Smart Actions (or another app) For Battery Life?

[Agrajag]

Okay, went from my original Droid to the Razr yesterday. Sadly my experience was interrupted by a visit to the hospital to find out I was passing a kidney stone. OUCH! Anyway, the phone was at 50% out of the store and I charged it a bit in my car and had it pretty much hanging at 50% for much of the evening while awaiting test results and such. I mainly was sending texts. I got home, charged it fully and then disconnected it. Without any use it had dropped to 20% by noon. Not exactly heartening.

So now I'm thinking about Smart Actions or another app to try to get creative about this as the phone does work the way I want it to. I feel like I can add anything in the market and apps that ran like dogs on the Droid are silky smooth here.

So, does it make BATTERY sense to use Smart Actions for things like shutting down the radios at home where I have WiFi? Will I save heavily there? What will I lose? Can I receive calls that way? Can I get text messages and send them? Will you save battery life or will the localizer function negate the benefit?

What happens if I'm on a call and I drive into my driveway? Does the call end?

Thanks.

 

[nodak102]

I am using green power on my tbolt and it has helped s lot.

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums

 

[killboredom]

good luck so far...

I setup smart actions, to kill cell data and GPS at work and home. I got my razr, charge to 100, then started the drain. I used it to surf the web, general setup, read and send email, and listen to music on my commute home...using spotify over 4G. I woke up at 5:45am this morning and it was at 5% battery left at 16 hours and 45 min. When I finally got up at 6:30 it was dead. Took 'bout two hours to charge to 100% powered off. We'll see how things go today. Either way, in the best case scenario, my Bionic NEVER saw double-digit battery life.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

Battery Life – BY: NoBloatware on DF (with a few edits by me)

If you are having short battery life:

Consider doing a factory reset. Do not sync apps, wifi connections, etc. with Google services as that may cause a problem. Install all apps and wifi connections from scratch. A bit of a pain, but not too bad.- install a home/launcher replacement. I use Go Launcher EX, which is free, and I love it. No reason not to try out an alternative launcher as you can always go back to how you had it.

- Don't use an automatic task killer--not even the one that comes with the phone. Reboot your phone and look at what's running. If anything that you've installed is running and there's no reason for it, then uninstall it and find an alternative that behaves. Ignore any stock apps that run on boot as I've found them to be more or less benign.

- Weather widgets, live wallpapers, news/social feeds, any app or service that you use that runs--do without it if you can. If you can’t do without it, lengthen it’s refresh time.

- Don't use antivirus

- Set your WIFI sleep policy to never. The default is "turn off when screen turns off". This will cause the wifi to reconnect every time you open the phone. From any Home Screen select Menu/Settings/Wireless & Networks/ and then use the Menu button to see some new options - select Advanced. Then select Wifi Sleep Policy and set it to Never. Home key to return to Home Screen.

- If you have access to wifi, leave it toggled on as it is more efficient than 3G. Wifi consumes less battery power than 3G.

- I leave GPS toggled on too by the way. Apps use it as needed. When I'm done with Maps or an app that uses it, I'm sure to return to the home screen so GPS can stop. Under wireless settings turn on "Google location services" so that an app is able to use network resources to get your location instead of GPS. I have "VZW location services" turned off--don't know why that option is even there. By the way, I increase the speed of voice output > text to speech > speech rate because I like the directions to get spit out faster. That saves a bit of battery. Turning off the display and just listening for directions help. Also, often I just get the directions and then exit back to the home screen: GPS uses so much battery I try to get it over with ASAP.

- When you get a 1) new battery, 2) do a factory reset, or 3) an OS upgrade - run your battery all the way down until the phone shuts off and then charge the battery all the way up. This will calibrate the phone's understanding of the battery's capacity. Do this once every month or two also, but don't do it too often if you can help it.

- I have my battery set to "Performance Mode" and data is on all the time because I am on call 24x7. If you don't mind, try out a more conservative battery profile to save more gobs of energy.

- Set screen brightness to "Automatic"

- Under Accounts, click on any account listed and turn off sync for any items that you're not interested in syncing. For example, Google Books if you don't use it. Don't use Backup Assistant--I prefer syncing my contacts with Google. You don't need both. Also go into your contacts > menu > display options > backup assistant > UNCHECK. Also do contacts > menu > more > settings > contact storage > and select your Google account and "remember this choice"

- Turn on Bluetooth only when you are going to use it.

- Consider turning off voice privacy. This may not be a big deal but it will save some processing (and therefore battery). It may also improve call quality.

-T off haptic feedback, animations, and any un-needed sounds in Android settings and in your apps

- Set your screen timeout to as low a time as you can stand (I use 1 minute) and manually turn the screen off when you’ve finished using the phone.

- Turn off in-pocket detection

- Keyboard: turn off vibrate on key press and sounds for any keyboards you use

- Use a red or black screen background. On the original Droid screen--not sure about this Bionic screen--red was the most efficient color that could be displayed.

- Camera app: I like keeping location on and flash on auto. Consider turning location off or at least returning to the home screen ASAP when using camera if location for camera is on.

- In stock browser the default home page is Google and it uses your location. This is a bad idea as it can waste your battery for no reason. Make something else your home page and make sure to close any web page that uses your location when you're done viewing it.

- Charge your phone via the wall charger instead of computer USB as it is faster. Also, don't use long USB cords--use regular power extension cords instead. I stick with the charger that came with the phone. Put the phone on charger when you go to bed every night.

- Consider install the Home Replacement app Zeam. It is basic app that uses very few resources and will help with battery power.

This is a link to some very good videos about saving battery power on the Bionic (there are 4 parts and the other parts will show up as available videos when part 1 finishes):

Battery Saving Video

Part 1: [video=youtube;cvWg7SbUgsI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cvWg7SbUgsI[/video]

 

[JohnnytheK]

Golf clap all around!

You really have good suggestions but how much do get out of it?
I mean 10% better, 30%, more?

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Morydees]

- Set your WIFI sleep policy to never. The default is "turn off when screen turns off". This will cause the wifi to reconnect every time you open the phone. From any Home Screen select Menu/Settings/Wireless & Networks/ and then use the Menu button to see some new options - select Advanced. Then select Wifi Sleep Policy and set it to Never. Home key to return to Home Screen.

Any chance this has changed on the RAZR? I don't seem to have an Advanced choice (menu button does nothing in there) nor do I see that setting anywhere. Appreciate the guide posting though! :biggrin:

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

Any chance this has changed on the RAZR? I don't seem to have an Advanced choice (menu button does nothing in there) nor do I see that setting anywhere. Appreciate the guide posting though! :biggrin:

I reach it on my Droid in the app Spare Parts.