Suggestions and new features

[Lisandro]

Welcome abord Avast Battery Saver!
Being an intensive app user, I have to use tricks and battery savers.
What do I miss in Avast?

• Battery temperature (ºC/ºF)
• Battery full charge time remaing
• Battery capacity (mAh) information
• Into profiles, ability to manage: WiFi, network, GPS, brightness, vibration, haptic, bluetooth, plane mode
• Charge alert: LED, vibration, sound + silence hours
• Battery fast consumption alert: app/services in background with high battery consumption
• Different icon themes/colors
• (?) Screen (dark) while charging
• Root functions: app management, whitelist

[Lisandro]

Back to root options: wakelocks and alarms, or, in other words, apps and services running in background. Besides the screen brightness, I think these are the major battery hogs. Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, Runstatic... A lot of apps are continuously starting.

So, features for hibernation of settings (data, WiFi, Bluetooth), apps and CPU will be welcome imho.

[Ondra Cermak]

Hi Lisandro,

thanks for your feedback, I'm happy that you use the app and think about how we could improve it. We're definitely thinking about some of the things you mentioned, but we need to be very careful with integrating them, because we're trying to make the app easy to use for people without much experience (i.e. not geeks like us) and we don't want to overwhelm people with options.

Ondra

[Lisandro]

We don't want to overwhelm people with options.

Thanks for your return. People on Avast for PC has passed the same situation for the last years. Joining the settings and creating "Advanced settings" tab could be a solution. There are some "complicated" app that were never concerned about what we worry about. For instance, the Titanium Backup interface. The app is superb. The interface is... whatever...
Other common error in all battery savers round is the "intense" cross promotion among apps. I think I don't need to make examples of that... But when our mobile family is growing, we need, I think, to find the ballance between cross promotion and bothering the user with other apps: browser, locker, battery, file cleaner, torch...

[REDACTED]

I think this are great ideas - especially the option to activate the plane mode or to deactivate the mobile phone network so that in the night would be no disturbance because of sms

[YLAP]

I think it would be great, if avast implemented something like Pixel Battery Saver - great addition for AMOLED based screens, also it works on Android 5.* and does it's job then you need to maximise battery life with screen on

[Lisandro]

Cermak, after being using ABS last month I suggest:

1. A way to customize which settings won't be touched. I mean, some users don't like *any* change on timeout (regardless the battery level), others the WiFi status, others the screen brightness. I know that some users preferences will "kill" the effectiveness of ABS. But isn't it better to have it at low power as uninstalling it? For me, do not touch the timeout! I uninstall *any* battery app that touches it

2. I think the profiles should admit more than one WiFi. I have more than once at work and some of my relatives houses could be consider my home too. Right now, the profile admits only one WiFi.

3. As the screen is one of the most battery hunger item, why don't you take a look in other brightness managers and have some ideais? For instance, the "automatic" level is always a bit more than it should. Why don't you have an "automatic level - x %" (the user will have the best of the both worlds: adaptive brightness and simultaneously saving battery. Also allow + % (I know, it's not battery friendly, but, again, users could be angry with the app IF the brightness (even the automatic) is not enough.

4. A % of energy savings compared to the non tweaked (or standard) situation. I mean, the user would be happy if he/she knows is saving 10% or 20% of the juice IF he/she was not using the app. This will teach the users which options are most battery saver and the ones which are, more or less, not that efficient.

What do you think?

[Ondra Cermak]

Hi Lisandro,

thanks for your suggestions,

1. We could respect the user's screen timeout when creating the profiles, like we do for some other settings (mobile data, bt, vibration), but then there's the question of actually saving battery. It's always about the balance between saving and not making the user angry. There might be a button, like "optimize my profiles", that would do what we think it's best, but only after user action, but we'd have to think about that. Having some kind of "ignore this setting" would, imho, make the UI too complicated.

2. We actually have it like that internally, but decided not to use it for now and only allow one wifi. We'll see in the future if we use it or not

3. Also an idea we had before, but just didn't implement it, yet (I'm not saying we will for sure, but there's always a possibility).

4. We had something like this before, when we had the "chart" on the dashboard, where people could compare the profile efficiency compared to "not saving at all", but we decided to simplify the dashboard a bit and this piece of information got lost. We're thinking about bringing some of the removed features back, just need to fit them somewhere and have some time for implementing that.

Ondra

[Lisandro]

1. We could respect the user's screen timeout when creating the profiles, like we do for some other settings (mobile data, bt, vibration), but then there's the question of actually saving battery. It's always about the balance between saving and not making the user angry. There might be a button, like "optimize my profiles", that would do what we think it's best, but only after user action, but we'd have to think about that. Having some kind of "ignore this setting" would, imho, make the UI too complicated.

Agree. No UI complications. But a button like "optimize my profiles" for battery OR balanced would be good. Common users could just opt and go ahead.

2. We actually have it like that internally, but decided not to use it for now and only allow one wifi. We'll see in the future if we use it or not

Well, like an user, I'd rather the opposite.

3. Also an idea we had before, but just didn't implement it, yet (I'm not saying we will for sure, but there's always a possibility).

I'll wait then...

4. We had something like this before, when we had the "chart" on the dashboard, where people could compare the profile efficiency compared to "not saving at all", but we decided to simplify the dashboard a bit and this piece of information got lost. We're thinking about bringing some of the removed features back, just need to fit them somewhere and have some time for implementing that.

Maybe the better would be not put this in the dashboard, but rather inside an "Advanced settings" tab deeper in the interface.