Reducing your Android phone's battery power consumption

Gone are the days when one charged a 'not so smartphone' once in 2 to 3 days. Smartphones these days are known to need charging on a daily basis. That is understandable, but my  Samsung Galaxy SII GT-I9100 reached a point where it demanded charging every day - twice a day !!!

The situation was bad, especially, when I was out & away from power sources for my phone for extended periods of time. When I needed it the most I would find the low battery warnings. I would want to use the phone for some critical purpose (like calling someone) and what do you see - a 'Low Battery' warning. I would have a wonderful 'kodak moment' to capture with the phone's lens and my smartphone's flash would not work because of 'Low Battery' ! It was frustrating !

My first assumption was that the battery was kaput and needed replacement. Before building on that thought, I checked if the software was not party to the crime ! I was right, the operating system software of the smartphone was indeed a major suspect in the 'battery drain' case !

Hence this post that articulates some of the steps I took to work around this problem. With these measures taken, nowadays after a full charge I am still left with around 60% of battery even after 10-12 hours of normal usage and without hampering any communications via the phone. Earlier I would have needed to charge the phone once in that period.

Some points mentioned below may be specific to the Samsung Galaxy SII GT-I9100 but similar configuration screens would be available on your android phone.

So, what are the things that you can do to save yourself some smartphone juice when you 'really' need it ?!

Phone settings to pay attention to for battery conservation & usage stats

Reflect on what is consuming the battery ?

• Tools to support this reflection
• In the phone settings you will find the Power saving settings
• Use this to setup your phone for power savings
• In the phone settings you will find Battery 
• Here invariably most phones will show the display is consuming most battery
• So how can you reduce your screen usage 
• Check the display settings for and set them appropriately to consume lesser battery.
• Brightness - what brightness settings have you chosen ?
• Screen timeout - how long do you want your phone to stay on ?
• No Smart stay ? 
• Is the phone's GPS on ?
• (this is a very quick battery drainer - you forget to switch off GPS after using it and in a short time you might not be able to make calls on your smartphone! Read below about AutomateIt on how to not let your slacker memory be cause of a battery drain) 
• Is the phone's Bluetooth on ?
• In addition you will find some apps seems to be consuming lot of battery
• Reflect on whether you need all the apps that you have on your smartphone, it is so easy to go overboard with installing apps and with time forget about them as they idle in the background and consume battery power. In some cases these apps are pre-installed and come from the device manufacturer. If you do not have the liberty to root the device perhaps you will not be able to get rid of them. Some examples of heavy battery consumers are apps such as Google Now. This is because of their data connection requirements. Also synching of your google accounts causes a battery drain especially if you are using it to synch your pictures.
• You might also want to review your smartphone's data and wifi settings
• Is your phone constantly searching for a wifi connection ?
• Are apps on your phone constantly trying to get onto the network ?

      ......... now, this leads us to review and reflect on your smartphone usage habits.
      

Reflect on your own smartphone usage habits

• Do you need to be online all the time?
• If not, you have a very good chance of saving unnecessary power consumption by your phone - read below about AutomateIt and how it can help make your smartphone smarter in terms of power consumption.

    b. What are the main uses of the smartphone
        You might come up with a very finite small number of apps that will help you meet those uses, this is a very good input for your making the most of the AutomateIt app !

AutomateIt - Make a smarter smartphone with AutomateIt !

Disclaimer: I am not associated with the makers of AutomateIt in anyway that I an aware of. I  only use the Android app and find good utility in it!

AutomateIt - read as Automate it

Would you like your android phone to

• go mute and stay silent automatically when you are in meetings?
• go mute during certain times of the day?
• seek for WiFi networks only when you are in certain regions (for example only at home)?
• make the WiFi/Data connections active only when the apps that need them are activated?
• routinely schedule a data or wifi connection to allow apps?
• switch on GPS only when you are using Maps or any other such application?
• keep the screen on longer only when you are on certain apps and otherwise go off sooner to conserve battery power?

The above are just a very small set of what you can use AutomateIt for (and most of them help conserve your battery power).

