Battery life is one of the first things that we think about when we purchase a smartphone and continues on our minds throughout the lifespan of our devices. Manufacturers work hard to fit the biggest batteries possible in the design for each device they produce. It seems that battery life is on the forefront of everyone’s tech radar.
Now, Qualcomm, the major producer of SoC’s for some of the biggest names in the smartphone industry, has introduced an application that aims to take the guesswork out of getting the most out of your Snapdragon-powered smartphone’s battery on a day-to-day basis. The application is called Snapdragon BatteryGuru and is still in beta at this point.
The application accomplishes its goals by monitoring basically everything that you do on your Snapdragon-powered device and takes it to heart. Over the course of two-four days after you install and set-up the application it will learn from how you operate your device and take in to account your locations, and behaviors while using your gadget. It, for instance, will learn when and where you are most likely to be connected to Wi-Fi or at what times of the day you may be away from a hot-spot and more prone to using your 3G/4G connection and then do the job of turning your Wi-Fi adapter on and off based upon this data.
“The software learns where and when you use various applications. In addition, it monitors data connections those applications make when you’re not using your device. It will then learn the optimal times for each app to refresh data based on your unique patterns, allowing the apps to “sync”, or refresh, when you’re likely to use them and turning refresh off the rest of the time.” -BatteryGuru Q&A
After the learning period is complete, the application will inform you that it is ready to start extending the life of your battery. At this point, the application will run in the background on your device, optimizing your battery’s performance without disabling any smartphone functionality. In the application’s information, it states that the app requires zero user configuration, “Snapdragon BatteryGuru automatically learns and adjusts the smartphone settings so you don’t have to.”
Snapdragon BatteryGuru is still in beta at this time and supports the majority of Snapdragon powered devices in North America and Europe with expansion promised to more smartphones and regions that are not currently supported. I have just now installed the app on my very own Nexus 4, so we will see how it goes after my phone is initiated through the “introduction process”. Go grab this one for your own Snapdragon-powered smartphone and let us know how it works for you in the comments.
