Not everyone knows that the new version of the "green robot" has acquired a new power saving mode. In order to turn it on, you need to go to the "Settings" - "Battery" tab, then press the menu button (three dots) and select the power saving mode. Power saving mode does not work if you have plugged your device into a power outlet.
By default, when the charge drops to 15 percent, the system automatically prompts you to turn on the power saving mode in the form of a notification that you can view at any time. Many people wonder - "What does this regime give?" - let's figure it out.
First, let's say right away that the power saving mode in Android 5.0 is not similar to those offered to us by other manufacturers. For example, Samsung is adapting the functionality of its mode, taking into account the specifics of AMOLED displays, while disabling all unnecessary background processes, leaving only the basic functions. In Android 5.0, everything is a little different, the "lollipop" has rather an adaptive power saving mode, as well as adaptive backlighting, which also became an innovation for fans of stock Android.
When you turn on the mode, what immediately catches your eye is the changed animation, rather a simplified version: now, if you slide the shutter down, it will not go down gradually and smoothly, but abruptly and instantly. In other words, the guys from Google have worked on drawing the animation itself, thus the load on the video accelerator decreases noticeably. But if you pull the shutter without releasing your finger, the animation will be the same as in normal mode. That is, the developers worked to ensure that the difference for the average user was not so noticeable, and they succeeded. Also note that now, when you click on something, you will not be able to enjoy the beautiful animation of circular waves, on the contrary, everything happens in the same way as in Android 4.4. For example, the effect of a button press is not circular waves, but simply a lighter shade of a button or menu item depending on what you press.
Among other features, now when opening applications they will not fly out from the bottom, but appear directly in front of the user without any animation, many will like it even more, because it takes less time to open. Note also that when you turn on the power saving mode, the status bar and navigation bar get an orange tint - stylish, beautiful and informative. On the other hand, this color is too bright and distracting, especially when surfing the Internet.
If earlier, when you clicked on an application shortcut on the desktop, it (the shortcut) rose a little and a small shadow appeared under it, now this effect is gone, everything is done to simplify the visual component, thereby there is less load on the processor. It would be a little silly to say that the display brightness is decreasing, so we will omit this information.
As for the load on the processor, in my case I did not notice the difference, in both cases AnTuTu produces similar results, and this is probably the adaptability of this mode: in case you need maximum performance from your smartphone, but you want the maximum save a charge, and not turn off the power saving mode, then the system will meet you and allocate the required power of your gadget.
Summing up, I would like to praise Google for such a high-quality work done, we expected many different things from the new version of Android, but what we received is beyond praise.
Modern smartphones and tablets are much more like a full-fledged PC than a simple device for communicating and receiving information. Now they are equipped with 2 GHz quad-core processors, gigabytes of RAM and Full HD screens. The only problem is that to power all these powers, not a cable from the outlet is used, but a small battery, the capacity of which rarely lasts more than a day. Well, let's see how to fix this.
In this article, I will try to figure out whether modern smartphones really consume too much energy and in fact they need much less. First, let's look at the energy conservation methods that are already in use in the Android operating system and how much they can reduce overall energy consumption. Then we will try to apply the popular energy saving methods, which are often talked about on forums and write in blogs, and see the result. At the end, we will apply heavy artillery in the form of methods such as undervolting and downlocking. Go.
Standard Energy Savers
There is a myth among smartphone users that in fact mobile devices should live much longer than they are now, and the real problem is not in the capacities, but in the buzz of Android and iOS developers - they just do not want to optimize the OS due to laziness or collusion with hardware manufacturers who need to sell gigahertz and gigabytes. OK, let's spend our time reading the documentation and try to figure it out. So, here are four myths about why Android eats up so much energy.
- Java is a brake on CPU and memory. The first thing to remember is that there is no Java in Android. It uses the Dalvik registry virtual machine, designed specifically for embedded devices. The Plan9 / Inferno developers have already written about the advantage of a registered VM, and a link to their article is at the end. In short, the register VM differs from the classic Java stack in less RAM requirements and less redundancy, that is, it allows you to execute code quickly without wasting memory. Second: most of the "heavy" code (multimedia codecs, graphics processing algorithms, cryptography, etc.) in Android is written in C, which allows it to be executed as quickly as in any other OS. Dalvik code is mainly used to define application logic, and thanks to HotSpot JIT, the code inside Dalvik is not much slower than the C code.
