Tips to improve the HTC One battery life

HTC released its flagship handset – the HTC One – earlier this year. Six months later, the One is still a fine handset by all means, except for its battery life. The One comes with a 2300mAh battery that should be enough to last you a day. However, compared to the likes of the LG G2, iPhone 5s and Note 3, the One can feel a bit lacking in the battery life department.

HTC has kept on improving the battery life of the One via software updates, but there are always some tweaks and optimizations you can make to extract some more juice from your One’s battery life.

The few tips below should greatly help in squeezing an additional 10-15% of battery life from your HTC One. If you are expecting anything more, I’d recommend you to sell your HTC One and buy an LG G2, or buy a portable battery pack for your device.

Switch Off Blinkfeed

HTC has been pushing Blinkfeed as one of the highlighted features of the One. While not for everyone, Blinkfeed definitely is a nice way to catch up with your friends and news in that spare few minutes that you manage to get while in a lift or while walking out of a mall. HTC has been consistently improving the Blinkfeed experience as well, adding additional news sources, offline reading support and Pocket integration.

However, Blinkfeed can be a bit taxing on your One’s battery as well. In my usage, I noticed an increase of at least 7-9% in battery life by simply switching off Blinkfeed on my HTC One.

You can turn off Blinkfeed by pinching on the screen, and then tapping the Blinkfeed Off option at the top-left. This option, however, is only available for One owners who are running the Sense 5.5 update on their device.

Turn Off Always On Wi-Fi scanning

With the Android 4.3 update, HTC added the always-on Wi-Fi scanning feature on the One. While this helps apps in determining your accurate location, the hit on the battery life is pretty significant as well.

You can turn off always on Wi-Fi scanning by going to Settings -> Wi-Fi, tapping the overflow menu button and selecting Advance settings.

Turn On Power Saver mode

HTC has included a Power Saver mode on the HTC One that automatically kicks in when the phone’s battery goes below 15%. In Power saving mode, the One’s display brightness is reduced, the frequency of the processor is lowered and haptic feedback is disabled etc.

The difference in battery life due to Power Saver mode on the One’s battery life is pretty significant. If your One has been struggling to make it through a day, the Power saver mode might just be what you need. I have managed to extract nearly 1.5 days of usage from my One when I use the power saver mode.

The three tips above should help you in boosting the battery life of your One by at least 15% at the very minimum. Also, make sure that you are running the latest software version available for your device, since the One’s battery life has greatly improved via software updates from HTC since it was released.

Credit:androidbeat.com

Tips to make the most out of the HTC One M8 camera

The HTC One M8 comes with a measly 4MP ‘UltraPixel’ camera, which is awfully low when against the likes of the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2’s 16 and 20.7MP camera sensor, respectively. Nevertheless, the One M8 comes with the best camera app compared to its competition, which has quite a lot of neat features hidden up its sleeve.

If you own an HTC One M8 and have been looking for ways to extract the maximum juice from the 4MP sensor using the app, read below.

UFocus

The rear camera on the One M8 is accompanied by a depth sensor as well, which allows users to apply the ‘fake bokeh’ and other effects even after they have clicked a picture. While most of the other Android phones also offer this feature, they require the user to switch to the mode before clicking the picture. However, on the One M8, users can apply the effect after clicking the picture without worrying about switching to any particular mode.

To apply the UFocus effect to your picture, simply open the Gallery app and tap on the Edit option. Then select the UFocus option from the Effects tab and then proceed to tap the area on the photo which you would like to focus on. You can use the slider on the left to control the surrounding blur effect as well.

There are quite a few other effects that you can apply to your images like Foregrounder, Seasons and Dimensions Plus etc. but none of them are as impressive as the UFocus effect.

Dual Capture

Usually when I go out with my friends or family, I am the only one clicking pictures. This also means that I am almost always missing from most of the pictures. HTC has tried to alleviate that problem to a certain extent by adding a Dual Capture mode to the M8.

Under this mode, the camera will simultaneously click pictures from the back as well as the front camera, which means that the person clicking the image will also be present in the final image.

The One M8 will show the preview from the front camera inside a small box, which can be dragged around on the screen and positioned anywhere you like. To resize this box, use the two finger slide gesture.

Manual Mode

The HTC One M8 comes with a very effective and useful manual mode — a killer feature in the hands of any ace photographer. If you are looking to extract the maximum performance from the One M8’s ‘UltraPixel’ sensor, learn how to effectively use the manual mode.

Zoe and Gallery Highlights

Zoe and Gallery Highlights are two of my favorite features of the HTC One M8. Both these features are also present on the company’s previous flagship — the One M7.

In Zoe mode, the HTC One M8 records a short 3-second video while also taking burst shots. This will allow users access to many advanced editing features like object removal and Sequence shot.

In case you want to record a video longer than 3-seconds, simply keep the shutter button pressed for more than 3 seconds.

Gallery Highlights will combine your Zoe video and other images into a beautiful overview video of a specific day or event. You can customize the video theme, change the audio or even use a custom one if you wish to. The clips have a maximum length of 30 seconds.

Credit:androidbeat.com