Android 7.0 Nougat Tip: Manage Battery Life

Android 7.0 Nougat Tip: Manage Battery Life

Android 7.0 Nougat includes various features for improving the battery life of your device, many of which work automatically in the background. That said, you can still customize these features according to your needs.

Some of the key settings to look at include:

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Display

The most obvious place to start is Display settings. Here you can configure such settings as:

Brightness level. This control lets you manually configure the brightness level of the screen. This is also available from the notification shade.

display-settings

Adaptive brightness. This option can help improve battery life by adjusting the screen brightness to meet the needs of the available light.

Sleep. Here, you can determine how quickly the screen shuts down after inactivity—from 15 seconds to 30 minutes—with lower values obviously offering better battery life.

Wireless and network

This isn’t unique to Android, but as a reminder, you can get better battery life by disable radios like those for cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The best savings can be had by using Airplane mode, which toggles all three. But many even swear by disabling cellular and/or Wi-Fi from time to time because those radios are constantly seeking a better connection which, yes, impacts the battery.

Battery

Android’s Battery settings is your central location for monitoring battery usage and determining which apps are using the most battery. You can also access other utilities from here, including Battery saver (discussed below) and Battery optimization, which is tied to the Android Doze feature (also described below).

battery-settings

Battery saver

Available from Battery settings, this feature automatically kicks in at 5 percent or 15 percent battery life (your choice) and reduces performance and system and app capabilities in order to preserve battery life. You can also disable it if you’d like or turn it on manually.

battery-saver

When Batter saver is enabled, the Android status bar and system toolbar are colored orange-red.

battery-saver-on

Note: You can also toggle Battery saver from the Battery usage shade: To access this switch, open the Notification shade and then tap the Battery icon.

Doze

Doze works like Standby on a PC: It’s a system service that ensures that battery usage is minimal when the device isn’t being used, isn’t plugged into power, and the display is off. While dozing, only high-priority notifications—SMS messages. phone calls, alarms, and so on—are allowed through.

The nicest thing about this technology is that you don’t have to do a thing: It just works in the background.

Doze debuted in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but it’s gotten even better in Android 7.0 Nougat: it works more efficiently than before, as you might expect, but it also works while you are moving. So if you’re walking around or whatever, and your phone is in your pocket, Doze will make sure it gets its beauty sleep.

doze

Note: Android lets you opt your favorite apps out of Doze so that they can notify you even when the system is sleeping. To do so—at the expense of battery life, of course—navigate to Battery settings and choose Menu (“…”) and then Battery optimization. Then, display the All Apps view, tap the correct app, and choose “Don’t optimize.”

 

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