Manufacturers and developers have looked for ways to enhance mobile battery life since these devices became available. As phones have evolved, new hardware and software features have added great advantages, but these also come with increased battery usage.
For a while, battery-boosting apps like Greenify were one of the effective solutions for Android phones. While there have been other great battery-saving apps, Greenify is a pioneer among them, so it makes for a good representative.
Let's look at how Android battery conservation methods have evolved over time, and why you probably don't need apps like Greenify anymore.
The Evolution of Android Battery-Saving Methods
In order to understand how battery-saving efforts have changed over the years, it is best to divide them into two categories: software methods and hardware methods.
Software-Based Methods for Saving Battery Life
First, let's consider the three major software-based milestones to see how they've adapted since Android's inception.
1. Task Killers
When Android was first introduced, the idea of an app running in the background was disturbing to many users. People naturally thought that the background apps were consuming their precious RAM and battery.
Task killers were utilities designed to regularly kill background apps that were supposedly consuming the resources of your phone. However, with growing awareness of how Android works, people realized that task killers were actually reducing the performance and battery life of their phones.
Letting Android keep recent apps stored in RAM, in fact, made the system more efficient in terms of performance and battery consumption. Constantly closing apps, only to have them start again soon after, is counter-productive.
2. Hibernating Apps
When task killers proved ineffective, a new set of battery-saving apps hit the market; hibernating utilities. Greenify was the best among these apps for many years, especially for rooted users.
While Greenify might sound like a task killer at first, there is a subtle but important difference between these two kinds of apps. Task killers shut down background apps completely, while Greenify puts them into a hibernation mode. This method proved revolutionary, and became particularly popular among custom ROM users. With root access, they could do more than Android allowed by default.
Apps like Greenify were not just immensely effective, but they also kept evolving and integrated well with the new features of each Android version. Greenify was a perfect balance between task killers and stock Android's battery management.
Moreover, you could enhance its functionality by purchasing the donation version and installing the Xposed Framework on a rooted device.
3. Stock Android Battery Management
There was a time when people started preferring custom Android ROMs over the stock factory ROMs. This preference alarmed manufacturers, as well as Google itself. That’s when they started integrating more features from custom ROMs in their stock ROMs.
Notable among those features were battery management software like Doze and a battery-saver mode. Doze recognizes how you typically uses your phone and allocates resources so that apps you need are responsive, while apps you rarely use don't waste battery in the background.
Now the stock ROMs automatically manage your battery quite well, plus provide more options that you can tweak to further boost your battery life.
Hardware-Based Methods for Better Battery Life
Software and hardware are interdependent. You need suitable hardware to support your software, and vice-versa. So while developers were busy making the software more efficient, manufacturers complemented these features with hardware developments.
1. High-Capacity Batteries
Worrying about battery life at the software level can make you overlook a simple solution: why not simply increase the capacity of phone batteries?
A high-capacity battery can help you use your phone to its fully capacity for longer. Moreover, you can combine the software-based battery-saving methods with a larger physical better and get amazing results.
2. Fast Charging
Another aspect of this battery issue is that you'll always have to charge your phone now and then. So manufacturers came up with a brilliant idea to make the tedious process of charging faster.
Nowadays, fast charging is a must-have feature in smartphones. This feature helps you charge your battery way faster than traditional charging. And manufacturers are constantly trying to find even better and faster means of charging, letting you reach all-day capacity in just a few minutes of charging.
Have a look at the best phones with great battery life if you'd like some examples.
Do You Still Need Android Apps Like Greenify?
The quick answer would be no. We can justify this answer by considering the following reasons why Greenify isn't necessary for Android users anymore.
1. Stock Battery Management Is Great
Modern versions of Android already have an efficient way of managing battery life. Further, there are options you can experiment with to find the right balance between performance and battery life. These including turning off battery optimization for apps you want to run all the time.
2. Modern Hardware Features Provide More Battery Life
High-capacity batteries and fast charging have somewhat mitigated battery-related issues. When you can quickly charge your phone and it has enough power to last all day, you won't worry as much about apps using power in the background.
3. Greenify Disables Some Functionality
Whenever you use third-party hibernation apps like Greenify, you are limiting the functionality of your phone. Every function or app has a purpose. If you hibernate it, you lose that functionality.
While you might not mind this for apps you barely use, freezing a useful app means that it can't do anything in the background. This can defeat the purpose of some apps entirely.
4. Hibernation Takes Time and Effort to Set Up
While they're not particularly complicated, hibernation apps like Greenify can be tricky to set up. There are many points to consider while doing so, which might scare off novice users.
You wouldn’t want to miss a rogue app from your hibernation list, or mess up your phone by hibernating a core app. You don't have to worry about this with the built-in methods.
5. Limitations on Non-Rooted Phones
Another fact to consider is that these hibernation apps work best on a rooted phone. On a non-rooted device, it will perform its functions visibly, which might disrupt your usage every time you tap the hibernate widget.
The processes will run in the background on a rooted phone and the app will have easier access to the system to do its job efficiently. And since rooting your Android phone is less necessary than ever these days, you probably don't want to root just to make Greenify run a bit better.
6. You're Adding Another Background App
In order to save your battery, you install an extra app that constantly runs in the background. This idea seems counterproductive. While it does seem silly, the net gain can make it worth it. But you might not want to install yet another app to do what your phone can already achieve.
7. Greenify Isn't in Active Development
The developer of Greenify, Oasis Feng, stopped the development of the app back in 2019. Given its overall positive reception, this is an indication that such apps have lost value and are largely unnecessary for your phone now.
However, this is just one side of the coin. The other side is more promising: it's fun to play around with your phone and discover new tools. And while Greenify’s development has stopped, there are many other similar apps to try that are still supported.
Many of them still do what they promise, so they might be worth a try. This is especially the case if you're on an older Android version that doesn't have great stock battery management yet.
It's up to you to find that sweet spot between functionality and battery life.
Some alternatives for Greenify are:
- Download: Naptime (Free, in-app purchases available)
- Download: Brevent (Free, in-app purchases available)
- Download: Doze (Free, in-app purchases available)
Manage Android Battery Wisely
We've looked at how methods for saving battery on Android have changed over the years. While apps like Greenify had their time, they aren't as useful today as they once were. But they might still be worth using in your case.
Why not give them a try and see if they work better than Android's stock offerings for you?