I'm a fan of the battery gauge style used by batti / vistahide / etc and would like to run a similar display on my XP laptop. Frequently I'm running an app in full screen, and loose track of batter status (as displayed by a widgit / in the taskbar / etc). I'd really like a gauge that's always on top, and consumes a few pixels accross the top of the screen to show me what I want to know.
Any ideas?
ooo that does sound like a good idea. who made vistahide anyway?
Try "Notebook Hardware Control (NHC)", it's simple to use, require small resources, but powerfull enough..
What is Notebook Hardware Control (NHC)
With Notebook Hardware Control you can easily control the hardware components of your Notebook
Notebook Hardware Control helps you to:
- control the hardware and system power management
- customize the notebook (open source ACPI Control System)
- prolong the battery lifetime
- cool down the system and reduce power consumption
- monitor the hardware to avoid system failure
- make your notebook quiet
Easy to use, friendly program surface and for free
NHC isn't only very powerful; it has a friendly program surface, it's easy to use and free for private use. A large number of users appreciate these advantages and NHC becomes one of the leading programs to control the power and hardware of modern notebooks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Homepage => Click me...
Screenshot => Click me...
This does a whole lot more than just battery status but it may be worth a look. Doesn't install to the top of the screen as such but can be configured to stay on top wherever you put it.
GKRellm
just rainmeter. do not search for ****ty apps.
This is not the official site but i cannot remember where i got it now, i feel one of the more useful ones in the realms of the net
http://mattcollinge.wordpress.com/software/power-meter-plus/
chris10230 said:
This is not the official site but i cannot remember where i got it now, i feel one of the more useful ones in the realms of the net
http://mattcollinge.wordpress.com/software/power-meter-plus/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks chris10230. This isn't exactly what I had in mind (displays on the side not the top like vistabar/batti) but it gets the job done.
The other solutions would probably work too, but I suspect at a higher resource cost.
Thanks to everyone that contributed
Elegant solution for Vista/Win 7
Although it does not help me directly, since I'm running XP, this is a neat solution that uses cursor modification and a few other display mechanisms to get the job done
http://en.battcursor.net/details.aspx
Hi,
Is there a program that displays a CPU usage over time graph as a widget?
I tried "Tokaplot Widget", and while it says it does what I would like it to do, it doesn't seem to actually work on my N1.
Everything else for CPU/widgets seems only to give me the current percentage (as a snapshot), and not a graph over time.
Thanks,
It's not quite what you want but aiSystemWidget does display a graph when you click on the widget... but it doesn't graph on the widget.
Keep in mind that constantly updating a widget with a scrolling graph of usage will cause more CPU usage and more battery drain.
If you're just after an instantaneous idea of CPU usage, you might want to check out britoso's CPUStatusLED app, which uses the charging status LED to provide a continuous indication of CPU usage without significantly increasing usage or battery drain.
You can also use SeePU and SeePU++ from the market. The first is free and the last is the payed version that displays a graph of your cpu in your notification bar. There are a few options like how often to update the graph. I use them (both must be used together like docs2go and the key for it) and love them.
Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiumiu.ca.statusbar.free
Very useful for gamers who just want to turn brightness up, check notification and things like that.
Thanks for linking to the app, i definitely think this is something google should have built into android. I was looking for something like this a few weeks ago, too, and here it is.
However, i think it belongs in the Themes and Apps section, development is based around ROMs and Kernel modifications, though if a feature like this could be built into custom ROMs it would be priceless.
I agree. This should be a standard feature for Android, well, as for now this app does the job
Wow, really useful app I've come across in awhile. It was always a pain to switch back into the homescreen.
My only concern is that it takes up 12 MB of RAM. I think it could be more optimized? Well everything has a price.
I'm assuming this would constantly have to run in the background. Wouldn't that deplete battery life? ICS's battery life isn't amazing as is so I am not sure I want to make it worse...
