WiSyncPlus FAQ
FAQ

Verizon Droid Users, Read This

Important Upgrade Note

A change in APN handling takes effect in version 1.3.4 and later. After installing this upgrade you must immediately toggle your APN three times. Doing so will safely transition the old style of APN handling to the new style of APN handling. This change is required because of APN handling changes in Etas Network. An alternative method is to reset your APNs to the default factory load and then turn them off again.

How Does It Work?

Applications and Google's core services drain battery and possibly incur fees each time they access the internet. WiSyncPlus works by directly controlling devices which use battery; meaning, your WIFI and cellular data connections. In turn, by limiting and controlling access to the Internet, battery life can be considerably extended and significant dollars can be saved. Furthermore, for those without unlimited data access or those that roam, considerable data access can be prevented or at least controlled in a coarse grained manner.

The result is control over how, when, where, and even how often your phone synchronizes, allows Internet access, and indirectly, when and how often background services and applications can run.

What is an APN?

An APN is a profile which tells your phone how to establish data connections on your cellular network. By manipulating your phone's APN you can control your phone's access to the Internet.

How Do I Take Control?

Taking control is easy. WiSyncPlus provides several mechanisms to take control of your phone back. Triggers, shortcuts, notifications, and scheduled events provides a multitude of means to control your phone.

How Do I Use Triggers?

With WiSyncPlus running, select, "menu" and then "preferences". Here you can enable and disable various actions based on various device conditions; including when the display turns off/on, when a WIFI connection is established, when charging begins and ends, and even when your device boots.

How Do I Create Shortcuts?

You can create shortcuts in two ways. One is to long press on your desktop where you want the new shortcut placed. After you press and hold (a long press) long enough, a dialog box will open. Select, "Shortcuts". WiSyncPlus provides eight different shortcuts. These shortcuts provide one-click access to many of your device's and WiSyncPlus network and synchronization features.

How Do I Enable Notifications?

In WiSyncPlus' preferences, under the "Notification" section, select, "Enable Notifications." Many other notification options exist. More are planned. Configure to suite your style of access.

How Do I Use The Scheduler?

From the application's main screen, press the "menu" button. Select, "Schedule". Your list of schedules is now displayed. If you have not created any yet, the list is empty. To create a new schedule, press the "menu" button, followed by, "New Schedule". See The Scheduler section of the FAQ below for more detailed information.

What Are The Lock Buttons?

The main GUI now has two lock buttons. They each control "manual locks." When you manually enable either your WIFI or APN, it becomes manually locked. The light on the button indicates its state. When the scheduler starts your WIFI or APN, it is not manually locked. By manually locking your APN or WIFI, you are preventing the scheduler from turning off your Internet access when a scheduled events completes. This allows the user to convert scheduler initiated WIFI and APN access into a manual lock. Without these buttons, when your WIFI of APN has been enabled because of a scheduled event, you would be forced to turn off and then on again your WIFI or APN. With the buttons in place, you can now simply lock it.

Take Control Now

WiSyncPlus allows you to control Internet access with various trigger actions. Some of the triggers include:

  • Enable WIFI/APN when display turns on.
  • Disable WIFI/APN when display turns off.
  • Enable/disable your synchronization configuration based on display on/off.
  • Enable WIFI/APN when charging.
  • Disable WIFI/APN when stop charging.
  • When battery critically low (15%), disable WiSyncPlus' scheduler, WIFI, APN, and synchronization.
  • Disable APNs at boot.

WiSyncPlus also allows you to directly enable and disable WIFI and APN Internet access by both shortcuts and optional notifications.

A day of the week based scheduler allows for automated Internet access to be scheduled, thusly allowing applications to periodically and autonomously update in the background. This means many applications can continue to access the Internet but do so without constantly draining your battery. For example, many weather related applications are horrible at draining your battery and usually provide no means to turn off or control their constant access. WiSyncPlus works wonders at limiting these types of applications negative impact on battery life.

The Scheduler

How does the scheduler work?

WiSyncPlus' scheduler is day centric. Scheduled events are based on a single day's 24-hour period. Schedulable hours are 12:00am to 11:59pm for all events. In turn, each scheduled event is associated with one or more days of the week. Events which span multiple days, really multiple 24-hour periods, require the creation of multiple events to be run on multiple days of the week.

