Develop Bugs

Wifi profile timer?

I'm looking for an app that can enable & disable wifi at certain times of the day/days of the week etc.
Basically so that while I'm working, my wifi is switched off to preserve battery power, but when I'm out at lunch or home in the evening the wifi is on automatically.
I looked around the site at things like wifiprofiles app, and monsterwifi app etc but unless I missed something I don't think they allow shedules for when wifi automatically switches on & off do they?
Sorry if I'm being thick or missed another option!

you should check out phoneAlarm Pro -- I've been using this for years, it is a powerhouse of control for all sorts of things -- profiles (automatically switchable) include WiFi on/off as well as Data, Ringtones, Volume, Backlight, customizable alerts, etc. I could go on and on... this is my one and only "must have" app!

oh, and of course it's skinnable! you can find plenty of skins and support in the pocketmax.net forums...

Thanks for that. Installed the demo version.
In theory it's spot on, but in practise I can't get the automatic (scheduled) profile switching to work.
I set a time for it to swap from 'Out of hours' to 'Work' and noticed my phone still shows as having the ringer on even though I set the Work profile to be silent etc.
What I don't understand is the relationship between the profiles in this software and the profiles that the phone uses normally.
Ie when installed, I can't see anything that illustrates what profile this software thinks it is currently using, just the usual volume/ringer icon at the top of the screen.
If I change the system volume with the hardware volume button for instance, does this directly influence what profile gets used on Phonealarm? Or should Phonealarm disable the system related profiles/volume control etc?
Me = a bit confused!

yeah, it can get a bit daunting at times cuz it does so much...
can I assume you're on WM 6.5 and Manila/Sense? back in the day, phoneAlarm ran as a Today screen app (still can) -- but now with 6.5/manila it can run as a 'background host' -- so you don't really see it unless you call it up. you can have an Icon 'stick' to the taskbar, but I keep mine hidden and have a key shortcut to bring up "paHost". now, depending on the skin used, you can see what profile is active as well as alarms, status, time, weather, etc...
basically, the profiles 'overtake' the WM settings -- they're still there, just set by phoneAlarm. for example, you can still change the volume as usual, but on the next profile change it will be reset per the profile's settings.
the profile schedules and the custom email/sms alarm are probably the most difficult to understand (or to get working as you'd expect) -- I would recommend downloading the 'user guide' -- it explains things far better than I could here.
lastly -- get familiar with the forum! the FAQ and Support threads cover just about everything, and "Penguin" (the developer/moderator) is really very responsive to everyone's questions and/or needs.

maybe an example would be helpful...
here's how I do it -- when I arrive at work, I plug my HD into a cradle at my desk and it (usually) stays there all day. the ActiveSync connection triggers the "work" profile, which sets volumes/tones, turns on bluetooth headset, etc. etc.
now once I unplug it -- it switches to "car" profile, as I'm (usually) now on my way home. note the "on end" setting in screenshot #2.
when I get home, I manually switch to "home" profile. this would be where you could get into location-based rules -- from gps, cell tower, etc. -- to automatically know you're home, but I don't have them set up at the moment.
then, it will switch to "night" mode at 10:00pm, turning off bluetooth, data, lowering volume & screen brightness, etc. etc.
when I get to work the next day we start all over again. (also note weekdays, as in you could do something different on the weekends)
I hope this helps you -- I think once you get the hang of it this is a truly awesome app. I'll be happy to answer any specific questions you have if I can. Good Luck!

Thanks for the assistance mate.
I think I've got the hang of it now after your posts and looking at the manual (I should have learned by now!). There's a few bits I'm not 100% certain about but it's mainly doing what I want and looks promising.
The phone is guzzling battery power since I installed it but I think I have found why. I have found that the wifi logo is visible all the time but red instead of blue, and previously this was not the case. I notice in the settings it describes toggling 'wireless lan' on or off but not perhaps in the same way as going into comm manager and selecting Wifi on or off. Not sure how I can get round but I need to make it turn off properly as it's burning my battery like the clappers!!
I like it though apart from teething problems!