FYI, there is a built-in option in MIUI to enable this feature
it uses too much ram 10mbs for this small app is a bit much.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium
6.7mb here. Doesn't use any extra battery. No complaints here.
Did not notice any decrease in performance of my phone, nothing noticeable anyway. Supercharge your phone to compensate if you want.
309041291a said:
I'm assuming this would constantly have to run in the background. Wouldn't that deplete battery life? ICS's battery life isn't amazing as is so I am not sure I want to make it worse...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I doubt this consumes extra battery life; if so, it's negligent. RAM used does not consume more power; only CPU cycles do.
Besides, if this app was programmed well. It would only be active if it notices that the foreground app was in fullscreen mode.
Very usfull for me,thanks to the creator
This is my app. It doesn't do polling from system to get full screen change. It is triggered when there is size change in window. So it doesn't do anything until it is called by system for adjusting its size.
This feature definitely does need to be implemented stock. It's a wonder that it hasn't already really.
Thanks!
Powersaving / extend battery life
On rooted and non-rooted Note 4 devices.
There are quite a few battery saving tools on the playstore market. However, most of these tools only use what your device can already do by itself. Besides that, it is one more app that can and will consume power so the overall effect of these apps is very limited.
Here is a lot of stuff you can do by yourself to save power and increase battery life. Although most forum users will already have some knowledge on the way your phone works I will begin this post with the most obvious tips on power saving.
Obviously, the list below is a list of possibilities, and not a list of stuff you should do immediately while reading this post. Just look carefully which functions you really use which you don’t. Every option can save a little bit of battery, but together they make quite a difference.
I am quite a heavy user and at this point my phone can do 1,5 to 2 full days without a charge.
General:
1 Turn your GPS of if you are not using it
2 Turn your Wifi of when not using it
3 Turn your Bluetooth of when… (you get the idea)
4 Same goes for NFC
System settings:
Display and wallpaper:
Use auto brightness and set it to your liking. There 10 different levels of auto brightness. I have found that level 2 or 3 is not only sufficient but friendlier to my eyes.
If you really want to get most out of your battery, it’s possible to have a completely black wallpaper image. Black doesn’t take any power so this will save you a lot during a full day of work. I always have one black wallpaper in my preferred wallpaper list.
Smart stay. With smart stay on, the device will stay on while looking at it. Now you can reduce the screen time out mode to 15 seconds. Actually works pretty well and saves a lot of power.
Activate auto adjust screen tone.
Turn daydream off.
Turn led indicator off.
Touch key light duration on “always off” or 1,5 seconds.
Increase touch sensitivity off.
Lockscreen:
It really helps if your lock screen just has a black wallpaper.
Unless you really need to, don’t make your screen lock too complicated. The fingerprint scanner seems pretty cool but really isn’t. It often takes several swipes to get it to work and that takes power as well.
Personally I use non at home and a simple pattern outside. I use the tasker app to automate this but I will talk some more about specific apps after the general settings.
Multiwindow:
Although the multi-window function is one of the things that makes the Note series the king of Phablets, a lot of users hardly ever use these functions. If you are one of these users, turn this function off. The hone keeps checking which apps you can or can’t use in this function evertime you open an app, or open your recent apps. This takes power and CPU.
Even if you are a multi window user, the 2 listed options:
Open in split screen view & pop up view shortcut aren’t used by many. If you don’t use them, turn them off.
S pen:
Same thing here, look at the options You really use during the day.
I do find Air command a very useful function and personally I always keep it on. If you don’t use it, you know what to do by now.
Under Air view there are the following options to turn off if not used by you:
Information preview / Preview info, extend text, or enlarge pictures hovering over them
Icon Labels / View the labels of icon by hovering over them
List scrolling / Scroll up or down by holding the pen over the edge of the screen
Link preview / Hovering over a link will show you a preview of the page
Air menu / Hover the pen over the action or attach button to add content or contacts
Motions and gestures:
Again. Turn everything off that you are not using.
