After updating JuiceDefender/Plus/Ultimate the app doesn’t work anymore!

Sometimes Android doesn’t handle well app updates – it’s quite rare, but it happens. The solution, however, is simple and reasonably quick: uninstall JuiceDefender (the free one), reboot, and reinstall.
In case you encounter issues after restoring your settings (from About→Backup/Restore), try the uninstall/reinstall without restoring your settings – i.e. reconfigure your settings manually.

I purchased JuiceDefender Plus/Ultimate, but when I open it it brings me to the Market to download the free version!

JuiceDefender Plus and JuiceDefender Ultimate are addons – they work on top of JuiceDefender (free) and they need it to be installed to work. So simply go ahead and download the free one as directed ;)

I tried to buy JuiceDefender Plus/Ultimate from the Android Market, but my card is refused/the purchase doesn’t get through.

Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do. I DO NOT process payments on the Android Market – Google does; so whatever the issue, it’s about Google Checkout, not JuiceDefender. However, most of the times the problem is specific to the credit card you’re using; it’s worth trying with a different card and/or contacting the card issuer for further assistance.
(it also seems that Google, on its end, is slowly sorting out most Checkout issues.)

I purchased Plus/Ultimate from the Market, but I can’t download it!

It might take some time for Google/your credit card company to authorize the transaction. This is usually done within hours, but in some rare cases it might need up to two or three days.

Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do to speed up the process; at any rate rest assured that it will work eventually – or you’ll be automatically notified that the transaction couldn’t be completed and was canceled; in the latter case your card will not be charged – see the previous question for further information. For step-by-step troubleshooting please see here: http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1067233

I purchased JuiceDefender Plus/Ultimate from the Market, then I lost/changed/wiped my phone, and now it says I have to buy it again!

App purchases on the Android Market are linked to your Google account and the purchase never expires.

This means that whenever you wipe your phone, or get a new one (or even a dozen), all your purchased apps will immediately be available (in fact they’ll be downloaded automatically) as long as you set up the phone with the same Google account that was used to purchase the apps in the first place. Again: purchased licenses are tied to your Google account – they cannot be transferred to another account.

I have bought Plus/Ultimate, but I can’t see any added functionality

If you’re using one of the preset profiles, Plus and Ultimate will add WiFi control to that profile. To enable other features you have to choose the “customize” or “advanced” profile. After you tap on either button, scroll down a bit and tap on “confirm”.

Also remember that some features might not be supported by your ROM.

JuiceDefender Ultimate “deprecated”: what’s the deal?

If you have the “deprecated” version – formerly called “alternative” – you DO NOT NEED to buy Ultimate again. Your version works and will be updated.
It’s marked as deprecated because in the past (for Market problems) some users required a slightly different version – that’s no longer necessary so this alternative legacy version is now exactly the same as the “regular” Ultimate.

JD shows “there was a problem checking the license”

The license check requires internet connectivity and some time. Once you enable JD, leave it running for a couple of hours. If you don’t have a data plan, please connect to a WiFi network.

Refund policy

If you want a refund, please use the “contact seller” link for your order at Checkout – http://checkout.google.com – and choose “request refund”. All requests submitted within one week after the initial purchase will be honored – while the free JuiceDefender is more than enough to make an informed purchase decision, it’s also true that the Google-enforced 15 minutes refund window is ridiculous.
Requests submitted via other means cannot be taken into consideration.

Update:
Would you consider joining the private beta?
http://latedroid.com/beta
___________________________

• Eternal truths set in stone

- Once you manually disable Wifi, JD will not touch it; as soon as you turn it on again JD will resume working normally – the “enabled by user” state only lasts two minutes.
If you enable and then disable WiFi while it was in disabled state by JD, (e.g. to scan for access points during a trip, with Location keeping WiFi off) nothing will change. This also applies when some other app does this (such as scheduled downloads in podcasting apps).

- Location does NOT use GPS; GPS consumes battery and the benefit would be minimal, if any (as the GPS signal is usually absent inside buildings)

- Location DOES use both cell towers and nearby WiFi networks (the latter of course is only available when WiFi is enabled) for positional data; these two different positions are used separately and intelligently as to minimize battery usage while providing as much accuracy as possible

- You need to have the system-wide preference “Use wireless networks” enabled (under Settings/Location & Security) in order to use Location. If it’s disabled, all you’ll get will be a bunch of “Location not available” lines in the log.

- The first 20% of “training” is collecting cell locations for a period of four hours. During this initial phase, WiFi will stay enabled. While this is “bad” for battery life, it only happens once and allows Location to work much better right from the next day (instead of taking many days).

- After the initial phase, training increases every time you go out of/into a given known zone – this typically means 16% per working day

- However, training is only an measure of how much consistency you can expect; under the hood the training goes on all the time (even after 100%). When training reaches 100% you should usually see that Location consistently allows or disallows WiFi at any given place.

• Accuracy

- Accuracies and distances are to be taken cum grano salis (with a grain of salt, or two); it’s perfectly normal to see, say, “distance: 130m” even though your phone is sitting on top of your router. Location “ranges” are determined fully automatically and cannot be altered – nor it would make sense; they might occasionally seem exceedingly wide, but if that’s the case it’s because that’s the best accuracy you can get from the positioning provider. Even then, keep in mind that the converse applies as well: even though a given location might have a range of 5km, Location might still be perfectly able to detect when you’re just 1km away.
In short, those distances are just roughly indicative at best.

