How to extend your Android’s battery
life
by Carl ParAndroid devices are smart mobile devices.
They’re actually mini computers more
portable than netbooks or laptops. But,
their power requirements aren’t as mini
as we’d hoped them to be. Many Android
users frequently bewail the battery life of
many Android devices.
Yet, used in moderation — and, with
energy-saving habits practiced by the
user — an Android tablet’s or phone’s
battery life can last longer than originally
intended. How do you make your battery
last longer so you can use your device
longer?
In this article, read about tips and tricks
to increase Android battery life for your
phone or tablet. (You may also view our
video guide incorporating these tips and
tricks.)
Unused device features
Connectivity features
Whatever isn’t in use or needed, turn it
off. You’d do the same for your electric
fan, TV, or the lights at home — I
presume. Turn off phone or tablet
features that you don’t use, especially
the following:
GPS
Wi-Fi
4G/LTE and mobile network
connection
Bluetooth
NFC
These connectivity features eat up some
of your battery power even if they’re idle,
and they eat a significant amount of
power when they’re not.
Haptic feedback
A frequently vibrating device also tends to
lose power faster. Haptic feedback refers
to the shaking that happens on your
device as a result of some interaction or
activity on the device. Such feature uses a
small vibration motor, which, in turn, eats
up power. Do you really need your device
to vibrate every time you touch the
screen or every time a notification arrives
even if the device is on your desk? It’s
wise to turn on haptic feedback only for
important UI interactions (e.g., typing on
the keyboard) or when your device needs
to be in your pocket.
Power Control widget and task apps
You can use Android’s built-in Power
Control widget to quickly toggle most of
the energy-draining features such as Wi-
Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Autosync, and Auto
Brightness. Just place the widget on your
homescreen and tap on the toggle
buttons as needed.
But, using even a handy widget such as
Power Control can become tedious if you
need to do it several times a day. The
good news is that there are several apps
on the Google Play Store that you can use
to automate, or semi-automate, the
turning off of energy-draining features.
Here are some that you can try (in no
particular order):
AutomateIt-Automate Your Droid
This free and ads-free app lets your
device perform actions according to
triggers that you associate them with.
For instance, you can set it to disable
certain features (e.g., Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, GPS, etc.) at certain hours
of the day. Get the paid version for
more flexibility with the triggers,
actions, and rules.
Tasker
This app, although having no free or
trial version, is extremely flexible. It
works in a similar way to AutomateIt.
You can set your device to perform
tasks/actions (e.g., disable network
services) according to “contexts” that
you specify (e.g., time of day, day of
week, etc.).
Juice Defender
This app is specifically written to help
users lower battery consumption and
squeeze more power out of their
devices’ batteries. The default profile
targets the most battery-sapping
components (e.g., mobile data
[3G/4G], Wi-Fi, and the like), but you
can customize the settings further
according to your needs.
Mobile network, Wi-Fi, and network
signal
If you must connect to the Internet, and
you have a choice between connecting via
Wi-Fi or mobile network, choose the
former. Mobile data connections sap your
battery power faster than Wi-Fi. The
reason has something to do with the
relationship between strong network
signal and distance from the transmitter.
Since Wi-Fi presumably is closer to you,
you tend to get a stronger and more
stable signal, therefore reducing the
needed energy to power your phone’s
antenna.
So, when connecting to Wi-Fi, stay in a
place with the strongest signal. This way,
your phone’s antenna won’t need to work
so hard to get a stable network signal,
saving you some battery power. The
same is true for your carrier’s network
signal. The better the reception signal is,
the better it will be for your battery life.
Also, it’s a wise idea to disable your
phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot feature if it’s not
being used. This feature also eats up a lot
of power.
Autosync, refresh frequency,
notifications
Instead of letting your apps sync their
data automatically, choose to do it
manually. Or, at the very least, enable
autosync only for those apps that really
need it. The logic behind this is that when
an app is scheduled to sync, it will look
for an active Internet connection — and
the process uses power. When it finds a
connection, it will connect and start
syncing even if there is nothing to sync —
this part uses power, too. Either set apps
to sync manually or set them to sync less
frequently.
And, you’d want to sync over a Wi-Fi
connection instead of 4G/LTE or mobile
data network.
App/widget refresh frequency
Certain apps such as Facebook, Twitter,
RSS readers, Instagram, and the like can
be set to fetch fresh content or updates
in intervals. The longer the refresh
interval you specify, the better it will be
for your battery life. To be more
economical, set the app to never refresh
automatically; instead, do the refreshing
by hand.
