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Juice Defender - How-toAs most smartphone owners know, battery life is a major issue regardless of OEM or operating system version. It is fair to say that most smartphones seldom last 24 hours without requiring a recharge.There are a number of ‘tricks’ to boost battery life, however, most don’t work without sacrificing either large sums of money or important features of your phone. This is where Juice Defender comes in. This app is an easy way to regulate certain features of your phone in an effort to boost battery conservation, and it'll even give you an indication of just how much battery you'll save.The AppName: Juice Defender Ultimate (free, and cheaper versions avaliable but not all functionality will be availiable)Developer: LatedroidPrice: £4.99Market Link - CLICK ME!For the sake of this guide, I will assume that you have Juice Defender Ultimate. If you do not, you may find some features described are not available for you.This app will have access to control all of your device's functions, such as bluetooth, data, wifi, gps (and if you want it can even control the cpu clock levels of your phone) to ensure they are only turned on when you need to use them, thus saving power when you do not need them.When first opening the app, you'll be presented initially with two tabs, and later, lots more (depending on your settings). This guide will take each tab and each option in turn and describe what it does before going on to recommend basic settings that can be used to extend your battery life with little risk.Help Tab
This tab doesn't do a great deal. It starts off with some links to various websites and social media outlets, followed by an estimate on how much battery the app has saved you in the last 48 hours, then a link to some tutorials and support forums.You will then see what will probably be the most useful option to you if you flash a lot of roms; the backup and restore option. It should automatically backup, but once you have got it how you like it, I'd recommend running the backup then. You will need to restore this each time you change the kernel.Help is the next option. It is best to keep this on “show”, as you can then see extra tips on how things work.The following sections are to help if some things are not working quite as expected.The first is “screen”. This option is rather useful and I recommend you have it turned on. That way if you use your phone to look at the time on the lock screen but do not actually unlock the device, it will not turn on your data, thus saving you power. Otherwise, data would be initiated as soon as you turn the phone on. Don’t worry, this does not cause delays in connection.The next option is “use APN method”. If you find that your data is not actually turning off as expected, you can use this ‘old’ method to disable your data. Many older Android phones will require this. It simply renames your APN’s so that your phone has nothing to connect to, and corrects them when data is to be initialised. If you are on a phone that was released with android 2.2 or higher you will most likely not need this option.“Mobile Data AutoFix” is next. This is useful, as if for some reason your phone seems to get stuck with data turned off, this will force several toggles of the on/off switch until your device decides to wake up and turn data on. I have not had a need for this on many phones/roms; it is only useful if you are on a very experimental rom with radio issues.The next option is to disable mobile data if your wifi is turned on. Personally, I use this option, however, if you are the type of person who sends and received large amounts of MMS messages you will need to have mobile data connected to do so. In this case, it will be best to leave this turned off, or just remember to manually turn data on when you need to send/receive and MMS.Next we have an option for in case you suffer wifi issues, such as your wifi not connecting when it should. This option forces a retry of wifi until it does connect.The next option is if you find that Juice Defender is not starting when you reboot your phone (remember it can take a few minutes to connect even when it does work so don’t put this on if you don’t need it). Once again this should only be needed on older android devices.Finally, you have the option to disable the app via an sms. This is only needed if you use any device tracker apps and want that tracker app to find your lost device. This way, you can disable Juice Defender and your default settings will kick in so that the tracker app can gain full control over your device.Status Tab
This tab is basically the “home” tab and will be what the app defaults to when you first open it.The first option is self-explanatory, and is an on and off switch for the service itself. If for whatever reason you need to turn it off, you can do so by pressing ‘disabled’. Below these buttons, you will get a summary of what the app is doing, e.g. “The service is running”.The next section is a summary and links to the further settings for how you currently have the app set-up to work. This is an easy way to see what your settings are to spot if you have set something wrong, or need to change something.The next step is “profile”. Here you can set a pre-set, however, I would advise you to click “advanced” to gain all the options, then customise the app yourself. That way, you know exactly what it will be set to do and cannot blame anyone but yourself if it does something you don’t like.The rest of this tab is irrelevant so I will skip it.
