There’s nothing like hunting down a pesky techie issue and uncovering a whole new way to manage & tweak to a geek’s heart’s content.
Playing around with rooting and custom ROMs for my Android phone and tablet means sometimes I come across performance issues that require a measure of online research to resolve. One such bug for me right now is a battery drain now that I’m on the 4.3 version of the OS. (Google made some substantial changes to certain subsystems which has resulted in a lot of users complaining of an increased battery drain. Supposedly it will be addressed in future updates)
In my Googling travels, I was once again reminded of the app “Greenify” (requires root) which allows you to “freeze” apps that you’re not using to prevent them from syncing continuously in the background. I’d heard about it on Lifehacker this past summer but hadn’t had much reason to try it, until now. There are experimental features that require the donation version, but at $2.99 I felt it was a sound investment. I also installed something called Xposed Framework, a relatively recent development in the Android app extensibility realm, to make the extended features of Greenify work. Now I can also “freeze” system apps that keep the phone awake when it should be going into deep sleep (screen off, no current apps needing brain power or Internet connection) and that’s made a huge difference.
Freezing an app means you temporarily hibernate the app so it doesn’t keep the phone awake. The primary two causes of battery drain for smartphones are screen-awake time and apps that continuously sync or refresh in the background. Some you can adjust by changing settings provided in-app (such as reducing the frequency of checking for new mail), but many are not adustable in this way. Having the ability to put something to sleep (until you need it, then it gets turned back on temporarily or until you freeze it again) is invaluable in the quest for better battery life.
Another invaluable tool is an app which monitors the various apps and Android subsystems that wake the phone up. The timer starts when the phone is taken off AC charging and if you install a monitor, take it off charge and leave it alone for 1-2 hours, you’ll have some pretty meaningful details to review to see where and how your battery is being drained.
I turned to one such battery-monitoring tool called BetterBatteryStats, developed by chamonix, one of the regulars over at XDA-Developers, the go-to place for seriously geeky, pop-the-hood-and-tinker kinds of customizations for Android. It’s not a free app, but once again, it does the job very well and I feel it’s worthy of investment. If you’re rooted, you can even have it monitor the Android subsystems to get a more detailed idea of how to make adjustments. (Word of warning: compatibility not guaranteed for the latest version of Android OS, 4.4 KitKat)
I have gone from losing roughly 10-11% battery every hour, to now it’s somewhere between 2-4% (even more if it’s sitting idle a lot of the time), which makes a huge difference. I may not have the constant notifications about mail or Facebook messages, but I can connect when I feel like it and it’s actually reduced the amount of time I’m looking at my phone, always a welcome improvement to my work ethic and social graces.
Another invaluable guide to squeezing more battery life can be found here, which although it’s a message thread in a specific device forum, more or less applies to just about any other Android device running 4.3.
If battery life is important to you, and you’re amenable to taking your Android tweaks to a new level, the tips contained in these articles mentioned may just be the ticket.