There are days I feel like a professional traveler, but the reality is I only do it as a needed aspect of my job. I am always looking for new gadgets that make my life easier. Every universal or all-in-one gadget comes with a downside and in recent times, that has been battery life. With my iPhone, it was great because it was an all in one media player, mobile phone, GPS device and more, but the downside was landing with a virtually dead battery after a short business flight.
The Mophie Juice Pack or Mophie Juice Pack Air addressed traditional battery usage issues like this one. The heart of the problem was figuring out what I could do to preserve my battery. The answer was not rocket science. You can do the traditional things like turn down screen brightness, turn off WiFi, turn off Bluethooth, turn off GPS, and/or switch from 3G to 2G. Despite all of this, every once in a while you know something is draining your battery but don’t know what. Recently, my friend discovered Safari was draining his iPhone battery. This was determined by Apple when be brought the phone into the store and they ran diagnostics.
I am not complaining. I know once you move to a SmartPhone you have committed to having ridiculously poor battery life. The trick is to get ahead of the problem. On the Droid, they have nice built-in feature (Settings | About Phone | Battery Use) called battery use. It provides a graphical display of what is using your battery the most. Recently on a trip to phoenix I discovered I had an app that was killing my battery. The feature shows an amazing amount of details about battery use by application/process. Almost as if the offending process/app was highlighted in red, I saw that app using the GPS constantly. It was trying to get location information my entire flight. To resolve the issue I was able to turn off the GPS and the problem was fixed. It is a small feature but everyone should be able to see easily what is draining the battery and not just assume it is the traditional items listed above.
Windows Phone, Blackberry, iPhone, and Android have applications that are available for various types of performance metering here are a few:
- MemMaid – cleans your memory from attachment to temp files to log files
- HandySwitcher – task manager for running programs
- Pocket Mechanic Pro – Manages memory, defragmentation and moves installed apps and data to SD cards
- Meterberry – shows the amount of time remaining on battery and helps free memory and perform scheduled resets
- BatteryPlus – this one does a ton but most important is it gives graphical realtime info and helps with regular calibration
- FreeMemory – Does exactly what is says allows you to free up memory on you iPhone or iPod Touch
- iStat – Sys Monitoring, Battery – Shows general battery info on your phone and Macs
- PowerTime – home screen widget that shows remaining uptime and battery percentage remaining
In one way or another I have or my friends have used these applications to address various issues. One new habit I developed is after installing any new app, I use my metering apps for the next couple days to catch any abnormal activity that may drain my battery or memory unnecessarily.
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