In case of a timezone change or if time changes as the result of daylight savings, the scheduler will automatically reschedule the proper event. This may cause some events to unexpectedly be executed multiple times.

Can multiple events run at the same time?

No. Only a single event is ever scheduled to run at one time. Only the most current, enabled event, is ever scheduled to run. The most current event is always the event which most closely encompasses the current time or is the closest future time.

Here are some examples:

  • Current time is 7:30am. Two separate events are scheduled for today. The first event is scheduled for 9:00am until 5:00pm. The second event is scheduled from 11:00am to 1:00pm. The first event to be scheduled for the day is the 9:00am event. It will run in 1.5 hours from now. The first event will run because it is the first future event which can be scheduled.
  • The current time is 11:32am. Two separate events are scheduled for today. The first event is scheduled for 9:00am until 5:00pm. The second event is scheduled from 11:00am to 1:00pm. The event which spans 11:00am to 1:00pm mostly closely encompasses 11:32am. Accordingly, only this event will be scheduled for execution until after 1:00pm. From the hours of 9:00am to 10:59am and again from 1:00pm to 5:00pm, the first event will be scheduled to run.
  • The current time is 6:00pm. Two separate events are scheduled for today. The first event is scheduled for 9:00am until 5:00pm. The second event is scheduled from 11:00am to 1:00pm. None of those events will run because none are scheduled later than 6:00pm. A phantom event is scheduled since no other events can be. The phantom event will run at 12:00am the next morning, which does nothing but schedule the next event for the day. Phantom events are always used when no other events on the given day can be scheduled. That means at a minimum the scheduler will fire one event every day.

My scheduled event does not run.

If an event does not run, make sure the event is marked, "Enabled" in the scheduler. By default new events are "Disabled" and must be explicitly "Enabled." Events which are marked "Disabled" will never run.

My scheduled event still does not run.

Every event must be associated with one or more days of the week. By default an event is not associated with any days of the week. Make sure each event is associated with at least one day of the week and the day of the week selection includes today.

My event is configured to turn off my APN. When my event expired the APN was not turned off as part of the stop action.

This is actually a feature. Anytime you manually enable your APN, it prevents the scheduler from automatically turning it off. Imagine trying to web browse or check email and the scheduler keeps turning off your APN. In order to prevent high levels of frustration, the user takes responsibility for manually turning the APN back off when done.

I leave data roaming enabled and I constantly forget to turn off my APN after manually enabling it. I wind up racking up roaming fees. Is there anything you can do to help me?

Yes! Go to your preferences and find the When Display Turns Off section. Check the Disable APN(s) option. In doing so, every time your display turns off, it will automatically disable your APN - even if manually enabled.

How to set an event's duration?

The button which has the word, "For", on it is used to configure an event's duration. After the configured period of time, the event will expire. Each time an event expires the At End of Event actions are executed.

How long should I set an event's duration?

You always want to configure the minimum period required for your needs. Setting the duration too small may not allow background services enough time to finish their communication tasks. This is especially true if you wind up falling back to much slower GPRS cellular data speeds. Setting the duration too large simply wastes battery and allows background services unfeathered network access for the entire duration. Some trial and error may be required. For most needs I have found one to five minutes is adequate.

Here are some rules of thumb to get you started:

  • A one minute duration may be acceptable when syncing only email over WIFI.
  • When syncing only email over APN, a two minute duration may prove to be a good starting place. The additional time allows for both, the APNs to be enabled and disabled, as well as time for the radio to establish a data connection on the cell network. This does not mean you will actually have a data connection available for the full two minute window.
  • If syncing contacts, add a minute.
  • If syncing calenders and you have multiple calendars or a large number of events, add another minute.
  • If syncing via APN and slow GPRS connections are likely the best you can achieve, add another one to two minutes. Yes, GPRS connections can be very slow especially if syncing many emails, contacts, and calendars.

How to set an event's interval or frequency?

The button containing the word, "Every", is used to configure how frequently an event will fire. Events must never fire more frequently than the event will last (duration). By definition, any event which fires as frequently as its duration is a continuous event. The proper means to configure this is to set your event duration to a larger value while increasing the event frequency.

What event frequency should I use?

