Juice Defender Ultimate Yea or Nay?

[Phienyx]

Is there anyone out there that is more tech savvy than I who can tell me if Juice Defender is useful or if it is a waste of time? I'm seeing/hearing alot of opinion and whatnot, but no technically sound advice.

 

[sonofaresiii]

Short answer:
It's not really an issue of "does it work", it's more an issue of "is it right for you." Best advice is to try it out and see if you like it.

A little more in-depth response:
I've tried it out, and it completely depends on how you use your phone. Ultimately, the most useful features have to do with shutting off connections when you're not using them. If you're someone that uses your phone sporadically, meaning you regularly leave it unused for hours at a time, it'll be good for you to have those connections shut down, and only receive e-mails/updates/IMs when you specifically want to check them. However, the way I prefer to use my phone is to instantly receive updates/messages/e-mails etc. and I use my phone very frequently... even during class or whatnot, I'm constantly checking my phone-- meaning that not only was having connections disabled annoying, but having to shut down/turn on connections rapidly drained my battery even more.

So for me, it was not useful. For others, it's extremely useful. Again, I say try it out (start with the free version) and see if you're getting better battery life. It has a nice indicator of how much battery life it's saving you... I think it uses around .2 times the battery, so unless it's indicating that it saves you more than 1.2x battery, it's not doing you any good.

There's no correct answer on this (as opposed to, say, using task killers, where there's a definite right answer, and you either choose to accept it or not).

 

[Phienyx]

Short answer:
It's not really an issue of "does it work", it's more an issue of "is it right for you." Best advice is to try it out and see if you like it.

A little more in-depth response:
I've tried it out, and it completely depends on how you use your phone. Ultimately, the most useful features have to do with shutting off connections when you're not using them. If you're someone that uses your phone sporadically, meaning you regularly leave it unused for hours at a time, it'll be good for you to have those connections shut down, and only receive e-mails/updates/IMs when you specifically want to check them. However, the way I prefer to use my phone is to instantly receive updates/messages/e-mails etc. and I use my phone very frequently... even during class or whatnot, I'm constantly checking my phone-- meaning that not only was having connections disabled annoying, but having to shut down/turn on connections rapidly drained my battery even more.

So for me, it was not useful. For others, it's extremely useful. Again, I say try it out (start with the free version) and see if you're getting better battery life. It has a nice indicator of how much battery life it's saving you... I think it uses around .2 times the battery, so unless it's indicating that it saves you more than 1.2x battery, it's not doing you any good.

There's no correct answer on this (as opposed to, say, using task killers, where there's a definite right answer, and you either choose to accept it or not).

Thanks, that helps me out a bit.

....now on the question of task killers? What is your take on those? I've heard that as of 2.2, they're not really necessary for the average user.

 

[sonofaresiii]

They're not necessary for anyone, average or otherwise. Once in a great while an app may need to be killed, and Android has an option built in for that. Plenty of good threads around that explain it all.