Improve Your Battery Life

Hi everyone,
just came across this interesting Wiki guide. It explains how to make a cell phone battery last longer between charges, and how to prolong the overall life of the battery. To many of you, it will already be common knowledge, but there are still alot of interesting pointers mentioned.
For example, it states that lithium-ion batteries should be charged for about 5-6 hours and we should ignore the phone telling you that the battery is full... it states that this is normal but is not accurate if the battery is not initialized. It goes on to say that we should NOT fully discharge a lithium-ion battery, because unlike Ni-Cd batteries, a lithium-ion batteries life is shortened every time you fully discharge them. Instead, charge them when the battery meter shows one bar left. Lithium-ion batteries, like most rechargeable batteries have a set amount of chargers in them.
Please share your findings, opinions, and any further tests you have carried out to improve battery performance for your Desire.
Thanks.
Battery Saving Tips:
There are loads of "tweaks" you can make to imporve battery life span:
1. Lower screen brightness. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Brightness. Slide the brightness switch to the left to lower it or check the "Automatic brightness" box to let the phone use its sensors to adjust the screen according to the ambient light. You can also find dedicated screen brightness widgets in Android Market.
2. Turn off 3G, WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth when you don't need them. The easiest way to manage these wireless radios is to use the Settings widget preinstalled on your phone. Tap the + button on your home screen -> Widget -> Settings. Once your chosen widgets are on any of your home screens, a simple tap turns each one on/off. You can also use "Power Control" widget found in home screen -> Widget -> Power Control. There are other widgets that do this in Android Market (e.g. SwitchPro), but these are already preinstalled and they're a nice-looking set.
3. Disable WiFi and 3G network notifications. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi settings. Uncheck the Network notification box so your phone isn't constantly scanning and looking for open networks to tell you about. For 3G, go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile Networks.
4. Disable "always on" mobile data. This is one of the biggest battery savers. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks. Tap "Enable always-on mobile data" to uncheck the box. I haven't found a negative consequence of disabling this feature, as Gmail and other apps/functions still work perfectly.
5. Turn off background data. If you're not using Google services, go to Settings -> Accounts & sync and uncheck the Background data box so that applications cannot sync, send, and receive data whenever they want to.
6. Lower the screen timeout interval. The phone's screen can be set to automatically turn off when you don't interact with it for a predetermined amount of time: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, or never. Depending on what you're doing, a too-short interval can become annoying (especially if you didn't disable your lock screen), so choose wisely.
7. Manually turn off the screen when not in use. Since the screen timeout function ensures that the phone's screen will turn off (unless you have it set to "never turn off"), it can be tempting to put the phone down when you're done using it and just let the screen turn off by itself. Instead, give the power button at the top of the phone a quick push to turn it off manually.
8. Turn off auto-sync. Go to Settings -> Accounts & sync -> Auto-sync.
9. Change auto-sync frequency (Weather, News, Stocks, Twitter, etc). If you don't want to turn off auto-sync, you can adjust how frequently data is retrieved/updated. The settings vary depending on the app (and some don't offer the setting at all), but it's generally found in the same place: Settings -> Accounts & sync. Select an account from the list and then tap "Account settings" to change the sync frequency.
10. Disable wireless network location services when not needed. Go to Settings -> Location -> Use wireless networks. Note that this (or one of the other options) needs to be enabled if you want to see and/or use your location in apps like Maps.
11. Turn off window animations. To turn it off, go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Animation -> No animations.
12. Don't use a live wallpaper. Use a static wallpaper instead.
13. Use a dark wallpaper. Some say that dark wallpapers are more energy efficient than light wallpapers. Others say it doesn't make any difference. Either way, there's no harm in using a dark wallpaper so you may as well do it.
14. Change WiFi sleep policy. This may sound counter-intuitive, but leaving WiFi on when the phone isn't being used and the screen is off is actually better than letting it sleep. When WiFi sleeps, 3G wakes up to sync, get email, and retrieve other data. 3G will eat up more battery than WiFi, so go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi Settings. Press the Menu button and tap Advanced, then Wi-Fi sleep policy. Choose "Never" from the pop-up menu.
15. Monitor your running services (or consider using a task killer). Just because Android 2.1 is supposed to an intelligent operating system that will manage your running apps for you doesn't mean it will always do things the way you want them to be done.
You can take matters into your own hands by going to Settings -> Applications -> Running services, where you can view what your phone is doing and manually stop certain activities. You can also download a third-party task killer from Android Market and kill selected apps to free up some resources and potentially save some power. Task killers are a polarizing topic in the Android community, so tread lightly when looking for recommendations or asking for help with them.
16. Choose your home screen widgets carefully. Widgets that need access to the internet to update information (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Engadget, Slacker Radio, Weather, Stocks, News, Mail) can suck up a lot of juice if not managed well, so choose them carefully and set their sync/update frequencies to a reasonable interval.
17. Disable notification lights. This may not be practical if you're someone who really needs/wants to know when something happens on your phone when you're not looking, but for everyone else, feel free to turn off those notifications. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Notification flash and uncheck all the boxes.
18. Turn off phone vibration. If the ringer is on, why do you need the phone to vibrate? You're already in a loud environment that drowns out the ring; answering the call won't quiet your surroundings so you can hear what the person at the end of the line is saying.
And if your phone is set to silent, then an incoming call should be silent. Yes, the buzzing vibration may not be disruptive as your ringtone, but people still hear it.
So go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Phone vibrate and turn it off.
19. Turn off audible touch tones. In Settings -> Sound & display, uncheck Audible selection and turn off Audible touch tones.
20. Turn off haptic feedback. Once you get the hang of typing on the phone's on-screen keyboard, you can turn off the haptic feedback that was turned on by default. Go to Settings -> Language & keyboard -> Touch Input -> Text input -> Vibrate when typing.
You can disable haptics in other areas of the system by going to Settings -> Sound & display -> Haptic feedback.