- Android does not know how to work effectively with equipment. This is complete nonsense. Android is based on the Linux kernel, with the hardware support code polished, if not brilliant, then close to it. The OS implements many techniques for optimizing work with equipment and energy saving, such as deferred flushing of buffers to disk with merging, a competent task scheduler and a processor power saving algorithm, effective energy saving algorithms for Wi-Fi, 3G, LTE and Bluetooth (4.0 Low Energy) modules, batch method for polling sensors (implemented in 4.4 KitKat). Without all this, an Android smartphone would not have survived even five hours.
- The Linux kernel is redundant in mobile technology. The Linux kernel has a very flexible build system that allows you to include in the resulting image only what is really needed in a particular device. The key subsystems of the kernel from this, of course, will not become simpler (at least the base layer), in many ways they are too redundant for the conditions of mobile technology, but this is the price that you have to pay for Android to exist at all.
- ** Android is too complicated and heavy. ** Probably, many OS components can be seriously optimized or even removed altogether (there is a lot of duplicate code in the source code), and Google did this work with the 4.4 release, but you should not expect that all these optimizations are - will seriously prolong the life of a smartphone. After all, one day of the life of a gadget was a reality in the days of the very simple and light version 1.5.
The main "problem" not only of Android, but of all modern mobile operating systems is not at all in their severity and unoptimization, but in the fact that a modern smartphone is no longer a static gadget like Nokia N95, which allows you to run ICQ and play sokoban, but the system living her own life. Regardless of whether the device is asleep or not, it continues to collect mail, receive notifications from the calendar, Facebook, Instagram, wait for Skype calls and sync files with the cloud (as, for example, does the Dropsync application). All this work cannot but affect the battery life, and this is the direction that should be looked at when talking about extending battery life.
Automation
To conserve battery power, it is highly recommended to use automation apps such as Tasker or Locale. With their help, you can configure the automatic activation of airplane mode at night, turn off data transmission when a certain battery level is reached, reduce the brightness to a minimum in the evening, and much more. Almost any energy saving software from the market can be replaced with these tools, while you have complete control over what is happening.
Insomnia
Before moving on to the stories about optimization techniques, I must pour some more water and talk about what wakelock and suspend are. Like any mobile OS, Android works on the principle of "conserve as much energy as possible" and therefore at any time seeks to put the processor and other components of the device in a power-saving mode. This mechanism of operation allows the device to give processor resources to applications as needed, and the rest of the time to be in a low power consumption mode. When the user presses the shutdown button and the screen turns off, Android puts the smartphone into suspend mode, turning off the processor and leaving the voltage only on the RAM (analogous to ACPI S3). In this way, even greater savings can be achieved, which under certain conditions can reach 99%.
To prevent already running applications that should continue to work even after the screen is turned off (music player, file synchronization, etc.), they do not freeze along with leaving suspend, a mechanism called "partial wakelock" is used. It works very simply: as long as there are applications that have installed wakelock, the device will not go into suspend and applications will be able to work normally. In addition, applications can use the AlarmManager, which allows you to remove the device from suspend at the right time in order to perform a certain job (this is how widgets do, for example). AlarmManager also uses wakelock to keep the processor awake.
Abuse of these mechanisms can lead to excess energy consumption, regardless of which operating mode the gadget is in. Fortunately, having root, it is quite easy to get information about wakelock usage statistics. The most convenient way is with Wakelock Detector. This is a free application that shows the total number of wakelocks sorted by application.
Let's take a look, for example, what the Wakelock Detector shows on my Nexus 4 (screenshot of the Wakelock Detector). The very first line of the screen is the total wake time of the device for one day and six hours (since the moment it was fully charged). The five most voracious apps are Dropsync, OnLive, Google Search, Gmail, and Carbon. Together they kept the smartphone awake for almost an hour, which is a lot.
