Android Battery Saver Apps Competition: Android Forums Style (Please recast your votes)

[TimeAndroid]

Hmmm, well Google Maps chewed up 25% of your battery. How much did you use Google Maps during the period described in that screenshot?
If not at all or not much, then I would use Gemini Apps manager to disable it from starting at boot... it's keeping your phone awake.

If you are having excess battery drain while the phone is idle, two programs come to mind to help figure out the cause:
1 - Better Battery Stats. Uses no significant resources itself, but a little tough to figure out.
2 - Badass Battery Monitor (actually they changed the name to GSAM Monitor, but Badass is much easier to remember). Will tell what programs are keeping the phone awake and using battery. It does use a lot of resources itself, so after you figure out you're problem you'll want to stop the program from monitoring.

Rogue app is not the same as malware app. I think usually people use that term to describe program that is out of control. Good programs can get confused and suck your battery down (Dolphin browser has done it to my phone). It's gone rogue. Good programs can also have an unfriendly battery impact during normal operation (like Google Maps).

How do you disable it from start?

 

[Rxpert83]

How do you disable it from start?

Your running jellybean yes?

I wouldn't disable maps then. The maps in your battery graph is actually Google now.

 

[TimeAndroid]

Your running jellybean yes?

I wouldn't disable maps then. The maps in your battery graph is actually Google now.

Yes, I have Android 4.2.1

 

[electricpete]

How do you disable it from start?

Gemini Apps Manager (requires root)
More details:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=29420959&postcount=7059

Your running jellybean yes?

I wouldn't disable maps then. The maps in your battery graph is actually Google now.

I don't know much about jellybean or google now. If google now is something that you absolutely need to start immediately when your phone boots, then then leave it alone. But if not, considering it uses 25% of your battery, I'd recommend to disable it from loading at boot using Gemini Apps manager and see what happens. That does NOT mean that you can't use the App, only that it doesn't auto-load at boot. Once you manually launch it, chances are that tenacious apps like Maps will then remain until next reboot. I reboot once a day (automated using Tasker). Also note many programs like the google ones have other auto-start features besides at boot (i.e. when something is requesting them). More details at link above. These other auto-start features are also individually controllable with Gemini. My experience is things work fine when disabling auto-start at boot but occasionally things don't work when you disable every single possible auto-start (because a program is asking for help and not getting it). Again, my recommendation is simply try it.

 

[ktchong]

What's so great about GreenPower? What has it gotten so many votes?

I've been testing GreenPower today. I was in my home. My phone was connected to my home Wifi. The Wifi signal was strong. My phone was not charging. However, GreenPower kept turning on mobile data! I used a battery doctor, which indicated that both the WiFi and mobile data were discharging (= using) my battery.

Turning off 4G whenever WiFi is on is very basic for saving battery. Yet GreenPower could not even perform the simple battery-saving function correctly. I played around with different settings in GreenPower, but it was unable to keep mobile data turn off. My JuiceDefender Ultimate always turned off my mobile data whenever my WiFi was connected, or vice versa.

I like GreenPower interface, which organizes WiFi, mobile data, Bluetooth, etc., into different categories. However, I know GreenPower FAILS as a battery saver app because it could not even manage the very basic WiFi/mobile data function correctly.

I'm actually looking for an app to replace Juice Defender because its developer has not updated the app or his blog in over a year. Many features in in Juice Defender have been listed as "experimental" or "not fully tested" since the last update over a year ago. It seems that the developer has abandoned the project but continues to collect money for sales.

 

[TimeAndroid]

There was a issue with the poll so the mod changed it but he added 13 to GreenPower when he should of added 13 to I prefer not to use any.

 

[ktchong]

There was a issue with the poll so the mod changed it but he added 13 to GreenPower when he should of added 13 to I prefer not to use any.

Ask the moderator to fix it. People base their purchase decision on polls like this one, and right now it is very misleading.

 

[chanchan05]

What's so great about GreenPower? What has it gotten so many votes?

I've been testing GreenPower today. I was in my home. My phone was connected to my home Wifi. The Wifi signal was strong. My phone was not charging. However, GreenPower kept turning on mobile data! I used a battery doctor, which indicated that both the WiFi and mobile data were discharging (= using) my battery.

Turning off 4G whenever WiFi is on is very basic for saving battery. Yet GreenPower could not even perform the simple battery-saving function correctly. I played around with different settings in GreenPower, but it was unable to keep mobile data turn off. My JuiceDefender Ultimate always turned off my mobile data whenever my WiFi was connected, or vice versa.

I like GreenPower interface, which organizes WiFi, mobile data, Bluetooth, etc., into different categories. However, I know GreenPower FAILS as a battery saver app because it could not even manage the very basic WiFi/mobile data function correctly.

I'm actually looking for an app to replace Juice Defender because its developer has not updated the app or his blog in over a year. Many features in in Juice Defender have been listed as "experimental" or "not fully tested" since the last update over a year ago. It seems that the developer has abandoned the project but continues to collect money for sales.

Have you checked the traffic checking values? You may have set it to too low that even a ping from an app turns on the data. What I noticed was that GreenPower is more sensitive to that than JD. Even in the middle of a download JD would shut down my data even if I set it to not do that during an active connection. GP would wait for the download to finish.

There was a issue with the poll so the mod changed it but he added 13 to GreenPower when he should of added 13 to I prefer not to use any.

That's odd. I was sure I put the 11 to the "Not using any" when I edited it. Anyway I fixed it again. Check how it shows on your PC.