A low scheduled frequency can be very counter productive to battery life. While no one answer is good for everyone, for the best battery savings, use the largest value possible. Keep in mind there is a battery cost associated with each event which fires. This includes both starting and stopping an event. For best results I suggest a value of no less than an hour. If a more timely schedule is required, consider 15-minute intervals to be the ideal lower limit. I've not done much battery testing with intervals less than 15-minutes. I can tell you battery savings tends to fall off rather quickly with intervals less than 15-minutes.

Obviously results will vary based on actual workloads.

What does the At Start of Event section do?

Every time an event runs, it optionally can trigger a WiSyncPlus specific action. These actions include enabling your cellular data connection (APN), enabling your WIFI, and triggering a forced synchronization.

While none of the actions are required, either enabling your APN or enabling your WIFI connections are generally what you'll want to do.

What does the At End of Event section do?

Just like the At Start of Event, the At End of Event section allows actions to be run every time an event expires. At this time the only supported actions are disable your cellular data connection (APN) and disable your WIFI connection.

Advanced Tip:Remember, just because you enable a feature at the start of an event does not mean you must disable the feature at the end of the event. So for example, if you want to have your APN enabled over the transition from one day to the next (11:00pm to 2:00am), enable it on the current day at 11:00pm and and disable it in another event on the second day at 2:00am. To truly disable at exactly 2:00am, schedule the second event to start at 1:59am, with no enable actions, and a Disable APN action for the At End of Event action. Set the interval to be one minute.

Application Side Effects

WiSyncPlus Turns On My WIFI When Charging But It Keeps Disconnecting

This isn't really a side effect of WiSyncPlus. The problem is, on many devices, by default, your WIFI will go dormant when its no longer actively used. When your WIFI device goes dormant, your WIFI connection is shutdown. To prevent this behavior, go to Settings -> Wireless Controls -> WIFI Settings. Then, hit the menu button and select the Advanced menu item. Now select WiFi sleep policy followed by Never when plugged in.

Now when you plug in, your WIFI will no longer go dormant and your phone will not fall back to your cellular data connection for Internet access.

Can Google constantly "ping" in the background with my APN disabled?

Google has a variety of services which run in the background on your Android device. These services periodically attempt to collect and report statistics, WIFI locations, and crash information back to Google. Without an active APN, Google's applications are unable to effectively run. While they still periodically wake in the background, they are short lived as they are unable to establish a connection back to Google.

Limiting network access of these background services is one of the key reasons WiSyncPlus is able to significantly save battery power. Its also why no other application saves power like WiSyncPlus does.

Can I save money when roaming?

When data roaming is enabled, disabling your APN saves you money as it prevents Google's core services from using data services; which incurs user fees. When your APN is enabled Google is still able to use your connection but the amount of traffic will be reduced. The exact savings is highly application, service, and user dependant.

By turning off your APN when you sleep, your phone is not able to establish connections back to Google unless it also has a WIFI connection. Should data roaming be enabled, your phone will still be unable to communicate with Google so long as your APN is also disabled. During these periods WiSyncPlus is saving you money by not allowing connections which would otherwise injure fees.

Can I check my email or browse the web with a disabled APN?

Assuming you do not have a WIFI connection, no. All of these things require Internet access. Internet access is disabled so long as you APN remains disabled.

Can Google's Latitude service report my location with a disabled APN?

Assuming you do not have a WIFI connection, no. Latitude requires an Internet connection to report your location back to their Latitude service. If your APN is disabled and you do not have a WIFI connection, your location can not be reported.

Does SMS Texting work with my APN disabled?

Absolutely yes. SMS messages ride on the back of the control channel the cellular network uses to communicate with your phone. So long as you can see bars on your phone, texting still works.

Does MMS Messaging work with my APN disabled?

Not directly. MMS works differently than SMS. MMS requires access to the internet to function. In order to receive MMS messages your phone requires either a WIFI connection to the Internet or an APN connection to the Internet through your carrier.

The good news is WiSyncPlus now supports carrier configurations which support multiple APNs, with one being of type MMS. To enable MMS support in WiSyncPlus, go to Preferences,Global Settings, and check the, "Ignore MMS APN(s)", option. Users with only one APN will not see a difference.

Please keep in mind, enabling this option does not prevent roaming APN activity. Having said that, your MMS applications should already protect you from roaming MMS data activities.

Does the Network Location Provider work with my APN disabled?

