Let's face it. The battery life on your Android is far from great and it seems to be running short ALL the time. In fact, it is getting so bad that you are running around looking for power points to plug in your new Android phone any chance you get!
Now, before continuing, just a quick disclaimer: I do believe that power issues have been a problem for smartphones in general for a while now (yes, even the iPhones) and not only for Android phones. As such, rather than it being an Android-specific issue, we should look at it as just a matter of implementing the right tools and techniques for conserving battery life in the Android context.
We hope with this article, we can provide some good reference points for new users to implement on their Android phones so as to make the experience a more enjoyable one for them.
1. Know what is hogging the power!
(Settings » About phone » Battery use) First of all, in order to find out what to turn off, we need to know where are the resources being allocated. In general, you will find that most of the time the biggest power hog is the display.
2. Play around with the brightness settings for your screen.
(Settings » Sound & Display » Brightness) Do play around with the brightness slider to gauge which brightness level is the most comfortable for you to be able to see your screen. Most people can see an Android display quite well with the backlighting feature turned off indoors. Perhaps this might work for you as well. This can potentially help to conserve a lot of battery life.
3. Set the minimum time for your screen timeout
(Settings » Sound & display » Screen timeout) Basically, this setting instructs the device to turn off the screen after a certain period of inactivity. Although this setting differs from phone to phone, it is, in general, a good idea to set the length of your screen timeout to the minimum time possible to ensure that the phone does not drain unnecessary battery life when we forget to put the phone on Standby Mode.
4. Turn off the Wireless, GPS and Bluetooth feature when not needed via Power Control Widget
(Settings » Wireless controls » Wi-Fi) This setting is recommended to be off when not in use. It should be noted that even if the device is not connected to a network, the wireless networking transmitter will still continue to search for available wireless network on a periodic basis and this consumes power.
(Settings » Wireless controls » Bluetooth)The Bluetooth functionality works in a similar manner to the Wireless functionality above. For Bluetooth, the device will try to search for nearby Bluetooth devices automatically on a periodic basis. Turning this off explicitly will ensure that this automatic functionality will not cause consumption of unnecessary battery power.
(Settings » Security & location » Enable GPS satellites) When the GPS receiver in your Android device is active it looks for satellites, and its processor prepares information to be sent to any application that needs it, regardless of whether an application that uses the GPS is running or not. Similar to both the Bluetooth and Wireless feature, if not in used, this should be turned off explicitly as well.
(Home screen » Menu » Add » Widgets » Power control) As of Android 1.6, there is a widget that you can place on any one of your home screens that gives you quick control buttons for Wireless, Bluetooth, GPS, Push Sync, and screen brightness (three levels). It is recommended to just enable the Push Sync functionality via this widget (if the Widget is available to you) for ease of email receiving.
5. Use Advanced Task Killer for termination of unused apps.
For a hassle free, stable application to help you in managing the termination of unused apps to conserve power, the Advanced Task Killer is highly recommended. This is bearing in mind that all these unused apps might be running background processes for data processing/preparation even when you are not using them.
Please check out this page for more information about Advanced Task Killer.
6. Staying "Plugged" In!
This may not be a tweak but we will like to bring out this point for the clarification of a common misunderstanding about "over-charging" a battery and causing it to be less effective. Li-Ion batteries do not suffer from the “memory effect” where a battery may hold less charge over time or after being over-charged, so it is OK to leave your phone plugged in, even after fully charged, though it does waste electricity. There is also some discussion going on regarding whether powering off your phone prior to doing a full recharge will help to improve battery life but this has not been determined.
Hopefully,after implementing the above 6 points for your Android, it will significantly increase your battery life and help to improve your Android experience!
Do drop us a line if you have some other information to share regarding the conservation of battery life or a personal trick you implemented from your own experience!