Unfortunately, I do not want to uninstall any of these applications, and therefore I will have to find out what specifically they used wakelock for and try to fix this problem using the settings of the applications themselves. Click on Dropsync and see that he set wakelock with the DropsyncWakeLock tag 15 times (which resulted in a total of 32 minutes of wakefulness) and once AlarmManager (2 seconds). We already know what AlarmManager is, but DropsyncWakelock is more interesting. The programmer has the right to give arbitrary names to wakelocks, but it is easy to assume that this one is used to perform automatic synchronization with Dropbox (Dropsync is intended for this very purpose). I don't really need constant synchronization, and I can start it myself. So I just go to Dropsync settings and disable automatic syncing. Voila, the phone wakes up less often and not for such long periods of time.
OnLive can be skipped, since 18 minutes of wakefulness were caused by incorrect closing of the application (you must exit it according to all the rules). Next is Google Search, an app that includes Google Now, among other things. We tap on it and see that the two most actively used wakelocks are NlpWakeLock and EntriesRefresh_wakelock. This is already more difficult, and it is rather difficult to figure out what actually happens when installing them. Therefore, we hold our finger on the wakelock's name for a long time, select "Search" and see what the browser has found. Already on the second page found there is an explanation that NlpWakeLock is installed at the moment when the position of the smartphone relative to the network (3G, Wi-Fi) changes, after which Google Now sends location information to the server. The second wakelock appears to be used to update cards in Google Now. At the same time, you can solve the problem of gluttony in both cases by simply disabling Google Search in Settings -\u003e Applications -\u003e All. The first solution is to turn off location detection in Android settings.
Gmail keeps the smartphone awake with a wakelock with a telling name sync/gmail-ls/com.google/ [email protected] Obviously, it is installed at the time of automatic mail synchronization, so you can reduce energy costs by simply disabling Gmail synchronization in "Settings -\u003e Accounts -\u003e Google -\u003e [email protected]". On the other hand, I do not want to do this and would rather tolerate three minutes of wakefulness in a day and a half.
After going through the list of the most power-hungry apps with Wakelock Detector, it's easy to see that the main reasons for waking a device are different kinds of synchronization and regular location updates. This means that by disabling these features completely, you can get rid of most wake-ups and seriously save battery.
I would recommend that you first go to your Google account settings ("Settings -\u003e Accounts -\u003e Google -\u003e [email protected]») And accounts of other applications and disable all unnecessary types of synchronization. For example, I don't need to sync my calendar, standard browser, Google+ contacts, and app data, so I can safely get rid of them. The same should be done with all other accounts registered on the smartphone, and turn off automatic synchronization in the settings of third-party applications (do you really need to auto-sync Twitter and RSS?). It is better to delete rarely used applications altogether.
The latest versions of Android do not allow you to turn off location detection completely, but they can use a very conservative and almost no effect on the life of a smartphone called (surprise!) "Battery saving" mode, which updates information only when there is a connection to Wi-Fi. networks or moving to another cell tower.
If the application runs out of battery, but you cannot delete it and there are no synchronization or auto-update options in the settings, then you can simply freeze it. This is done using a great app called Greenify. It suppresses the application's ability to wake up on its own and makes it work only when you want it. It's very easy to use. Launch Greenify, click on the + button in the lower left corner and see which applications work the longest in the background. The screenshot shows that the most gluttonous are the OTransfer Target, which is used to remotely enable redirection (it is generally constantly awake), as well as Beautiful Widgets and Carbon, which periodically wake up for various kinds of synchronizations. I set the OTransfer Target for the test, so I can safely remove it (by the way, it is also among the "leaders" in the Wakelock Detector). Beautiful Widgets wakes up to refresh the desktop widget, so I'll leave it alone. But Carbon, which took the fifth place according to the Wakelock Detector, can be frozen. To do this, just tap on the name and click the checkmark in the upper right corner.
- Killing background processes with a task killer. One of the dumbest ideas you can think of. You just have to remember: background processes do not consume energy, usually it is consumed by the services they run, which either are not killed by task killers at all, or have the ability to self-resurrect. But the killing of the background applications themselves leads to the need to restart them, for which energy is still wasted.
- Disable Wi-Fi at home. In energy-saving mode (when the smartphone is sleeping), the Wi-Fi module consumes very little energy, so little that much more is often spent on turning the module on and off. It makes sense only on a tablet, which you take in your hands two or three times a day to read a news or a book.
- Automatic switching between 2G and 3G. A similar story. When jumping between the types of networks, the towers are searched again and the connection is repeated, and at this time the radio module is operating at full power. Apps that automatically turn on 2G while sleeping almost always consume more power.
