Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Need a Dumb-phone

My smart phone, a Samsung Verizon Android Galaxy Nexus running the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, has become my latest obsession.

Specifically, I've been trying to figure out why I am always running out of power.   

Suspect #1 is the screen.  It's big, it's bright, it's super-amoled, and, according to my battery discharge chart, it's the largest consumer of  my power.  The solution for this is simple; turn down the brightness and decrease the screen timeout time.  Now that the screen's radiance is gone and the screen turns off seconds after you turn it on, you should see an immediate improvement in the phone's power performance.

Suspect #2 is data communication.  This includes the phone searching for and using 2G, 3G, 4G, wifi and bluetooth networks.  The solution for this is to turn them all off.  If that is a bit harsh, turn your network down to the oldest technology.  Who cares if you have 4G, use 2G.  While it may take you twice as long to download your email, hopefully it'll also cut your power consumption by one-half.  I have no idea if that's the case.

Suspect #3, apps.  These wonderful tools which entertain, inform, and increase your productivity do not run on love.  In the course of processing data, saving your settings and communicating with the cloud, apps use power.  The only reasonable thing to do for this issue is to kill all running apps.  I recommend uninstalling all apps.  When you want to use an app - plug the phone into the charger, download the app, use the app, and then uninstall. 

After you take care of the 3 suspects mentioned above, you will be left with a phone with maximum power capacity.

This brings me to my latest app idea.  There should be a simple toggle app that will turn my phone into a dumb-phone.  When turned on, all you can do is make phone calls.  Well, maybe the app would also allow texting.  We're not barbarians after all.

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