I previously said, "no." I was wrong. It seems the answer is, "YES!" The Network Location Provider requires access to the Internet. The network location provider works by determining the cell towers your phone can see and looking up their latitude and longitude with Google. No internet access means no location information is available. A WIFI connection and signal bars on your phone, in of themselves, can provide location information. A WIFI connection in combination with an active data connection can provide for highly accurate locations with the Network Location Provider.

My GPS is enabled but Google Maps still does not display anything.

Google Maps requires an internet connection be available to download and display maps. Applications which strictly use your GPS and offline maps or data will continue to function even with your APN disabled. Otherwise, you'll need to enable your APN/WIFI to allow this class of application to function.

My scheduled event still didn't run. I know this because an application's data was not updated in the period when the APN was available.

This all gets fairly complex. Here are some reasons why applications and background services may not have been updated despite having a data connection (WIFI/APN) available.

  • The application or service runs off of a periodic timer which does not align with the scheduled availability of your APN/WIFI connection. You'll likely need to modify your schedule to ensure your application or service runs when a data connection is available.
  • The application or service in question is poorly written. Applications may assume an Internet connection is always available. This may result in application crashes and the inability to properly run.
  • The application is based on a push service. While highly dependant on the specific service, the push may not be initiated by the remote when when your APN is actually enabled. You'll likely need to modify your schedule to ensure your push service runs when a data connection is available.
  • You were on a phone call during the time the event ran. If your cell radio is active with a call, data connections via APN can not be established. As such, if you are on a call during the period when your APN was active, data can not be transferred.

Well written applications must use the various connection interfaces to monitor availability of connection paths. Applications and services which monitor connection availability will be able to timely take advantage of the available connection paths.

Can I still be billed for roaming charges while the phone is booting even with though APNs will be disabled at boot?

Yes! The order in which applications are started at boot time is completely out of WiSyncPlus' control. In the event you reboot your phone with APNs enabled, Google's core services and even other applications may detect a connection path and use it before WiSyncPlus can disable your APN.

Because its always possible, and in fact very likely, your cellular data access will be used at boot, it is strongly recommended to never reboot your phone with both your APNs and data roaming enabled.

Application Compatibility

Is there a list of of applications which are not compatible with WiSyncPlus?

There is no list, nor do I plan to maintain one. I have, however, noticed a specific category of application which seems to be more problematic then most. Weather applications in particular seem to be especially problematic at correctly handling loss of Internet connectivity.

I have filed a bug report against one of the most popular weather reporting applications. The bug report was accepted. This application goes into an infinite loop attempting to obtain a weather update and rapidly discharges the battery. I do not believe they have addressed this bug despite having almost thirty day to do so. Hopefully they plan to address their very serious bug in the near future.

Another very popular weather reporting application seems to fallback into a periodic retry cycle, attempting to obtain the latest weather. This application seems to discharge the battery at a rate of approximately 5% per hour. While not nearly as serious as the infinite loop above, it does defeat the potential power savings WiSyncPlus brings to the table.

Long story short, several of the most popular weather applications are poster children for how not to write proper Android applications. Rather than infinite loops and chronic retries these applications should be determining if a connection path is available before doing anything.

Doesn't these types of application problems invalidate WiSyncPlus' approach to connection management?

No, not at all. Keep in mind it is perfectly valid and even reasonable to expect you will travel to locations where data services are not available. Traveling into subterranean locations (for example, sub-basements, tunnels, subways) or extremely rural areas are both locations where one might lose their data connectivity. Furthermore, placing your phone into airplane mode has a similar effect. Traveling to these types of locations results in the same loss of connectivity as WiSyncPlus imposes.

Applications which do not work properly with WiSyncPlus are buggy in the most general sense and need to be fixed.

Google's MMS service seems to force close. Is this related to my use of WiSyncPlus?

I'm actually not sure. I have observed a periodic issue with Google's MMS service on my own Android device. I have also noticed an increased rate of forced closures from the MMS service after I started developing WiSyncPlus. I'm convinced Google's MMS service is buggy. As Cupcake is nearing release I decided I would take a wait and see approach to see if the problem persists with Cupcake.

Does Google's MMS Service force closing cause problems?

Not that I've observed. I only occasionally send or receive MMS messages, but for my own use I've not noticed any side-effects as a result of associated force closures.