I just plug mine into the USB of my computer (which is on most of the time) when I'm at home. Apart from that I use my phone how I want to. If battery life becomes unbearable I'll get a spare battery.

Not too sure about the 5h charge. It doesn't make sense. First once the battery is full, its full. It depends on how this is measured, but usually when max voltage has been reached, the 100% is shown.
The charger of the Desire is 1A, while the battery is 1.4A. If its actually charging at 1A, a -completely- empty battery is fully charged after around 1.5 hours. Even if it were charging at a lousy 0.5A, battery should be fully charged after 3 hours.
So no idea where that figure comes from (perhaps very very low amp charging on other cellphones ).
And most important tips are indeed no full discharge, and (kinda hard to do) keeping the battery cool. Most important factors on battery life.

Removing Nimbuzz upped by Battery life by about 300%, not worrying about it any more now.

I read some article said the lithium-ion battery is based on the time of your recharging. That means the the total one full recharge is under counting. Say you used your battery from 100% to 50% and recharge it to 100% for the first day. two days later your battery goes to 50% again and you rechage it to 100% again. That is the total one full recharge. each lithium-ion battery can go over 2000 full recharging(I am not so sure it is the number). so it is nothing to do with the time you charging your battery.

badgerz said:
Removing Nimbuzz upped by Battery life by about 300%, not worrying about it any more now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is nimbuz?

Raminder1992 said:
what is nimbuz?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking on the market, it is an IM/Skype combo thing... I reckon his battery life improved vastly as he set it to constantly stay signed in/syncing every 15 minutes which will completely kill any battery performance...

turn off WiFi?

guys, is there any point turning off WiFi when not in use, or does it do the decent thing and stop using power when not actively in use?
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

I'd imagine it still scans for networks so it will still use battery - I just have the toggle on one of my home screens and turn it on when needed

landwomble said:
guys, is there any point turning off WiFi when not in use, or does it do the decent thing and stop using power when not actively in use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
from Market, get WiFi Status from Andrew Schwimmer, one of the very best android app developers. It doesn't do exactly what you want but it's the smartest detection app out there for letting you know when there is no wifi signal to connect to, thus prompting you to toggle off wifi. It displays in the Notification Bar.
As for turning off wifi, I tried about 10 home screen widgets; they are all the same more or less. To me the far greater tool is Quick Settings, which gives you one-click access from anywhere via the Notification Bar, vs having to navigate to home screen and find the widget. But in addition it has toggles for sound, brightness, data, gps, bluetooth, etc -- all in on fast app.
I think it blows all these single-function widgets away as dumb.

