Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Tips & Tricks Episode 43, Extend Battery Life with Snapdraon BatteryGuru

Snapdragon Battery Guru Review 

In this video we review a relatively new app called Snapdragon BatteryGuru.  It is an app that should extend the battery life on your Galaxy Note 3.  I've tried many battery saving apps in the past, and they have all been a let-down because of the ineffectiveness, or their intrusiveness on how we usually use our phones.  But the Snapdragon BatteryGuru seems to hit the sweet spot and in the end, it does actually extend the battery life of the phone.

As the name suggests, it will only be installable on a phone with a Snapdragon processor which means it should work with most Galaxy Note 3's, and most Galaxy S4, but probably not with devices with Exynos processors like Galaxy Note II's.  If you own a Galaxy Note II, or a Galaxy Note 3 with a Exynos processor, there are many battery savers in the Google Play store I have yet to check out.  If you know of one that you swear by and have kept on your device for more than a few weeks, please share in the comments below.

So Snapdragon BatteryGuru.  It is the first battery saving app that I tried that I've kept for over a week.  Even paid ones such as Juice Defender Ultimate, were uninstalled off my device after a few days.  I've actually been running BatteryGuru for about 3 weeks now and for at least how I like to use my device, it does extend the battery life on my phone.  But I must say that the battery savings are limited mostly for times when the phone is idle, especially while you're sleeping.

The Learning Process

So first when you install it, it will tell you that it wants to learn your usage habits for 2 days.  It's a little frustrating because we live in an instant gratification world today, but I kinda liked the anticipation.  What I believe it's doing is that it's learning your usage patterns, your sleeping habits, how often you use apps with push notification, and the refresh patterns of background push services.

After 2 days of collecting that information, what it does is relatively simple.  It turns off your data and wifi while you're sleeping.  Most people aren't going to wake up in the middle of the night to read the emails that come in.  No need to have your Note 3 checking and listening for emails to come in at that time.   And some apps, because of the way they a lot of people like using that app, they are a little too active even though you yourself don't use that app that heavily.  So it regulates that based on your usage and refresh patterns of that app.  Now if you still need to be notified at any hour of the day because your job requires it, there are plenty of options in there to make sure you are still receiving the message notifications as soon as they come in at any time of the day.

And unlike other battery saving apps that do relatively the same thing, BatteryGuru seems to have gotten it right.  I really don't notice any difference in getting my push notifications.  The apps that I expect to be notified of as soon as they come in still do that, while the services that I don't check regularly seem to come in just the same, maybe they come in a few minutes later, but again, only for the ones that I consider non-critical services.

Low Power Mode & Interactivity Power Boost

There are 2 extra features that are worth mentioning.  The low power mode.  Here is a list of all the things it does to save battery, and you can tell it to come on when it reaches below the level of the battery that you specify.  And another feature called inactivity power boost.  After a set amount of time, like 1 hour of your screen being off, it will shut down all wifi and data until you wake the phone up again.  These two features you can enable by widget.  Considering the data and wifi antennas are both very power hungry features to have enabled, this mode will definitely save you a lot of battery, but at the price of convenience of not getting any push notifications until you wake up the phone by pushing the home button.  I personally consider this feature to be too intrusive so I have it disabled.  You are essentially disabling push notifications after your device has been not used for a while.  But considering that this feature can extend the standby time of your device to even a few days, it is good to know that I have this feature to enable for specific days when this feature would be beneficial.

BatteryGuru Tips

One side effect to BatteryGuru regulating how often for example your email is checked.  Your email app might say syncing is disabled.  However, it is because BatteryGuru might just have it disabled at that moment to save battery.  Again, this doesn't seem to get in the way of me being notified in a timely manner when messages come in.  However, you can make changes to how this app behaves in BatteryGuru if you feel that your messages for this app needs to be received as soon as they come in.

Conclusion

If you are a light user of your device, you will see a good noticeable battery gain.  I personally see up to 8 hours of additional standby time on light usage days.  On heavy usage days where I burn through a fully charged battery in 12 hours, I don't see any battery life gain because I don't really give it a chance for it to do it's thing.  In the end, I don't notice any negatives but on some days I get a good amount of battery savings.