The same principle applies to homescreen
widgets, especially those that need an
Internet connection to work. If possible,
don’t place such widgets on your
homescreens. If not possible, be very
selective. Weather widgets, for example,
look nice and fancy, but they need to
update weather data from their servers,
consuming power along the way. You can
lessen the frequency of such updates, or
remove the widget entirely.
Ad-free apps
The same principle also applies to ad
fetching in ad-supported apps. These
apps use power to download ads and
upload user data for location-specific
advertising. Where possible, opt for ad-
free apps, whether paid or free.
Notifications
Disable or minimize notifications and
alerts for apps that you don’t need those
for. If all of your apps alert you every
time a notification or update comes in,
your battery can drain faster than usual.
To send you notifications, apps run in the
background to pull information from their
servers, and consume power in the
process.
If you have a device running Android 4.1
or 4.2 Jelly Bean, you can go to Settings >
Apps, switch to the All tab, view each
app’s info page, and uncheck the “Show
Notifications” option.
Screen and display
Generally speaking, more light means
more power used. Applied to phones and
tablets — the brighter your screen, the
more power is used.
When you are indoors, set your screen’s
brightness level to the lowest setting that
is most comfortable to your eyes. You
don’t usually need the extra brightness
indoors, and your battery life will be
happier for it.
Other people suggest using the auto-
brightness feature, which can be handy.
But, for the auto-brightness feature to
work, the light sensors need to work and
consume some minimal power to detect
the ambient light levels. So, it’s actually
counterproductive.
To save some more juice, shorten your
screen’s timeout. If you normally have
your screen sleep after five or ten
minutes, lower it down to 30 or 15
seconds. Keeping your screen on for a few
more minutes without using it will waste
battery power needlessly.
Wallpapers and themes
Live wallpapers
Live wallpapers are all nice and pretty.
They’re actually a big reason why some
people ditch other mobile OSes and stick
with Android. But, live wallpapers can also
take a toll on your device’s battery life.
As far as I know, there’s no consensus
about how much drain live wallpapers
inflict on the battery, but one thing is
certain: they consume power because
they use CPU and GPU resources to
animate. And, then, there are the poorly
coded live wallpaper apps, which can
potentially eat more battery power than
you bargained for.
If you can live without the stunning eye
candy, you can probably save a bit on
battery life.
Dark themes
This tip may not have much effect on
LCD-screened devices, but for devices
using OLED screens (including AMOLED
screens, such as those on many Samsung
mobile devices), darkness can be a saving
grace for your battery.
Unlike on LCD displays, the pixels on
OLED screens produce their own light.
The brighter the pixel is (as in the case of
white), the more power is used. Black is
practically an unlit pixel, so it uses no
energy. Thus, the darker your screen or
its background, the less power the OLED
pixels use.
Based on that explanation, you might
want to use a black wallpaper and a dark
theme on your OLED-screened Android
device. It can save you some juice.
Location services, background data
You could also squeeze a little bit more
juice by turning off Location Services
(usually found in Settings > Location
Services). You might want to prevent
apps from using your location info. You
will also most likely want to disable the
“Location and Google Search” option (or
“Wi-Fi and Mobile Network Location”
option on some phones) to prevent your
device from using Wi-Fi and/or mobile
networks for triangulating your precise
location and sending the data to Google
servers. The process, needless to say,
requires power.
Keep an eye on apps that use data in the
background. Some apps, such as the Play
Store and Gmail apps, continuously collect
and send data in the background. You can
restrict such background usage of data —
per app — and your battery will be the
happier for it.
But, you can also perform a blanket
restriction in Settings > Data Usage; tap
the Menu button tick the “Restrict
Background Data” option to enable it. You
can also enable per-app restriction by
opening each app’s info page.
(Note: The “Restrict Background Data”
option may not be available in certain
phone models. Also, Google itself
considers per-app background data
restriction as a “drastic measure that may
also affect the app’s performance or cause
it to malfunction,” so you might want to
use this option with caution.)
“Bad” apps
Some apps are resource-intensive —
either by nature (as in the case of games)
or by developer incompetence or
negligence (as in the case of poorly
written apps).
You need to be vigilant about how your
various apps consume battery power. A
quick trip to Settings > Battery (or, on
some devices, Settings > Power >
Battery Use) will usually reveal which
app or service is sucking most of the
juice.
Identify apps that constantly drain CPU
and battery life. Poorly coded apps that
connect to the Internet even when
they’re not supposed to should be
uninstalled, as should apps that
needlessly use up a huge amount of CPU
resources. Replace these apps with
better developed ones rather than
endure running on lesser and lesser
battery each day because of
“mischievous” apps.
