How I Nearly Doubled The Battery Life Of My Android Phones

Last year, I purchased my first Android phone – the Samsung Galaxy S. Before the Galaxy S, I had no previous experience with the Android OS. However, after I got the Galaxy S, my love for the OS and its ‘openness’ grew. Since the Galaxy S, I tried many other Android based devices including a HTC Legend, a HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy 5. Recently, I got the HTC Desire Z.

On my suggestion, many of my friends also purchased an Android based phone and they have been simply loving the OS. However, one complaint all my friends have is the poor battery life of their Android phone.* In fact, the majority of Android owners complain about the poor battery life of their handset. Until late last year, the battery life of even my Galaxy S was very poor. If I used the phone heavily, it would be totally out of power by evening.

I tried many tips, found all over the Internet, but the increase in battery life was hardly noticeable. Then one day, I came across an application on the Android market called Juice Defender. The description of the app says that it will help ‘Reclaim your battery’. Out of pure curiosity about the efficiency of these kind of apps, I installed Juice Defender on my phone. I ran the app on my phone and was surprised to see that the app checks if your phone is rooted or not. After that, I enabled the app and used the ‘Aggressive’ profile.

Since then, the battery life of my Samsung Galaxy S has improved considerably! Before using Juice Defender, the battery of my phone would go down to 30% by night on moderate usage. My ‘Moderate’ usage scenario includes an hour of phone calls, 30-40mins of fiddling around with the phone, around 30 messages and some tweeting via TweetDeck with Auto Sync enabled for my FB, GMail and Twitter account.

After installing the app, I can squeeze out nearly a full day and a half of battery life from my Galaxy S with the usage pattern defined above. Even under heavy usage, I can get a full day of battery life from my phone. I seriously never expected this app to have such a big impact on the battery life of my phone. I installed this app on the Android phones of all my friends and relatives. After a week of using the phone with the app running in the background, even they reported substantial improvements in the battery life.

When I shifted to the HTC Desire Z, I did not install Juice Defender for a couple of days. The battery life of the phone was pathetic. Even on light usage, the battery of the phone hardly lasted me a single day. However, after I installed Juice Defender, the scenario again changed. The battery life of my Z increased substantially.

For people who think that this app may slow down your phone or may disable some features of the phone, I am pleased to say that this is not the case. There is absolutely no performance hit or anything. Your Android phone will continue to function as it was.

For all Android phone owners with poor battery life, I will highly recommend you to try out Juice Defender on their phone. Users always have the option to uninstall the app if they don’t like it.