 

[Deleted User]

i use my phone quite moderately and use green power to switch data on for 2mins every hour. data is also on whenever the screen is on (quite often) and my battery life is great. phone comes off charge about 6am and goes back on charge when i go to bed at approx 11pm and the battery is still at about 50 - 60%.

ive tried most battery savers and greepower is the best imho. also without greenpower running the battery is normally down to 20-30%.

samsung gs2 4.0.4

 

[mrgigabyte]

used to use juice defender but they have not been updating the app so been using green power pro and it works great on my razr maxx and dev is always updating app and i feel with use about to get jelly bean we need a app thats being fixed so when the time comes you know your app will work i have not had any issues with green power my wifi works like it should when i get home and data works right also

 

[Xyro]

As you know, we've had some problems with the poll. It looks like votes were not being recorded correctly. Some votes went to the intended option, some didn't - it was a bit of a mess. We'll look into why that happened, but unfortunately in the mean time I have had to reset the poll.

Please recast your vote, and when you do so make sure that the counter goes up appropriately and that your vote is recorded under the correct option on this page. If you see anything odd happening, please drop me a PM.

 

[TimeAndroid]

Has anyone ever had Battery Saver Du & Switch Widget? Judging by the pictures, it looks like it has a lot of good features.

 

[ktchong]

Have you checked the traffic checking values? You may have set it to too low that even a ping from an app turns on the data. What I noticed was that GreenPower is more sensitive to that than JD. Even in the middle of a download JD would shut down my data even if I set it to not do that during an active connection. GP would wait for the download to finish.

I had already tinkered around with all the different settings available in the free version of Green Power. Obviously I'm not paying for the full version when I already know it sucks.

I really like its interface though. To bad it does not work properly. I'm sure it saves battery to some degree; but based on how it was unable to switch off mobile data correctly, I know it would not work as well as my outdated Juice Defender.

Green Power, in fact, did not work as well as the outdated Juice Defender. I used and compared both, and my phone battery was at a much lower percentage after one hour of moderate/heavy use with Green Power than Juice Defender.

 

[shelliewnj]

I am finding much less battery drainage on my phone today with juice defender. Hope it lasts

 

[TimeAndroid]

I am finding much less battery drainage on my phone today with juice defender. Hope it lasts

Lucky! I did not get very good results with JD.

 

[ktchong]

Lucky! I did not get very good results with JD.

I had a LG Esteem, and Juice Defender did not work with my old phone. The app slowed down and often crashed the phone. (LG Esteem overall sucked.) I am using a Samsung Galaxy S3 now, and Juice Defender works really well with it. So different battery savers work better for different phones.

 

[chanchan05]

I had a LG Esteem, and Juice Defender did not work with my old phone. The app slowed down and often crashed the phone. (LG Esteem overall sucked.) I am using a Samsung Galaxy S3 now, and Juice Defender works really well with it. So different battery savers work better for different phones.

That may be it, but the app's behavior on your phone was weird though. Because the phone can't have both WiFi and data connected at the same time because its doing prioritizing the connection at the OS level. Not even Green Power can alter that. It may leave the mobile data connection turned on, but it the phone won't use that so it won't use any power because no data is streaming through it.

Anyway, on my testing, JD saves a bit more power than GP (4%/hr vs 5%/hr) especially when compared to my no power saver stats (9%/hr). However, GP lets more of my internet messages and emails get through closer to real time as its more sensitive to data traffic and has an actually working sync trigger, unlike JD which may take up to 3hrs late for me to receive IMs and Emails. That 1% an hour trade off is something I'm very willing to shoulder for prompter notifications.

But that's the way it is, not all phones work the same for some reason.

PS: If you're testing battery apps, test them from 100-15% on your phone (or better yet 90-15), this is because the battery level we are seeing isn't all that accurate no matter what app you use. 100%-90% drains faster than say, 90-80% or 70-60%. Its just the way li-ion batteries are.

 

[shelliewnj]

If JD is working for me, is it worth it to upgrade to get the screen power reduction, or is there another free one I can try that has that feature?

 

[chanchan05]

Screen Power reduction isn't special and won't do a lot. Your Tab has that built in if you want to check.

 

[shelliewnj]

Well I'm on my phone. What I notice is at its lowest brightness setting, the phone screen is much brighter than my tablet at the middle brightness setting.

 

[funpig]

Power Tutor is a free small app which can be used to track power usage. It helps to find apps which may be eating the battery in the background. If I have two similar apps, I will run both and then compare which one uses more battery with Power Tutor.

 

[TimeAndroid]

Easy Power Saver is great so far. I would suggest "Intelligent Mode" for novice users and "Advanced Mode" for advanced users. It has almost everything JD has and some new stuff that JD does not have. I will test advanced mode in a couple days and report back.

 

[Petegunns]

Juice Defender Ultimate is far better than its lesser installations, and has been working well for me. However, I also couple my battery saver with Watchdog task manager/monitor, (NOT a task killer) since poorly configured apps can use way too much memory, which is also a battery drain culprit. This app allows you to easily identify ram hogging apps, and in the paid version you can blacklist an app - allotting a specified ram threshold. Finally, battery stats will differ with a number of factors - the number of apps installed on your phone, widgets that are active, and live wallpaper use to name three common ones.

 

[TimeAndroid]

According to Easy Battery Saver, it says it has boosted my battery by 1.6x. I like how this seems more accurate than Juice Defender. (It said boosted by 2x but it felt like way less) I will now try advanced mode. This will be great because it will manage brightness. Brightness is the biggest culprit according to the battery statistics followed by cell standby.

 

[TimeAndroid]

Anyone know why cell standby is taking up 27% of battery? I just fixed the Google map issue by removing it and now cell standby is giving me trouble.