BatteryXL Battery Doubler, a Task Killer Android App to Help Battery Life
by Paul Wilks
Jun 20, 2011 9:58 AM –
Install
BatteryXL Battery Doubler is a simple yet effective task and power management tool. It allows you to select and shut down running tasks, in addition to controlling power-hungry elements of your phone such as brightness, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth. It doesn’t perform anything your phone cannot already do, however it puts all these controls in one easy-to-use app, instead of having to scoot about your phone making adjustments.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Low maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Careful use can increase battery life, great if you are away from a charger for a while.
- Performs a number of handy power-control functions.
- Lets you select which apps to kill.
- Provides a kill-all widget.
- Simple, easy to use interface.
Cons
- Not as customizable as paid for apps such as JuiceDefender.
- Widget graphics were a bit off.
Features:
BatteryXL is a superb little application for managing tasks and boosting battery life on your Android. Tabbed headings at the top of the screen are split between Tasks and Settings. Beneath Tasks you have a list of all the apps which are currently running and a button to kill all these apps. I found it quite surprising which apps were running- especially as some I hadn’t used for a few days- yet there they were draining my battery without me even using it! You can press and hold tasks individually, and you are given a menu: Kill, Ignore, Select/Unselect, Switch To, Uninstall and Detail/Force Stop. I thought this was a nice touch which lets you have complete control over that particular app. You have a large button at the top of the Tasks screen which lets you kill all the apps in one go.
On the Settings tab there is an amalgamation of power settings for you to adjust. Brightness is obviously a big consumer of your battery and you can adjust that setting here. You can additionally adjust sound and vibration, volume control, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. A great feature here is to customize these settings, it allows you to view and sort a host of further hidden settings including; Mobile data, screen timeout, auto rotation, airplane mode and master volume controls. Therefore there are a host of useful additions here that can remain hidden or come up as a selectable option under your Settings tab. This tab will additionally show you how much memory is free on your phone. What BatteryXL does well is bring a host of settings, widgets and options right into one small, simple app. It isn’t revolutionary, and there is debate as to whether Task Killers are useful at all, especially with newer smartphones.
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BatteryXL – Task Killer List
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BatteryXL – Task List Menu
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BatteryXL – Settings List
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BatteryXL – Customizable Settings List
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BatteryXL – Widget
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BatteryXL – Sharing options
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BatteryXL – Preferences
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BatteryXL – Settings
Usefulness:
Well one side of the debate as linked above would suggest the task-killing element of the application isn’t particularly useful, but all the settings sat within this app is very useful. It lets you adjust all these within one easy interface, instead of having to go into the different Android settings individually.
Generally we recommend folks with Android 2.1 (Eclair) or lower should download and use task killer apps, however, if you have Android 2.2 (Froyo) or higher, it becomes counter-productive to “kill” apps.
Ease of Use:
The two tabs and array of basic settings available in one place makes this app very easy to use. The app is very customizable so you can sort the functions the way you want to, whatever is convenient to your personal phone usage.
Frequently Used:
My phone is usually in quite a consistent environment- if I’m working at home it’ll just sit in a dock, so it can be as bright and power hungry as it likes. However, if you are out and about a lot this app could be a great app to refer to a few times a day to kill apps you aren’t using, monitor which ones are hungrier than others and change your settings depending on where you are.
Interface:
The interface is very simple and easy to understand. It’s not cutting edge UI, it’s functional yet simplistic. The widget, which allows you to kill-all running tasks works well, but looked awful on my home screen.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Task Management,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Battery Power Saving App,
Save Battery Power,
task killer,
Task Killer Debate,
Task Manager
Categorised in: Productivity, Tools, Utilities
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