Save Android phone battery life with Tasker

Saving battery life is a must for business users and IT pros when it comes to an essential tool - your smartphone. Derek Schauland recommends Tasker to help optimize Android devices.

For many business users and IT pros, myself included, our smartphones are essential to the way we work and must always be available. I have noticed with the HTC EVO Android phone that htc battery consumption is a huge concern, and this doesn't mean just under heavy usage. With all the additional capabilities, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and 3 and 4G, the battery can quickly fade. Then I found Tasker in the Android Market. It takes a little getting used to and some planning to get it just right for you, but can make a world of difference in terms of battery life as well as customize other features of your phone.

What is Tasker?

Tasker is an application that runs in the background and monitors certain conditions on your Android device. When one of the chosen conditions is met, actions you have selected can be executed. In reality, it works as a set of macros for an Android phone. The conditions are almost infinite and actions can be really anything you can imagine. Started off slow and still learning

When I downloaded Tasker, I was reading a post about cell phone battery life on the HTC EVO while trying to find a way to get it under control. After some investigating, I found a way to keep things working smoothly by reducing consumption. I created a task that checks the orientation of the phone. If the phone is face down, it switches to airplane mode. This way, when the phone is placed face down, the constant search for a signal goes away, improving battery life.

While the idea of Airplane Mode is great, there are things that still need to get my attention while my phone is face down. Simply ignoring incoming calls or texts is not the best way to go through the work day. For this I created a similar task that only runs between 8am and 6pm and when the phone is face down. When this is true, Tasker sets Airplane Mode to On to conserve motorola battery, but also toggles Airplane Mode off every 10 minutes to check for new alerts.

One last task I discovered recently with regard to nokia battery usage relates to signal strength. If I am in an area where I know there is zero signal strength for my phone, which happened while attending an event in Seattle recently, the phone should not be looking for a signal and draining the lg battery. The first day of the event, I went to breakfast and in the hour or so I was in the basement conference area, my phone was over half way to a dead battery.

Using Tasker, I created a task that triggers when signal strength is zero and switches on Airplane Mode. When this condition is no longer true, Airplane Mode is switched off.