Potential app shows you battery life of your devices

It’s perfectly normal to be carrying two or more devices on a daily basis. Now, you couldn’t possibly keep track of the battery life of all of those? Paranoid Gems introduced its new Potential app that will let you monitor the battery status of your devices. It syncs via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and checks on the battery levels of your gadgets. It will notify you when one of them is running low. It will even let you disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on your devices. You just need to make sure you are logged into your account on all your gadgets. The app, however, is on beta mode so be prepared to encounter bugs.

Source: Android Community | Download: Google Play Store (Free)

Apple Watch will need to be recharged nightly, will also work for left handed users

We're learning a few more things about the Apple Watch. As it stands right now the watch will need to be recharged each evening which means it will yield around a day of use on a single charge, which is in line with most wearable devices sporting high res screens and multiple sensors. This might change as we get closer to the device's shipping date in 2015.

We also learned today that, unlike traditional analog wristwatches and many wearables out there, the Apple Watch can be oriented to right-handed or left-handed users. This is determined when you set the device up the first time. Since the straps of the Apple Watch are super easy to change (no tools needed), you can orient the device however you wish. 

Apple Watch will also have around 8GB of storage and can play back music via Bluetooth to a headset even without an iPhone present.

Microsoft Research aims to develop smartphones with battery life to last you one week

Battery life remains to be one of the major concerns of smartphone users today. That is why Microsoft Research are finding ways to remedy this problem. According to Ranveer Chandra, their team is exploring the possibility of creating smartphones with batteries that can last for seven days without the need to use external battery packs.

One method is to put two li-ion batteries in the phone instead of one. These batteries can split usage depending on what the users need. For example, one can provide larger supply for heavy use and the other can be for standby mode. They are also exploring software optimization through a process called E-Loupe. This will pinpoint battery hungry apps that the software can slow down or pause when not in use. The research team has been able to create prototypes that improved battery life from 20% to 50%. It’s not yet their goal but we’d take that over a lot smartphone batteries we have today.

Source: Ubergizmo

BlackBerry 10 software updated to 10.0.10.85, improves functionality and battery life

The BlackBerry Z10 gets some update love today with a new 150mb software update that improves the ability to tkae photos even without the flash, improvments to calendars specifically when used with GMail, better browser performance and video playback and a huge battery update that involves over 60 battery saving improvements to make the Z10 as long lasting as the BlackBerries of old. Hit jump for instructions on how to get the update.

Software is available over the air (OTA). Typically, you’ll get a notification about new updates, but you can manually check to see if it has been made available by your service provider and install it in a few simple steps.
Settings> Software Updates> Check for Updates> — then follow the on screen steps to install.

The download is approximately 150MB in size, so I recommend updating when connected to Wi-Fi.

Source: BlackBerry Blog

Update on Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 2:26PM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Just downloaded and installed the update this morning. 155 MB of download and it took around one hour via WiFi to download and install (long!), another 5 minutes to reboot the Z10. Will put it through its paces and see just how different the performance and battery life is.