AutomateIt has a very simple model - A rule consists of a trigger that results in an action.

You select the triggers from one screen and then select an action in the next, you name the rule and schedule it if necessary. That's it.

AutomateIt configuration options

The video here shows how a simple rule of setting your phone to silent on a schedule with AutomateIt.

AutomateIt has a free version and a paid pro version. Personally for me, playing around with the free version for a while convinced me that I could do more with the pro version. The pro version comes with composite triggers, calendar triggers and sensor triggers. I have heard that iOS devices do many of the battery conserving activities by some blanket rules. Again personally, I appreciate the better, configurable control that comes with the Android phone and the apps in its ecosystem.

Where to get AutomateIt?

• On Amazon - Free version & Pro version
• On Google Play - Free version & Pro version

Do you already use and like AutomateIt ? How do you use it ?

References

1. Samsung Galaxy S 2 website
2. The AutomateIT app website
3. AutomateIT on the Google Playstore and Amazon's app store
• On Amazon - Free version & Pro version
• On Google Play - Free version & Pro version
4. Other tools for further analyzing and fine tuning battery usage 
• Wakelock detector

Innovation versus Invention

This post does not conclude with answers, rather attempts to sequence a set of thoughts in the direction of the topic and poses questions that you are welcome to answer or corroborate with your own thoughts.

Innovation vs. Invention : Word usage over time

The Google books Ngram Viewer clearly shows that starting around 1972 the word innovation has appeared more that the word invention in the English corpus it indexes.

Putting aside questions about the quality of the corpus etc. can we ask the question - Is it true that innovation is more of recent times than those of the yesteryears ?

Innovation vs. Invention : Wikipedia definitions
The Wikipedia's entry defines innovation and contrasts it with improvisation and invention

Innovation : Innovation is the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulate needs, or existing market needs.
Invention : Invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.
Improvisation : Is not doing anything new but doing the same thing in a better way.

The diagram below attempts to capture the same thought pictorially.

Innovation is connecting the dots

Innovation vs. Invention :  Creativity Vs. Associativity?

Inventions are definitely creative in nature but an innovation from the above section seems to indicate that it is associative in nature. So what is the relationship between associativity and creativity ?

The paper on 'Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Creative Process' details the following along with the two distinct forms of thought for a creative process.

'The first is a suggestive, intuitive associative mode that reveals remote or subtle connections between items that are correlated but not necessarily causally related. This could yield a potential solution to a problem, though it may still be in a vague, unpolished form. The second form of thought is a focused, evaluative analytic mode, conducive to analyzing relationships of cause and effect . In this mode, one could work out the logistics of the solution and turn it into a form that is presentable to the world, and compatible with related knowledge or artifacts.

This suggests that creativity requires not just the capacity for both associative and analytic modes of thought, but also the ability to adjust the mode of thought to match the demands of the problem, and how far along one is in solving it.'

• Does innovating require the first form of thought - suggestive, intuitive and associative ? 
• Does inventing require a more focussed, evaluative analytical form of thought? 
• How do these words fare in the Google books Ngram Viewer ?

Oh yes, there is an answer for the last question.



References
[1] The Wikipedia's take on innovation
[2] Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Creative Process - Liane Gabora
[3] Google Books Ngram Viewer

Faulty capacitors and the light bulb conspiracy !

I had read a while ago (in 2009) that the Samsung LA32A330 LCD TVs had a problem of faulty capacitors. The capacitors rated 2200uF,10V were delivering to a 12V or a 16V bus causing stress on themselves. This finally would lead to the capacitor's breakdown. Eventually this was felt by me when I tried to switch the TV on and it failed.

We had bought the Samsung LA32A330 TV in October 2008. The capacitor's breakdown was gradual. I say that as a fact since I felt it in the form of ever increasing TV start up time and the associated ticking sound at that time. Finally the time it took to switch on was = infinity. It was then I mustered up enough courage to open the TV's back and do the correction. Now that I had nothing to lose!

