batteryscore 1.37
Animated UI
A free app that claims to assess the health of your phone’s built-in Li-Ion cell, Batteryscore has a decent looking interface and how-to guides to get up and running. Nothing spectacular in this area, save for the matrix-style animation that runs in the background. It’s this video that’s said to intentionally drain the battery to determine its health.
How the test works
Batteryscore is a battery benchmarking tool that claims to reliably indicate the health of your device's battery. Developer Vidfame explains that “batteryscore operates by running a stress load on the phone and then measuring the battery degradation over that period that the test runs.”
“The batteryscore app analyzes the time taken in seconds for the phone to move through two API battery level thresholds and uses that to compute an overall score for the battery,” it adds.
You need to bring your device to maximum charge with the app turned on, hit Start, swipe up from the bottom of your display to bring out Control Center and turn on Airplane Mode, double click your Home button to enter multitasking mode and kill all apps except Batteryscore, and then finally hit OK.
You’ll need to unplug your device to start but leave the app running and refrain from using the phone. The test takes about 30 minutes, as the developer itself says, and our score was 1700 something. Which was great only we didn’t know if that was good or not. So we wanted to upload the score and compared against others’ results. What do you know: a hidden in-app purchase.
By browsing over to batteryscore.com, we learned that our score was actually pretty decent. Most people range between 1,000 and 1,600. The higher the value the better the battery condition. Of course, without any professional experience with this type of thing, we can only go on faith.
Tricky upload feature
Unfortunately we felt a bit robbed by Batteryscore. The upload feature provides no indication that you'll be presented with an in-app purchase. It did feel rather suspicious that it wanted our iTunes credentials, and from there on it was just a matter of accidentally tapping Buy. It also collects data about your device when you upload your score.
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0/5
Hits & Misses
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Bottom Line
Design / UI8
Batteryscore looks pretty decent and its UI is very easy to understand and to follow. The matrix-style animation is particularly appealing. |
Function8
Whether or not it provides an accurate assessment of your battery’s health, Batteryscore does seem to be reliable. Scams don’t usually take 30 minutes with Airplane mode on. |
Security7
The upload feature provides no indication that we’d be presented with an in-app purchase. Also it collects data about your device when you upload your score. |
Battery7
It drains the battery intentionally to make its assessment. But we have to grade it. |
Price5
It has ads and hidden in-app purchases. Although the free version churns out your score in exchange for no money, the peculiar way in which Vidfame decided to reach into our pockets is enough to shave off a lot of points on our chart. |
Compatibility7
Requires iOS 6.0 or later. No iPad version. |
Careful with that upload button, ya hear?
Specifications
- price:
- Free with ads
- current version:
- 1.37
- reviewed version:
- 1.33
- developer:
- Vidfame LLC
- category:
- SYSTEM & SHELL
- os version req.:
- 6.0
- age rating:
- 4+
- in-app purchases:
- Yes. Battery Score Unlock Non Consumable $0.99
- hits:
- 735