Your Android Mobile battery life is a big deal with Google’s Android Platform cell phones. Primarily because we don’t want to have to charge our phones more than once a day.
In today’s tip, we’ll show you how to use the Power Control widget to increase your Android Mobile’s battery life. If you use this widget wisely, you may be able to use your phone for multiple days without charging – it all depends on what you do with your phone.
Read on for more complete details:
Android Battery Life – What does the Power Control Widget Do?
For better Android Mobile battery life, the first thing to master is the Power Control widget. There are five features to the widget. When they are all on, or active – your battery life will suffer. To the right we have a picture of the Android with the power control widget displayed on the top of the screen. We have highlighted it with a red box.
We’ll talk about each button on the power control widget one by one and talk about how they affect Android Battery life – starting on the left. Simply press each button to turn them on or off.
WiFi
The first item on the left is WiFi. This has been the traditional method of connecting to the internet Wirelessly. But with 3G, we can connect to the internet via cell towers. So, we can safely turn WiFi off to increase Android battery life. However, if you are in a location without cell service or you have a “Hotpot” nearby & want a faster connection, simply turn WiFi back on.
Bluetooth
The second item from the left is Bluetooth. A wireless Bluetooth headset or ear piece allows you to talk on the phone without having to hold the phone to your ear. If you aren’t using a Bluetooth device, you can turn this off and save a bit of battery life.
GPS
The middle item is GPS. This power hog allows the map and navigation system to provide accurate directions. Some apps are location sensitive, but they can usually find you based upon your proximity to cell phone towers. So, unless you need precise mapping, you can safely turn this feature off and save some battery life. Then, when you need driving directions, simply turn the GPS back on.
Special note for HTC Incredible users: Your symbols look slightly different than on the widget. In the status bar (top bar of your phone) you’ll see a Target icon. If that icon shows sound waves coming out of it, then your GPS is on and draining battery life, if the target is visible, but there are no sound waves, then the GPS function is not active and not draining your battery.
Sync
The fourth item from the left is the Sync button. Having your email, contacts, calendar and other features readily available on your phone is a real time saver. Sync is the feature that updates your phone. This won’t use much power unless you are getting lots of emails and updates. You may want to keep this on so you are always informed.
Display Brightness
The button all the way to the right is the display brightness feature. It has three settings; off, medium and bright. As you can probably guess, the bright setting will burn through your battery pretty fast. Press this button three times to see what your display will look like with each setting. You may be surprised to find out that with this set to off that you can still see your screen. This will extend your battery life.
To optimize Android Mobile battery life, turn off the power controls you aren’t using.
Use My Android “Power Tip”
Your Android Mobile’s battery life is also being drained by the apps you use on your phone. Games and other programs will run in the background so you can access them quickly, which is quite handy. But that also means they are using up battery life even if you aren’t using them. Apps do quit eventually, but you can force them to quit by using an App like “Advanced Task Killer”. You can get it on the Android Market for free.
Has this Android battery life tutorial been helpful? Let us know – leave a comment below.