So if my phone is on, screen off, in my pocket, it'll be constantly looking for wifi? If this is the case it's, well, dumb. Ta for tip about quick settings, just installed it and it's very nice.

landwomble said:
So if my phone is on, screen off, in my pocket, it'll be constantly looking for wifi? If this is the case it's, well, dumb. Ta for tip about quick settings, just installed it and it's very nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
then try wifinder -- i mused ti use that, but with quick setings i dont bothher any more

Add the widget 'Power Control' for one-touch bluetooth/wifi/gps/sync/brightness control....

landwomble said:
So if my phone is on, screen off, in my pocket, it'll be constantly looking for wifi? If this is the case it's, well, dumb. Ta for tip about quick settings, just installed it and it's very nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure it would be scanning for wifi when the screen is off. That would be daft. Ntework coverage yes, but wouldnt think wifi until you turn on the screen. Anyone confirm?

no, it stays on when the screen is off.
Seems so many people complained about it turning off in standby that google went ahead and changed it.
now it defaults to staying on forever until manually turned off.

Go to Settings> Wireless & Networks > Wi-Fi Settings > [Menu] > Advanced > Wi-Fi sleep policy. I set mine to 'after 15 mins'... if I understood this setting correctly then after 15 minutes of the phone being in Sleep mode it'd turn off the Wi-Fi. I don't use mobile data anyway so that's irrelevant. Wi-Fi will turn on again once I activate the screen.

blimey, that's well hidden.
what a stupid arrangement. WiFi should be on demand, and enabled only when data requests it, like the iPhone.
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

I use "Y5 - Battery Saver" for my wireless shenanigans

I am using 'Y5 battery save'r. It turns on wifi if you are on a location where you had a wifi connection and turns it off if you go elsewhere. You can manage the locations in the program. It can use the GPS or radio for the locations. You will find it in the market place.

Some questions from a recent iPhone switcher

Hello!
I just bought a HTC Desire (was using an iPhone 3G until a few days ago).
I haven't rooted (yet?), so I'm running stock 2.1. Didn't install any task manager.
I have a few questions I couldn't find answers to...hope you'll help me!
Maybe they are just differences between Android and IOS, everything is so different from the iPhone...
1. Why doesn't wifi turn off when I turn off the screen? The only option I found is to turn it off after 15 min (I don't see the point).
2. I turned off every autosync in every possible setting/app. (turned it off in all apps such as Newsrob, etc). When I'm out I continue to see the HSDPA icon with blinking arrows, as if something was transferring data. I only have the Astrid todo widget and battery snap. no weather, no mail, nothing else.
3. Do I have to switch off wifi and gps using the power widget? If so, why? On the iPhone if you don't use them they won't drain the battery...if I don't open Maps, why would I want to turn off GPS? Isn't it off by default?
4. Sometimes when I receive a text message and I read it, the 'Messages' icon displays a little '1' for a while, then disappears (don't know exactly when).
5. Since I turned off autosync, I have to open mail, press menu, hit refresh to check if I have new mail. I checked the 'Refresh on open' in the default mail app (not gmail). This works, but once the app is in the background and I switch to it, it won't count as a new 'open', so it won't check for new mail and I have to go through 2 additional keypresses. Frustrating, since mail is my most used app. This happens in both mail apps.
6. Is there a way to enable the clockwise landscape rotation?
7. Is there a way to enable a gesture to perform the 'back' action on the browser via the touchscreen? Maybe I need to get used to it, but for now I really don't like to hit the physical 'back' button.
8. The compass works randomly. Sometimes, using Maps, it's perfectly smooth and accurate. Then I close maps, open it again (i.e. switch to it, since it's in background) and it's a mess, doesn't work with the phone on a flat surface but moves if I hold it up vertically. Weird. Also, do I need gps activated to use it?
9. The auto-brightness is way too bright indoors, way too dim outdoors. I tried to trust it for a few days, but always end up going to the power widget and activate the lowest setting while indoor and the highest while outdoors. Any fixes for it?
Quite a long post, I'm sorry...
Thank you, this forum already helped me figure out a lot of stuff

