Three Apps to Make Your Android Phone Battery Last Longer

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 17 Nov 2014

Phones and tablets die. It’s a fact that we must all inevitably plan our daily routines around. But sometimes you can’t. There isn’t always an open plug or an extra battery pack. This is why you need to plan ahead. To avoid this, often you’re faced with the untimely death of your pocket computer. We rounded up three favorite apps to help you get more time out of that lithium cell.

GSam Battery Monitor

GSam accurately monitors your battery life and offers alarms that alert you when things are going south.

The GSam Battery Monitor may be a better app to look at. Still, it’s one of the most effective battery-monitoring apps and the most popular in the Play Store. Not only does it tell you precisely how much juice you have left based on both current and past usage. But it also comes with the App Sucker. This powerful tool hunts down which apps are draining your phone’s energy.

The App Sucker lets you kill the apps that are sucking. Sort of.

GSam Battery Monitor allows you to set up custom device power profiles and view historical averages over time. You can set up alarms so that the app warns you when your battery is overheating, for instance. Or when it’s below a certain percentage. And it comes packed with a few handy widgets. And a Notification panel indicator that lets you know precisely how much juice you’ve left. You can download the GSam Battery Monitor root companion app if your device is rooted. Which offers detailed wake lock sensor usage statistics to help narrow down the cause of what’s eating up battery life. There’s also a Professional Edition for tablet users.

Snapdragon Battery Guru

Snapdragon Battery Guru is admittedly an app hawked by Qualcomm. Still, considering most flagship devices in the U.S. market run on a Snapdragon something-or-other. Snapdragon Battery Guru is worth the free download to check what’s happening under the hood.

Snapdragon’s Battery Guru will make your system zen.

Snapdragon BatteryGuru requires no user configuration on your part. It automatically adjusts to whatever your usage pattern is. Hence, it learns what’s going wrong when your battery begins to flounder. The app will launch into learning mode to understand how you use your device. Then incrementally adjust based on your usage pattern. However, it could take up to a few days, even weeks, before it’s accurate. But the payoff is worth it. Snapdragon BatteryGuru also offers individual application settings. You can manually adjust how much power each app uses. So that the least used apps only use up battery life when asked to. Rather than constantly working in the background.

Greenify

Greenify was a root-only app, but now it is gloriously open to all. The app aims to valiantly greenify your device, that is, to kick those offending, battery-sucking apps to the curb. You can give it permission by selecting those offensive apps and then forcing them into hibernation. Which cuts off all background functionality, even push notifications. There’s also an auto hibernation feature that automatically shuts off those juice-sucking apps. Though it needs to be enabled in the experimental feature settings, it’s only available if you’re running Android 4.1 up.

Be green to your phone and cut off those apps that are taking advantage of available battery energy.

Greenify warns you against hibernating alarm clock apps, instant messaging apps. And any other apps you rely on throughout the day. Though it doesn’t completely shut down apps, when you turn it on to hibernate an app. It’s almost like reviving a saved state rather than starting up an app from scratch.