Is this a waste of time on android?

[Maximilian]

1. Turning off the wireless network when im not using it.

2. Closing down apps im not using with a task manager.

Does doing these things save any battery or anything? Im on android 4.0

 

[Binky]

Yes on #1. There are several apps that can do this automatically based on GPS (draws power), timed intervals, or cell tower proximity.

No on #2. Let android do its thing. You're just getting in its way. I only close apps when things are misbehaving. This includes things just getting slow for no apparent reason.

 

[ChronoReverse]

1. Turning off wifi does help.

2. Usually not since most misbehaving apps will just restart themselves =(

 

[TuxDave]

I hope it's a waste of time to do both.

 

[Zaap]

Definitely keeping wifi and other connections off when you're not using them saves battery. (BT, data, GPS as well as wifi). You can have connections more intelligently turn themselves on and off as you need them using Tasker, or something like Juice Defender.

Task killers: my personal view is they don't do shit. Occasionally you might have an app that goes rogue and really does cause a problem, but most Android apps being 'open' don't really use resources. It's coming from a desktop computer mindset (namely Windows) that makes people believe open application= "resource drain", when on Android it's not nearly that simple. I used to mess with task killers, but found that they did exactly squat- just wasted a lot of my time with something that had nothing to do with actually improving anything.

 

[Bateluer]

On #2, if you're using a Nexus or an AOSP rom, then yes, its generally a waste of time. If you're using a skinned device, MotoBlur, TouchWiz, Sense, etc, then maybe. I know on my TouchWiz Samsung Tab, I have to hit the Task Manager to clear ram after a few hours of heavy use. Or the thing slows to a crawl because of all the memory leaks in TW.

 

[wirednuts]

it helps to turn off the cellular radio, but really not that much UNLESS you are in an area with bad reception.

 

[cl-scott]

I have long been amused by the idea of task killers... It's a constantly running program that saves battery power by closing constantly running programs.

Beyond that, turning off the wifi chip when it's not being used will of course save battery power. Same with BT, NFC (if your phone has it), and GPS.

The vast majority of power saving tips you find for cell phones are complete farces that, at best, are based on someone trying to impress by (incorrectly) repeating some half-remembered nugget that they heard someone else say. Problem is they say it with enough conviction that others pick up on it and assume it must be true... So when it fails to actually do anything, people beat their heads against the wall trying to find whatever else must be causing their battery to drain. Amusingly, it rarely seems to occur to them that maybe this magic tip was bogus.

 

[Nothinman]

Turning off Wifi cuts power to one radio so it will save battery, although I can't say how much savings you'll actually see.

Task killers may have made sense back in the original releases of Android, I'm not even sure if they did then, but they don't at all now. Android's application management is much smarter than you or some 3rd party app. And like cl-scott says, you're installing a constantly running app to save you from constantly running apps? That's like putting your pagefile on a RAM disk to save memory, it's a gimmick that seems like a good idea to uninformed ricers and usually has more adverse side effects than advantages if it even has any advantages.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

wifi doesn't save you THAT much more battery... maybe 0.5% an hour or something. I mean it helps and stuff, but I'd be more concerned with rogue apps in Android more than anything else.

another thing that's bad is the # of apps you have constantly syncing and pulling data. when you're in an area of bad reception (hey I still get 2-3 bars at this one office I'm at, but I can't download crap). If your phone keeps trying to pull data in a congested area or an area of bad reception, expect your battery to drop immensely.

 

[Nothinman]

wifi doesn't save you THAT much more battery... maybe 0.5% an hour or something. I mean it helps and stuff, but I'd be more concerned with rogue apps in Android more than anything else.

another thing that's bad is the # of apps you have constantly syncing and pulling data. when you're in an area of bad reception (hey I still get 2-3 bars at this one office I'm at, but I can't download crap). If your phone keeps trying to pull data in a congested area or an area of bad reception, expect your battery to drop immensely.

Yea, cell signal is probably the biggest culprit these days. If your phone is constantly looking for or bouncing between towers your battery will die at like 2-3x the normal rate.

 

[lothar]

1. Turning off the wireless network when im not using it.

2. Closing down apps im not using with a task manager.

Does doing these things save any battery or anything? Im on android 4.0

1.) Not really.
2.) Not really.

You won't achieve any meaningful savings in doing either.
In conclusion: Don't waste your time.

If you're having a problem with battery life, look for rogue apps using BetterBatteryStats.

 

[wirednuts]

yeah even in bad reception areas, i think my cell standby uses about 25% at worst over the course of a day. so say you have it off half the time for the night, and youre only saving 13% battery... which is pretty minimal at the worst.

 

[zerocool84]

A Google employee for Android put out an article about how task killers waste battery more than they help.

 

[Spoooon]

1.) Not really.
2.) Not really.

You won't achieve any meaningful savings in doing either.
In conclusion: Don't waste your time.

If you're having a problem with battery life, look for rogue apps using BetterBatteryStats.

+1

Especially regarding BetterBatteryStats.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[Maximilian]

Quite glad to hear this I can uninstall task killer and ill experiment with leaving the wifi on and see how it affects battery. I only really need it to control XBMC on the HTPC.

Using cyanogenmod 9 on galaxy SII btw.

