Solution for better battery life

[Guest rss2k]

All,

i found a small tool called setcpu.apk, it is a tool which is meant for overclocking the HTC Qualcom MSM7201a based androids (G1, G2, Hero).

Since the pulse is using virtually the same hardware I thought it should also work for the Pulse. And it actually does work, but a bit

different than I expected. Apparently the HTC's use default 384MHz, whereas the Pulse uses default the max 528MHz.

The application does not allow above 528MHz, so we cannot use it to overclock the Pulse, but underclocking is a possibility.

The application supports profiiles, so you can set lower speed when the device is sleeping. This should result in

longer batterylife! I just found it out, so I have no idea yet if the batterylife will be better. I charge my phone whenever

possible, so normally I don't have too much problem with the batterylife, but I guess that for some people

it should help.

I did find a support page: http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/

The tool is in the marketplace for $0.99, but also available at XDA for free. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=505419

[Guest rss2k]

I suspect I have 1 issue: if the device returns from sleep then wifi is not working correctly, I am not yet sure if it is related to SetCPU. But turning wifi off and on fixes it.

[Guest Shuflie]

How did you go with your testing of this, have you noticed much difference in your battery life yet?

[Guest rss2k]

How did you go with your testing of this, have you noticed much difference in your battery life yet?

Hi,

didn't do a scientific test, but I actually did not find much difference. I *think* the device already has

a default twin speed. 528MHz when the speed is required and turned back to 245MHz or so when sleeping.

Try in an ADB shell a cat /proc/cpuinfo The bogomips figure is on this processor the actual clockrate.

When the phone is at the startscreen it registers at 245. Start an application and it is at 528, so I think

it's already quite powerfriendly with this speedthrottling. Of course you could turn down the 528 MHz

speed down and I am fairly sure the battery life will increase, but I am very happy with the batterylife as it is.

[Guest Shuflie]

Did a quick test last night myself, I left the default at 528-245 but set up a the profiles section to

Charging -> 528-528

Sleeping -> 128-128 (really runs @ 122-122, and it didn't crash)

Power <50% -> 384-245 (Pulse runs @ 320-245 with this setting, guess I should really setup a custom clock file for it)

The sleep profile is the one I'm most interested in as I don't really need my phone to be working away at full speed when the screen is off. Left it sleeping overnight and with bluetooth, WIFI and the phone enabled (with the t-mobile SIM in it so reception is pretty patchy); this morning the battery had gone from 100% to 94%. That's good enough reason for me to hold onto setcpu.

[Guest Jason Patel]

Nice set of test results, do you know what your battery would normally go down to?

Thanks

Jason

[Guest Shuflie]

Nice set of test results, do you know what your battery would normally go down to?

Thanks

Jason

I'd normally loose about 25-30% overnight so big improvement for me.

[Guest channi3]

How did you set your sleep profile to 128-128?

I cannot get it down below 245-245 for sleep

[Guest le_lutin]

How did you set your sleep profile to 128-128?

I cannot get it down below 245-245 for sleep

Might be a silly question but does it take any longer for the phone to come out of sleep mode when it is underclocked? 

I might try out this method soon - the battery on my pulse is a bit woeful. I don't have sync, wifi, gps or anything on and I normally don't get much more than 24 hours out of it. 

[Guest Shuflie]

How did you set your sleep profile to 128-128?

I cannot get it down below 245-245 for sleep

Set the Min value first then the Max, you can't set Max below Min. Starting profile is the Dream/G1/Magic/myTouch.

[Guest Shuflie]

Might be a silly question but does it take any longer for the phone to come out of sleep mode when it is underclocked? 

I might try out this method soon - the battery on my pulse is a bit woeful. I don't have sync, wifi, gps or anything on and I normally don't get much more than 24 hours out of it. 

About a second from button press to unlock screen appearing, no real difference from the default setting to be honest.

[Guest channi3]

I've got the 128-128 profile working (i think)

SO do you have to keep setCPU running in the background to get it to work, or is it a permanent underclock?

Thats because i use Taskiller alot to terminate all applications, so will it still work even if i kill all tasks?

Cheers

[Guest Shuflie]

I've got the 128-128 profile working (i think)

SO do you have to keep setCPU running in the background to get it to work, or is it a permanent underclock?

