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Use "Blocking Mode" to save battery when you're asleep.

J

Jan Shim

Newbie
Ever since I upgraded to Jelly Bean, I have found Blocking Mode to be useful in a number of ways especially turning off all notifications, calls and even SMS when you're asleep. It's a great way to conserve battery overnight when you need the phone least. I'm a professional photographer and there's no such thing as an urgent last minute photo shoot that I need to drag myself out of bed for. Family emergency exceptions are settable (see bottom of screen shot). Source: Shimworld

screenshot_2012-10-15-07-33-40.png
 
Yeah, it's a great feature, I use it a lot as well. They did a great work implementing it, though they should have implemented it with ICS as well, it would have saved me a few times before :P
 
Apparently none of you people have ever had family emergencies because it has been my experience that everything bad always happens in the middle of the night and they don't always come from numbers you know, in fact almost never. I prefer not to risk that just to prolong my battery. Besides, why wouldn't you just plug your phone in when you're sleeping? It is a nice feature though for those who still want to use it.
 
If I wished to cut off all contact I'd just use good old airplane mode.

Although I have actually used the blocking feature once.
 
Well, I don't use it to "block" incoming calls, but just to block notifications and LED. My phone is always plugged to the main overnight.
 
sherlock5545 said:
Well, I don't use it to "block" incoming calls, but just to block notifications and LED. My phone is always plugged to the main overnight.
Click to expand...

I use Tasker to turn off my audio. Light Manager does my LED but this looks good for LED. The only issue is Light Manager lets me change the colour on a per app basis.
 
clitrenta said:
Apparently none of you people have ever had family emergencies because it has been my experience that everything bad always happens in the middle of the night and they don't always come from numbers you know, in fact almost never. I prefer not to risk that just to prolong my battery. Besides, why wouldn't you just plug your phone in when you're sleeping? It is a nice feature though for those who still want to use it.
Click to expand...

For family emergencies they call the house which is more effective (because it's a lot louder to wake everyone up). I do not sleep with the cell phone next to me or in the same room so draining battery overnight serves no real purpose in my case. But when I travel abroad for overnight work (rarely), it's as simple as disabling Blocking Mode.
 
SUroot said:
You could set them as "Allowed contacts" as per the screenshot.
Click to expand...

I have added my family contacts to this but it's kinda useless because I do not sleep with the phone in the room. I think this stems from the years of much publicised ill effects of having electronic items in the vicinity. In the case of en emergency, family members are expected to call the house.

But I imagine the combination of settings is great for users in an office environment when you need to quickly tone down the phone's sometimes hyperactive notifications (social, email, and what not) during a meeting.
 
One problem I have had with blocking mode is that allowed contacts were getting blocked.

I found the cause were contacts that had several "links". I had to edit the contacts and un-link everything and add the data manually, then it let them through the "block"
 
My main issue is if I have it on all the time, I have a persistent notification, even if its not within the time I want it to be active. So I have to manually turn it on and off.
 
SUroot said:
My main issue is if I have it on all the time, I have a persistent notification, even if its not within the time I want it to be active. So I have to manually turn it on and off.
Click to expand...
That's the same issue I have as well, I wish we could disable the notification icon, at least outside the time it should be active.
 
Yes. I mean, it would make sense, come the pre-determined hours arrival, that the notification is active, but not without.
 
There's another thread on here about this, but Verizon did disable/hide this feature. However, if you download an app from the Play Store called Quickshortcutmaker, you can create a shortcut that points to the feature. And... you don't have to be rooted to get it to work.

I'm on Verizon and have created a shortcut to give me access to Blocking Mode. It works well. My only gripe with it so far is that it leaves an icon on the status bar that I'd rather not see. I've not found a way to get rid of it as Blocking Mode doesn't seem to have the option of not displaying it.
 
Some launchers allow shortcuts also. I have Apex launcher on my Verizon S3 and all you have to do is:

Longpress on a blank area / Shortcuts / Activities / Settings / Blocking Mode (2 entries, choose either one)
 
I have a question since I am on Verizon. Does downloading Quickshortcutmaker just to use blocking mode make it any different than just using airplane mode? Do I need blocking mode?
 
works on Nova Prime Launcher too!


Doit2it said:
Some launchers allow shortcuts also. I have Apex launcher on my Verizon S3 and all you have to do is:

Longpress on a blank area / Shortcuts / Activities / Settings / Blocking Mode (2 entries, choose either one)
Click to expand...
 
My main issue is if I have it on all the time, I have a persistent notification, even if its not within the time I want it to be active. So I have to manually turn it on and off.
Click to expand...
It seems there is no persistent notification anymore on 4.1.2
 
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