Tag: battery life

Android 4.3 plus Snapdragon S4 has massive battery life improvements

Okay, I expected a battery life boost when I got my LG Nexus 4 (16GB), but what I got blew me away. When I finally got the phone last week as a replacement to my battery hogging Samsung S3 I didn’t really expect much in terms of battery life.

I immediately installed three apps that I use a lot and that draw some amount of standby power: corporate email, a second email account and Twitter.  Then I got a prompt to upgrade to Android v4.3 (thanks LG!) so I immediately installed the update. I fully expected to get 10 to 12 hours of use before the battery approached rock bottom. Well was I wrong…way wrong…because at the 32 hour mark (1 day 8 hours) I still had 42% battery left! See the screenshot at the bottom of the page. I’ve also seen other reports that 4.3, by itself, added an amazing boost to battery life.

Note, I did the exact same test on my S3 when it was brand new and it lasted almost 12 hours before it started throwing low power warnings. That’s pretty much been my general experience with the eight other various Androids that I’ve had since v1.5. The results from the Nexus 4 blew that out of the water. I understand this is a brand new phone with very few apps on it. And as I add other apps that eat power in stand-by I’ll fully expect to see a drop off in battery life, especially as the battery gets older and more discharge/recharge cycles on it.

I also wanted to explain my usage pattern for the phone. It is what I’ll refer to as light- to medium-duty. What I mean by that is I would check email, news and twitter every two to three hours. This would consist of browsing on the phone for roughly 7 – 10 minutes at a time in short bursts throughout the day. I very much use it as a business and Android dev phone.

My main suspicion is that the WXGA IPS screen combined with the Snapdragon processor and Android 4.3 is dramatically more power efficient than the Super AMOLED screen on the S3 running Android 4.1.2 with a Samsung Exynos 4 quadcore. I’ll also point out that the screens are roughly the same size, if you were thinking maybe the Nexus 4 had a smaller screen and that’s what saved on power then think again. In fact, the Nexus has a slightly higher pixel density:

Samsung Galaxy S3 – 720 x 1280, 4.8 inches (~306 ppi pixel)

Nexus 4 – 768 x 1280, 4.7 inches (~320 ppi)

My point is that when jumping between previous major Android versions in the past we never saw battery life improvements even close to this. And from a hardware perspective, my S3 and all of my other pre-4.2 Android’s had screens that were major gas hogs. The screens on those phones were always at the top of the list on the Android battery consumption monitor as the number one energy consumer.

Conclusion. Whoa! I’ve been harping on Android’s miserable battery life for a long time, and now the Android team along with their hardware manufacturing friends may have finally broken the trend. Time will tell as I continue to use the phone and load up on apps if 4.3’s battery life improvements continue to hold up under pressure.

Android battery at 32 hours

So you want to build a mobile app? Not all mobile apps are created equally

Most smartphones users I know ditch apps pretty quickly if they don’t work or end up being clunky. So, if your company is considering offering mobile apps to your customers you should be aware of a few things.

Buy a Smartphone. If you don’t already have a smartphone then you should go out and buy one. Then download a number of apps that interest you and try them out and see what you like and what you don’t like. For example, if you do the shopping for your family you might consider trying out a bar code scanner app that lets you compare pricing. Some scanner apps may work faster than others. If you don’t own a smartphone then you won’t be able to understand what a good app is.

Likes and Dislikes. Pay close attention to what you like and don’t like about a particular app. Here are a few questions to take note of:

  • Was it easy to use?
  • Did it hang and/or crash?
  • Did it perform its tasks gracefully?
  • Did it do what you expected?
  • Was it visually appealing?

Become Tech Savvy. Become a bit more tech savvy about things that the phone is doing behind the scene. There are apps that do this for both Android and iPhone that help you monitor what’s going one. Things to look out for:

  • Apps that keep running even after you think you shut them off. These will run the battery down faster.
  • Apps that consume more and more memory over time. Using more memory equals more battery usage and shorter time between charges.
  • Apps that seem to slow your phone down when they run. These apps may be using more CPU than necessary resulting in greater battery usage.
  • Apps that connect to the internet frequently costing you extra data charges. There are apps that let you monitor how much data your phone uses and some apps can help pinpoint which apps use the most data.

Which Phones to Support? Understand what devices to support. If you are building an application for internal use, then you have an easier decision since you hopefully have some control over which devices are being used and how often their software gets updated. If you work in retail, your users may have Androids, Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, Kindle’s, Nook’s and possibly other tablets that get updated whenever and however the customer dictates. My advice is do some research and pick one that is used the most and work on that first.

Release Early and Iterate Often. Technology changes so quickly these days that if your app takes more than 3 – 6 months to build, then the technology will change underneath you. In other words, you might be releasing an application that doesn’t work perfectly with the latest phone operating systems or browsers that your customers are using. When that happens, it will cost you even more time and money to fix the problem and the problem will repeat itself. Be sure to take into account the speed at which technology will change once you begin your software development process.

Go Native, Go Web Browser, or Both? Last, it’s important to understand that there are two common types of mobile applications. Native apps are downloaded from an app store and installed directly on the phone, the other is a web app that runs in the phones web browser. My advice is to research and understand your target market. What do your competitors use? What do your customers prefer? What are the trends in your industry?

If you go with native apps, you’ll need to understand which phones to support and how often you will be updating the app. If you choose web apps you’ll need to know which browsers to support. Also take into consideration which skill sets your development team has and understand if they can tackle the project or if you need outside help.

Update, Update, Update. No matter what you decide, you can’t just deploy an app and think you’re done. If you want to keep your customers happy, you’re going to have to keep updating the app until the product line is discontinued or replaced. And, you have to update it often enough to stay on top of the latest technologies. New smartphone models are being released all the time and they all may have different screen sizes and screen resolutions. An app that looks good at one screen size may look horrible on a tablet or iPad. These things have to be accounted for. And, the smartphones operating system software may be updated three or more times per year offering new functionality and fixing bugs. If your customers download a broken app, or if they see the app that hasn’t been updated in a while and something stops working they may not be your customers for much longer. This is especially true for retail apps where customers make split second decisions whether to stay or walk away and try something else.

Conclusion. I hope you find this list useful and at least give you some ideas to think about before you dive head first into bringing a new mobile application into the world. It can be fun, be there is a lot of hard work involved. But, if you plan it right you’ll be successful and learn alot in the process!