Background Data Toggle?

[Droid_Ritch]

On my Droid Razr I am using the "Power Control" Toggle Widget for my homepage...This widget can toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Background Data, and Brightness. I use this widget to conveniently switch off these features to conserve battery life. Every switch seems to work fine except for the Background Data...I am able to turn on Background Data but when trying to turn off Background Data with the widget, although it does appear to be turned off because the icon is no longer illuminated...when I manually go into Data settings, the Background Data is still checked on....Does anyone know the reason why it is not turning off with the widget and has anyone noticed a similar issue?

Help would be appreciated. Thank You.

 

[kodiak799]

Honestly I don't know why people use these. For starters, outside of the display and MAYBE bluetooth, most of these are extremely marginal on battery usage. I should think Locale or Tasker is sufficient to accomplish this. Granted, they'll take a little (literally like 2%) of battery life, but then you can automate all these silly things, by time and location (as I do) or with profiles if you prefer. My suggestion would be to control or restrict data usage by changing the update settings on individual apps (like I think you can set gmail or email to fetch every 30 minutes, instead of push).

At midnight, Locale turns all that stuff off for me going into "sleep" mode. Turns it back on in the morning. If you were so inclined, you could even set it to turn background data on for 5 minutes every hour, or perhaps only if you're on wifi, etc... The choices are nearly limitless. I can't imagine an Android smartphone that doesn't take advantage of Tasker or Locale. I walk into the office and it puts all my notifications on vibrate, If I'm out in the city, it automatically turns up my volume so I can hear a call in a noisy bar. To me it's just not a "smart" phone without such capability.

 

[Droid_Ritch]

@kodiak799

I appreciate the input and valuable information, but unfortunately this did not really answer my question. I use a power control toggle widget out of simplicity and convenience. I actually use the Wi-Fi, GPS, and Background Data toggles the most, compared to the Bluetooth and Brightness. Rarely do I use Bluetooth and I keep my display manually set to the lowest setting possible to maintain longer battery life.

As far as the widget just sitting on my home screen, it's not gonna really take up too much battery when just sitting there as opposed to people who load their home screen with tons of data and battery sucking widgets and shortcuts that are just unnecessary. And I do like the concept of both Locale and Tasker, but I'm not looking to install an aftermarket application, especially if they cost me money on the Android Marketplace. My phone is preloaded with a stock application that does follow a similar concept "Smart Actions". I am able to program customizable actions to take place depending on if I activate a specific action or have it activate automatically based upon location settings or specified triggers. I try to keep the amount of programmed actions to a minimum. If you have an application like Locale, Tasker, or Smart Actions running based upon location, you are already bound to drain battery since GPS settings have to constantly be enabled along with the application itself. I have used Smart Actions for a custom rule: whenever I connect to my specific network SSID in my own home, my 4G data automatically turns off to prevent it from sucking battery life for no reason. This app is pretty useful.....As far as installing more similar apps, I just do not want to have the extra application running when unneeded if I already have a stock task manager, a stock similar application, and toggles to kill services....

As far as email and gmail data syncs: My yahoo and hotmail account only support data pushes with the E-mail application. My comcast account is the only account I can set for a fetch schedule. I run my Gmail account on the Gmail application and cannot really customize a fetch schedule....

My phone does have a "Sleep Mode" but the phone is basically hibernating and disabling everything. When sleeping I would like to still be able to receive calls and texts in case it were something important so having a simple stock power control widget to disable every service to maintain good battery life is what I prefer to avoid the hassle of having to go manually into settings for each one of these services.

Overall, my goal is to maintain the best battery life and data when all of the extra services and features simply are just unneeded.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I was just wondering if anyone has had a similar issue with this widget and know why Background Data is still running even when its supposed to be turned off.

 

[Locker]

I have the same problem/question and I'm using the same widget and also notice that the sync button will turn on background data but won't turn it off. Not sure why but I wanted to confirm the same issue. Going to try to find another app for it.