Transcript from the video:

Droid Battery Life: The Problem

In this helpful Use My DROID lesson we answer Use My DROID Guys Question: How do I get better battery life?

Did you know you have a way to manage how much power your phone uses? This is important to know if you run down your battery too often. Learn how to Use the Free Power Control Widget that comes with your phone.

In This How to Use My Droid video, we will show you the different parts of the Power Control Widget, the next video in this series will show you where to get the widget and how to install it on YOUR own DROID.

Droid Battery Life... Power Control Widget

Using this Power Control Widget Helps you control Battery Usage. With it, We can turn off items that you do not use very often to save battery life so you can use your phone longer between charges.

Here is the Power Control Widget. This view shows All power options ON... this configuration Can drain your phone battery life quickly. This control panel lets you manage what is on and what is off for these power hungry items. If you turn them off using this widget, you do not need to worry because most programs will automatically turn services back on if they need them, or they will ask you to turn them back on manually with a menu choice.

Droid Battery Life: Buttons of the Power Control Widget

I will turn off each of the power items and NAME them as I go:

1. The first item on the left is for WiFi. We can safely turn this off because without it, the phone will automatically use 3G to communicate online. However you may want to note that WiFi is generally faster than 3G, but if you are not near a wireless hot spot, you are not using it anyway. We will turn it off, it will let our battery live longer between charges.

2. Next we will turn off Blue Tooth. It is not needed unless you use a Wireless BlueTooth device like an ear piece, You might use one when you are driving and need to have both hands on the wheel. But when you are not, Turning it off saves battery life.

3. The 3rd item in from the left, is a real power hog! It is the GPS option (that stands for Global Positioning System) You do not need that on very often. You know why? Your phone knows where you are by checking in with the cell towers. That is usually good enough for most apps needing to know your location. When you do need to be more accurate, like for Map Navigation, then you can turn the GPS back on. But remember, the GPS option will really drain your battery fast.

4. The next item we will Turn off is called Sync (for Synchronization) This syncs your email, contacts or other online services. It Does not take up much power unless you are getting lots of emails all the time. But, we will turn it off anyways.

5. The last item is used to Adjust the Brightness of your display. This option has 3 settings, Off, Medium, and Bright... as you might guess the Bright Setting is going to burn up the battery the fastest. All you do is press it each time to cycle through until you turn it off, Go ahead and turn it off. You can STILL see your screen and we are saving battery life.

Now that you know what each option on the power control widget does, we will give you an extra tip:

Droid Battery Life... Power Tip

USE MY DROID Power Tip: you might look into getting an Application Killer. Since your Droid phone runs your Apps in the background and does not quit them very often, they eat up battery power as well. We suggest using the FREE Application Killer called Advanced Task Killer... you can get it in the Android Market for free.

In the next training article, we will show you about how YOU can INSTALL this Free Power Control Widget on your own Droid.

Now you know how to USE YOUR DROID Better when it comes to the power control widget, AND you should get better battery life because of it.