I haven't had my desire long but here's my n00b point of view...
1. So your listening to streaming music the screen goes off your wifi goes off too personally i just leave wifi on unless i'm on holiday.
2. I have never turned off any auto sync options, If you want to be sure of not incurring extra charges, untick data roaming in mobile network settings.
3. My gps is set to off, If i use maps it switches on unless my desire is magical
4. I have had the 1 stick around before too, I have seen an answer to this before but i have forgotten where.
5. you could use the sync widget, or get a task killer to force close the mail app.
6.
7. Dolphin browser has gestures
8. Its been a while since i used the compass because i know where i am i believe a message popped up about enabling gps otherwise it would use the network to determine position or some such thing.
9.

6. enable rotation in settings/display
9. the auto brightness works off the light sensor so no, i have no problem with it tho works fine for me

1. In Advance Settings of my WiFi I found a sleep policy with 3 options:
a) After 15min. b) Never when plugged in. c) Never. I think that 15th minutes is fine, It wont drain so much power.
2. You could use a program like APNDroid to disable mobile internet, there is a widget for faster ON/OFF switch.
3. In Android programs can't change GPS status and you have to turn off/on manually. But for my personal option if the GPS is turned on it won't drain power if you not using it.
4. It bugs me too, It was the same on Windows Mobile.
5. I don't use mail programs on Desire and I'm sorry that I can't help you.
6. Not found my me - asking same question ?
7. Dolphin browser .
8. For me is working fine, but I don't lose myself often
9. I'm using manually brightness settings, but in sunny days AMOLED screen makes me crazy.

6. For this one you need a custom rom as the default rom only allows anti-clockwise rotation I believe
9. The Auto Brightness is rubbish, The power widget is your best and fastest option, Give Extended Controls a look if you dont want a full 1x4 widget bar

Battery Tips

Hello all. I just decided to retire my Vibrant yesterday and got an S3. I haven't changed much on it. I'll run it stock for quite a while. I am using a custom launcher, etc.
My battery life is horrible though! It's not even noon and I'm already down to 35%. I've made sure S Voice is not set to wake up when I talk to it. My weather was set to update every 15 minutes by default, but I've changed it to every hour. I charged it in the van on the way to take kiddos to school, and it was at 80ish percent. So that's quite a drop in not a long time. Granted, it's new, so I'm playing with it.
What tips can you give me to get the best battery life I can out of it? Besides custom ROMs. I'm not even rooted. Yet.

Well how long has your screen been on? That will be the determining factor in your battery life. Like you said, it is new and you are playing with it so I am willing to bet that probably has something to do with it.
Otherwise, turn data off when you aren't using it and keep the screen brightness as low as possible.

Here's what I do with a freshly flashed rom. I pretty much drill down through every setting turning off what I dont need.
WiFi - turn off network notification.
More Settings - Everything off
Sound - turn off everything below "System"
Display - Auto brightness off. Timeout 1min. Smart Stay off. Touch key always on or off. Auto Adj Screen Tone off. Battery% on.
Power Saving - Off.
Accounts and Sync - Off
Location Svcs - Off
Language and Input - Voice Cmd off. Voice Recognizer (all off for google and Samsung). Voice Search all off. TTS driving mode off.
Backup and Reset - can't remember what its listed under but below carrier data press to open and uncheck collect data (this is carrier iq, so I removed it asap once rooted)
Accessory - all off
Developer Options - set animation scales to 0.5x.
Hope that helps. I keep a lot off and only turn stuff on when I need it. There's some pretty cool features but for me it doesn't hurt my experiance with the phone to not use a lot of them.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app

