realy don't know how to set it up... i mean, i tried, and i think it's good, but it doesn't have to be good. that's why i needed help in the first place
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