- If the range after the training ended is very high (10km+) and Location is not working for you (not disabling WiFi when you go out) please check the accuracy of cell-based location in your area, by disabling both GPS and WiFi and opening Maps. If the “my location” blue dot is way off your actual location (tens of km) you probably won’t be able to take advantage of JD’s Location feature effectively. Please also note that 4G might influence accuracy – try with both 4G on and off to see if it makes a difference.

- As a general rule, the “wireless networks” location provider has a good accuracy in dense cities, while it gets worse in sparsely populated areas. This means, to make up an extreme example, that if you live in a very small town, and go to work on the other side of town half a mile away, Location might not work at all for you – and it would probably show your home and/or office locations’ accuracy being, say, 35km.

• Using public hotspots and the like

- When you connect to a public hotspot for the first time, Location will go into initial training mode; but you don’t have to worry about turning off WiFi when you leave anyway – JD will do that for you after the connection is dropped

- If you only want to connect manually for a few minutes every once in a while (as opposed to whenever you’re in range), just connect, open JD, and set the newly created location to “ignored”.

- A possible (minor) catch: if the “occasional” ignored hotspot is close enough to a “regular” location, JD might still enable WiFi – believing it has a chance to connect to the “regular” network; and then the phone will connect to the hotspot. However this will not interfere with the “regular” location.

• Things that might change in future builds

- Location treats different Access Points (/WiFi “base stations”/BSSIDs) as different WiFi networks; but you will see the “human-readable” SSID network name in JuiceDefender’s UI. If you use two (or more) geographically distant WiFi networks with the same name (like public hotspots in retail chains), this behaviour is what you want ;)
But this also means that in some cases (large offices etc.) you’ll have many different Locations with the same name, and really about the same network. Future builds will hopefully have an automatic “merge” feature to minimize this kind of unwanted proliferation.

- Manually disabling WiFi will train Location “negatively” (i.e. Location will try to exclude your current position from the nearest known network); this can be useful if, after a while, you see that WiFi gets enabled in far-away places where it didn’t use to.

• Problems with recent/current builds

- none known

• Tips

- I have reasons to believe that Google “crowdsources”, at least partially, data gathering for the location provider. If it’s true – and I might very well be completely wrong – perhaps there’s a way to “force” an improvement!
Gather a bunch of friends, organize one or more treasure hunt/geocaching games around your home/school/office, and have everybody walk around with Maps, WiFi and GPS on. Cons: everybody will seriously drain their batteries. Pros: fun! And if my hunch is right, it might (perhaps after some weeks) improve the location provider by feeding Google all that positional data; and if that turns out not to be the case:it’s still nice to have a good time, no? ;)
Again, you can check whether the situation improves with Maps (GPS off). By all means if you try this crazy experiment let me know how it works!

Feel free to add a comment if you need clarification on anything Location-related.

The ways of the carrier are mysterious… I used to have the same problem where one out of ten times, one phone (others worked fine) wouldn’t connect to one specific cell tower (others worked fine) – fun fact: this was when JD was v0.2 or something like that, back then it only used APN renaming :)
Bottom line: this issue is hairy like no other; it’s caused by obscure, rare bugs in the interaction between your phone radio firmware and the cell’s firmware. Even if you don’t change anything on the phone, carriers sometimes update cells firmwares, or it might take hours or days for the problem to ‘build up’ and manifest itself.

I guess it can even happen that too many modem connects and disconnects will eventually put the phone on the ‘bad boys’ list, while trying to connect using a fake APN for some reason won’t. But this seems so weird I won’t discount other possible causes yet.
I prepared a test v3.6.2 build that forces the APN method, you can get it here: http://latedroid.com/testapn – see if it helps (make sure you use the same exact settings!) then report back! ;)

@Bowie: yours is a different issue, look for the Droid Charge thread

1) When an app enables connectivity, all other running apps will have internet access for the duration; the converse goes for “disable” apps. Since JD intervenes at the interface level, it’s currently not possible to have it act as a firewall to selectively allow internet access for specific apps.

(the “Apps” section of the “aggressive” profile only applies when the battery is low – i.e. when JD in practice switches to the “extreme” profile. So in both cases JD behaves the same way)

1) When you launch an app that’s set to “enable”, JD will enable connectivity. Depending on your ROM and carrier, this might take just a couple or up to several seconds.
2) The connectivity remains enabled only as long as the app stays in the foreground – i.e. it’s visible full screen
3) When the app is no longer in the foreground, and by all means when you turn off the screen, the connectivity will stay enabled only until data transfers are completed.
4) This means that, while audio streaming apps should work normally most of the time, there’s no guarantee that connectivity stays on while listening to online radio with the phone in your pocket. If there’s no data traffic for a sufficient time (e.g. due to large buffering – Pandora – or because you’re temporarily without reception), JD will disable connectivity. However this should be considered a feature – JD is ensuring maximum battery saving, which is at odds with online streaming :)

1) An app is considered “visible” either when it’s either in the foreground (full screen) or when it has an “ongoing notification” icon in the status bar (like audio streaming apps or Maps navigation – or, by default, Skype: better disable it in its settings)
2) An app merely requires a running service to be considered “service” – use this with caution, as most apps leave their services running all the time
3) Both “visible” and “service” apps are “enabling” apps
4) When JD detecs an “enabling” app, it will enable connectivity. Depending on your ROM and carrier, this might take just a couple or up to several seconds.
5) When you either close a “visible” app, or a “service” stops running, the Traffic trigger will keep connectivity enabled as long as necessary (of course the connectivity will still remain enabled according to other triggers, e.g. Screen)
6) When you open a “disable” app (i.e. when it’s full screen), the Traffic trigger will let current data transfers finish before JD disables connectivity – this should allow initial syncing for RSS readers, Amazon Kindle, etc. (added in v3.3.3)