Green Power

Posted by: Himanshu October 25, 2012 in Android App Reviews, Productivity Leave a comment

Is the battery on your Android Phone is driving you nuts? Probably you have got yourself a new Android phone or your battery has worn out with time and frequent charges. But if many battery saving apps that claim to conserve your battery have only made the battery life worse, its not long before you get frustrated with your phone and look for a replacement that offers a longer battery cycle. But if love your phone and need a worthy alternative, you got to take a look at Green Power.

Don’t be misled with the name, the app isn’t a source of free energy like many fake apps on Play Store claim in a humorous sense rather Green Power is an ultimate power management solution that allows you to conserve battery without affecting the performance or usefulness of your phone. A lot of users use 2G networks that save battery, well is does but its a painfully slow way to surf the web or check your mails on the move, others have been experimenting with screen brightness making the screen severely dull and unbearable to see in the sun and some also turn off the auto-sync function to leave the latest update behind for the little extra battery juice. We’ll if you don’t want to end up trying those experiments and tricks that reduce your device’s usability and feel, Green Power for Android can get things right at the right time ultimately improving your battery usage and device usability by a noticeable amount.

Green Power does the trick by automatically toggling phone’s hardware and settings. With Green Power you can manage you phone’s WiFi, Mobile data, Bluetooth, Auto sync, brightness and even running apps by understanding and allocating resources based on your requirements. The app will then consider your usage to determine whether a feature a required or not and smartly take decisions on your behalf to turn off unused or unrequired features.

Each wireless network has its own communication preferences and settings that can help you control it in various circumstances like screen off, time out on inactivity, location based toggle and even based on signal quality. With Green Power, leaving your WiFi ON for extended periods will not lead to battery drain because your WiFi will get into sleep mode as soon as you turn off your screen, you can also choose to use the WiFi management in case of low signal from connected access point which makes your phone work hard for less. Even when the traffic goes below a threshold level, the WiFi will be disabled to avoid drain a lot of juice. But Green Power takes these small factors in consideration to avoid unnecessary battery drain along with a day/night mode that allows maximum battery saving at night while maintaining a balance of battery-performance in day conditions when you use the phone the most. The app manages mobile data in a quite similar way and you can choose if you want to manage mobile data or leave it unmanaged.

While you might be happy with the auto-sync feature on your device, you can churn out a lot of battery juice by managing auto-sync with Green Power. You can choose features like, auto-sync being performed over WiFi only if you want to save the limited data plan offered by your operator. Furthermore the auto-sync settings have options to disable the default sync schedule on device and specify a routine when sync should be performed. Like, when screen is turned off or when your phone is connected to a charger and thus you will be able to enjoy auto-sync without affecting battery and performance of your device. To even improve the syncing ability the app has a Sync when screen ON feature which will sync you mail and data only when the device screen is unlocked and thus offering you fresh content when you take a look at your screen. But using this feature without understanding your usage can have adverse effects too when you unlock your screen every minute to see a update. The “sync when screen ON” feature avoids syncing during screen off and can be delayed for a few seconds after screen unlock to avoid slow-down of the phone due to excessive CPU usage that arises in this short cycle.

The Bluetooth has some cool features like turn off after call and reactivate during incoming call which help you utilize the power only when highly required. You can also create a blacklist/whitelist of apps that can keep your device data ON, like Facebook chat or Skype which need continuous data connection to show your status to other user. By creating a whitelist the allowed apps can override the main settings if they are running. The Bluetooth and app management is a premium feature available in the paid app only, so if you are planning to upgrade the app will give you more benefits and deeper management of device settings.

Worried how the app would work when you are using your WiFi hotspot? The settings panel has an answer for you. You can check the hotspot mode feature which allows the app to offer uninterrupted mobile data and hotspot connection.

Apart from individually managing each service the app can also take the time of day in consideration to provide better connectivity-battery life. The day mode provides additional features to fine tune your usage while night mode has some aggressive power saving features like turning off all connections during night, airplane mode trigger and even custom brightness reduction for day and night.

At any point when the app is running you can notice the leaf icon on the top of your notification bar with the battery percentage which the Android notification bar does not show by default. This is good to keep an eye on your battery stats while also know that Green Power is running. The app will also utilize the Landscape mode switch when rotating your device to offer comfortable viewing in every screen orientation. The interface of the app is well laid out that allows you to directly access device default stats like battery usage and running apps by hitting the options on the apps dashboard. Green Power has a variety of settings to adjust according to your preferences but using them in the wrong way can lead to more power drain too. Understanding your usage and then tuning the app can be the best way to make the most out of it. The app is highly compatible with almost every android phone including Samsung phones which have their self-power management feature that often interferes with most other power savings apps.

Green Power is available in free to try limited version that gives access to most features of the app while the premium version gives ability to manage Bluetooth and apps too. If you are looking for an app that is not just good at saving battery but also does not affect the overall performance of the device then Green Power is highly recommended for every such user.