Reduce battery consumption for billions

Battery life is precious on low-cost phones and over intermittent power supplies. Today’s tip offers best practices to reduce battery consumption on Android and the Web for billions of users:

First, understand your app or site’s battery consumption using Battery Historian and Batterystats (walkthrough - https://goo.gl/M0Vqbl). Then, further conserve battery by reducing user actions required to access your content, such as detailed logins, long menus, or multiple sub-pages, to keep things lean.

On the Web and with native apps, you can usually reduce battery consumption by checking for and eliminating unused or duplicative network requests, content reflows, and limiting ‘expensive’ animations or sensor use. Periodic audits of those functionalities helps build a battery-efficient experience.

On Android, you can then use GcmNetworkManager to schedule all non-essential background activity for when the device is charging and is connected to an unmetered network.
This is the fifth of five weekly posts we’re sharing on how to build Android and Web products for billions of users. Check out our full lists of Web (https://goo.gl/SV83fI) and Android (d.android.com/billions) resources on building content for billions.

Previous posts on building for billions:
Content: https://goo.gl/vto7K5
Connectivity: https://goo.gl/lbr2UH
Data: https://goo.gl/yzqIqT
Hardware: https://goo.gl/fktM0n