Monthly Archives: November 2011

Elixir 2.7 is available

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What is new

  • Volume dialog: dark theme, new layout, displays percent values, looks well on tablets, full screen on small screens
  • Volume, reboot, brightness level and screen timeout level dialogs can be closed by touching outside (on Android 3.0)
  • Swipe left/right gestures can be used to change screen, data or selected widget
  • Logcat/Dmesg log screens: you can save log data to external storage
  • New widget type: clear cache
  • Battery current can be detected for Acer Iconia

Changes in volume dialog

The following changes made in volume dialog are requested by users to make it better. The theme is changed to dark and the layout is reorganized: the stream titles are aligned to the left, the min and max buttons are moved to the right in the line of the title and the current settings value in percent is displayed between these buttons. The seekbars can be used easier now even on small screens. There is an other optimalization for small devices, the volume dialog is displayed in full screen.

 

Swipe left/right

In this version of Elixir you can use swipe gestures to change screens, pages or widgets. You can use these gestures everywhere where the selector component is available:

 

You can use swipe to:

  • switch between device information and software information screens
  • switch between running data, running tasks and top screens
  • switch between logcat logs and dmesg logs screens
  • switch between widgets on the widget configuration and performance screens
  • switch between icon packs on the customize icons screen
  • switch between pages on properties dialogs

On the widget configuration screen only the widget container can be used to change widget by swiping.

 

Save logs

On the logs screens you can save logs to your external storage by clicking on the right arrow icon in the header and selecting the Save data option. After saving finished a dialog displays the full path of the saved log file.

 

Clear cache

There is new Clear cache icon that can be used in widgets to clear application caches. This icon displays the free space available on the internal storage as a label.

 

If you click on it a toast message appears and displays how much data was cleared.

About widgets performance

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Fortunately very rarely, but sometimes people say that Elixir widgets drain the battery too fast. I have made a little test on my own device to check the performance. Of course, the performance depends on the device, the operating system, the environment, the operating mode, the type of widgets and other factors so this article should be regarded as a specific case.

  • Device: HTC Desire
  • ROM: CyanogenMod-7.1.0-Desire
  • Operating mode: Wi-Fi is turned on continuously in the daytime, under normal use, reading e-mails, making calls, using internet
  • Widget: a 4×2 widget: internal storage, battery usage, screen timeout toggle, reboot toggle, wifi toggle, screen lock toggle, volume, application launchers, shortcuts, empty slots

The following pictures show that I could use my phone more than 85 hours, three and a half days without charge, using wifi continuously in the daytime.

 

But if you suspect that an Elixir widget is responsible for the battery drain then you can check the performance of your widget on the Widget performance screen. This screen can be opened in two ways:

  • on the main screen of Elixir 2 click long on the widgets or statusbar icons and select the Widget performance option
  • on the widget editor screen click on the right arrow icon in the header and select the Widget performance option

On this screen you can see the following:

 

The first row shows the beginning and duration of measurement. You should wait at least a day, do not draw a conclusion for a few hours.

The next row displays the number of widget updates and the total and average update times of the widget for this period. The most important value is the percent value which displays the ratio of widget total update time and the duration of measurement. If this value is 0-1% then the widget has a good performance, doesn’t drain the battery.

If this percentage is large then you can check the list to find out which icon has the worst performance. Foremost in the list are the types which need more time to be updated. We can see that the internal storage icon was updated 59 times. This icon is updated in every minutes by default so it should have been updated 17*60+22=1042 times for the testing period. The widgets are not updated if the screen is off so this icon is updated only 59 times because of this optimization. You can see that other icons are not updated if the storage icon is, for example the Wifi icon was updated only 12 times. This is an other optimization available in Elixir 2.

The Wifi icon needs the more time to be updated but it uses only 22% of time so the widget is absolutely ok. If you put an “Unread e-mail count” icon into this widget and set 10 seconds refresh rate then you would see that updating this icon needs more than 90% percent of widget update time so it would be suggested to increase refresh rate of this icon to achieve better performance.

To sum it all we can see that the widget on my device has a very good performance.

Elixir 2.6 is available

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What is new

  • Volume dialog: handling profiles, min and max buttons
  • Running processes screen: batch mode is available, you can stop / uninstall multiple processes
  • Applications screen: batch mode is available, you can uninstall multiple applications
  • Widget settings screen is available when there are no home screen widgets to be able to enable/disable widget sizes
  • Widget configure screen: icon size seek bar is changed, minimal value is for the smallest icon size
  • Messages and missed calls widgets: on click action can be set to change the default action
  • Bugfixes: battery current fix, widget configure screen handles screen rotation well, etc…
  • New language: française

Changes in volume dialog

There are a left and a right arrow icon for every stream and you can set the stream value to minimum or maximum value easily if you click on those arrow icons.

 

The volume dialog can handle profiles now. If you click on the Profiles button then a dialog window appears where you can restore or delete a profile.

 

If you click on the Save button then a dialog appears where you can select a profile to save current volume settings or you can click on the + item to create a new profile.

 

Batch mode in running processes screen

You can stop or uninstall multiple processes easily using batch mode.

  • click on the list icon in the header and select the Turn batch mode on option to enter in batch mode
  • checkboxes appear for every processes and you can select as many processes as you want
  • after you have selected the processes click on the list icon again and select the Stop selected processes or the Uninstall selected processes option to execute the batch operation

You can exit from batch mode by clicking on the Turn batch mode off option.

 

Batch mode in applications screen

You can uninstall multiple applications easily using batch mode.

  • click on the list icon in the header and select the Turn batch mode on option to enter in batch mode
  • checkboxes appear for every applications and you can select as many applications as you want
  • after you have selected the applications click on the list icon again and select the Uninstall selected applications option to execute the batch operation

You can exit from batch mode by clicking on the Turn batch mode off option.

 

How to set on-click actions for widget icons

Changing on-click action for many widget icons is available from Elixir 2.0 but now you can change this action for Messages unread count and Missed calls count icons too.

To change on-click action open the widget editor screen, select the widget and click long on the widget icon. A popup window appears where you can select the Set on click action option and then select the action to be executed. If you would like to reset the default action then click long on the icon again and select the Clear on click action option. Don’t forget to save your widget.