Battery Draining Widgets and Alternatives - Captivate Themes and Apps

After having some pretty horrible battery life I started searching around on some of the widgets I was using--it looks like some of them barely touch your battery while others drain it. I was curious what other users have seen and if they found any decent alternatives.
The ESPN Scorecenter widget killed my battery. Haven't spent enough time with Google Scoreboard or Sports Tap, but they seem to be better and allow you to set how frequently they update. The ESPN app doesn't, I think it's pretty close to a constant pull.
Anyone see much difference with using a Weather Channel widget vs. not? Any good alternatives?

Related

Binary Clock

Cyrket link Has anyone got the .apk for this? As i can't seem to find it on Market at the moment, It's a really good widget
Sorry, can't access it in my market either. Too bad, it looks kinda nice.
It was available yesterday, weird. This app has one big drawback. It prevents your phone from sleeping causing the battery to drain faster.
It's an awesome widget, but it drains battery and way too much CPU resources. It makes the G1 much slower. Bummer...
Hi,
I am the developer of this widget,
I decided to stop publishing for a few hours to fix a lot of problems. I had several problems with the widget, especially to manage the time with AM / PM.
Currently, most bugs are corrected, the widget is usable.
Yes, it uses lots of battery , as it is refreshed every second. I'm trying to see to define the delay of updates in the control panel.
If you find bugs, do not hesitate to send me an email.
Thanks for your support !
(Sorry for my english)
Mind if you send me the latest apk, If you would like me to do some testing for you...
EDIT Sorry found it in marketplace, will reinstall

[Q] One of these apps is killing my battery, which one?

I got a new Captivate a couple weeks ago now. Since then my battery life has been less than 12 hours on stock 2.1, stock 2.2, Paragon RC6 and Serendipity 5.12.
Yesterday I decided to wipe the phone and start off with stock apps then slowly add them back in each day. So far, I'm 5 hours unplugged and still have 86% battery (stock apps) after using some GPS, some WiFi, 3 phone calls for a total of about 20 minutes, some browsing and some text messaging. THIS IS HOW THE PHONE SHOULD BE WORKING. Therefore, one of the apps I normally have installed is being an asshole. However, this is going to take me forever to slowly add each one back in and monitor them to see what is killing my battery.
Does anyone have an idea of what it might be from the following (I didn't list what comes on the default Serendipity ROM because it obviously isn't anything already on it):
3G Watchdog
Adobe Reader
Advanced Task Killer
Angry Birds
AppBrain Market
Barcode Scanner
Beautiful Widgets
BLN Control
Cineplex Mobile
ConvertPad
Documents To Go
Dropbox
Google Earth
Evernote
Facebook
GasBuddy
Google Goggles
Google Sky Map
Google Translate
GPS Test
KeePassDroid
Lookout
Mint.com
Rogers My Account
Google Reader (not setup to sync)
ShootMe
Google Shopper
Skype
SoundHound
Spaghetti Marshmallo
Spare Parts
Tip Calculator
Titanium Backup
Twitter
Unblock Me
morrty said:
*3G Watchdog
Advanced Task Killer
*AppBrain Market
Google Earth
*Facebook
Google Goggles
Google Sky Map
*Lookout
Google Shopper
*Skype
*Twitter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*=Suspicious. Any of these could be the culprit(s) since they access the internet/network, but ones like Twitter and Facebook that update regularly are most suspect.
Do you keep skype connected? I would imagine it would use a lot of power if left connected.
What is your refresh interval set for in facebook?
Have you made sure to flash or reset with a full battery? The first time i did a factory reset, i did it with a half battery and my captivate would only last about 6h with light usage. After resetting with a full battery I could go 14-16 hours with similar usage.
Another issue ive seen is if you are in a low signal area that can also cause higher battery drain.
I'd suggest installing osmonitor from market and see what apps are running and eating up resources.
I previously had appbrain issues where it was running constantly at 5-10% of the cpu's resources but just uninstalled and reinstalled and all seems ok now. ymmv...
sent from my captivate using the xda app
Miami_Son said:
*3G Watchdog
Advanced Task Killer
*AppBrain Market
Google Earth
*Facebook
Google Goggles
Google Sky Map
*Lookout
Google Shopper
*Skype
*Twitter
*=Suspicious. Any of these could be the culprit(s) since they access the internet/network, but ones like Twitter and Facebook that update regularly are most suspect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ones in red definatly, blue meh... with the built in memory management/ tweaked management in updated newer/custom roms, task killers use more power than they save.
Android has their own online market with push installs now. AppBrain not needed. https://market.android.com/
destrorox said:
I'd suggest installing osmonitor from market and see what apps are running and eating up resources.
I previously had appbrain issues where it was running constantly at 5-10% of the cpu's resources but just uninstalled and reinstalled and all seems ok now. ymmv...
sent from my captivate using the xda app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
see above...
The blue ones could also be battery vampires because they access the network/wifi. Depends on how often they are set to sync data.
Thanks for the suggestions, I think what I'll do first is install everything that isn't suspicious from what you guys advised against and monitor that. Then I'll slowly add back the suspicious apps.
By the way, I'm going on 12 hours now and only at 74%. Usually my phone would be dead by now. This is with moderate use too. I just got off an hour long phone call with my brother after we both put our phones in speaker phone mode and owned kids on Black Ops.
don't forget beautiful widgets. stock setting were to update weather every 15 min. that is a lot of data over the course of a full day.
i found that one would kill my battery.
Tenchuu said:
don't forget beautiful widgets. stock setting were to update weather every 15 min. that is a lot of data over the course of a full day.
i found that one would kill my battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
weather apps are battery killers. I uninstalled mine and went from 10hours to two days between charges.
@morrty, be sure to let us know your results.
I definitely will, it just may be a little while because I'm calibrating the battery by doing a full run down and full charge. I'm actually having a hard time running down the battery now.
Currently sitting at 45% @ 29 hours.
Incredible, I can't wait to single out that asshole app.
So far, I've installed all of the non suspicious apps. My battery started draining a little bit faster but not to the point it was before. It still seems like normal use. 7% drain overnight. 4% more since waking up, showering and coming to work.
Latitude was a huge offender I found. Even with the auto check-in disabled, it kept the phone in a partial wake-lock.
I've still got more testing to do but I'll update when I find out more.
Looks like it was a mix of facebook, twitter, latitude and dropbox.
Thanks for the help guys.

