Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Our Best New Feature

Almost all of the additions to Battery Notifier Pro BT come from our users.  This one came from a user who previously had a problem with installing an earlier version of Battery Notifier Pro BT  We were able to get things corrected for him, but this time one of his suggestions just made sense to me, and it was short and to the point.

"permit user to specify a percentage less than 100 as a full charge notification target".

I believe he said Frank wasn't his real name, but thank you Frank.  After reading all about batteries in Android devices in the links you can find elsewhere in this blog, I assumed he might have been having a problem with the battery in his phone not reaching 100% for some reason, (age of the battery or wear on his phone) and therefore the full battery notification would never go off.  For some reason on my Samsung Intercept, 6 months after I bought it, the percentage 99% never gets shown anymore even after I replaced the battery with a new one, so I can understand how other phones might have a similar quirk to them.

I also know that as the battery getting charged approaches 100% capacity, that the charge going to the battery intentionally gets lower and more gradual so the battery doesn't get overcharged in order to increase the life of the battery.   It's also best not to drain the battery all the way from 100% to zero repeatedly, as you can read about at other links you can find here at our blog.

So why else then would you want to only charge your battery to say, 70%?  Time.  I last charged my phone from zero to 70% in just 2 hours and 2 minutes.  Are you getting the picture?  (Of course everyone's "mileage will vary". as they say.)  And it doesn't hurt at all to repeatedly just do short charges to your battery.  Now you just have to remember to take your charger with you.

Now I'm sure there are many who don't abuse their phones like me and they just always put their phones or devices on the charger overnight and they may never use this new feature.  But if my battery is showing just 40% or less at some time in the morning either from overuse or because I forgot to charge it the night before, just knowing that in a pinch I can use Battery Notifier Pro BT to let me know when it gets to 70% capacity in about an hour, again making my phone usable for the rest of the day, well, I just think that's a really neat feature to have.  And I can honestly say I have been using it a lot since I first got it weeks ago.  And now I'm happy that all of you can have it as well.