Energy management apps
Today’s smartphones make it simple to control screen brightness and sleep time. Some apps are even set up to tell you what programs are running, and make recommendations on which ones to shut down in order to conserve memory and energy. Scott Webster, a CNET columnist, recently shared the top five programs that help with controlling these settings on Droid devices.
His recommendations included Juice Defender, an app that lets the user control the phone’s energy performance with pre-settings like “balanced” and “aggressive.” Paying for an upgrade adds more settings, including the ability to use more battery power during peak times and less during lower times of activity.
Avoid free apps
A 2012 Purdue study that looked into smartphone energy use revealed that more than half of the code in free apps was dedicated to non-game functions like geolocating and serving ads. For instance, Angry Birds is known to drain batteries quickly, and spends 75 percent of its power running advertisement modules, and 25 percent on actual game performance. Consider the consequences of free games, or opt to upgrade to a full ad-free version.
Shop for your device based on battery life
Though lithium batteries will degrade over time, newer phones are coming out with batteries that have a longer lifespan. This is great news since many of the new devices also have brighter screens and more features. The iPhone 5 has a suggested duration of 225 hours standby and the Google Nexus 5 from communications provider T-Mobile is designed with 300 hours of standby battery life.
Charge anytime
Harry Slater, a columnist for The Guardian, suggests charging the phone throughout the day rather than waiting until it's almost out of power as some manufacturers suggest. Waiting until it runs out of power may drain it faster than charging it every so often.
The future of batteries
Antony Leather, a columnist for Forbes, said that lack of extended capacity of batteries is the biggest flaw currently limiting life with smartphones. The limited life of batteries tethers us to plugs or portable storage tools. Heavy users can’t go more than a day without charging.He hopes hardware developers and engineers find a better solution beyond longer-lasting batteries or apps that turn settings on or off. Perhaps they'll explore solar cells, or thinner layers of batteries with graphene that can stack to boost current capacity to a week or more.
Faizan Ahmad About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.
