Android App of the Day: Juice Defender

Posted by Amy Eichelberg

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

For anyone who has ever owned a smartphone it feels like you are constantly in search of your charger due to poor battery life. Like so many fellow smartphone users out there, my battery is almost always near death, which is both annoying and very inconvenient. If this sounds familiar, then maybe the Juice Defender application for Android will help you too. Juice Defender is a free app that claims to provide “extra hours of precious battery life”, and after spending some quality time with the app it does just that.

Pros:

5 Preset Profiles available (from default mode to full customization)
Intuitive User Interface
Home screen Battery Widgets
Mobile Data toggle automation
2G/3G toggle automation
WiFi toggle automation + Auto-Disabling option
Location-aware WiFi Control (e.g. enable WiFi only at home/work, disable it otherwise)
Battery Consumption Optimization (e.g. when screen off, battery under threshold, etc.)
Comprehensive Connectivity Scheduling (regular schedule, night time/peak time, week days/weekends)
Connectivity Control for Specific Apps with Interactive Training mode
CPU scaling when phone is idle
Smart Brightness control
Bluetooth control with Automatic Reconnect
Full Activity Log

Cons:

Juice Defender companion app, Ultimate Juice will cost you $4.99

How it works:

Juice Defender disables battery draining functions on your device (like 3G and Wi-Fi) whenever your device goes into idle mode. Idle mode is whenever your screen turns off. Simply turn the screen back on and the radios click back to life. Additionally, Juice Defender manages your apps and scales back the CPU while your phone is in idle mode. After trying out the basic free version of Juice Defender and seeing the drastic change in battery life, I will most certainly be investing into the Ultimate Juice companion app. Ultimate Juice promises a wider variety of battery management features and settings.

Battery improvement will vary from device and will depend on what type of apps you run on a daily basis. I noticed that with just Juice Defender alone it interferes when I use any type of streaming app, like Pandora. With Ultimate Juice I would be able to change the settings to keep Wi-Fi on for select apps or when tethering.

Conclusion: As a little experiment, I charged up my device overnight and ran it as normal throughout the day marking my battery life at noon and again at 6pm. Without Juice Defender I was at 60% battery life by noon and down to 10% by 6pm. Back to the charging dock by 6:10pm. With the Juice Defender app ready to go the following day, I was surprisingly still at 80% battery life at noon and only down to 65% by 6pm. I was really impressed. I have tried several other apps that claim to protect your battery life, but none have shown this kind of significant improvement. If you are unhappy with your battery life, then don’t waste any more time attached to your charger. Give Juice Defender a try, and let us know how it treats you.