Outstanding and actually useful battery monitoring apps for Android: find out what's draining your juice

posted by Peter K. / Dec 03, 2015, 4:57 AM

Outstanding and actually useful battery monitoring apps for Android: find out what's draining your juice

Have you ever been curious what exactly is draining the battery on your Android device? We are sure that the answer to this would be positive in 9 out of 10 cases. After all, keeping tabs on your battery is an essential and vital process that is rather important, regardless whether you are a power user or a Plain Joe.

Well, until they develop batteries that hardly ever deplete or fully change in 5 minutes, we will have to be careful and pull the reins on rogue apps and processes that suddenly decide to go haywire and waste our precious juice. True, we can't keep our battery levels at 100% at all times and we can only do so much in preserving this important smartphone metric as high as possible during our day-to-day adventures.

Among the things we can easily do is to keep tabs on our batteries and what's discharging. There is a respectable host of apps that do this, but as usual, few ones are actually useful. We will show you our favorite ones and in case you don't see your go-to battery monitor down below, make sure to share your recommendation in the battery section right beneath.

BetterBatteryStats

Download ($2.16)

Better Battery Stats, or BBS for short, is hands-down one of the best battery monitors you can get on your Android device. It provides a pretty insightful data on all the running apps and processes on your handset. This shows you exactly what's draining your precious juice. The app is also perfectly capable of spotting rogue apps on the fly - if a certain piece of software shows abnormal battery usage, BBS will highlight it for you. What you do with the culprit afterwards is, of course, up to you. To be honest, the app is not among the user-friendliest we've seen around, as the data it provides is a bit on the more geeky and technical side, but that's not a con at all, mind you. Have in mind that in order to benefit from all of its features, you'd need a rooted device.

BetterBatteryStats

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GSam Battery Monitor | GSam Battery Monitor Pro

Download (free | $2.49)

GSam Battery Monitor is another noteworthy battery monitor app that you can get for your Android device that brings a lot of useful features to the mix. The most notable one is, undoubtedly, the so-called App Sucker, which enables you to "hunt down" battery drainers on your trusty Android phone. These could be all kinds of rogue apps and processes that eat through your battery. After you use the app for a couple of days or so, it will show you a very approximate battery life prediction (in standby, mind you). Apart from apps and processes, GSam also shows you what percentage of your wasted juice is courtesy of your display, cell & Wi-Fi signal, Bluetooth, and calls. Nice! Still, have in mind that the app requires a root companion in order to work as intended.

GSam Battery Monitor

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Battery Monitor Widget | Battery Monitor Widget Pro

Download (free | $3.18)

Despite its name, this is not yet another feature-less widget for your device; well, it offers one, but the app is actually quite able-bodied and feature-rich. It shows real battery capacity (in mA), incoming battery flow (also in mA), records your battery data history, and show all type of additional tidbits of info in neat graphs. Additionally, you can see the current rate of discharge of your battery, its temperature, and projected remaining battery life. One of our favorite features is indeed the battery history, which shows you the rate of battery discharge broken-down by Have in mind that the app works best on rooted devices as it requires a sidekick app to be installed in the /system partition of you handset.

Battery Monitor Widget

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Done yet? Make sure to check out some additional battery-saving articles:

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15 Comments

1. Android_Lollipop

Posts: 155; Member since: May 05, 2015

How come there is no limelight on such kind of apps for iOS? Whether the iOS is so stringent on battery draining apps and handles all these monitoring & optimizing by itself? My view is iOS is not capable of handling multitasking to the extent like Android does which again happened to have this as an advantage of not draining battery in the background.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 6:19 AM 0

12. nodes

Posts: 1160; Member since: Mar 06, 2014

it does capable. couple weeks ago there was Facebook bug that prevent the device from sleeping as the app ran continously in background. it is just iOS is more conservative about managing things in background. Android is turning to this too with Doze.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 8:17 PM 0

2. Android_Lollipop

And one more Thing!!! I tried FORCE STOP for Facebook culprit in the app info section but this Facebook wakes up again like a Phoenix and drains my battery even if I don't open this app. F**kBook. Android doesn't do what I said it to do. :(

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 6:22 AM 2

3. Illuminati007

Posts: 16; Member since: Dec 03, 2015

Bad android :D :P Get rid of the app, even FB acknowledges that the app is a battery drainer. The website version does fine for me. You could also try a autostart manager or if you're rooted, try greenify. I somehow sense you already know this.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 6:49 AM 0

4. Android_Lollipop

You sensed it right. I know all these. But why these things are required from a consumer standpoint? This is where Apple wins iOS tells to the user: "Hi dear user. You do want ever you want with your phone. Browse, message, take pics, use apps blah blah blah and just enjoy your device. I will take care of all the background activities. That is why I am here for"

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 7:07 AM 1

5. Android_Lollipop

Android OS to user: "Hi dear user. I am more capable than iOS and can do more than what iOS can do. I have so many tricks up my sleeve. In order to unleash my full potential and to continue to work without getting tired for ever, you need to install battery drain monitors, app boosters, game boosters (samsung), root me, press this button, press that button, cut the red wire, cut the blue wire.... blah blah blah" User: "s**t"

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 7:16 AM 2

7. Illuminati007

Haha! U nailed it :D But you and I both know and like it has been said countless number of times, fragmentation is the answer to everything android. Optimisation and polishing comes only after you know the hardware which Apple knows very well since it designs it's own SoC. I am aware of the pain you mentioned above but I love it somewhere inside me. The ability to tinker around and do stuff. That's the beauty of this wicked OS

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 7:48 AM 1

8. Tizo101

Posts: 572; Member since: Jun 05, 2015

Apple doesn't win, the same app has been acknowledged by the Facebook team that it also drain the battery on ios... unfortunately I can't provide a link because I rely solely on my really good memory but I read that here in phonearena a few weeks ago

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 8:15 AM 0

9. Illuminati007

I never said apple wins. I was talking about the general state of things on both operating systems. I remember the article you're talking about.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 8:29 AM 0

14. strudelz100

Posts: 646; Member since: Aug 20, 2014

Facebook drains battery like crazy on iOS because MOST users leave default notifications on iOS and Facebook lights up your display like no other while its sitting in your pocket.

posted on Dec 04, 2015, 12:28 AM 1

6. RobotMan

Posts: 145; Member since: Apr 13, 2012

Then, don't used android.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 7:41 AM 0

10. Sovat_fc

Posts: 224; Member since: Aug 30, 2014

I think these apps themselves that drain your battery. No thanks!

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 8:30 AM 0

11. Cyberthing

Posts: 127; Member since: Nov 18, 2014

I've been having Android OS and Android system going crazy on my phone, and I still haven't found the culprit for it. I don't think these apps will help.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 12:45 PM 0

13. nodes

BBS is the only app actually useful among the list. it is kind of ironic though, this feature should be baked into the OS, not a paid 3rd party app. Android native battery stat is useless.

posted on Dec 03, 2015, 8:21 PM 0

15. javy108

Posts: 1004; Member since: Jul 27, 2014

Is this necesary? I mean I use many apps on my G3 such as Whatsapp, Facebook, blah blah, just turn off the Data while Im at work shift (not using my phone at all) and it works perfect for me, more than a full day of battery... I see many using iPhones and they need to do it as well, I think that is about people hating Apple or hating Android.