Friday, November 15, 2013

A Smartphone Battery Miser

It has become one of my life’s greatest disappointments to look at my mobile and see that my battery is about to die. It’s such a terrifying feeling to know that my mobile will run out of charge and will shut down leaving me strangled and disconnected in middle of a busy day or during a travel where charging facilities aren't readily accessible.


Thanks to the pathetic battery life of today’s smartphones and the constant cycle of such disappointments that I have had, I have morphed into something disgusting. A battery miser. Yes, a smart phone battery miser.
There are tons of battery saving apps and battery drain preventing apps in the Google market. I constantly keep track of them and keep reading the reviews. I have been hoping from one app to another believing the impossible promise of a longer battery life. Some apps simply disappoint by themselves draining more battery. The others bring about no visible change.

What can the apps do for you if you keep using your mobile more, you might ask. Yes. The first thing I did was to decrease the screen brightness to the minimum possible through the settings. The awesome AMOLED display fitted in my mobile constantly is dim because of my stinginess and others find it too difficult to read text or view images. To add fuel to my craze is an app called the screen filter. It enables to decrease the screen brightness less than 10% (the minimum possible using the Android default settings). I have been using this app and now my AMOLED screen displays pathetically washed out images and poorly dim lit text with no clear contrast. It is no longer crisp nor clear. All for a longer battery life.

What could be worse? I am so fearful of switching on the Wi-Fi or the mobile internet. I switch it on only for an instant. I try to check whatever I wanted to do on the internet and put it off as soon as possible. Often I am not being notified of my emails and messages from Whatsapp and Hike because I have switched off the auto-sync feature to prevent battery drain. I’ll have to open the apps and refresh them in order to get the notifications.
All for a longer battery life.

The kill apps button. I keep pressing this button whenever I unlock my phone. I am pathologically obsessed with an uneasiness which creeps into my mind when these background processes keep running and keep draining my precious battery. It has become an obsessive compulsive disorder for me now.

Games are a strict no-no on my mobile. Mobile is not for playing games! It would drain the battery more. No switching on the GPS or the Bluetooth either. If I find that the GPS had been left ON by mistake, I would faint. Any new custom ROM that promises better battery life would have been tested by me in vain. The battery stats in android is my best friend. I keep checking for the battery percentage. I keep checking for apps which drain the battery the most. 

My pathetic worsening condition has rendered my 20k+ smart phone into something worth nothing more than an ordinary mobile used for making calls and texting people. I constantly keep check of the battery percentage. I charge the battery whenever I get a chance. My mobile does not auto sync. My mobile’s AMOLED display performs poorly that an ordinary TFT display. And so on…

I type this on my laptop because typing this in my mobile drain a lot of battery!!!

Is there any help for me?    :-(

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