- Apps with names like Ultimate Battery Saver. In 99% (if not a hundred) of cases, this is either a placebo, or the same task killer, equipped with a mechanism that turns off various components of the smartphone when a certain charge level is reached. First, there is a transfer to 2G and the GPS is turned off, then the Internet is turned off, and at the very end the phone is put into flight mode. The problem here is that the described mechanism of operation rather interferes and it is more convenient to do all this yourself at the right time.
- Battery calibration using recovery. There has long been a myth that deleting the /data/system/batterystats.bin file using CWM resets the battery settings, so that it starts to show a "more correct" charge level. The myth has become so ingrained in the minds that some individuals have begun to “calibrate” daily, claiming that this can prolong the life of the battery and even increase its capacity. In fact, the file is needed to save energy usage statistics (the same information from "Settings -\u003e Battery") between reboots and does not affect anything.
Underwolting
Now let's talk about heavy artillery. It's no secret that one of the most power hungry components of a smartphone is the processor. Its power consumption may be even higher than the consumption of the screen (or rather, its backlight), and this is all because it operates at very high frequencies that require high voltages. At first, it may seem that you can save battery life in this case simply by lowering the maximum processor frequency and turning off the "extra" cores. However, this will most likely get nowhere: despite the lower power consumption, the processor will execute code for longer, and ultimately the power consumption may even increase.
Instead, an undervolting operation should be performed, that is, simply to lower the maximum supplied voltage for all possible frequencies. To do this, you need to install a custom kernel that supports this function. I talked about how to do this and which kernel to choose in all the details in one of the previous issues of the magazine, so I will not repeat myself, but simply say that if you have one of the nexus, then it is enough to install franco.Kernel updater and with it help download and install the kernel. Everything happens automatically.
Next, install the paid version of Trickster MOD (free does not save voltage settings) or CPU Adjuster; for franco kernels, the paid franco.Kernel updater is also suitable. Go to the voltage adjustment page (in Trickster MOD, the necessary settings are at the bottom of the fourth page) and begin to carefully decrease 25 mV for each of the possible processor frequencies. After decreasing, we minimize the application and test the smartphone for a while, launching heavy applications, then we decrease it again and test it again.
In 90% of cases, the processor will withstand a drop of 100 mV without any consequences, and this will give us an additional hour or two in active use mode. If you are lucky, the processor will be able to withstand –150, and in especially happy cases even –200, it all depends on the batch of the processor and the specific instance. Too much underestimation of the voltage will lead to a reboot, after which it will be enough to raise the voltage by 25 mV and save the value in the default profile (in Trickster MOD, this is the "Profile" button immediately above the values).
INFO
A smartphone with an AMOLED screen will last longer if you use apps with a black background. To make system apps dark, one can use AOKP firmware or one of the Xposed modules.
Often, the mechanism for automatically adjusting the brightness of the screen sets too high values. If you manually control the brightness, you can extend the life of your smartphone by another couple of hours.
Advanced firmware features of some smartphone manufacturers, such as gesture control, voice control, or auto-turn on the screen, drain the battery. Disable them if possible.
Instead of conclusions
In general, the methods described in the article can extend the battery life by at least half a day (with an average intensity of use), and even more if you turn off all types of synchronization and remove unnecessary applications. It is not difficult to implement the recommendations, and the effect is significant.
The Android 5.0 operating system has received a large number of innovations. We have already talked about many of them in the previous articles of the cycle. In particular, the opportunity to create new users was mentioned. This function will be used by parents who trust their children with a smartphone or tablet. The ability to pin the application will also be useful for them. For all others, there is a power saving mode. Previously, only branded casings from various manufacturers possessed it. Now this mode is implemented in "pure" Android.
Google has been working on a power saving mode for a long time. Now its experts assure that the inclusion of this mode will allow you to get 90 additional minutes of battery life. The engineers had to work hard. After all, the operating system is installed in the overwhelming majority of cases on smartphones and tablets with a conventional IPS-screen. So adding darker shades will get you nowhere. It was necessary to find other ways to solve the problem.
There are two ways to activate power saving mode. The first is to use the tray (which contains notifications and the current state of the wireless modules). Swipe down from the tray. Then repeat this action. This will bring up the quick settings. The battery percentage will be displayed next to the battery icon. Click on this icon. You will be taken to a separate section of the settings. Press the "Menu" button, depicted in the form of three dots. A context menu will pop up. You will immediately notice the desired item.
