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In this section you'll find a series of tutorials about useful configurations and tasks.
The “Minimal” profile is not a preset profile per se - it is rather a customized configuration that allows you to get email/Facebook/IM/whathaveyou notifications instantly, by leaving connectivity always on while still keeping some of JuiceDefender’s positive effect on battery life.
Just remember that always-on connectivity is tough on your battery. Most people are happy of the substantial improvement in battery life that comes with letting JuiceDefender judiciously manage connectivity; but if you need instant notifications for work or dependency issues... well JuiceDefender can be a good companion for you as well, still optimizing power consumption when possible.
The “minimal”profile - step by step guide:
What happens in a nutshell is that JuiceDefender’s automatic connectivity management will effectively be disabled until the low battery threshold is reached. At that point JuiceDefender will kick in, cutting connectivity when the phone isn’t being used; this will greatly extend the duration of the remaining battery charge, ensuring that you can get through the day.
For bonus points (and some further battery saving) enable the Apps trigger (Triggers tab) and Configure the apps that never require internet access (such as games, offline reading, media players etc.) to Disable.
You may want to have your phone always connected via WiFi when at home, while taking advantage of JuiceDefender’s automatic connectivity management when out and about.
A slight variation of the “minimal” profile discussed above will achieve this:
JuiceDefender will automatically enable WiFi when in range of a know network (home, work, etc.) and leave it enabled until you leave. At that point it will disable WiFi and manage connectivity (mobile data) automatically as usual.
Most of the times JuiceDefender will work just fine out of the box with “regular” radio streaming apps like WinAmp. This is because JuiceDefender never cuts connectivity while there’s an ongoing data transfer - it always waits for network activity to finish before disabling your phone radios.
However some music streaming apps - notably Pandora - don’t always play nice with this safeguard (if you’re curious about the technical reason: they cache an entire song as quickly as possible, subsequently halting network traffic until the next song).
But don’t worry, the Apps trigger is there to save the day: this feature allows fine-grained connectivity control on a per-app basis. You can use it to instruct JuiceDefender to leave connectivity enabled while specific apps (e.g. Pandora) are running - even when the screen is off.
The Aggressive and Extreme profiles include the Apps trigger in the Status tab (scroll down a bit). If you are using the Balanced profile and want to use this feature, you’ll have to activate the Customize profile - you will then find the trigger in the Settings tab. If you’re using the Advanced profile, you can find it in the Triggers tab.
Once you spotted the Apps section, tap on Configure apps. A list with the installed applications will appear - scroll around until you find Pandora (or whatever music streaming app is giving you trouble) and tap on its entry until the button on the right reads Enable/screen off. Voilà!
Another, more flexible way to get instant notifications when necessary while keeping as much of JuiceDefender’s power saving as possible is by using the Peak schedule.
Need to reply to your boss’ emails at a moment notice? Go to the Schedules tab, enable Peak, set the start/end times to your work hours via the sliders, and select on for the frequency. As you can guess, on will keep connectivity always on during the programmed period.
Or maybe a 5 minutes sync frequency is enough during work hours, but decidedly overkill otherwise? Well, you can set a regular Schedule frequency of 1 hour and rely on a 5 minute Peak schedule for office hours.
One of the best features of the Peak schedule is that you can manually activate and deactivate it when necessary using the QuickBox. Just make sure Peak is enabled and set to on; when, say, you’re having an important but “sparse” IM conversation, use the QuickBox to activate Peak - you’ll be notified instantly of new messages even when the screen is off. Just remember to deactivate it when you’re done!
JuiceDefender’s complete customizability allows even more sophisticated scenarios. For example, another way to have instant notifications at work - while still saving juice - is to leave only mobile data enabled and turn on the WiFi radio on demand. To do this, set the Peak schedule frequency to on; then, under Controls, tap on Custom and leave enabled mobile data only. Your phone will be always online via mobile data during the Peak schedule; as soon as you turn the screen on - e.g. to place a Skype call - it will connect to WiFi; and when you’re done, the WiFi radio will be disabled to save juice.
JuiceDefender’s Location feature relies upon the so-called “network” location provider; in other words, it relies on nearby cell towers and WiFi networks to get an approximate location when necessary, and it does not turn on the GPS receiver, as that would use a fair amount of juice (thus defeating the purpose). Note however that if a fresh GPS-provided location is available (e.g. because you have recently launched the Maps app), JuiceDefender will make use of it.
Similarly JuiceDefender does not turn on the WiFi radio unconditionally just for the sake of a more precise location fix (locations calculated via cell towers only are less accurate than those that also take into account nearby WiFi networks); it will only do so when there’s a chance you might be in a WiFi zone and take a second reading, usually more precise and sufficient to determine quickly whether WiFi will be able to connect.
All this means that the Location feature relies first and foremost on the cell-tower-only location fix; to get an idea of its accuracy in your area, turn off both WiFi and the GPS receiver and open Maps: the blue dot indicating your presumed location will be surrounded by a circle showing the “confidence” radius; it can extend up to several kilometers, especially in rural areas and small towns.
To see if Location is doing a good job, compare the stated accuracy value for your WiFi network (in the Location section) to this radius. If the accuracy value is several times higher, the location might have been “polluted” by a stray reading (this should only happen rarely, but you never know); to solve the problem you’ll have to reset the location training (tap on Clear then Clear below).
At any rate, even if the cell tower precision is very low, to the point that the confidence radius encompasses entirely your daily commute, Location can - and often will - still be useful. The second WiFi-powered reading is in many cases sufficient to tell, say, your home from your gym within ten seconds, so the WiFi radio will only be turned on briefly, minimizing the wasted juice.
Finally, don’t forget that you can manage WiFi manually even when Location is enabled: if you go visit a neighbor and want to avoid the WiFi radio turning on at all, turn it off manually after screen on via the power control widget; Location will “go to sleep” since the “WiFi disabled by user” status has the highest priority. Naturally you’ll have to re-enable WiFi manually when you get back home.
When you buy a new phone you can easily migrate all your settings and your trained WiFi locations by taking advantage of the Backup/Restore feature.
If both the old and the new phone have Android 2.2 or above:
If the cloud-based backup is not available, or not functioning properly, you can manually copy the file /sdcard/Download/JuiceDefender.backup to the new phone (obviously if you just take out the SD card from the old phone and place it into the new phone you don’t need to do this, unless your physical SD card folder is different - some phones with internal storage mount it to /external_sd for example), then proceed with the restore on the new phone.
The time it takes to establish a connection via mobile data (usually one or two seconds) depends on a ton of factors, such as the radio firmware in your phone and the particular configuration and signal reception of the cell tower you’re connecting to. These obviously can’t be controlled by JuiceDefender; however, if you’re experiencing long delays, there’s a couple of configuration tricks that might help:
How-Tos |
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Latedroid 2011
All content licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
