When I’m on my Android tablet at home, there are times where I’d like to print something out. Even better, I’d love to be on my Android phone while I’m out and have a printout of something waiting for me at home. Through the magic of Google, it’s possible.
To be a bit more specific, I’d like to print to my older printer, one that doesn’t have cloud printing built in. It’s attached to my computer at home.
Here’s how to do that.
Your battery isn’t lasting as long as it used to. Why?
Unfortunately, it’s not a simple answer. It could be because the battery isn’t holding its charge as well, it could be a faulty cord that isn’t charging it well, but usually, it’s because a setting changed somewhere or some program is consuming battery. You may have changed things intentionally, you may have done it inadvertently and not known it, or an upgrade (or app) may have changed it. In any case, here is how you can change your settings. Before you go ordering another battery, try these things, charge your battery, and then see if your battery works better (usually you’ll tell within a half a day).
Checking the Basics
This is what most people will tell you to check if you call for support. It’s a good idea to know what these things are, but frankly, if your phone isn’t lasting during your waking hours, this first section probably won’t solve the problem. But look through them — you’ll get to know your device a little better, if nothing else.
The first thing is to turn off unnecessary radios. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can use a lot of battery, so IF you don’t need them, turn them off. To get to the screen shown on the right, tap on the Settings app.
You probably DO need Wi-Fi, so don’t turn that off.
Do you have any Bluetooth devices? These might be an earpiece/microphone, a connection to your car’s stereo system, fitness gear, or other wireless devices that your phone/tablet talks to. Not sure? Try turning it off. If something doesn’t work, you can always turn it back on. Tap on the green ON button to switch it to the gray OFF position. (You might grab a piece of paper and write down what you changed. This might be Bluetooth Off. That way, you know what you changed!)
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f you scroll down to the Devices section, keep scrolling to the Power saving mode. If you tap the green ON button to switch it OFF, it may help. You may notice that the screen isn’t as bright (extra brightness really drains the battery), it may not vibrate a little when you touch it (that’s called “haptic feedback”), and if you’re using really intensive apps, it may slow down (I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, you probably won’t notice any slowdown at all). If you want to override these, you can click on the Power saving mode words and it will let you choose what options to turn off and explain a little more about this mode.
Depending on how your device was set up, you may or may not have changed anything. If you changed a lot, you might stop here, charge your battery, and wait a while to see how if that helps. How long is a “while?” Probably at least 1/4th of the time it took to drain your battery. If it only lasted 8 hours, then charge it and wait 2 hours. If it has substantially more than 75% charge, then you may have fixed the problem.
Finding Out What Uses the Battery
Changing the settings above is helpful, but sometimes you do need Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a very bright screen. And, frankly, it should last at LEAST an entire day with those settings enabled. Wouldn’t it be nice if your device could tell you what was using the battery?
The good news is that it can! While you’re in the settings, scroll down to the Device section. Keep scrolling to find the Battery option. Tap on it to see the battery screen. Mine is shown to the right.
The top part is a graph of the power since it was last charged. So far, I’ve made it almost 14 hours and I’ve still got 64%. Not bad, particularly since I’ve spent a lot of time on talking on the phone. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time poking through settings to write this.
The next part shows the breakdown of what features of the phone are using the battery. I see that “Voice calls” has used 60% of the battery use, and since I talked on the phone for almost 2 hours, that doesn’t surprise me that it’s the biggest drain on my phone.
The next items — Device idle, Android OS, Cell standby, Screen, Android System — are things that the phone uses to keep it running. Individually, they’re taking less than 10% of the the battery use. That seems like it’s pretty fair. It has to keep checking for cell reception, monitor for incoming phone calls and texts, check emails, etc. None of those look unusual.
What would look unusual is if something you don’t recognize is taking up a whole lot of resources. If you played Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds for several hours, I’d expect to see those taking up a large percentage of battery use. But if there is something that is taking a large chunk of battery and that didn’t actively use or something that sounds like it’s used to keep the phone running, then we can isolate the problem.
What you need to do is find out what is using an unusual percentage of the battery. Write down:
- The exact name of the task (“Android OS” is different than “Android system”)
- What percentage of battery the task used (how long is that blue bar)
- How long it has been since the phone was last charged (hrs/min)
- What percent of battery is remaining
Then contact your favorite Android expert (or Google the task name, adding the terms battery drain in your search)
Bonus: More information is available!
You can tap on that item to get even more information. For example, click on the Display item and more information appears, as shown to the right.
If there’s a way to adjust the power use, it will show you how to do that. In this example, you click on the Display button and it will take you to the proper screen to change the settings. It will, at least, tell you how long that particular task has been working.
Step 5 in Learning about Dropbox
In the last step, you configured one of your computer’s folders to synchronize with the cloud. In this step, you’ll configure your Android device (smartphone, tablet, etc.) to do the same. You’ll need to do this once for EACH Android device. It’s an easy process: Continue reading
Android devices require a Google account/email address. You’ll want to know this address and make sure it’s the same on all of your devices. On all of your devices, go to:
Settings -> Google (in the Accounts section)
to get to the screen shown below. Note the email address at the top of the screen (obfuscated to protect my privacy). Continue reading
MyTechsplanation 