Disqus
Me battery done. Where me charger?
Aha! Finally the culprit to my quickly-depleting battery is becoming clearer… and I blame push-sync!
Previously on IntoMobile we had suggested tips for extending the battery life (here), and I followed up with my investigations on to what could be the primary battery hogs (here). Having turned off pretty much all the radios in my device, I was then left with only a couple of candidates:
• Any apps/processes I was unaware of that could be running (and eating power)
• Anything specific that was running in the background (i.e. push sync)
A restart cured me of any hangover processes that might be running, which left me with one candidate – push-sync! This is now turned off, and so my calendar (the thing that was being synced) is now only synced when I open the app specifically – in a very manual fashion.
You see, it’s all very well having all the radios and network dependent apps turned on if you have access to a mains charger, but otherwise they can (and do) give the battery a bit of a kicking. So right now I am running:
GPS – OFF
3G – OFF
BLUETOOTH – OFF
WIFI – OFF
REGULAR FETCH (for email) – OFF
PUSH – OFF
You might argue that this limits the functionality of the device somewhat, and do you know what, I’d agree… but this process was designed to find out what exactly it was that “canes” the battery – as a raver would say!
Now that I’m aware of what the key battery killers are, the next thing is to find out whether things I would like to either use, or leave on, are also battery shredders. Those things would be 3G radio functionality, and also Bluetooth – since having that on is great for auto-connecting to my car kit.
It ain’t over yet – next time I hope to have a definitive set of suggestions in order to combine functionality and battery life. But it would be great if Apple could aggregate all these features in to one place with a series of graphical switches (as our readers have suggested) – then you could alter ad-hoc as you pleased! Apple, are you listening?
Ben
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
