Best and most accurate Battery Manager?

[Freddybnj_2004]

Hey all... just curious to why my battery widget says one thing while my bar up top says another... what do you guys think is the best and most accurate battery meter?

Thanks.

 

[naman919]

I use BatteryLeft. It's pretty accurate after it calibrates over a 10-14 day period. It's spot on for the most part.

YMMV.

 

[Freddybnj_2004]

I'll give that a shot.... what about widgets... do they really eat up battery?

 

[cpjr]

Battery Status. Not a widget but adds a very cool status icon to the statusbar and info on the drop down.

 

[hookbill]

Moved to apps area. This is an apps discussion, not specific to any one Droid.

 

[musicman]

+1 for battery left. It will also give you an estimated amount of time before the battery is dead

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App

 

[dmo580]

I use BatteryLeft. It's pretty accurate after it calibrates over a 10-14 day period. It's spot on for the most part.

YMMV.

I don't want to bash on the app it self, but the maker has done a terrific job.

My problem with this is the concept of it. If you think about battery life, what people love is the battery timer on their laptop. It tells you how much time based on how you're using the device.

So if you're playing videos away you might get 2.5 hours, but if you're just casually surfing, it might be 5-6 hours. The meter will change accordingly.

The problem here is BatteryLeft just analyzes how you use your phone. Essentially it wants to see how long you take to reach 90% 80%, etc etc 10%, 0%. Then it uses this as calibration data and assumes this is your typical cell phone use. Fair enough. It's pretty accurage.

But is the % left a true % left of the battery? No. When it says 68% what does that mean? Is it really 68% left in juice or is it 68% left in time?

To me I'd rather know that it's 68% left in juice like my MacBook and Dell Inspiron will tell me. 68% in time means that I have to follow typical use patterns. What if I'm on vacation and I need to tether more? That 68% becomes inaccurate. And plus, if my average use is such that I front load my usage by having a long workday but then idling the phone when I come home, then halfway through my day it might say 50%, but in reality I have even less juice because my first half of the day is very intense usage with email/work crap. That's why BatteryLeft can give you a false impression that you have more battery than you actually do. It's purely a time meter.

Just imagine your gas tank. No one wants an a "time left" before your gas tank runs out based on your average consumption. You might commute everyday so your patterns are normal but what happens if you go on a road trip? Extra driving, and the "time left" meter fails and you run out of gas because it can't account for it. That's why gas tanks use a meter that tell you how much gas you have left. You have to use a little brainpower to figure out how much.

So while BatteryLeft is a nice app and the dev works endless hours with us here, the concept of it is still... well. Just simple. Take average patterns and turn the battery meter into a % time thing. That's different from taking the % juice left.

 

[naman919]

^^^^ yes. BatteryLeft is an avg, not a dynamic scale for battery use. I find it's a pretty good estimate. I typically don't stray from my usage patterns.