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iOS 7 Wishlist: Energy Saver Mode

By 02/01/2013 17 Comments
feature

If you’re an iPhone user, then you’re all too familiar with this sight:

low_battery

Now what? I’m nowhere near an outlet and it’s only 8pm! I’m expecting an important call or text (or I really wanted to capture my dinner on Instagram). In a desperation scenario, I think we could all get by with just access to our text messages.

All Apple currently offers you is a large “Dismiss” button that is basically an acknowledgment that you are screwed. At this point, a savvy user reduces the brightness of their screen and turns off all non-critical, known energy-consuming hogs like bluetooth, wifi & push notifications … oh wait, Apple removed the ability to globally turn-off push notifications. Thanks (Here’s a popular thread I found of some unhappy users questioning this decision). Apple still references this feature on their site so it makes you wonder if they’re even aware of it.

So what if Apple offered an alternative to the “White Flag” Dismiss button. Say, I don’t know, An ENERGY SAVER mode? They already have this on their desktop OS, why not on their mobile OS? The alert would look something like this:

low_battery-options_V2

And of course it would be accesible in the settings if one wanted to be proactive about turning it on.

settings

Perhaps it’s even customizable so the user can have control over which features they want to disable based on priority and also set the threshold that they would want this to activate itself (Thanks Mirco).

settings_v2

But we also want this feature to be smart enough to disable itself and re-enable these features when we do plug in:

charge_alert

So what are the hurdles? Why has Apple deprived us of this? What am I missing? I’m generally very proud of myself when I think of something that Apple, and their collective group of geniuses have not thought of. Then I usually pass the idea by some devil’s advocates at the office for their input. So far, nobody has made a compelling argument why this shouldn’t exist. We are in the sixth generation of their OS for crying out loud! Is this part of Apples’s planned obsolescence model, e.g. time for an upgrade when your phones battery can’t withstand a full day of use? I hope not and if so, Apple should reconsider this wasteful approach.

We have an airplane mode and a do not disturb mode, is it time for an energy saver mode?

 

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