Apps for conserving battery

[ridpath]

I've just bought my first Android phone, an HTC Legend running 2.1 which I love. What I don't love is the battery life! I've been experimenting with different methods of conserving the battery and would like to hear what others users are doing.

At the moment I switch off Wifi when I'm not at home and switch off GPS when I'm out all day. I also use a task killer to stop auto-updating apps I don't want open. I have some applications that check for updates frequently, email, exchange client and Google Listen, how does this impact of battery life?

What about battery management apps? I've seen apps that control aspects of the phone but they seem overly complicated to configure, i.e. it's unclear how different settings will affect battery life. I've come across an app called Data on Demand that switches to 2G when the phone is on standby or on a schedule which seems very promising however there's no obvious way of verifying that it's working!

Finally, anyone using Locale for power management?

Cheers.

 

[nightfishing]

To improve battery life get rid of the task killer.

See where you are after a couple of days of not wasting juice with that running.

 

[Scythe]

Download Spare parts. Click on battery history. Then select from the top dropdown "partial wake usage"

If an app shows up in there that has a huge amount of usage, then you might want to remove it. A "partial wake lock" is a way of preventing the phone from sleeping, so it'll never sleep and save power while it's on.

 

[blackvyper]

Try Advanced Task Manager and Screebl. I use both of these and I have excellent battery life. Some people may tell you not to use task managers but if you leave apps running in the background without the ability to stop them then they can suck your battery dry.

 

[takeshi]

I've just bought my first Android phone, an HTC Legend running 2.1 which I love. What I don't love is the battery life! I've been experimenting with different methods of conserving the battery and would like to hear what others users are doing.

Have you bothered to check what the battery info screen claims is using your battery?

Try Advanced Task Manager and Screebl. I use both of these and I have excellent battery life.

I don't use either and I have excellent battery life.

 

[ridpath]

Thanks for the replies.

I use Advanced Task Killer Free to kill itself so it's only running momentarily, i.e. for closing apps. I've since learned that Android pauses applications in the background so I'll get rid of the Task Killer and do a comparison and report back. I'll also check out Spare Parts, thanks for the suggestion.

Last comment, yes I have checked the battery usage and unsurprising it's the display. I already have this set to the lowest possible settings that's visible outside, not a lot I can do to reduce this so looking at other ways to increase battery life.

Cheers.

 

[mcatdtDROID]

just have a charger readily available.... it's the nature of the beast it seems.

 

[ridpath]

Hah! I've got chargers everywhere; home, work, car.

Been researching task killers and getting a lot of conflicting information. Some people swear by them and they've been developed in the first place so presumably they must have some purpose? I've also read that Android pauses applications and eventually closes them. Does anyone know the technical answer?

If anything, they do clear up the available memory. Does a low amount of memory impact on a new application launch and what happens when memory runs out? On my Legend TaskKiller just took my RAM from 53MB to 82MB.