 

[Yuriman]

As a previous poster said, look for apps that sync a lot and either change their behavior or remove them. One thing to look out for is what's called wake-lock. It doesn't slow your phone down, but it eats battery. Ideally shortly after your phone's screen shuts off it will go into a deep sleep and use very little power, until a signal comes in to wake up (ie a call), or an app decides its time to sync.

I've found by tracking down wake-locks and minimizing them, I can go as much as 4 full days off a charger under light use in my GS2. Users with lots of misbehaving apps might not get through a workday.

I'd suggest trying out better battery stats for a week or two.

 

[gorcorps]

I would suggest installing Watchdog for #2. It looks for apps using a large chunk of your processor and warns you. Then you can decide to try and kill it, ignore it, or Google for a problem if it keeps happening.

 

[runawayprisoner]

1) It's recommended not to disable WIFI unless you have a real problem. If you disable WIFI, your phone will try harder to look for and transmit 3G signals, which drains your battery faster. It is recommended to disable 3G, though, where you have bad signals (less than 3 bars).

2) Closing down apps using task manager: YES! (big yes)

Contrary to belief, Android apps DON'T automatically behave. This is not the developer's fault, but rather... it's Google's fault for using Java, which, by default, relies on a garbage collector and does not allow developers to manually kill things. The most a developer can do to ensure their app behaves well is by constantly calling garbage collector, but Google advises against that because it reduces performance (it actually does).

So it is best if you manually close down your app when you don't use it anymore. Otherwise, it will just sit there until Android decides to collect it... which... may happen randomly at any time. And when it does, the performance of the phone will come to halt momentarily depending on how large the app (or apps) was.

Alternatively, as suggested, install watchdogs or monitor apps that will periodically or conditionally close down tasks and processes when it deems that you have not come back to those tasks and processes for a long while. They usually (or hopefully) do that when you aren't doing anything intensive on the phone, thus you won't experience bad performance.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

^ lol not sure if srs.


1) Why would your phone look HARDER to transmit 3G signals? Your phone's data operates independently of wifi--that is it will try to transmit via 2g/3g/4g if not connected to a wifi network. Meanwhile the wifi will scan periodically to look for open SSIDs or stored SSIDs. It's only when it finds a connection that your data switches from using mobile data to wifi.

Having Wifi on uses more power if you're only connected to mobile data as the scanning process takes power. You can set the scanning interval to a longer time period which many kernels do. This is why in the end it's not going to use THAT much more power. And plus, even if you're only connected to wifi during the time that you're at home, the power savings from that will outweigh whatever scanning it needs to do during the day.

 

[ockky]

I personally experience MUCH better battery life by leaving WIFI on while i'm at the house. With wifi on, i can make it thru an entire day without charging. Using LTE, it's guaranteed i'll have to charge it

 

[runawayprisoner]

^ lol not sure if srs.


1) Why would your phone look HARDER to transmit 3G signals? Your phone's data operates independently of wifi--that is it will try to transmit via 2g/3g/4g if not connected to a wifi network. Meanwhile the wifi will scan periodically to look for open SSIDs or stored SSIDs. It's only when it finds a connection that your data switches from using mobile data to wifi.

Having Wifi on uses more power if you're only connected to mobile data as the scanning process takes power. You can set the scanning interval to a longer time period which many kernels do. This is why in the end it's not going to use THAT much more power. And plus, even if you're only connected to wifi during the time that you're at home, the power savings from that will outweigh whatever scanning it needs to do during the day.

It doesn't look HARDER to transmit 3G signals. But it DOES drain MORE POWER to transmit 3G signal (compared to WIFI). This is doubly true if it's 4G instead of 3G.

And I'm quite certain that most people would be connected to home WIFI for a longer period of time than 3G (unless you're saying people don't sleep in their own homes).

While connected to WIFI, some phones can also dial down their 3G transmit interval and save power. The power saving from that would be pretty significant especially in a poor signal area.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

It doesn't look HARDER to transmit 3G signals. But it DOES drain MORE POWER to transmit 3G signal (compared to WIFI). This is doubly true if it's 4G instead of 3G.

And I'm quite certain that most people would be connected to home WIFI for a longer period of time than 3G (unless you're saying people don't sleep in their own homes).

Gotcha.

What I was trying to say is that if you want to be lazy and compare:

1) Always on Wifi

versus

2) Mobile data only


Always on wifi will drain more battery compared to mobile data while it scans when there is no wifi available. However, it will save power when the user is at home or at any location with a saved AP. I'd say 1 vs 2 evens out.

If you're really good at switching on and off wifi, you'd get the best power. Some people suggest apps like Tasker, but I question this because it would require location updates for example to know when to shut things off and turn things on. As a result I think that would end up using more power than you would get from turning off wifi.

 

[vshah]

Gotcha.

What I was trying to say is that if you want to be lazy and compare:

1) Always on Wifi

versus

2) Mobile data only


Always on wifi will drain more battery compared to mobile data while it scans when there is no wifi available. However, it will save power when the user is at home or at any location with a saved AP. I'd say 1 vs 2 evens out.

If you're really good at switching on and off wifi, you'd get the best power. Some people suggest apps like Tasker, but I question this because it would require location updates for example to know when to shut things off and turn things on. As a result I think that would end up using more power than you would get from turning off wifi.

nfc tags are great for turning wifi on/off. entry table at home,desk at work, and car.

 

[wirednuts]

nfc tags are great for turning wifi on/off. entry table at home,desk at work, and car.

yeah but at that point you wish you just had wireless charging built into your phone....