Direct call / By bringing the phone to your ear it will call the contact on the screen
Smart alert / Device will vibrate when you pick it up to notify you about missed calls and messages
Mute/pause / I don’t think this option will affect your battery life
Palm swipe to capture / I have no idea who thought this would be a good option to add. Turn it off if you agree.
Cloud:
I have rooted and installed ROMS and apps on many phones of friends. What seems odd to me is that most people have at least 3 cloud storage spaces were the automatically store all their pictures. Some them even had 4 or 5 without realizing.
1 Samsung account,
2 Picasa / google,
3 Dropbox.
One of these will do just fine. You can have more but just don’t let them auto-upload your camera pics. If every picture you take has to upload to 3 or more different cloud spaces, your device will be working more than it should have to.
Backup data:
Same story. Pick one. Stick to it. Don’t have 3 backup accounts.
Accessibility:
Vision and hearing / Turn off unless you need them
Dexterity and interaction :
• Assistant menu / Off
• Air wake up / Off
• Press and hold delay / 0.5 seconds
• Interaction control / Off
Direct access / Off
Answering / ending calls / Look at what suits you best. Picking up quickly will save battery over the phone ringing longer.
Powersaving:
Whats in a name ha? The powersaving mode can be adjusted which means you can get to saave power in the way you find most efficient.
The options are:
1 Restrict background data.
• This option limits the stuff you can do on your phone rather drastically. Dowloading content, viewing multi media and sending messages. Personally I never use this as this makes my phone just as useless as a phone with an empty battery
2 Restrict performance, which has 4 sub options:
• 1 CPU performance / This machine has enough power to do pretty much everything with this option on except for some high performance games perhaps.
• 2 Screen output / Usefull to have turned on when in need of extra battery life.
• 3 Turn off touch key light / Usefull to do when needing power.
• 4 Turn of GPS / Which I already only turn on when needed.
3 Grayscale Mode
• This option doesn’t affect your performance but just makes you entire phone black and white. This grayscale mode saves a lot of power and you will still be able to do all the work stuff like browsing, mailing, texting, etc…
Ultra power saving mode:
In this mode your phone can last for several days but its use is very limited. You can browse the web, call and text but that’s pretty much it.
I think this would come in very handy if the end off the world has come, all power is gone, and you want to be the very last person to send a text
Just kidding. If this is what gets you home on a few percent of power, it comes in very handy.
Look at the standby time when you turn it on. It’s amazing how long a phone can last in this mode.
Widget use:
Widgets can save or cost you power. There are very useful widgets that give you quick access to wifi, GPS, Bluetooth and other power saving stuff on your home screen. Besides easy access you will become more awre of the fact that you have a lot of stuff on that really doesn’t need to ben on at the moment.
Other widgets can cost you lots of power and data. This mainly depends on the amount of data the widget has to download and the refresh interval. For example: If you have a Facebook widget on one of your home screens that refreshes every 15 minutes, that means it will go and download new content from facebook every 15 minutes. This costs you data (when not on Wifi), but also battery life.
So look carefully at the widgets you use before installing them on your homescreens if you want your battery to last.
Launchers and home screens:
By organizing your favorite and most used applications you will be able to open them faster and so it will shorten your screen on time.
Personally, I think you should be able to open every app within 2 seconds. If you have many apps, and the only way to open them is scrolling to several pages of app drawer, your doing something wrong.
The beauty of Android is the fact that it is the most customizable system out there so use it! Combine widgets, apps, shortcuts, and folders until you have everything within reach.
When using TouchWizz launcher, it really helps to turn of Briefing on your home screen. This makes the phone slower and it costs battery life and data usage.
Many Samsung users have come to terms with the fact that TouchWizz will never be the best launcher out there (And that’s the understatement of the [email protected]&1ng century).
That’s why most heavy users will install a third party launcher as a home screen replacement. The one most used is probably Nova Launcher.
