The battery in the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone is supposed to last for 18 hours on standby, 10 hours if you're talking, eight hours if you're playing a video. We've been lucky if ours lasted half that. A free app called Greenify, along with some basic adjustments, has made a big difference.
Greenify for Android phones hibernates any apps you don't need to have running. Our phone stays on for at least 18 hours now, with light use. Some apps, such as the Amazon Kindle app, take a little longer to load with Greenify running in the background, but that's better than a phone that dies when you don't expect it.
Before Greenify, we tried several other battery life extenders: Wavelock Detector, GSam Battery Monitor and Watchdog Task Manage among them. All gave us information but didn't fix the problem. In fact, having information about what's causing your battery life problem tempts you to attempt a "forced close" of a whole bunch of apps, which can make your phone unstable. (Ours got so freaky we had to turn it off a couple of times.)
In previous columns, we've recommended Battery Doctor, but it has not proved satisfactory since then. It routinely closes the apps we have running, but they come back a few minutes later. In desperation, we turned to HelpHelpNow.com, a tech support site. Kenny, the owner, told us that Greenify is the only one that works.
We had been puzzling over poor battery life for months. Sure, we had turned off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, maximum screen brightness and location services when we didn't need them. But that's just for starters. We should have set our screen to turn off after a minute; ours went off after 10 minutes. We used to have "live" wallpaper animation, but that also eats up the battery.
Here's the dumbest thing of all. We didn't know we weren't exiting apps when we tapped our home button; they were all still there running in the background. To get rid of them, hold the home button for a few seconds and then tap "X." On other Android phones, tap the multitasking button.
On the iPhone or iPad, hit the home button twice, and then swipe the apps into oblivion with a wave of your hand. To find out what's hogging an iPhone's battery, tap "settings," then "general," then "battery usage."
THE SHARING ECONOMY
Sharing your car, couch and kitchen are all part of the so-called "sharing economy."
First we tried the Uber limo service -- nice but expensive. Uber X is the cheaper version. The drivers are regular people who use their cars as taxis. To feel safe, you can check the driver's rating, but they can also rate you. Bad passengers -- for instance people who repeatedly fail to show up for the ride they order -- are rated as bad passengers.
We were miffed recently when our phone went dead and we couldn't use our Uber app. Uber X would have cost about $25 for a long ride from the airport; the regular taxi we had to use instead charged us $100 -- not counting tip.
The last Uber X driver we used happened to be a driver for Lyft as well. This is a rival service. The driver said he likes Uber better because Lyft always tells the customer he'll be there in two minutes, no matter how far away he is.
Our conversation with the Uber driver sparked a discussion of other parts of the sharing economy. We told him about Eat This, which lets you use your home as a restaurant. "My wife's a great cook [of Iraqi food]," he said.
To qualify you as a host, an Eat This manager checks your home environment and eats a meal with you. A lot of the people who sign up as hosts are professional chefs or food bloggers or are passionate about recipes. Some offer cooking lessons as part of the whole experience.
But be sure to send a message to your host with any questions. We signed up and were then told the location was a fourth-floor walk-up, but that was only after we had already paid. (Fortunately, it was an easy cancellation.) It could also be in a bad neighborhood, but they don't tell you that either unless you ask.
The biggest sharing app is AirBNB, a bed and breakfast network that lists people willing to offer a couch or spare bedroom to strangers. This has quickly become a big business. Though the company is not public yet and owns nothing but a database, investors have priced it at about half the value of Hilton Hotels, which owns actual real estate.
AirBNB has a hundred thousand overseas listings, though countries vary greatly: there are 37,500 places to stay in Paris, but only 2,500 in Tokyo, where there is a slight tendency to be xenophobic.
DECEASED BUT ALIVE ON FACEBOOK
A widowed friend of ours is still keeping her husband's Facebook account open, several months after he passed away. She has no plans to close it. Many experts suggest "memorializing" such an account to make it impossible to send messages there, but she sees no reason to do this either. We agree. Survivors probably want to hear from anyone who hasn't yet learned of the death of their friend so it's best to keep channels open.
OUR CARTOON SELVES
Below our email signatures we often use a cartoon portrait of ourselves. We've gotten lots of compliments on that over the years and requests for information about it.
The drawings came from MyFaceIcons.com. For $49, they give you a small, medium and large version. Though we've never needed the large one, it's fun to have. The best part is how flattering the drawings are. They look like our younger, handsomer selves.
If you spend a little more, you can add more than one item to the drawing. Ours has our computer screen with the words "On Computers." Next to Joy's computer is a little photo of Bob. Next to Bob's is a little photo of Joy. If you don't know what to get someone for their birthday, this is pretty cute.
Bob Schwabach can be contacted at bobschwab@gmail.com. Joy is at joydee@oncomp.com.
SundayMonday Business on 03/09/2015