One quite annoying aspect of mobile devices is that you have to persistently manage network connections and radios during use. For example, if you use Wi-Fi while you’re at home you need to disable said radio when you venture out into the world. If you don’t, the Wi-Fi radio will continue searching for a signal as you move around thus draining the battery much faster than if it were disabled. While it’s not a tedious thing to manage it is pretty easy to forget doing so. Wireless Minder is an Android application that will monitor your active connections and disable any that are not in use. Not only will it disable inactive connections, it will activate those that are in need.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Wireless Minder is a unique application for Android that aims to automate your wireless connections. Perhaps the best part about it is that you can install it and leave it be, meaning it will handle the necessary functions on its own. To paint a quick scenario, let’s say you remain connected to your home Wi-Fi and constantly leave and return home (I’m sure that’s true of most folks). Normally, every time you leave home you would have to manually disable your Wi-Fi radio after leaving and then do the opposite when you return. With this app, that entire process is handled automatically in the background. The app can manage your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile network connections.

Pros

• Will automatically enable or disable wireless radios as they are needed or not being used
• You can specify which wireless radios are monitored (if you only want a specific one to be watched)
• You can customize the scan interval
• The app can be set to run on a schedule, allowing you to run it during a very specific timeframe like while you’re home or at work

Cons

• I truly encountered nothing wrong with this app
• The main UI has advertisements, non-obtrusive banners
• It uses 25MB of RAM while running, not bad at all but it seems like it might be a bit high for low-end devices

Discussion

Perhaps the best thing about this application is that you can just install it and leave it to run. You really don’t have to worry about messing with any settings or configuring any options. It just works. That being said, there are some options you can customize if so desired, but we’ll get to that later.

By default, the application will monitor the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile data radios for activity. If the connection is not in use by an app or the device, then it will be disabled. The app also constantly checks if a connection is required for various apps, when one is Wireless Minder will enable it as needed.

Because it monitors your wireless connections in realtime, disabling those that aren’t absolutely necessary it does improve battery life. Just how much will depend greatly on your device and how often you leave connections in discovery mode.

It works great and does the job.

The options you can configure are pretty basic as far as functionality goes, but they do add something a little extra for the most part. The most notable setting is that you can enable or disable any of the wireless radios. For example, you can tell the app only to “mind” or monitor Wi-Fi and nothing else by disabling the Bluetooth and mobile radio options. You can also customize the monitoring intervals, which is set to happen every ten minutes by default.

When it comes to the mobile radio you can disable 2G, 3G or 4G support individually. This allows you to keep the phone operating on a certain network instead of always searching. In areas where you don’t get a very good 4G signal the phone will continue searching and this can drain the battery much faster. Disabling the 4G functionality is certainly a great way to improve battery life.

If you want to schedule the app to only run during certain times you can also do that. It might not be apparent what such a feature is useful for so I’ll paint a scenario. Let’s say you work during the day, and in the evening you relax at home. When you’re at home you’re probably going to stay connected to Wi-Fi and you probably won’t use your phone as much, or maybe it’s the other way around? You can set the app to only monitor wireless activity during a certain timeframe like while you’re home.

While running Wireless Minder uses about 25MB of RAM. This is relevant because it’s an app that will be running continuously in the background. I did not notice any severe performance issues while using the app. In fact, the battery life of all my devices seemed to increase a bit after installing.

Conclusion and download link

Wireless Minder is an automation app for Android that automatically handles the wireless connections on your device. When they are not in use, it turns off the related radios thus preserving data and battery life. When an app is launched that requires a connection, the various wireless connections will launch on their own. In addition, you can set the app to run on a particular schedule so that it only monitors connection status during a certain timeframe- like when you’re at work or relaxing at home. If you’re tired of constantly enabling and disabling your Wi-Fi when you leave or return home, disabling your mobile data when it’s not necessary, or forgetting to turn off Bluetooth then this app is for you. Check it out.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.07

Requires: Android 2.1 and up

Download size: 654KB

Wireless Minder on Play Store