Showing posts with label battery life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label battery life. Show all posts

Thursday, May 19, 2011

How To improve Dell Streak battery life

For all those proud owners of Dell Streak, here a are a few tips and tricks that will enable you to use your Android powered device in an effective way.

Save Energy:
  • Reduce the energy consumption and prolong the battery’s life by turning off any background data synchronization, as well as GPS localization and data connection. To turn off the Data connection, Dell inserted a new switch in the firmware; it completely disables any APN point and doesn’t allow any data connections, until you switch it on again.
  • To access the option, Go to Settings> Wireless controls> Mobile networks> Uncheck the Data connection option.
  • The usual Background data option can be turned off from the Data synchronization menu, while the GPS localization can be found under the Security & location menu.
Taking screenshots with rooted Dell:
  • Taking screenshots with an un-rooted Android smartphone running Android 1.6 OS proves to be difficult if you are unaware of the procedure. So here’ my take on it.
  • After downloading the latest version of Android SDK (r07), and the essential software for USB driver, install manager to check the usb_driver folder.
  • Connect your smartphone to your PC> Choose the first option from the pop-up menu > Copy media files to / from your computer (MTP).
  • Your device will be automatically detected and access to the SD memory card is becomes available.
  • Check the new driver that appears now under My Computer and double click on the Dell PC Suite file. It  will install Dell’s proprietary synchronization software, including USB driver that you will need to take screenshots in Dalvik’s virtual machine.
  • Restart you computer, connect the smartphone through the USB cable . Choose the second option Copy other files to / from your computer. Open the virtual machine and notice that you Streak has been detected.
We hope these tips will help you manage your device. Feel free to share more tips via the comments box below. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

How to increase Motorola Xoom battery life

How to increase Motorola Xoom battery life

If you are looking to improve the battery life on your Motorola Xoom. Though this tablet comes with the 25 Wh of battery strength it only lasts for about 336 hours of stand-by time or can last up to a talk time of up to 9 hours on paper or even can last for up to 80 hours if you are playing the music. So, let’s check out the ways with which you can easily save on your battery life which will eventually lead to an increased battery life.

As you all know that the Motorola Xoom comes with an all new Honeycomb 3.0. Here are some fast tips

Select a shorter backlight duration.
Lower the display brightness.
Use the AC adapter to charge your device whenever possible.
Turn Bluetooth off when not in use.
Turn Wi-Fi off when not in use.
Certain applications may be drawing excessive battery power. If you are experiencing shorter battery life after downloading an application try uninstalling the application.
Close any third party applications running in the background.


Use Battery Manager Smart Application

There are so many things and parameters depending on which you will see a fluctuation on the battery performance but since there are many things we will not recommend you to do every single thing which is near to impossible as after all you need to use the Motorola Xoom tablet.

If your Motorola Xoom comes packed with the battery manager which almost comes with almost all Motorola products, to access the same you will have to press the “Menu” key and need to tap on the “Settings” after which you will have to tap on the “Battery manager”. After this now the battery manager will be opening up after which you will see that there are three different modes in the battery saving options which are “Performance Mode”, “Smart Mode” and the “Battery Saver Mode”.

Performance Mode – In the performance mode, the features like data time out as well as the auto brightness functions are turned off so that the battery is saved and the performance is not hindered by these features. Please note that if you haven’t changed the settings before, then this remains the default option for the battery management.

Smart Mode – In the smart mode, basically the things like the data timeout as well as the auto brightness are kept ON with a set of variable settings and also users can define what other parameters

Battery Saver Mode – In the battery saver mode, this one saves the battery to the maximum and which optimizes the battery in such a way that it will maximize the battery performance by reducing the battery use. You can also choose to change the default brightness which is set in this mode by default.


Use applications wisely:

Rather than using all the applications all at once, you can use applications one by one as the applications which are there in the stand by too eats up the battery. Also, in the world of applications in Android many of us tend to use the applications which assist in killing the tasks and application but it’s really not recommended to use such applications like the task killers as since such applications are on and search for the applications which are active, it eats up the battery continuously and instead of reducing the battery usage by closing down the applications it increases the battery usage in whole. Also, if you are using the social networking applications then the frequency of updates should no be set as lower or else it will continously refresh or use the data service for fetching the updates, so choose the manual updation of the updates to save on the battery life.

Turn off the biggest battery drainers

Do you know what are the parameters which constitutes the biggest battery drainers? No, then the biggest battery drainers are GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Wi Fi and also the 3G. You always have to make sure that these are used very wisely or else these will constantly eat up the battery power which could lead to some serious battery drain. To manage these network settings you can change from HOME > MENU > Settings > Wireless & Networks from where you can easily manage the important settings.

Wall Papers:

Since Motorola Xoom is a 7 inched screen, you need to optimize the wallpaper which you will be setting as lot will depend on this as the wallpaper battery drain constitutes to a whopping 19% of the total battery drain which Xoom encounters with. We would love to see lot of vivid and differentially looking wallpapers on Xoom but sorry to say that with the use of darker as well as the moving wallpapers the battery drain will be at the maximum, so always prefer to set and use lighter looking wallpapers. With the use of lighter wallpapers phone tends to use higher battery life as to make it visible it needs to burn higher pixels which need to be made to glow while the darker screens tends to not to burn the pixels which in turn saves the battery life. So, always use darker wall papers preferably black. Again, by using darker wallpapers you can save on the battery life by a fair amount of percentage which can be as high as 7% on your total battery power.

Use Power Widget

With the use of power widget you can easily save on the battery life easily as all the hot listed things which consume the battery are presented right ast the home screen in the form of widget. You can easily control 5 biggest battery drainers right on a single widget. The 5 things which are available for control in this widget are Wi Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and also the brightness

So, just by following the above tips for the battery saving, you can easily save the battery life by good amount of par and also more importantly you can easily increase the battery performance in the long run.

For more about Motorola Xoom read this articles:

Motorola Xoom Review

Tips for extending Motorola Xoom battery life

Motorola Xoom Accessories