I’ve had more women bosses and co-workers than I can count, so I couldn’t possibly name them all. But atypically, most of my high school science teachers and favorite CS professors were women. So I’d like to thank Shirley Kitchens (HS chemistry/AP chemistry), Jane Lusk (HS biology/AP biology), Dr. Methyl Hodges (HS math/pre-calculus), her daughter, Dr. Julia Hodges (MSU CS department chair), Dr. Susan Bridges (MSU CS) for turning interest into vocation for me and hundreds if not thousands of others.
Had a friend with battery life issues with a new droid ask for tips. So I’m repurposing. Droid mileage may vary, my G1 has a slower processor, but get 1 1/2 to 2 days between charges all the time.
A few things.
1) Make sure the power monitoring is right:
- When I first got my G1 it would claim that it was about to be out of power after only 6 hours or so. I eventually was out and about and let it run down instead of scrambling to recharge. It ran for 12+ hours before finally shutting down. After that it seemed to reset how quickly it would think it was running down. I’ve seen the same thing happen with 2 other G1s, so maybe there is an issue in the power management/recharge warning system for all androids. Let it run all the way down to die and see if things get better after the full recharge.
2) Install the power control widget on your desktop (touch and hold on a blank area of the home screen, pick widget and then power control. This will make it easier to monitor what’s going on and minimize your running power.
3) Turn off what you don’t need:
- turn off the GPS, use the cell system for your continuous location information – home screen, menu, settings, security and location, select use wireless networks, and turn off enable GPS. Now google maps, etc. will have your location within a couple hundred yards, but you’ve turned off a continuously running GPS radio. When you want to use google maps for driving or walking directions turn the gps back on from the power control widget.
- I turn the screen brightness all the way down and never need to brighten it unless I’m using the map in direct sunlight.
- bluetooth is always off, I don’t use it.
- wifi is almost always off – I find the 3G available almost everywhere and fast enough. I will turn it on if I am using the browser at a bar/restaurant and only have edge data.
- you could turn off your data sync from the widget – but haven’t ever needed to.
4) Install task killer
- You’ll find it in the market, it’s free. It also has a desktop widget that will show you everything running and let you kill them all or one at a time.
- Kill power using background apps. Most apps do nothing if you have them in the background, but some keep the processor running at full speed or look for data all the time (a twitter ap that is listening every couple minutes for instance). If you are having bad battery life, kill everything and watch what’s running regularly to help you find power hogging aps.
5) Install apndroid. It is a one click desktop widget that turns your data on and off. You can put it on your home screen below the power control so you can quickly power off all data connections. I never do this unless I’m down to a trickle of battery and am not going to be near a charger for a while, so I can maximize my phone availability.
Take facebook notifications and sharing wrap them around google docs and shared google calendar and hook it all together with email and IM messaging and you pretty much have a groupware dream.
Seriously awesome.
http://www.socialwok.com/