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher
Youtube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO52dfFm40o
I have found after installing this launcher and setting it up, my battery life increased with 7-9% on a full days use. At this point I haven’t figured out if this is only because I navigate more efficiently, or that there are other reasons aswel.
The benefit of a third party launcher is more customization for your home screens and app drawer (such as making categories is the app drawer and such). But also to have gesture control, for example: Have apps open when swipning up or down, with one or multiple finger, double tap, home button and so on.
This gives you much easier and faster acces to your most used apps.
Other usefull apps for powersaving:
Tasker is an app that lets you automate tasks on your phone. For example letting your phone detect when you are at home, and automatically turn on wifi, turn of GPS and your lockscreen pattern.
Tasker does not have to let GPS run for these task and can also turn everything around when you leave home. The amount options on tasker is pretty much unlimited and these automated tasks can save a lot of power thus increasing battery-life .
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm
Youtube tutorial(s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzY9te12UI0&list=PLjV3HijScGMynGvjJrvNNd5Q9pPy255dL
Tasker is not an easy to use in 2 minutes app. It will take some time and effort to really get into it, but beside winning a lot of battery life, it will let you automate pretty much anything you can think of.
Rooted users:
For rooted users there are many more options to save power and increase battery life.
I am just going to mention a couple:
• Limiting your CPU frequency. Your note 4 has a surplus of power and you will never need it all unless you play high performance games. You can limit the frequency completely, or make profiles that change the frequency as your battery level decreases. Personally I use the app SetCPU to do this.
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhuang.overclocking
• Freezing or uninstalling bloatware. A lot of stuff on your android phone you will never use. I always use Chrome as my browser so I won’t keep the original browser Samsung gave me on my phone. This goes for many apps. I use 2 applications to freeze and/or uninstall apps from my phone to free up memory, RAM and save battery life:
SD Maid (also limited functions for non rooted users)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.thedarken.sdm
Titanium Backup (also the best backup app I have found sofar)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup
Both these apps let you freeze and uninstall bloatware. Be carefull though! Do not just start deleting everything that doesn’t look familiar, or you will get in trouble.
Freeze apps first and see if ervything keeps working. Then make sure you do a Nandroid backup within TWRP or CWM recovery before definitely uninstalling apps.
There are several lists available on the web which show what can possibly be frozen and/or deleted. This is one I found quite useful:
http://www.reddit.com/r/galaxynote4/comments/2pgiib/the_ultimate_list_of_removablefreezable_bloatware/
Custom ROMs:
There are many custom ROMs that are more friendly for your battery then the stock firmware. However, if you are new to rooting and installing custom ROMS please be carefull and watch the tutorials before you start flashing away.
A good site to begin is:
http://galaxynote4root.com/
From XDA Senior Member:
Zedomax (Profile http://forum.xda-developers.com/member.php?u=2447605)
Many thanks Max. You are the one that got me hooked on this stuff!
Suggestions:
If you have any suggestions or comments on this subject, feel free to share them below.
great post thank you!! I wonder if you could share how much did you limit the CPU and if you you'd recommend any ROM there is plenty of them but which one worked the best for you? Thank you very much
CPU and ROM
mefistos said:
great post thank you!! I wonder if you could share how much did you limit the CPU and if you you'd recommend any ROM there is plenty of them but which one worked the best for you? Thank you very much
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man.
I have the CPU set on 1728 MHz without any lag or problems even with multitasking. Only when playing games I push it up to the max.
At this moment I use 2 ROMs:
Alliance V2.2: This one is most customizable and you'll keep all the touchwizz functions. (I do recommend a third party launcher like NOVA or Action Launcher 3 to get rid of the lag TW still has).
CM12 official: This is more friendly to your battery, but you'll have to install CM Spen addon and Note buddy or Spen control to get some Spen functions working. The latest nightlies hardly have any bugs (I haven't experienced any).