Some online searches (1)(2) reassured me that this was something I could do. All I had to do, as per this YouTube video by BigDog (3), was
- Unscrew the back cover
- Find the suspect Capacitor (swollen?)
- Unplug the 5 plugs and remove the screws
- Desolder the capacitor
- Replace it with a capacitor 2200 uF 16V
- TAKE CAUTION : Make sure the -ve lead goes towards -ve (shaded area)
- Resolder
- Put the screws and all plugs back
- DONE !

The last time that I did any soldering or dealing with circuit boards was quite a while ago in college. Soldering irons themselves have advanced a long way since then. I took the challenge since the potential rewards were worth the attempt. The capacitor that I had to buy cost only 0.0025% of the price of new TV or 0.01% of the cost of a Samsung technician's visit.

The board with the puffy capacitor

With a dash of help/inputs from colleagues who were adept at circuit boards and soldering, the new capacitor (2200uF and 16V now) found its place in the old circuit board.

It was done. Now I had to just put the board right back and taste success. And taste success I did .. the TV switched on (the powering up time for the TV had decreased to just 2 seconds) and I saw the picture from a local TV station playing out clearly on the screen. It was late, so I powered off the TV and headed to bed.
The following day, returning from work, I switched on the TV again and to my dismay I saw that after playing for 5-10 minutes the TV started to act up. There was a green tinge on the screen and the black parts of the picture frames were not showing up correctly.

On no ! My mind whirred with a lot of questions.  

• Was the capacitor acting up ?   
• Did I not solder the capacitor to the board correctly ?   
• Did I damage any other component in the process of the correction ?   
• This seems to be a more complicated issue. Will I be able to solve it ?

Gathering myself up from the disappointment, I proceeded to attempt to repair this new issue.

As usual, I did some Internet searches again with strings such as "Samsung LCD green screen" and so on. Most searches resulted in forums with topics such as 'The green screen of death' where sandro3342 mentions that lint in the TV at the connections causes these issues. And further the solution seemed to work for davidmparsons and masterstint. Considering that I might have kicked in some lint into the connections while repairing the board, I proceeded to clean the TV up. Well .. that did not solve anything and the green tinge remained.

At some point that evening, I gave up and thought I would sleep over the matter, clear my head and check the following day since it was a holiday.

The following morning, I tried to clean up a bit more and when that did not yield any results beyond the time I had set aside to attend to this matter, I gave up. The direction I was taking was only trial-and-error based and it was not yielding any results. So I switched to TV back on after putting all the connections back and was playing around with the TV settings. I manipulated the brightness/contrast and bit on the TV channels and lo! the picture was now perfect ! So that was all it needed a slight adjustment to the brightness/contrast adjustment ! 

I think it was my recent interaction with the TV system led me to believe in the fact that the problem was more complicated than it really was. Plus to add to the mystery the picture seemed to be OK when I had switched it on just after I fixed the new capacitor in.

I have no explanation for this. Maybe the power reset (disconnecting the power from the mains) in between had caused some of the components to reset to some default values due to the addition of a new component .... any theories/explanations ?

Switching lanes now ...

Internet searches reveal that this is a known problem (4), rampant and recurring again and again over and over again across all Samsung models, even as they advance.

Hence the thought : Is this in anyway connected to the lightbulb conspiracy (5) ?!

'The Light Bulb Conspiracy combines investigative research and rare archive footage to trace the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, from its beginnings in the 1920s with a secret cartel, set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, to present-day stories involving cutting edge electronics (such as the iPod) and the growing spirit of resistance amongst ordinary consumers.'


Credits
Carlos for the advice/help with the soldering know-how
Donny for pointing me to the food for thought Light bulb conspiracy.

References

(1) A blog article of a non-electronics guy's experience with the TV repair
(2) A YouTube video of an upset Samsung customer
(3) A YouTube video demonstrating simply how the replacement of capcitors is to be done
(4) A plethora of YouTube videos showing different Samsung TV's with similar problems -
(5) The light bulb conspiracy
(6) The green screen of death forum topic on CNET