Saving battery life on Android devices
If you're used to the iPhone you'll be well accustomed to probably charging your handset once a day, that is, if you use it for listening to music, push email, browsing over 3G/Wifi etc. The HTC Desire (as most Android devices are) is no different to the iPhone, it's a hungry little beast when you've got all the stuff it's able to do switched on - but thankfully there are ways to add a little more life.
I started hunting around for a power profile management app and found Setting Profiles - it's available in a lite and paid version ($3.95 - don't forget that if it doesn't work for you just uninstall and get a refund) - where the lite version is limited to a single rule. The idea of the app is simple. You create rules (multiple if required) which then activate profiles. Rules are based on conditions which can vary from a simple time period, an entry in the calendar, battery state, location and a few others. Locations can be either based on a connected wifi network or lat/long data which can be retrieved by GPS or cell information. Profiles allow you to control the state that the various phone features are in, wifi on/off, airplane on/off, volumes, gps, auto-sync etc etc.
I looked at a typical day and my movements and ended up with a couple of rules;
- I get up at 7am (after going to bed around 11pm) so I created a profile that enables Airplane mode and activate that between 23:00-07:00 - who want's to be disturbed during those hours?
- When I'm in the office (identified by a wifi network) I really don't need push email so I disable Auto-Sync, GPS, set 42% volume.
- When I'm at home (identified by cell) I turn off GPS and turn on Wifi
- Should my battery drop below 10% I turn off everything
Outside of these rules I have auto-sync on and GPS on when I need it - I still need to refine these rules a little bit to make sure I'm not wasting battery life but it definitely seems to have improved my battery life and prevented those calls/text at night!
