Samsung Galaxy S5
A new Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone is seen on a display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 23, 2014. Samsung Electronics unveiled a new smart watch and fitness band along with the latest version of its flagship Galaxy smartphone on Monday, demonstrating how the battleground for innovation is shifting from the hand to the wrist.Picture taken on February 23. Reuters/Albert Gea

To prolong the battery life of Android based phones, users can do many things. Switching to "airplane/flight mode" is a sure way to save battery when in low signal/network areas. To use this feature, the user has to remember to switch this mode on before the battery dies out.

This is where the new "Auto Pilot Mode" App helps by switching the mode "on" automatically when it detects less or weak signal, thereby saving the phone battery from getting drained by blocking the phone from searching for network signal.

This app is developed by XDA Developers Forum. According to the Forum, "Auto Pilot Mode is a lightweight tool to enable airplane mode. Battery is rapidly drained when the phone is out of service/signal and to search for a signal to use. In order to prevent this battery drain, Auto Pilot Mode will detect when the signal is below a certain threshold. Once this threshold is met, airplane mode will be switched on for a specified amount of time. After this time, airplane mode is disabled and the checking process repeats."

Advantage

This app can be customized to let the Wi-Fi switched-on when it disables network connectivity so the user will not lose the data connection when located within the coverage range of Wi-Fi network.

Also, this app allows users to set a threshold; upon reaching that threshold the phone will switch to airplane mode. The threshold can be set for both GSM and CDMA connections with the help of this app. The other advantage is that users can choose how long airplane mode should stay active before trying to search for a network signal. There is also an option to let the users launch the app when the phone boots. Besides, the user can stop the service when there is an incoming call.

Flipside

Although the phones running on Android 2.3.3 to Android 4.1 do not require "root access" to get this mode, the phones powered by Android 4.2 and higher will require the Android phones to be rooted.

Even though enabling root access is not a big deal, by doing that the warranty on the phone becomes void. Also, any versions below Android 2.3.3 are not supported by this app. At present, this app supports 2G only connections.

According to the Forum, the future versions will support 3G and 4G connections. Auto Pilot Mode app is available as a free download in the Google Play Store.