For now, the only problem appears to be an occasional annoyance in having to answer the force close dialog.

Applications Which Auto-Terminate Applications And Services

There exists some applications which seek to increase available memory by automatically terminating applications and services. For proper behavior, the WiSyncPlus service must be allowed to run. If you are using any of these applications, you must add the WiSyncPlus service to any and all exclusion lists. In absolute terms, termination of the WiSyncPlus service outside of the normal Android lifecycle breaks WiSyncPlus.

The WIFI Monitor Constantly Goes Off When It Shouldn't

Certain applications constantly turn your WIFI device on and off to detect physical location based on access point proximity. Some of these applications are very popular. If you are using these types of applications you should either uninstall the application or disable the WIFI Monitor in preferences.

The WIFI Monitor Still Goes Off When It Shouldn't

Either you have an application installed, which unknown to you is doing naughty things with your WIFI device, or your WIFI device is going dormant. When the WIFI device goes dormant, it draws less power. That's good. The bad part is, when it goes dormant the device disconnects from any access points to which it was previously connected. As such, this qualifies as, "on but not connected", and triggers the WIFI Monitor.

To avoid this condition you can uninstall any naughty applications, turn off the WIFI Monitor, or adjust your WIFI device to limit when it is allowed to go dormant. To prevent this behavior, go to Settings -> Wireless Controls -> WIFI Settings. Then, hit the menu button and select the Advanced menu item. Now select WiFi sleep policy followed by Never. Please make sure you understand the implications of this change in configuration.

I am exploring detection of the dormant case so as to avoid false alarms with the WIFI Monitor. Hopefully a solution will be made available ina future release.


Suggested Configurations

The Office Worker

For the typical officer worker, I suggest the following preferences as a starting point. This is based on the assumption WIFI will be more commonly available and an one hour lunch break will take place.

Enable the following:

  • On WIFI Connection
    • Force Synchronize
    • Auto-Sync
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • Force Synchronize Settings
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • On WIFI Disconnection
    • Auto-Sync
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • When Display Turns Off
    • Disable APN(s)

Then, create a schedule which covers you while you're out to lunch. So you may have something like: Enabled, "Work Lunch", 12:00pm, 1:00pm, For 2 Minutes, Every 15 Minutes, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Enable APN, Force Sync, Disable APN.

The Traveler

The Traveler configuration assumes you'll be largely data roaming and WIFI synchronization is preferred. Just the same, we assume periodic email updates are desired and that when the display is turned on you're attempting to make phone calls, browse the Internet, check and send email.

Enable the following:

  • On WIFI Connection
    • Force Synchronize
    • Auto-Sync
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • Force Synchronize Settings
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • On WIFI Disconnection
    • Auto-Sync
    • Gmail (if applicable)
    • Calendar (if applicable)
    • Contacts
  • When Display Turns On
    • Enable APN(s)
  • When Display Turns Off
    • Disable APN(s)
  • Global APN Settings
    • Disable APN(s) On Boot

Then, create a schedule which covers you while you're out and about. So you may have something the following.

  • Enabled, "Weekday Travel", 7:00am, 7:00pm, For 2 Minutes, Every 30 Minutes, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Enable APN, Force Sync, Disable APN.
  • Enabled, "Evening Travel", 7:00pm, 10:00pm, For 2 Minutes, Every 60 Minutes, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Enable APN, Force Sync, Disable APN.
  • Enabled, "Hotel WIFI", 10:00pm, 11:59pm, For 2 Minutes, Every 30 Minutes, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Enable WIFI, Force Sync, Disable WIFI.

I found a bug!

My desired start/end actions is not available.

Additional actions will be added in the future. Some additional actions have already been coded and are currently disabled because they are not well tested.

If you would like to see additional actions added in the future, please feel free to email GearSoft and make your feature request known.

How to report bugs?

If you found a bug, please go do the About page and select, Email GearSoft Support. Please include as much information about the bug in question. Simply stating, "x doesn't work", is unlikely to result in a bug fix. Please provide enough to detail to allow for recreation.

If your bug report pertains to crashes, compatibility reports, or force closures, please download and install XtraLogic's Log Collector application. Recreate the issue in question and then run the collector application. Then email the collected log to support.

These generated logs are invaluable to developers.