Willem1975 said:
Thanks man.
I have the CPU set on 1728 MHz without any lag or problems even with multitasking. Only when playing games I push it up to the max.
At this moment I use 2 ROMs:
Alliance V2.2: This one is most customizable and you'll keep all the touchwizz functions. (I do recommend a third party launcher like NOVA or Action Launcher 3 to get rid of the lag TW still has).
CM12 official: This is more friendly to your battery, but you'll have to install CM Spen addon and Note buddy or Spen control to get some Spen functions working. The latest nightlies hardly have any bugs (I haven't experienced any).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't really play games so I am alright with 1728
I was actually wondering how does CM works with S Pen thank you for the info I will definitely try both of them
Willem1975 said:
Powersaving / extend battery life
There 10 different levels of auto brightness. I have found that level 2 or 3 is not only sufficient but friendlier to my eyes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain how to change the auto brightness level? All I see is the "auto" checkbox and that's it. No way to adjust the auto brightness level. I can adjust the brightness manually though, but that isn't "auto".
Auto brightness levels
spexwood said:
Can you explain how to change the auto brightness level? All I see is the "auto" checkbox and that's it. No way to adjust the auto brightness level. I can adjust the brightness manually though, but that isn't "auto".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When pulling down your notifications, you'll see a slider and a checbox as you can see see in thee pic below. (It might look different becausse I'm running Alliancerom).
If the checkbox is ticked, you can adjust the slider for different levels of autobrightness. Without the checkbox ticked, you change the screen brightness directly.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Willem1975 said:
When pulling down your notifications, you'll see a slider and a checbox as you can see see in thee pic below. (It might look different becausse I'm running Alliancerom).
If the checkbox is ticked, you can adjust the slider for different levels of autobrightness. Without the checkbox ticked, you change the screen brightness directly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm on stock and with Auto checked, it becomes unchecked when you adjust the slider. Thus, adjusting the slider only forces it into manual brightness.
Edit: and I'm on the n910a
Didn't know that. Did not spend much time on stock. Sorry....
spexwood said:
I'm on stock and with Auto checked, it becomes unchecked when you adjust the slider. Thus, adjusting the slider only forces it into manual brightness.
Edit: and I'm on the n910a
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nothing like that happens on the snapdragon one. And i can bet it shouldn't happen on Exynos as well. This feature has been the same for years, and has worked very well; there is no reason to change it on any variant now.
Recheck that your rom is not messed up.
maksharma231 said:
Nothing like that happens on the snapdragon one. And i can bet it shouldn't happen on Exynos as well. This feature has been the same for years, and has worked very well; there is no reason to change it on any variant now.
Recheck that your rom is not messed up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My firmware is via ATT OTA, so it isn't messed up. I can't even flash anything since the n910a isn't rootable. The way my brightness slider is now is also how it was on Kitkat, and all ATT models are like mine.
It's just that when you mentioned the different auto brightness levels, I thought that maybe there was something I was overlooking in my settings. Apparently not, since your type of autobrightness was apparently adjusted by ATT.
spexwood said:
My firmware is via ATT OTA, so it isn't messed up. I can't even flash anything since the n910a isn't rootable. The way my brightness slider is now is also how it was on Kitkat, and all ATT models are like mine.
It's just that when you mentioned the different auto brightness levels, I thought that maybe there was something I was overlooking in my settings. Apparently not, since your type of autobrightness was apparently adjusted by ATT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, must be ATT setup, although it makes much more sense the default android way.
