Juice Defender

[Tzzird]

So I've heard of this program before, but never really bothered to try it because my phone usually makes it until bedtime each day (with battery in the red). But my usage is pretty light on most days on my Evo 3D as I have my phone on silent in my desk most of the day from 8-4pm, checking the phone every other hour for messages. After work, I'll visit some websites and play some WordFeud and message some friends.

When my brother came to visit me, he was shocked that I wasn't using this program. He said that it gives him at least a few hours of usage each day. I'm not one to install random programs in my phone, but he just grabbed my phone and installed it for me. On the first day with the program (weekend), with heavier usage than usual, I had well more than a sliver of a bar at the end of the day. I was pleasantly surprised.

Now that it is a workday again, I am checking to see how long I can go without a charge. Tuesday morning, I unplugged the phone from the outlet at full charge. By the time I went to bed, there was still half a bar left. The next day (today), it is still almost at half charge. At this rate, it seems that I will easily make it to bedtime tonight without having to charge. Never thought I'd get this type of longevity out of my Android phone withot having to intsall a custom rom.

Anyone else use this program? What type of experiences do you have with the program?

 

[Yakk]

Ok...

Yes the program works, but you have to be careful.

The program saves battery mostly by disabling the data antenna on the phone for high speed (call it 4G, 3G...) and reconnecting at set intervals while idle (which you can specify). If you constantly use your phone (text, MP3 player) there will be little to no savings. There's also dimming display and maybe 1 or 2 other things you can do.

In my example, I use it, and set my sync every 15 minutes, it means for 14 of those minutes the data antenna is off and I will NOT receive any e-mails, RSS feeds..etc... (calls & texts still work). Then the phone syncs and they come in 4 times an hour. You can also specify which programs can wake up the phone, and which can't (misbehaving apps). Some people might think the world might end in 15 minutes and set it to 5 minutes or less. If you manually wake up your phone it will turn on the data, but with a lag time... for me it's 3-5 seconds, I can live with that.

That is it basically. The data antenna uses gobs of battery on my Atrix, and any phone, and using Juice Defender basically automates the process of turning it off most of the time.

For me, on light/regular usage, voice/data I go from +/- 12-16 hours to +/- 26-30 hours with JD, it's significant. Heavy usage days sees practically no differences.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Pretty much. It works but it's not magic.

JD reduces the time your phone uses its antennas and can save chunks of power that way. You're exchanging instant response (like with push gmail) for battery life.

It won't do a thing for continuous web browsing, gaming, video or anything that leaves your phone on and active.

 

[Tzzird]

So it sounds like JD is exactly what I needed on the weekdays, as the phone stays in the desk most of the time. I am now 32 hours from discharge and the battery indicator is still about 1/3 full.