Doze is arguably the single most important feature of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, especially for us poor Nexus 5 users. Basically, when your screen is switched off and the phone detects it’s not in use, everything goes to sleep. You’ll still receive high priority notifications such as text messages and calls, but most background syncing is killed, similar to what Apple has been doing for a while on its iPhones.
Small problem: statistics say that you probably don’t have Marshmallow on your device. After all, at the beginning of November, only about 0.3% of devices were running Marshmallow. But now, you can get at least some of Doze’s features using an app called… er Doze.
What this app does is it basically sets up as a VPN, which kicks in when your screen is turned off. However, it’s only technically a VPN. What it actually does is act as a barrier to ensure minimal use of data. The app also has a whitelist where you can set some apps to always sync their data. You can also set it to not kick in when you’re connected to a WiFi network, which also has the potential to reduce your data usage. The app also includes an option to not activate Doze when the phone is plugged in.
While the app aims to mimic the actual Doze features, there is still a lot the developer can add, such as scheduling when the phone should go into Doze mode. This app also gives the user more control, as you can choose which apps to whitelist and also when the phone should go into Doze.
The app will work on devices running Android 4.1 Jellybean and above, which is a sizable chunk of Android devices. It’s great to see one of Android’s more important, if not fanciest, features being provided to users of older software.
[button link=”https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yirgalab.dzzz” icon=”fa-android” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Get Doze from Google Play[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
