You plug your phone in before you go to bed, like the responsible and mature adult that you are. You wake up the next morning, and take your phone with you to work. By the time lunch rolls around, your screen is already flashing with “LOW BATTERY” warnings. Does this sound like you? If so, you could probably benefit from these 2017 Android apps that are meant to help you minimize and manage your battery usage.
1. Avast Battery Saver – Free
Avast is a mega comprehensive battery saver app, offering solid function for a very low cost. To begin with, Avast deactivates the most battery-draining features of your Android device while you’re not using it. That includes things like Wi-Fi and intensive apps. 
Perhaps the most helpful feature of Avast’s app is the ability to create different custom profiles to suit your own individual use of your device. Avast allows you to create a profile for home, work, night, and emergencies. The emergency mode is my favorite — drastically ratcheting down usage of every non-essential aspect of your phone to ensure that you can squeeze that extra juice out when you’re in a pinch. Â The ability to create custom profile is really cool because, if you think about it…An app like Candy Crush may require more power while you’re at home, but you would obviously prioritize something like Outlook over Candy Crush if you were at work.
Avast also offers a feature that, while helpful, is fairly standard in battery-oriented applications. It displays different statistics showing which of your apps suck the most battery and require the most CPU usage. They also are able to display approximately how much time you have left to use your battery, so that you’re able to have peace of mind with that last little percent.
2. DU Battery Saver – Free
DU also offers a helpful battery saving solution, with a variety of different helpful features. DU comes with a lot of the standard battery saving features. You’re able to pinpoint your most battery killing apps and close them, you’re able to instantly change a bunch of different settings with a touch of a button.
More uniquely, DU also offers the ability to cool down your phone when it heats up due to intense CPU usage. It also features a variety of different app skins because, let’s be honest — a lot of utility apps tend to look kind of ugly. DU Battery Saver is an exception to that rule, however, and I find their user interface to be really user-friendly and attractive. DU also has a really interesting “charging screensaver” which is meant to help your device charge more quickly than it typically would.
Now, DU is technically a freemium app. Some features are locked behind a pay wall. Â However, they offer a pretty interesting model that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a freemium app. They allow you to accrue coins by completing special offers (primarily app downloads) to put toward purchasing the full version of the app. That’s a pretty user-friendly move on DU’s part, and I really respect when a developer makes it easier for the user to use their stuff.
3. JuiceDefender Ultimate – $4.99
JuiceDefender has been around forever. Most Android users have probably at least heard of it in passing. Although certain aspects of the application are sort of dated, I still think that JuiceDefender is a really reliable and useful battery saving app. And the paid iteration is only even more helpful.
JuiceDefender offers a lot of the standard battery saving features, but I think that it does it in a really comprehensive way. You’re able to schedule each different set of options, so that they occur without you having to manually activate them. You’re able to configure your CPU usage, and set caps for how high that usage can go without the application being closed. No stone is left unturned in this application’s goal to maximize your battery life.
If I had one complaint about JuiceDefender, it would be that the user-interface isn’t very friendly. It can be a little confusing to navigate through all of their (largely text-based) menus. However, I think that it’s simple enough to get used to, and once you do, the functionality of the app majorly enhances the quality of your Android device’s battery life.
4. Greenify – Free
Greenify is probably the most popular battery saving application on this list. It offers an insane amount of functionality, the app is very simple to use, and it’s completely free. For a long time, Greenify was only available to individuals who rooted their Android devices, but that isn’t the case anymore. Greenify is available to the Android-using public (although some beta features are still only available to rooted users) and it’s as useful as ever.
Greenify allows you to easily minimize the impact of various applications that may drain your memory, go hard on your CPU, or run in the background despite being closed. These applications are usually the biggest culprits when it comes to dead Android batteries. How is this any different from the other million battery saving apps out there, you ask?
Greenify is a very smart app, in that it doesn’t just completely close out of those “bad apps”. It basically tells those apps that your phone is in hibernate, which drastically reduces their impact on your system. This makes it much easier to access those apps when you need to use them, since you don’t have to spend all of that precious battery power starting the app back up again. They just go to sleep.
5. 2 Battery – Free
2 Battery is an app that supports most of the core battery saving app functions. Reaching the end of this article, you probably already get the gist of those functions. It provides statistics as to how long your charges last, and how much of your charge was spent on certain applications. It sets your brightness to a lower default to ensure a longer battery life. It has configurable themes and intervals.
However, 2 Battery has a certain feature that the previous apps lack, which is a blacklist and a whitelist. What does this mean? This means that, even if one of your favorite apps absolutely destroys your battery life, you’re able to whitelist it and prevent 2 Battery from killing them. If you’re like me, and some of your favorite apps are the ones that are the most CPU-intensive, then this feature is a must.
Don’t like apps?
With that being said, it’s a lot of work to manage all of these functions on your own. These apps are generally pretty lightweight and simple to use, so if you’re having any battery difficulties, you’d probably have a better time just downloading one of these applications and using them. Your battery will thank you for it later.
