Extending the battery life of HTC One XL

Disclaimer – This is a beginner’s guide. I am no Android Geek. The statements are based on the links I read on the internet. Please do not blame me for factual accuracy. I am just helping out people who, like me are struggling with this problem.

I bought amongst the latest Android Phones in the market that is 4G/ LTE compatible. HTC One XL. You can read the review here. I pretty much agree with what is written in the review, and I was mighty impressed with the phone, other than one thing – its battery life. Some mysterious force made its 1800 mAh battery drain in less than 10 hours. Now, I was expecting the battery life to be low, but less than 10 hours was unacceptable to me. Like all noobs out there, I did my research on the internet and here is what I concluded:

1. LTE is not completely implemented everywhere in my area. Most providers are just starting so the signals for LTE are not strong. When the phone is chosen to run on LTE, the phone desperately latches on to a not-so-strong LTE signal and consumes more battery. The easiest way to recognize this is – most places your signal strength wont be great when your phone displays “4G”. 
2. LTE is currently unable to handle calls and SMS and uses a battery intensive way to handle them (active dual-mode operation for CDMA and passive dual-mode operation or CSFB for GSM networks). This seems to be a temporary arrangement till they figure out a better way to do it (VoLTE?). But all this active switching between networks causes the battery to drain up to two times faster than it generally would.
3. If you are not using LTE and do not need blazing fast speeds all the time (even while your phone is on stand-by and you are not surfing) its better to switch down to GSM/WCDMA than be at LTE/ 4G speeds. This makes the phone stop doing the dual-mode operation thing that keeps doing otherwise. Result – your battery lasts long, real long. I have been able to get my HTC One XL run for 2 days without a recharge by doing this.
4. And here is a quick way of turning off your LTE. Go to your phone’s Settings > Mobile network > Network mode > Choose GSM/ WCDMA auto. That’s all that you need to do.

Passwords in the Cloud

So I have been generally paranoid about keeping my passwords in the cloud. However, over the last few days I have figured a way to keep them in the cloud in a relatively safer way. Mind you, its relatively safe. Relative to what you ask? Well, relative to keeping them in clear text on an excel spread sheet on your computer, or better still, relatively safer to having the same password (or a slightly varied password) for all your accounts. If you haven’t been scared about how insecure your passwords really are, or have been lazy enough to commit the two cardinal sins of managing passwords – reusing them, storing them/ writing them; its high time you do something serious about it. How about, you take a 10 minute break from whatever you are doing now, and follow what I say in this blog post. For once? Please?

Why do I need passwords in the cloud?

For a very long time, the primary computer from where I accessed the internet was my home PC. So I have been using Keepass for more than 6 years now and it has been really good. My passwords were securely encrypted in Keepass on my computer and that's about it.

Then came a time that I had to have passwords to access multiple sites and servers in office. So it became imperative that I have Keepass in office to store my passwords. Now having two copies of anything leads to inconsistencies. So I devised a way to sync my passwords every week. The solution was deceptively simple but cumbersome. I setup SyncToy on my home PC and I carried Keepass on a SD card in my office Laptop. So each time that I had to sync, I removed the SD card from my office Laptop and plugged it into my Home PC and synced them together. Synctoy is a very nifty and free Windows utility to delta sync two hard drives. If you are not using it to backup your PC, may be you should.

Now I have reached a stage that I need my passwords on my Smartphone, my Office PC and my Home PC. Now I can no longer do the SD Card thingie. So the easiest solution was to go cloud.

Having a Cloud based pure play password manager would be too big a risk. For all hackers out there, it would be a treasure trove of information waiting to be hacked into. Maybe that's why a pure cloud based password manager never came into being (till now).

How do I cloud-enable my password manager?

These days there are a lot of cloud-based storage options available. There is the SkyDrive by Windows, Apple iCloud, Google Drive and of course Dropbox. All these solutions let you store files in the cloud. They have been relatively secure. Yeah I know Dropbox got breached last month, but well it was not really a breach on their servers. And the beauty of this solution is that – the vulnerability is not on the cloud, but its on your Keepass encryption (or its distributed across your device, the cloud, your passkey and your master password). Getting access to just one of the things mentioned will not compromise your password security.

Here is the solution step-by-step:

1. Download Keepass on all your computers (I use the portable version, but that's just me)
2. Signup for and download one of the cloud-storage options like Dropbox on all your computers
3. Create a private folder on the cloud-storage provider
4. Create a new password database (or copy your existing database) onto the private folder in the cloud
5. Point Keepass to access that database on the cloud on all your computers(as long as your cloud-storage app is visible in Windows Explorer, Keepass can access it)
6. Create a Key File in Keepass and physically copy it to all your computers (this is a one time activity). Mind you, do not keep your Key File on the cloud.
7. Choose a strong password for Keepass (And here are tips for it)

And you are ready to rock!

How secure is the solution?

So the security of the solution really depends on how safe is Keepass and how complex is your master password. Keepass is relatively very safe. As of now, it has military grade encryption capabilities and its open source (so everyone can see vulnerabilities in its code). If you are worried, you should read this and this.

Breaches can occur at 2 places – in the cloud and on your computer.

A cloud breach occurs when someone gets access to your cloud-drive. Even if they get access to your password database on the cloud, it will be computationally impossible for them (as of 2012) to hack into it without your master password (which is in your brain) and the Key File (which is physically located on your computer).

A bigger breach is when someone accesses Keepass on your computer. In that case, they can theoretically access your cloud-drive and your Key File. But still the master password remains in your brain. It is computationally very difficult (provided you are not a spy or a government agent) for them to break your Keepass database as long as you had chosen a strong master password. Of course if they tie you to a pole and make you confess your password by unmentionable means then you are compromised. But I am sure if you reach that stage, you will have other things to worry about (like your life) than your passwords.

That's it from me. I would like you to comment on this one if – you have doubts or you feel there is a big gap in my logic.

Measure!

Disclaimer: I am no nutritionist. Have had a weight problem all my life. This is not a post about losing weight!

“What gets measured gets done” – Peter Drucker

Time and again I am impressed by how many times Drucker’s philosophical statement actually comes true. Right from KPIs measured by businesses to improve their operational processes right up to tracking your personal spending to control those aimlessly bought items just because you were bored and had nothing to do; Drucker keeps reminding me that for absolutely anything that I wish to achieve in my life, I need to measure it first.

I have been struggling with my weight since, well my birth. So much so that being fat has been a part of my life (yeah and my blog). About 6 months ago I decided that I go from very fat to moderately fat, so that I have less trouble lunging my huge self around. Being a Drucker student, the first thing I did is – bought myself an expensive digital weighing scale. To achieve my goal, there could have been many KPIs that I could have chosen (e.g. – Body fat content, Waist to Hip ratio, Pedometer etc.) but I felt weighing everyday was like the easiest thing to do.

If you look at the graph, I have been fairly consistent. Ironically the first day I started measuring, I ended up gaining quite some weight (the peak at the beginning). On and off I indulged once in a while (which is indicated by all the peaks that you see in between). But if I take the trend, I was fairly consistent with my weight loss plan, till 2 weeks ago.

Last 2 weeks I have been not measuring and my weight loss has been turned into a weight gain. My trend indicates that if I continue at my current pace, I will be back on my path to become very fat. Well, I don’t know if I will be able to counter that, but if there is one thing that I learnt from the last 6 months is indeed – what gets measured really gets done!

So, whatever you wanna do in life, it is mandatory that you set a goal, and measure yourself against the goal everyday!