Wonder why they decided to change it
My battery life on my note 4 is truly awful and I genuinely have no idea what's doing it, without fail it'll die like half way through the day when I only really use it for reddit and WhatsApp, I've heard by a lot of people that snapchat is really bad for battery. Whenever I look at these battery apps they never seem to tell me though, my screen on time is always atrocious and everyone else is getting like 6 hours, I use alxedandr rom btw, I also get lags here and there and I have no idea why can anyone help
Drizzy xS said:
My battery life on my note 4 is truly awful and I genuinely have no idea what's doing it, without fail it'll die like half way through the day when I only really use it for reddit and WhatsApp, I've heard by a lot of people that snapchat is really bad for battery. Whenever I look at these battery apps they never seem to tell me though, my screen on time is always atrocious and everyone else is getting like 6 hours, I use alxedandr rom btw, I also get lags here and there and I have no idea why can anyone help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most people are having problems with Google Play services drain. It's causing poor battery life because it's stopping the phone from deep sleeping. Sign out of Google Play in the accounts page in settings, then reboot the phone and sign back in again. Uncheck all the items you don't want to sync for Google.
I'm on lollipop and did a cache wipe straight after installing AND uninstalled the Facebook app. I've got 40% remaining after 12.5 hours. Boc3 seems to be really stable.
If you are having problems with battery drain I suggest you go to settings>application manager>running and kill tasks from there.
I am getting exceptional battery life on my Exynos
just quickly, is there any way to like reset the battery life physically?
ie in the old days, we would often let the battery run flat out, and recharge fully and run flat out a couple times.
and it'll basically give you the best longest battery life after doing this.
I think I just discovered a fix after updating to 5.0, I am running stock just for the info, all I did was boot into recovery and wipe cashe partition about 3-4 times and that seemed to have worked very well battery life is back to normal. Can someone who has this problem confirm?
joe1blue said:
I think I just discovered a fix after updating to 5.0, I am running stock just for the info, all I did was boot into recovery and wipe cashe partition about 3-4 times and that seemed to have worked very well battery life is back to normal. Can someone who has this problem confirm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What was your previous battery usage like for heavy, moderate and low usage?
Gold3nCloud said:
What was your previous battery usage like for heavy, moderate and low usage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was strangely very bad after I updated to stock 5.0, I would lose about 2% every 15min I mean very bad to the point that I was about to do a factory reset.
KK only
For those who cannot identify the battery drain source from the battery setting, disable your alarm clock. The stock alarm clock is causing a huge drain, and it hides itself in the Android System. Not even wake detector could detect it. I did a search, but couldn't find anyone talking about it. My SOT drops by an hour with the alarm clock on.
So it looks like all of the AOD's are just like stickers.. except the clock, or calender, all others they hold no purpose, they act like digital stickers/logo's.
I was wondering if I am missing out on the Aod's that are not on google play or samsung store... and are animated or even if there is a always on display for a Music Visualizer, that shows the animated spectrum equalizer or wave?
Would look really cool if the music is playing and the animated visualizer is on on the display while the phone is on sleep mode.
Is this hard to make?
well, that would totally defeat the AOD purpose, to be a light form of info while in idle, as it is, all users complain about batt drain, around 1% per hour, many preffer not to use it! I use the edge clock AOD, as it drains less than the others
winol said:
well, that would totally defeat the AOD purpose, to be a light form of info while in idle, as it is, all users complain about batt drain, around 1% per hour, many preffer not to use it! I use the edge clock AOD, as it drains less than the others
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get your point. But not everyone has issues with charging cell phones once or twice a day. Most of us have chargers or wireless chargers at work, and always connect or place the phone in charging mode.
Most AOD's do not make any sense except they display a small cartoonish logo over the phone. Samsung should either completely remove this feature, or should inculcate additional features to enhance the AOD's, to give it some sort of meaning, probably like an animated screensaver.. or as i mentioned earlier, having a music visualizer on the screen.
I was able to find an AOD in the samsung store that is just a static Music visualizer.. doesnt do anything, and serves no purpose.
I wonder how hard it would be for someone to come out with something like this.. if an AOD can display the current time or clock surely a few waves or graphic particles be made to dance to the tune of the music.
Well, when you put it this way, well yes, we should have the option to customize it any way we like, yes, you have a point there man