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Comment by frandroid | Hacker News Reader

I remember once when I was roaming at exhorbitant cost, I was regularly turning off data to save money and my battery life was greatly improved. I wish I could have finer control on the polling frequency and volume of most apps...

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It should be doable to build an Android app that turns data on every X minutes. Does such a thing already exist ? Does it really help with battery ?

Tasker can do it, but it might require a rooted phone to be able to toggle the mobile data setting.

Personally, I tried to get it to do a "turn data on when I have the display on, otherwise turn data on every X minutes/hours", but handling all the corner cases was difficult.

Plus, programming in the Tasker UI is fiddly.

According to this [1] StackOverflow answer there is no API support for enabling/disabling mobile data, but it can be done using reflection. Process requires CHANGE_NETWORK_STATE permission.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12535101/how-can-i-turn-o...

Yes, and yes. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gyagapen.c...

It essentially disconnects data when screen is off (the algorithm is a bit more complex, but that's the basic idea). Especially in areas where my phone passes between 2G/3G/noSignal often, I see much improved battery life.

This is one of the major things that JuiceDefender on Android phones did, though the app has apparently been abandoned (last updated more than 3 years ago). I suspect that there are newer apps doing the same things, at least on rooted phones.

JuiceDefender does this. It can also disable Bluetooth until you start to make a call, and other tricks. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.latedroid....

Sony Xperia devices have a Stamina mode that turns off data and wifi right after the screen is turned off. Big difference in battery life if one is not really interested in push notifications, etc.

+1 for this, my z3 compact with stamina mode on lasts almost a full week(!) even though i do a few calls, check emails, browse a bit etc. Performance while using it actively is still 100%, so not like many other lame battery saving modes that reduces the frame rate to 1fps and brightness to 0.01% making the phone unusable.

Only drawback is that background downloads get canceled when the screen dies but i don't have any downloads outlasting my active usage sessions anyway so i don't care really. Many people wouldn't like missing the push notifications from the mailbox but for me that is just another good reason to activate it.

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