• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Seeking a battery monitor to shut system down when too low.

M

mralaska

Lurker
Yesterday for whatever reason my new phablet (Chinese generic sold as Amar brand but identifies itself as alps MR7063H1C2W1), even though plugged into USB, completely discharged the non-accessible battery to "0" without notice which made it very difficult getting it to boot back up. It has been working fine ever since but I am looking for an app to ensure it does not happen again.

I have looked at and installed a lot of battery and power control apps but none of them seem to fit the bill. Most seem aimed at extending the battery which is not my concern. My main function I want is an alert to pop up at 15% power and then shut the phone off if I do not confirm. It seems I may need root access for such an app to be possible which would put me on another search for help but I will cross that bridge as applicable.

I really expected to find this functionality available so I feel I may have missed something. There are some other features that would be nice as a backup because sometimes I neglect to turn off radios that I am not using but I do not want the app to EVER turn anything ON which a lot of the battery extenders tend to want to do.

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
To shut the phone down I'm pretty sure it's gonna need root access but I don't think I've seen an app that will do that. The phone should never let the battery drop to zero but my Nexus 7 seems to do it. Sometimes it's like trying to bring it back from the dead lol so let me know if you find something.
I have a feeling it's gonna be something that's as deep as the kernel but hopefully not.

Another approach would be an app that plays a long loud alarm when you get to say 15% but that's not ideal.
For turning data off while screen is off DS Battery Saver is pretty good. It really extends my standby battery life :thumbup:
 
Thanks. That app would help with some of my aging brain lapses of turning off forgotten radios but my phone never sleeps. On the road it is running GPS and as soon as I get home it is racking up Perk points. It is possible it may have tried to alert me of trouble because Perk likes to push things to the background. If I found an app that gave a loud alarm at 15-20% I would give it a shot to see if it could break through Perk.

I have seen at least one widget that shuts the phone down using root access (but not triggered by battery level) so I think that solution is possible. It is kind of scary for a non-geek to try learning to root on a phone nobody else has but I would be willing to try.

Waking the phone from the dead is a very accurate description, especially when the battery is non-accessible. I just got this phone three days ago so it gave me quite a fright. My prior phones would set off all kinds of alarms and shut stuff down before they would go dead.
 
Gsam battery monitor can provide a lie battery level alarm...you can pick notification sound from whatever you have in your phone. I'd say it's a worthwhile app even without the alarm...handy statistics at your fingertips
 
Thanks. I tried that one and a similar one also and found out they will not give a second alarm until the first alarm is cleared which limits the effectiveness for my primary objective.
 
electricpete said:
Battery notifier BT free
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.larryvgs.battery

The description says it has REPEATING low and high battery alarms. It's a "free version"....I don't know if that means it has ads or maybe it dies after a trial period or hopefully it's just missing features you don't need.
Click to expand...

With it set to repeat the alarm every five minutes this application will give me a chance of catching it before the battery dies and it worked fine when I tested it with Perk running. It appears the free version is fully functional on its own. The paid version offers a few more options of which the ability to loop the alarm might help even more but right now I have the slider set up to start tripping at 50% just to tickle my attention. Thanks!
 
For the benefit of anyone who may be doing a search with a similar issue; I found the final piece of the solution in a sweet app called AutomateIt. It took less than a minute after installation to set it up to shut the phone down at 15% battery power plus I automated a couple other tasks while playing with the settings. [Edit: I did not try it but I later found a similar application called MacroDroid that appears may have worked just as well.]

I found Tasker first but I was afraid to pay for an app that might be too complex to get a handle on right away. AutomateIt lacks the power of Tasker but it is free and super easy to set up for simple "if this happens then do that" type of tasks. Preliminary tests so far have indicated flawless performance.

As mentioned before; to shut the phone using any application will require giving that application root access. This is the first phone I have ever rooted and my first attempt went wrong but I found a one-click solution for my Chinese phone after using Google translate to navigate a Chinese site recommended on XDA forums and found Root Genius.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom