Tip of the Week: Get More Battery Life Out of Your Android Device With Doze Feature

The more you use your device, the more often you reach for your charger for an afternoon plug-in session. For business owners who are increasingly using their smartphones as their primary work device, a short battery lifespan can impact effectiveness and productivity. Enter Android Doze, a new feature that could improve your battery life.

Doze helps your phone increase battery life by disabling an application feature known as wakelock. Wakelocks keep the device from entering the energy-conserving sleep mode, as this mode can interfere with applications and device functions. Wakelock was initially intended for use with fitness trackers and other applications that needed to function while the screen was deactivated. However, many app developers took advantage of wakelock to enhance their own applications with notorious battery-killing near-constant notifications (like Facebook).

As a result, these app developers have nullified any power-saving capabilities that wakelocks were intended to deliver. Doze seeks to resolve this problem by disabling wakelock and network access once the phone isn't used for a while. Doze keeps your applications from draining your phone’s energy while still allowing the apps to periodically update during “maintenance windows.”

Android has provided users the ability to customize their Doze settings, allowing the user to decide which apps are affected by the feature. To access this customization:

• Open Settings.
• Navigate to Battery.
• Select Battery optimization from the Menu button.
• Select All apps from the top-of-screen drop-down menu.

Doze will automatically affect most of your applications by default in order to optimize the battery. However, if there’s an app that you don’t want to connect to Doze, you can always switch the setting to Don't optimize.

Doze also has third-party apps designed to automatically customize their functionality. For example, Doze Settings Editor can turn Doze off when the phone moves a certain distance. Keep in mind that this particular app only works with Android Marshmallow, though.

All of this additional battery life will surely be able to provide you a better user experience. What do you plan on doing with all of your extra battery life? Let us know in the comments.

Let Smart Services position your agency for tomorrow’s technological challenges. For 25 years, Smart Services has helped agencies across the U.S. face a changing environment by providing innovative technology solutions that allow agencies to focus on growing their business. MyAgency Cloud, our complete cloud solution, covers all your technology needs in the cloud or at your agency. In today’s competitive environment, it’s time to make your agency technology a strategic asset, instead of a liability. Let us show you how. To learn more, please call our expert agency technology advisor at 586-258-0650.