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How Doze Mode in Android Nougat works, and How You Can Make the Most of It

Doze, the ‘behind-the-scenes’ functionality was launched with the Marshmallow update to help you put your Android phone save battery when you were not using it and it was further refined with the Nougat update. The Doze Mode functionality is great because it keeps the battery drain at the low level while you carry it in the pocket or purse. In this post, we will explain how the Doze-Mode works, and how you can make the most of it.

In Android, there are apps that use the “wakelock”, to prevent the phone from entering into a power-saving intense sleep mode. Usually, the deep sleep mode starts when the device’s screen is off, but for fitness tracker apps, for example, even if the screen is turned off, they will still use the GPS or the accelerometer.

These apps keep the device working when it’s needed and let it be in a state of sleep when it’s not. But, the problem is that there are apps like Facebook that keep your phone in use all the time and kills its battery, even when the phone is not used. Doze mode periodically blocks wakelocks and shuts off network access if the Android phone is not used for a while and allows apps to periodically check in during maintenance windows.

Google added, in Android Nougat, a brighter version of Doze compared with Marshmallow that will activate if your Android smartphone’s screen is off and not connected to a charger. In this mode, wakelocks are allowed, and the device will use GPS or Wi-Fi signals, but cell network access will be deactivate outside the maintenance windows, blocking Facebook from draining your battery.

If you don’t use your smartphone, Doze will still do its job. It will run in the background and from time to time you’ll get messages. If you’re not getting messages from an app, you can give certain apps priority, or also, if you want to squash a particularly battery draining app, you can choose which ones are suppressed.

Read also: Learn to use RAM Manager in Android Nougat

Read also: How to Make the Most of Android Nougat’s New And Improved Notifications

To access the battery optimization option, go to Settings -> Device -> Battery. Here, touch the three vertical dots that you find at the top-right corner of the screen and select Battery optimization. You will get to Battery Optimization faster, if you type Doze in the Settings search function and Battery Optimization will be the top choice.

In the Battery optimization section, you can toggle between the categories: Not optimized and All apps.Some apps cannot be optimized, like system processes or Google Play services.

If you toggle ‘’All apps’’ option, select a specific app and choose not to optimize this app and from now on, this app will always be able to access the network or receive messages, but it might drain your device’s battery. With Nougat, Google has pushed the battery optimization option further so that basic functions drain less battery. It will be interesting to see the efficacy of this function in future.

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