To help you pinpoint apps that are
misbehaving, you can use apps such as
Watchdog Task Manager Lite . Instead of
telling you to free up your memory, this
app alerts you when an app starts hogging
up your CPU power when it’s not
supposed to.
Also, keep your installed apps up-to-date.
App developers send out updates to
provide bug fixes, add new features, and
even lessen battery consumption. So,
make sure to update your apps regularly;
doing so can help in extending your
device’s battery life.
As for apps that you don’t use, or that
you rarely use — what are they still doing
on your device? Get rid of them. Your
storage will be all the more spacious
without them, plus you’ll be getting rid of
apps that potentially run battery-eating
background services.
Power saving mode
If you use your device constantly
throughout the day, you may want to
consider using your device’s power saving
mode. In fact, many of the tips suggested
in this post are implemented in most
devices’ power saving mode. For
instance, power saving mode usually
limits CPU use, reduces screen brightness,
deactivates haptic feedback, disables data
network when the screen is asleep, and
lowers the brightness level of the
browser’s background color.
The generally recommended advice is to
disable power saving mode when you
intend to use your phone’s smartphone
features; otherwise, turning power saving
off can help you stretch your battery life
further. So, for instance, you might want
to disable power saving mode if you plan
to play games on your phone, or else you
could experience lag or jitter.
To root or not
Rooting may have drawbacks but the
benefits far outweigh them. One
attractive advantage of rooting is that of
possibly improving your device’s battery
life.
Debloating
Rooting itself won’t lengthen your battery
life. Rooting merely opens the gates to
your device’s restricted partitions and
directories. With such restriction gone,
you can remove useless apps (e.g.,
bloatware from carriers or OEMs),
especially those that run as background
services, wasting away precious battery
power.
CPU underclocking
With root access on your device, you can
also install apps that can improve your
system’s performance. A CPU controller
app, for instance. Three names instantly
spring to mind: SetCPU for Root Users ,
No-frills CPU Control, and CPU Tuner .
Apps like these essentially allow you to
tweak the CPU settings on your device.
You can set the CPU frequency to stay at
the lowest (and, as a result, use up the
least power but sacrifice device
performance) or to stretch the CPU to its
maximum limits (resulting in better and
faster performance, but at the price of
heat, quick battery drain, and potential
system instability).
Be careful when using such apps. There
are risks involved; for example, your
device could behave erratically when its
CPU clock is set higher than usual.
Custom kernels and ROMS
And, since in all likelihood your phone has
also acquired an unlocked bootloader and
custom recovery in the process of rooting
it, then you’ll also be able to enjoy the
blessings — the power-saving blessings,
in this case — of many custom kernels
and custom ROMs. Feel free to look
around Android Authority for guides on
how to flash custom kernels or custom
ROMs to your particular device.
Extended batteries and battery care
If you’re one of the very rare few who
use their Android devices heavily
throughout the day, you might consider
buying a spare original OEM battery —
that is, if your phone or tablet has a
removable pack. We strongly recommend
OEM batteries because they tend to
outperform and outlive third-party
battery packs — even those with higher
capacities.
You can also consider third-party high-
capacity extended batteries (for devices
with removable batteries) and portable
“juice packs” (for devices with non-
removable batteries). High-capacity
extended batteries, however, tend to be
bulkier and thicker. Be careful when
buying third-party battery packs. Only
buy from reputable manufacturers who
have already established a good
reputation in the market.
Also, since Li-ion is still the most popular
battery technology among Android
devices, you might want to invest some
time in learning how to take care of a Li-
ion battery to avoid cutting its lifespan
short. For instance:
Keep Li-ion batteries away from hot or
warm places, especially while charging
or when in use.
Generally, don’t completely drain a Li-
ion battery before recharging. Bringing
the battery level down to zero before
recharging is detrimental to the
battery — if done frequently. Li-ion
batteries work better when charged
even while they still have some power
left.
Every once in a while, allow the
battery to discharge fully before
recharging. Experts recommend doing
this after every 30 charge cycles. This
reportedly prevents “digital memory”
and encourages the battery level
monitor to recalibrate.
Unplug the device when it is fully
charged. Don’t leave the device
plugged in for a long time after it is
fully charged. Doing so can harm the
battery.
Do not subject your device and its
battery to prolonged heavy use (e.g.,
non-stop intensive gaming for hours).
Doing so will encourage the battery to
deteriorate faster.
http://m.androidauthority.com/android-battery-saver-tips-tricks-189882/

Thinks it helps

b4 i finish reading diz note, my ba3 4 don die

very long story...it makes it boring.....nice one sha

Thought android users can give it a go try