We’ve seen how various companies have come up with different methods of saving battery life on smartphones. However this usually comes at the expense of performance and functionality. However it appears that over at the University of Waterloo, researchers have actually managed to create an app that will extend smartphone battery life without an impact on performance.This app is pretty much designed with Android phones in mind, namely because it will take advantage of the built-in multi-window feature. Basically what this app does is that whenever apps are open via multi-window, it will reduce the brightness levels of non-critical apps, which in turn will help reduce the amount of battery the phone’s display is draining.
According to Kshirasagar Naik, a professor at the university’s Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty, “We have developed an app which users can install on their devices and use to reduce the brightness of non-critical applications. So, when you’re interacting with one application, the brightness of the other window goes down thereby reduces the energy consumption of the device.”
Based on their testing of their app with 200 smartphone users, it was discovered that the app managed to extend battery life by as little as 10%, but as much as 25%. Unfortunately the app cannot be downloaded by the public at the moment, plus there are also limitations to the app, namely how it works only on OLEDs and not LCDs. However it is an interesting feature and one that hopefully Google or other Android OEMs will take into consideration as a feature in the future.
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