Battery app that doesn't drain battery

[Adam Hel]

Hi there,

The title is quite explicit. Every app I can found work in background and drain my battery way faster than usual. Plus, it is completely useless as the live tile can only refresh every 20 min so it's never accurate.

I just want a shortcut, a tile I could click on to display my battery % without anything going on in the background, does it exist?

Cheers!

 

[Vaibhav Chauhan]

no its not possible thats why people try out all sorts of battery tile apps. & I use one battery app too, but i dont think it makes any difference on my battery life!!

 

[Twitter@Firas_MD]

I'm using battery sense on my HTC 8X and I don't think that it's draining any extra battery. Yet its a bit inaccurate.

 

[Adam Hel]

And which one do you use? It might suit me

 

[th0mas96]

they all take almost no battery at all. all they do is get the percentage and update the value on the tile every 30 minutes. I'm sure your phone drains more just by searching for network, push services etc. I use a dev-version of TimeMe that updates the percentage every minute, and it doesn't affect my battery life.

 

[Church Punk]

Cant you just ignore the live tile setting on the app? I have one called "battery" which has the option to show notification on lockscreen. I havent seen any abnormal drainage, but then again, i dont have the live tile...

 

[th0mas96]

oh, solution how you want it: go to settings, background tasks and block the battery app you use. It won't update in the background, just on tapping it will open (and update the tile)

 

[Geddeeee]

I use the 'in-built' one, via Settings. No battery drain at all.
Pinned 'Settings' to Home Screen. One tap: Settings. One swipe down: Percentage...

 

[Adam Hel]

So I've tried Battery and it was quite accurate but yeah, it was draining like hell

 

[crash1989]

It is to do with how windows phone live tile and notifications system works. There are background agents which run to update your tiles and toast notifications (and/or push notifications).

It is clearly mentioned in the dev manuals that the agent is very tricky to work with and sometimes it might run and sometimes it wont.Generally it is told that the agents are run every 30 mins or so. Devs are explicitly told not to put any critical code in it.

This is the reason why the battery app updates only every 30 mins or so and not regularly. Opening the app will update the live tile since the dev must have written the code during the app launch. I don't think microsoft has made exceptions for third party apps to tweak the agents in the background. Although big companies like HTC has its clock tile working pretty well updating time.

 

[th0mas96]

It is to do with how windows phone live tile and notifications system works. There are background agents which run to update your tiles and toast notifications (and/or push notifications).

It is clearly mentioned in the dev manuals that the agent is very tricky to work with and sometimes it might run and sometimes it wont.Generally it is told that the agents are run every 30 mins or so. Devs are explicitly told not to put any critical code in it.

This is the reason why the battery app updates only every 30 mins or so and not regularly. Opening the app will update the live tile since the dev must have written the code during the app launch. I don't think microsoft has made exceptions for third party apps to tweak the agents in the background. Although big companies like HTC has its clock tile working pretty well updating time.

yep, it's a requirement in the store - they update every 30 minutes. With a developer unlocked device, you theoretically could deploy a custtom app that updates every minute and updates even in battery saver mode (completely like the HTC clock).

 

[Exotic Hadron]

I use the Battery app by Arthur Semenov and it seems okay, but... I think I am gonna remove the app as it doesn't do any better that what you get from Windows Phone settings. It only shows you that your battery drains when you actively use the phone and when you don't your battery drains smooth without spikes.

And that's not an issue with the app that presumably uses the same OS API that reports battery voltage. That's quite expected provided that a Li-Ion battery is a voltage source and you can't measure its drain properly as voltage is kept near same all the time and then its volt-ampere diagram drops very quick when it is discharged. Battery voltage kept close to 3.7 V provided by lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide. So practically, I don't see any real use of those apps, so I can't say why I keep using this app, probably because I like those digits changing all the time...

 

[stevethenerd]

I find the only time the app is inaccurate is when I'm charging. Although previous posts are correct, to create a live tile/lock screen notification a background tasks is necessary. My best solution to optimize battery use is to monitor these just as I would startup items on my desktop.

Its a trade off we will have to work with at this time...

Rome wasn't built in a day....


Even IOS has been constantly improved with each update.

 

[jaj324]

Life is too short to obsess over whether your battery is at 83% or 75%. Charge your phone often and don't sweat your %.
Sent from my AT&T Cali Blue HTC 8x using Board Express

 

[OzRob]

Most people seem to be missing the point that if you turn off ANY battery app's ability to operate in the background (Settings->Applications>Background Tasks), it won't use any battery power unless you explicitly open it.

 

[Adam Hel]

But then it'll ask me to switch background tasks on every time I open the app?

 

[OzRob]

But then it'll ask me to switch background tasks on every time I open the app?

I tried out one ages ago that asked me the first time, but never again. Can't remember which one, though.

 

[Exotic Hadron]

Most people seem to be missing the point that if you turn off ANY battery app's ability to operate in the background (Settings->Applications>Background Tasks), it won't use any battery power unless you explicitly open it.

But how then would it be possible for the app to monitor battery status when monitoring should be made in background? When the app isn't in background, it is dehydrated by the OS and thus process' main working thread is frozen. Please correct me if I am speaking absurd.

 

[beachhoppr]

Well I'm not sure its dehydrated...

 

[th0mas96]

they all don't affect battery life. Maybe 1%/week.