Frequently asked questions concerning BatterySave
What settings can I customize within a profile ?
The profile settings are:
- Network connection (WiFi / mobile networks)
- Screen brightness (manual / automatic)
- Screen timeout
- Haptic Feedback
- Sound effects
There may be more to come, such as sync or master volume...but for now, that's it.
Why are my settings not changed even though my battery level is low enough ?
To prevent disturbing the user, settings are only changed if your screen is locked. See the last question regarding the BatterySave service for further information.
I set the profile to change my display timeout but in my system settings there's still the old value. Is that a bug?
Nope that's working as intended. Even though you see the old value, the actual display timeout is what you set in your profile. If you click to change the display timeout in the system settings, you see that there's a list of predefined intervals. If your profile's value doesn't match any of those, that list is just not updated and shows an old value.
Why can't I get a mobile network connection even though I enabled APN ?
This could happen if you've installed other APN-disabling apps like "quicksettings" or "apndroid". Unfortunately, the only possibility to disable mobile networking by code is to modify the APN database saved in your device. A very common method is to append a prefix or suffix to some of your APN settings. So what happens if you've installed multiple programs is that each of those will append their own pre-/suffix to your APNs. In order to get the APN switch working you either need to enable APN in each other program and only control it with one of them, or uninstall the other programs.
Besides, that's also the reason why you only should uninstall an APN modifying program with its APN setting enabled. If you'd uninstall it with disabled APN, in your database were still the modified APN saved. To resolve the problem you could manually delete the appended Text by navigating to settings -> wireless & networks -> mobile networks -> Access Point Names. You now click all of your affected APNs and remove (in case of BatterySave) the "BSave" text after your APN and type.
If you don't have any other software installed, this could also relate to Issue 2207 which seems to be a bug in the latest android versions. To sum it up in short: Sometimes one can only get a mobile network connection after toggling airplane mode, what seems to be caused by the WiFi module after walking out of range of your access point while WiFi is active. Apparently, there's no fix for it yet :(
Does BatterySave really save Battery ?
Of course it does ;)
Seriously, how much battery you'll save by using BatterySave is very individual as it really depends on your usage behaviour. Two main factors for a short battery life are active network connections and your display. Both can be minimized by using BatterySave, as you can change both settings dynamically.
To mention concrete values is very difficult for the above reasons. During tests with my HTC Desire, I found out that with an enabled mobile network connection, a weather app that's refreshing itself after 1 hour as well as an RSS reader that's refreshing after 30 minutes, I lost 12% of battery life within 9 hours of night. With BatterySave running and a battery update interval of "medium", I lost 0% during 9 hours. Again those settings are very individual, but one can see how much potential only disabling a not used network connection has.
There's a BatterySave service running in the background, should i kill it ?
BatterySave is based on two design principles: Consume no battery yourself and Don't disturb the user.
Both principles can be achieved by using services. Instead of refreshing the current battery level all the time, BatterySave will only refresh the current level in predefined intervals ( You can customize those in the options menu ). While refreshing it starts a service to request the current battery level. Now if there's a profile to be activated based on the current level and you are currently working with your device, that service will wait until you went idle (i.e. your screen was locked and you didn't return after a predefined wait time) to change anything. That is the only case where you might see the service listed in any list of running services. In all other cases, the service will close itself after some milliseconds.
Now to answer the question: There's no reason to kill it, because it does nothing (and therefore doesn't consume any power). You could kill it, it won't affect anything except to change preferences delayed if you decide to go idle right after.
