Gadgetory

battery life is a major concern for OMS and users alike what our OEM is doing they're putting in unique and interesting ways to turn off your screen or turn down your backlight what our users doing some more writing apps some of us are using those let's go take a look Samsung has been at the front of using a front facing camera and other sensors inside your device to help turn the battery off whenever you're not looking at it sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't low light in particular is a problem so what can you do you've got all these other sensors baked inside well this developer came up with something a little bit different a little bit novel and it really works fairly well the app is called keep screen on it's available in a light which is free version and a pro version which costs about a buck and a half a little bit less so what do you do simply you tap the icon to launch it and you're met with this very very basic screen with this not very hollow UI looking interface now you may wonder Joe why are you holding your device up at this weird angle like that we can see your reflection and you look kind of silly you know that's part of the issue or part of the genius depending on how you want to look at it so first of all let's open up this test tab when you get it you will need to turn it on just by hitting the off button to turn on that will light up this little green dude up here letting you know that it is on you can hide that with one of the settings in here if I remember correctly let's open up the test tab you can see now this dude here is kind of grayed out but when I tip him up he lights up green when I tip him back he's grayed out and he lights up green ok enough with that what this is doing is it's using the accelerometer and other stuff inside the device to know when you're holding your device in your hands versus when you have laid it down flat on a table when you've turned it or when you've laid it flat it's going to turn off first of all the backlight and then very shortly it's going to turn off the screen now you saw it just like that when I pick it back up of course I've got to go through the standard unlock process so I went ahead and made sure that that doesn't happen for 15 30 seconds after the screen turns off you might have to do the same thing let's look at some of the other settings in here in basic we can start this on boot by putting a check mark there we can hide the icon by putting a check now that's just gonna make that box invisible it's still going to be there taking up space but if you don't like seeing the little green guy up there you don't have to you can play with the range come over here and make this a little bit more or less sensitive depending on the device and just play around with it use what works you can set your accuracy from normal which is the default down lower or up higher and then of course you can buy the pro version which gives you a few other options and features that we'll talk about in the article over at pocketnow.com how does it work well as you can see here when I haven't messed with this slider it's pretty accurate when I'm holding it up tipped at my face at a comfortable reading angle how does the battery life respond to that not bad it's been a little bit too short of time for me to be able to give you a definitive answer about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing as far as battery life goes but my general impression is it seems to be saving some battery life when I'm using it in a standard you know reading format like this when I'm doing non-standard stuff they laying down or whatnot it can kind of get wonky but you can always come in and turn it off just like that and then it will revert back to the default way of turning off after next many seconds or minutes of inactivity depending on what you have set up the app is called keep screen on with a capital o n there's a light and a pro version we just got done showing you the light version we want to know what you think down in the comments below give the video a thumbs up if you liked what you saw and of course who doesn't want better battery life for pocket now this is Joe Levi thanks for watching