Here’s What “Battery Saver” Actually Does on Your Android Phone

Let’s set the scene: You’re on the go and using your phone, but because you’re not aware of habits that could drain your phone’s battery, you run out of battery very quickly. To make matters worse, you’re miles away from a charger and it looks like you’ll be left with a useless brick if you don’t act quickly. As a last resort, you turn on the battery saver, and in an instant the screen goes dark, the animations slow down, and your flagship starts working like one of those minimalist phones.

What just happened? Simply put, Battery Saver turns off everything that isn’t essential. The goal is to make those last droplets of energy last as long as possible, so the mode puts background apps to sleep and lowers the brightness. Battery saver also gives the processor a cooling pill, making it considerably slower to save power – open one of your regular apps and pay attention to how slow everything is and how weak your phone’s processor is.

The mode is pretty nifty in a pinch, of course. But unless you have an important phone call, it’s not optimal. Poor performance is something you may be able to accept, but you’ll also need to be prepared to miss important messages and alerts. Since the apps no longer receive updates, they probably won’t work normally. That urgent email you’ve been waiting for? Well, the notification will only come if you open the app. Even instant messaging apps are shaky, which can be stressful if the conversation is even remotely important.

Tap the Battery Saver icon and your phone instantly starts cleaning up the clutter. The most notable change is the screen brightness. The screen is a notorious energy consumer which drains between 40 and 50% of the battery, so naturally it should be reduced. The feature also eliminates many processes, preventing some apps from sending notifications because Battery Saver prohibits apps from checking for updates in the background. In other words, any application that requires data synchronization and continuous updates could misbehave. Think instant messaging apps, email apps, navigation apps, pretty much anything useful.

At the same time, the processor goes into conservation mode, which can significantly slow down the device. Although some phones like the Samsung Galaxy let you fine-tune the axes of its power-saving mode (you can actually stop CPU throttling), this decreases CPU speed by 30%.

This is the usual battery saver. Most modern devices also feature some form of extreme battery saving that takes the savings to 11, cutting off everything from Wi-Fi to screen color to extend the remaining power for as long as possible. Overall, you’re giving up smoothness and brightness for extra battery life while saying goodbye to all the useful features, which is beyond annoying. Instead, it may be more helpful to manually play with the settings to extend the battery life of your device.

Your Android battery saver is making a mess of your phone, so if you want to maintain some semblance of normalcy, it’s time to switch to manual mode. Just like turning off Bluetooth makes no difference to battery life, battery saver may not retain much charge. This is especially evident on many modern devices where the operating system already manages power by tracking your usage habits and adjusting app activity. In fact, with committed savings, you might even find yourself refreshing your apps like crazy and end up negating any savings.

If you think your device is going to die quickly, switch to dark mode. On OLED screens, this kills black pixels, so in addition to reducing eye strain, it saves battery. You can go further by checking the battery settings and closing apps that are wasting too many resources. Another good tip is to change location services permissions: let them track your locations only when the app is in use.

Generally, doing these things will pay off in the long run because you’ll get more mileage out of a single charge. When you minimize overall battery drain, you experience problems less frequently. This way, there is no need to resort to extreme measures like Battery Saver that only cripple your phone and sacrifice your convenience for, at best, marginal savings.