Finally rooted, now battery life through the roof!

[Methos1979]

Just an FYI for those that might not follow the All Things Root sub-forum for the HD Maxx, you can now root your phone directly from JB 4.1.2. It is beyond easy and after downloading the drivers the actual root process takes about a minute. My phone is heavily customized with Nova Prime Launcher and all kinds of widgets and what not and the process was smooth and flawless.

I rooted for pretty much just one reason - to be able to program the phone to automatically reboot daily using Tasker, which works very well, btw. But the best thing is the increased battery life of my phone. It's through the roof. I'm a heavy user - surfing, texting, calls, and streaming music at least 8-hours a day at work. I would typically go a whole day with this much usage and still have 10-15% of battery at the end of an 18-hour day. But lately I'm using the phone just as much and still have 50% of battery left.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with this unforeseen development and so very glad I decided to root the phone. Just thought I'd share the wealth in case you were looking for a good reason to root your phone.

 

[seVer]

glad to see a positive outcome, but it's highly unlikely that root is the cause of that. it'd be like removing the cat converters from your car's exhaust and saying "wow, I get more radio stations!" I rooted the other day, and my battery life is pretty much the same.

 

[Methos1979]

I can't imagine what else it could be. I literally changed nothing else on the phone and to gain that much battery time as soon as I root, it has to be that. I didn't 'freeze' or get rid of any of the Verizon bloat and every program I had remains on the phone and my usage, if anything, has gone up.

I'm going to check out some other root sub-forums to see if others are reporting increased battery life.

 

[PowrDroid]

I rooted for pretty much just one reason - to be able to program the phone to automatically reboot daily using Tasker, which works very well, btw. But the best thing is the increased battery life of my phone. It's through the roof. I'm a heavy user - surfing, texting, calls, and streaming music at least 8-hours a day at work. I would typically go a whole day with this much usage and still have 10-15% of battery at the end of an 18-hour day. But lately I'm using the phone just as much and still have 50% of battery left.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with this unforeseen development and so very glad I decided to root the phone. Just thought I'd share the wealth in case you were looking for a good reason to root your phone.

So you schedule Tasker to 'reboot' your phone at the same time each day? What do you mean by reboot? A hard power off/on? Or something else?

I've been looking at Tasker and thinking of all the cool stuff I could do with it but can't think of a really compelling reason to get it. What else do you do with Tasker?

 

[Methos1979]

So you schedule Tasker to 'reboot' your phone at the same time each day? What do you mean by reboot? A hard power off/on? Or something else?

I've been looking at Tasker and thinking of all the cool stuff I could do with it but can't think of a really compelling reason to get it. What else do you do with Tasker?

There is just a TON of things you can do with Tasker. The problem is, it takes a whole lot of learning to program (unless you already are familiar with programming) and learning the Tasker interface to get really good at it, which I admit I am not. There is a 'beginner' mode that makes programming simple tasks fairly simple. I am still in this mode. With our phones, a good many of the things you can use Tasker to perform are already available for us with Smart Actions. But there were some things that Smart Actions could not do so I went ahead and bought Tasker.

I have written probably 10 programs with it. I have written two reboot programs so far. The first one just had my phone reboot itself (the equivalent of a hard boot) at 8:45 in the morning. The problem with this is I slept through it and it turns off my Dock Clock program. So I programmed another one that from a certain time frame at night when I plug into AC, the program Dock Clock get's loaded. Then when I unplug from AC in the morning it kills the Dock Clock app and reboot's the phone.

But I'm going to rewrite this program as well because I got to thinking, what if I have an emergency in the middle of the night (like a fire or intruder) and need to call for help. I unplug my phone and then it automatically reboots and I have to wait a few minutes wasting potentially critical time. So I'm going to add a variable prompting statement that when I disconnect it offers me a chance to cancel the reboot within a certain amount of time - say 10 seconds. If I don't cancel by pressing a menu button (that I'll create in Tasker) it will just reboot on it's own.

Other programs I've written are things like sending automated text messages to my wife when I wake up in the morning, automatically loading certain music programs and and playing certain songs or playlists when it detects connection to certain Bluetooth devices, increasing screen brightness when loading certain programs, that kind of thing. It's a pretty powerful tool, but unless you are really into programming then you can do most things with the Smart Action ap.

 

[Lowrider1]

glad to see a positive outcome, but it's highly unlikely that root is the cause of that. it'd be like removing the cat converters from your car's exhaust and saying "wow, I get more radio stations!" I rooted the other day, and my battery life is pretty much the same.

did you freeze any apps? I can't imagine not getting an extensive battery life increase.