The second method is similar to the first, only it takes more time. Go to "Settings". Then select the "Battery" section. Then repeat the above steps, as you will find yourself in the same place that was discussed above.
After pressing the button "Power saving mode" you get into its settings. The switch is at the very top. Below you can select when this mode will turn on automatically. This may never happen at 5% charge or 15% charge.
When the power saving mode is enabled, the tray and virtual control keys are colored orange. This slows down performance and disables vibration and background data transmission. The smartphone or tablet will automatically exit this mode when the charger is connected.
A modern smartphone is a real communication center and assistant that performs many useful functions.
Our life is now completely tied to the phone. When we are on the move and see a small remainder of the battery charge, which is rapidly decreasing, we try to maintain it in all available ways.
The Android operating system gives the user a lot of possibilities through its services and applications, and a smartphone with decent characteristics ensures fast programs and high performance. The price to pay for this is significant energy consumption. With active use of the gadget, few people have enough full battery charge for the whole day - it is. Fortunately, there are many ways to avoid being left with your smartphone turned off at the most inopportune moment.
Any Android device can enable power saving mode. When switching to this mode, the work is limited or the main energy consumers are turned off in the operating system.
Display. It is he who consumes most of the battery charge. The degree of brightness, backlight timeout and screen resolution directly affect battery life.
Installed applications invisibly, but regularly update their content for the user, and messengers and email clients notify us of new messages and letters using Internet traffic and battery power.
CPU performance... This metric measures how the device copes with multitasking and how fast applications are running. High performance requires significant energy resources. When switching to power saving mode and reducing the processor speed while performing standard tasks, you may notice a deterioration in the smartphone's performance.
The power saving mode in Android can be activated both automatically (when a small remaining battery charge is reached) and manually - through the device settings. After that, the smartphone will tell you how many hours without recharging the user can expect. Of course, these are estimates.
Some smartphone manufacturers add another mode - "extreme / maximum power saving". In this case, many applications become unavailable to the user, except for SMS, phone calls and some basic functions.
For more economical use of battery power, you can use not only the standard modes of the smartphone, but also some parameters of its operation. Often the device activates functions that are not currently used, but continue to consume battery power:
- auto-rotation of the screen, the position sensor of which is in constant working mode;
- live wallpapers and numerous widgets;
- active synchronization of accounts and contacts;
- running wireless connections: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS and mobile internet (especially 4G).
It is important to pay attention to the number of applications running simultaneously. When actively working with a smartphone, many programs are launched that remain open for a long time, quickly draining the battery. It is recommended to close especially voracious processes manually.
As you know, Google does not hesitate to sometimes borrow for its Android operating system some useful, but missing functions from the proprietary firmware for smartphones and tablets that manufacturers equip them with.
One of these features is the power saving mode, which appeared in the new version of the Google operating system: Android 5Lollipop and which can be very, very useful to those who unexpectedly low battery discharge of a smartphone or tablet is found far from external power sources. If, of course, you know how to enable and configure this mode.
Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do. So where to find it, how does it work, and how to use it to extend the battery life of your smartphone or tablet?
How it works: According to Google, "Power saving mode will reduce performance and limit vibration and background data to extend battery life."
In other words: your tablet or smartphone will not work as fast, but it will take a long time and some applications will not synchronize data on the Web all the time, but only when you launch them.
Where to find and how to set up power saving mode.
The easiest way to get to the power saving menu is to slide the quick settings menu curtain from under the top edge of the tablet or smartphone screen with two fingers, click on the battery icon and press the menu button (three vertical dots) in the battery usage statistics window that opens.
Then, in the menu that opens, select "Power saving mode".
Here you will be able to turn it on manually (just by clicking on the On / Off switch), or set the automatic activation of the power saving mode by clicking on the "Turn on automatically" item, after which you will have a choice of three options:
When you select one of the automatic modes, when the battery reaches a predetermined level, you will see a prompt asking you to turn on the power saving mode.
At the same time, so that you do not forget that the mode that slows down your device was enabled, the lower and upper navigation and notification bars on the tablet or smartphone screen will turn bright orange.