Controls Tab
This tab sets the meat of your settings, i.e, what the app will regulate.First, you'll get the option to let it control your mobile data. This is probably the best feature this app has to offer, so if you say “no” then you most likely don’t need to be using this app in the first place.The second option is a tablet mode. This is designed for tablets that have a data-only plan. If you are on a phone or a tablet which makes calls then skip over this step.The next option is Wifi. Again, if you use wifi then you should probably be saying “yes” to this one. The next step is how you wish to prioritise wifi. If you use wifi a lot, then “wifi prefered” is a good option to have. If you only wish to connect to wifi when you want and the rest of the time prefer mobile data, then click “auto disable”.The next one in line is Network Mode. This is something I don’t see much use for, but you might. If lets you control when/how/if you connect to 2G, 3G or 4G.Then we have AutoSync. This is useful if you still want your phone to sync when you don’t use it. It is best to set this to ping, as this enables the apps to tell Juice Defender when they wish to sync rather than Juice Defender forcing the apps to sync. This way it takes less data and therefore less battery power, in the option below you can even select which apps sync and how often (if you did not wish to use “ping”).The next option is “keep enabled”. Here you can tell your phone to keep a connection going, e.g. if when connected to a wifi network you want your phone to maintain connection even when sleeping, then tick “wifi”. However, this will significantly reduce the impact that Juice Defender can have on your battery life.Bluetooth comes next. Here you can decide if you want Juice Defender to control your Bluetooth connectivity, effectively turning it on on certain (limited) conditions, or just making sure it gets turned off when not in use. You can set the non-connection time out at either 1 minute, 5 minutes or 15 minutes and choose to have it turned on automatically when on a call (useful if you have an in-car bluetooth system and forgot to turn it on before you set off on the road), or enable on charger. The next choice is the best bluetooth related feature and is “Force Reconnect”. Basically, it will keep trying to connect to a set bluetooth system that you have pre-defined if it sees that it is within range, it is mainly designed for incar systems.Then, you have a series of options that control how/when your phone screen powers off, and the device itself locks (if you wish to use it, I never have). You can even set it to act differently when at home (definable via a wifi network being connected) i.e. no screen lock when at home.Juice Defender can also control your brightness settings, you may notice that similar settings are availiable on certain roms, e.g. Cyonogen Mod.Next up are the CPU settings, I would advise you not to touch these unless you are 100% certain on what you are doing, and what the settings do. Even if you think you know, I would still advise that it is better to use a separate app to control these e.g. SetCPU (other apps are available). This feature requires root access and a Kernel that allows overclocking.The final option is to have GPS turn on automatically when the screen is first turned on, and turn itself off if not in use after 1 minute. This feature requires root access.Schedules
Here you will set up the schedule for features to run. It is only really used for autosync; specifically allowing your data connection to be controlled to allow sync without having to keep your data turned on all the time.The first option is frequency. The options are 5m, 15m, 30m, 1 hour and 2 hours. This is how often you wish your phone to turn data on to sync.The next option is an important one, as it allows you to specify how long your data will stay connected for. You can chose 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes or 5 minutes. You need to be careful here as if you set it too short you will find that your apps do not actually have enough time to sync. I set mine to 1 minute and it seems to work well. You can then set up what turns on when you sync, default will be data, wifi and sync features.The next set of settings helps you set a ‘night mode’ so that the phone acts differently in the night (earliest time is midnight). You can set the time and what happens in that time, the options availiable are airplane mode turns on, phone turns to silent, phone turns to vibrate.You can then set a similar thing for a defined “peak time”, and “weekend” and “night weekend” and “peak weekend”Triggers
The first option is “battery". Here you can select from a series of options to define when the set schedules stop working if your battery drops below a certain level, i.e. to prevent sync when you are low on power to keep your battery in juice for longer. You can even tell it to automatically start connectivity again if on a certain power supply, e.g. usb or ac.Next up is “screen”. Here you can choose to enable connectivity while the screen is on. As the app tells you, if your screen is on, there is a good chance you will want to use the Internet anyway, so it is a good idea to turn this feature on.You then have a couple more settings that I will skip as they don’t do much.Traffic is the next important feature. This (if enabled) will stop Juice Defender turning off the connectivity when data is in use, i.e. when you are doing something e.g. downloading a file.If you wish to enable connectivity when specific apps are running (e.g. IRC or Gtalk etc) then you can define which apps you wish, be careful though if they run in the background then data will stay on.Finally in this menu, we have “Location”. Here you can let Juice Defender manager your WIFI hotspots. It learns which wifi hotspots you use and auto turns wifi on when in that area, and will turn it off when not. This feature works really well but can take a while to ‘train’ on each new wifi connection, so don’t expect it to be perfect the second you add a new wifi spot to it. If you find it is not working perfectly you can tell it to retrain, or even ignore certain wifi spots.QuickBox
The QuickBox is an option you can set for how the notification works when clicked (see picture above). It gives you quick access to modify settings quickly (and temporarily). JuiceDefender should revert back to your normal settings when the screen turns off. It is useful if you need data on when in night mode, for example.My ‘Perfected’ SetupWell, I've been talking at you for a while now; and as you can probably tell, I've had a lot of experience with this app. As such, over time, I have 'perfected' the way I set up Juice Defender. See below for what I consider to be the perfect set up for me. |
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