webdevmatt

This is far from a definitive power management post, but I’m sharing with you what I do at a minimum to get a full day of battery life.

1. Put the power widget on one of you home screens. The power widget gives you easy access to your hardware power consumer’s; sync, Bluetooth, WIFI, GPS and display. If you need to conserve power, shut off what you are not using with a touch of the finger. I run lean with just sync on for most of the day. It’s all I need when at work. Put the GPS on when I’m running or need to get somewhere, and almost always leave the backlight off.
2. Download a power management program. I use a free one, “Power Manager”. I have not fooled with the default profile, and it manages how long my screen stays on when in a call or when there is no activity. For some users the screen might go black a little quick, but for me, it’s fantastic. The screen is the biggest drawer of battery and the power manager keeps it off when it doesn’t need to be on.
3. Advanced Task Killer. Download it and use it. Easily close down applications that are running that “don’t need to be running.” I love this application, and it helps manage power by making it easy for the droid to run lean.

Do these 3 things out of the gate and see how it affects your battery life. If it gets you in the right direction, it will be time to get granular on how you use your device, and I’m pretty sure we can get better battery life out of your Droid.

In my first few weeks of using the Droid, I took a couple ~5hr trips along the east coast. As mentioned in this second droid post the streaming of music and podcasts was great, and my girlfriend had downloaded some game apps for some extra shotgun entertainment.

While I’m not one for play games on my computer or my phone for that matter there’s an app that she downloaded that I just can’t put down, especially when I’m on the crapper. It’s called jewels.

It appears to be a version of bejeweled and it is definitely entertaining. The object of the game is to get as many points as you can by putting at least 3 of the same color / shape in a row. There are 2 types of games, “timed mode” and “normal mode.” Timed mode is, as expected, the normal game with a countdown with time added as you score points.

Thank you Erin for downloading this game, it keeps me on the toilet a little longer each day. Droid users out there give it a go or post your favorite bathroom apps.