please take a look at my battery life and give me tips (with bbs screenshots)

As the title says I ve let bbs run the whole day and have now a pretty good view of my usage with the htc one. maybe you can find some drainers because I dont know all names of the processes By the way I use greenify so almost all apps are greenified, just whatsapp/viber/swiftkey and some apps are running all the time and music player while I'm listening. The awake time is one hour more because I listen to music through bluetooth headphones!
And would you say just by the number of wake ups that viber is a far more battery drainer then whatsapp??
Thanks for every advice
greetz
Sanj3k

Settings to optimise battery usage.

(Settings that consume battery more)
What are the settings related to battery you have found to enhance the usage like screen resolution, power saving, AOD etc.
I want to use my phone like a flagship not like a crippled one and get better battery life. But I seem to get less battery somehow due to my settings? Not sure. Please let me know.
[edit]:added the first line.
Check out my screenshots. My battery usage from last night. I use samsungs launcher. Bluetooth I manually turn it on when I need it. Also, turned off Bixby home.
I average about 5-6 screen on time, and lasts me all day. I don't use power saving mode at all, in fact I keep the entertainment mode on the whole time. Same for my data/sync. I have outlook, Gmail (2 accounts), typical social media apps (hangout, Instagram, snapchat, Facebook).
Main usage: xda, Instagram, snapchat, groupme, hangouts, YouTube, crunchyroll, Google's assistant feed, emails.
Would be nice if somebody told us what settings consumes battery most. And which doesn't have any impact at all.
bat0nas said:
Would be nice if somebody told us what settings consumes battery most. And which doesn't have any impact at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're right. Edited OP.

Chrome eating battery like breakfast. Any tips?

As much as I love chrome with all it's features, it's a big battery hog for me.
Does anyone have a browser to recommend that doesn't suck a lot of juice?
One feature I 100% need is to be able to import my current favorites passwords etc and sync them from my pc to my Mi8.
Edge and Firefox can do that, but I haven't used them so I don't know how much battery they drain.
Thanks for any suggestions!

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