joshnichols189 said:
Well how long has your screen been on? That will be the determining factor in your battery life. Like you said, it is new and you are playing with it so I am willing to bet that probably has something to do with it.
Otherwise, turn data off when you aren't using it and keep the screen brightness as low as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah. My screen was set to stay on for 10 minutes. That, I would imagine, was a large part of my problem. At least according to my battery stats. Why do they set that as default??
My screen brightness is now set to low. What is this with the data? Doesn't that mean I would not receive email, google talk messages, etc?
DocHoliday77 said:
Here's what I do with a freshly flashed rom. I pretty much drill down through every setting turning off what I dont need.
WiFi - turn off network notification.
More Settings - Everything off
Sound - turn off everything below "System"
Display - Auto brightness off. Timeout 1min. Smart Stay off. Touch key always on or off. Auto Adj Screen Tone off. Battery% on.
Power Saving - Off.
Accounts and Sync - Off
Location Svcs - Off
Language and Input - Voice Cmd off. Voice Recognizer (all off for google and Samsung). Voice Search all off. TTS driving mode off.
Backup and Reset - can't remember what its listed under but below carrier data press to open and uncheck collect data (this is carrier iq, so I removed it asap once rooted)
Accessory - all off
Developer Options - set animation scales to 0.5x.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just did almost all of these. With the WiFi detection off, will I need to manually find my home network each time I get back home?
Also, if I turn Voice Command off, I won't be able to push the button and say "Listen to blah blah blah" or "Navigate to ....." correct?

The_MamaBee said:
Ah. My screen was set to stay on for 10 minutes. That, I would imagine, was a large part of my problem. At least according to my battery stats. Why do they set that as default??
My screen brightness is now set to low. What is this with the data? Doesn't that mean I would not receive email, google talk messages, etc?
I just did almost all of these. With the WiFi detection off, will I need to manually find my home network each time I get back home?
Also, if I turn Voice Command off, I won't be able to push the button and say "Listen to blah blah blah" or "Navigate to ....." correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am on CM10 so I am not sure where it is for stock Touchwiz, but I would assume you could go to settings > display > screen timeout and change it there.
Yes, turning off data would mean no push email or Google Talk messages. You could download an app that turns off your data when you turn the screen off, then on when you turn the screen on and your emails and messages would come through then.

joshnichols189 said:
I am on CM10 so I am not sure where it is for stock Touchwiz, but I would assume you could go to settings > display > screen timeout and change it there.
Yes, turning off data would mean no push email or Google Talk messages. You could download an app that turns off your data when you turn the screen off, then on when you turn the screen on and your emails and messages would come through then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aah. Okay. Thank you! Yes, I fixed the screen timeout.

The_MamaBee said:
I just did almost all of these. With the WiFi detection off, will I need to manually find my home network each time I get back home?
Also, if I turn Voice Command off, I won't be able to push the button and say "Listen to blah blah blah" or "Navigate to ....." correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should have also mentioned I turn off wifi and data when I don't need it to, which is rare but it happens at times!
By turning off the wifi notification, the only change is it won't give you a notification in status bar that there's an open network nearby that you could connect to. Itll still auto connect to any network you've already got configured.
For voice cmd, it won't let svoice open apps for you. But for example in navigation you can still hit the mic button on keyboard and speak your destination.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app

Can you upload a Screenshot of your battery screen... It will make it a lot easier to look at
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium

On the Wifi issue. What I do with regards to wifi, is if I know that I am not going to be near an open connection, I turn it off. When I am at work, there is no wifi nearby that I can connect to. So I use Mobile Data instead. Why you ask? It is because when you have your wifi on, in the back ground it is always scanning for a signal. Turn that off and no scan, then no drain for something that you are not using at moment.
I know that this is a bit deeper than you wanted to go, but in the Build.Prop you can put a setting [wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=] and you can set that out. The time in there is the time duration on scanning intervals based on seconds. So the setting wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=180 means that it scans for wifi and doesn't find one, then counts off 180seconds and scans again.<--This is what I have mine set too, btw.

Disable the wifi when your not using it.