Thats because i use Taskiller alot to terminate all applications, so will it still work even if i kill all tasks?

Cheers

You need to leave the service running to get the profiles to work i think, otherwise how would they kick in?

[Guest jebbers]

I applied the same profiles as above and it works perfectly. The battery seems to last much longer.

Edited December 23, 2009 by jebbers

[Guest le_lutin]

I applied the same profiles as above and it works perfectly. The battery seems to last much longer.

I have rooted my Pulse and installed setCPU. I have applied the same settings as Shufflie (thanks btw). Is there any way of knowing whether the CPU is actually successfully underclocking or do you just have to trust that it is? 

[Guest Shuflie]

I have rooted my Pulse and installed setCPU. I have applied the same settings as Shufflie (thanks btw). Is there any way of knowing whether the CPU is actually successfully underclocking or do you just have to trust that it is? 

Not for the sleep setting, you just have to trust that its working. You can check that its working in general by setting the main clock speed to different levels and running the benchmark in the info (I think) screen.

[Guest zerosignull]

I have the latest version of SetCPU on my december Pulse. The battery situation is a bit better but not great. My profile is is:

Charging: 528 -> 122

Sleeping: 122 -> 122

Power: <50% 384 -> 122

CPU Governot: ondemand

If you want more extreme powersaving change the governor to "power save".

[Guest Bendolfc]

Have set my sleep profile to to 19MHz - 122Mhz. Battery now lasts two days although sometimes setCpu doesn't respond but the phone works fine.

Now seems to be a usable phone...

Edited December 27, 2009 by Bendolfc

[Guest Rob_B]

I've got the 128-128 profile working (i think)

SO do you have to keep setCPU running in the background to get it to work, or is it a permanent underclock?

Thats because i use Taskiller alot to terminate all applications, so will it still work even if i kill all tasks?

Cheers

I use TaskKill and added SetCPU to the 'ignore' list.

Thanks to original poster for the heads-up on this one. Unused, the battery is losing about 15-20% a day now.

Edited December 27, 2009 by Rob_B

[Guest rss2k]

I use TaskKill and added SetCPU to the 'ignore' list.

Thanks to original poster for the heads-up on this one. Unused, the battery is losing about 15-20% a day now.

I am glad that some people find it useful, like I said earlier I do not have too many battery problems,

but this tool saves some power, so quite welcome. This device already has the best battery life of any smartphones (WINMO devices)

I have used in the past, and now it's even better. I will try to contact the maker of the tool and make

him aware that there's another device which the tool works on.

[Guest Casper-vH]

Tried it using Shuflie's settings. But it gave a couple of force closes, when entering and leaving sleep mode and eventually crashed my music player.

I uninstalled it again.

Edited December 28, 2009 by Casper-vH

[Guest le_lutin]

Right, I am not convinced that this is actually working for me. I did a quick test last night (phone slept for 7.25 hours) and with nothing on except "background data" the battery went from 41% to 17%. Not what I'd expect. 

Here is what I did: 

- Installed setCPU from the market.

- When trying to configure setCPU, I got an error message saying my phone wasn't rooted, so I rooted it. 

- After that I no longer got the rooting message, but got a "could not read setcpu.txt" message, so I put a file called setcpu.txt on the root of my sd card. 

- This didn't make any difference, I still got the "could not read setcpu.txt" message, but the app seemed to remember my config (ie profiles enabled, sleeping 128 -> 128), so I figured that the app would still work, but going on my test, it looks like it hasn't. 

Any ideas chaps? Where did you guys create the setcpu.txt file? And would the app definitely not work without it?

Edited December 29, 2009 by le_lutin

[Guest rss2k]

To get the (almost) right profiles for the Pulse select the HTC Tattoo/Click beta option. I am in contact with the writer of this nice piece of software and he's going to add T-Mobile Pulse support in the program. But for now use HTC Tattoo settings.

[Guest le_lutin]

To get the (almost) right profiles for the Pulse select the HTC Tattoo/Click beta option. I am in contact with the writer of this nice piece of software and he's going to add T-Mobile Pulse support in the program. But for now use HTC Tattoo settings.

Thanks rss2k, 

I reinstalled setcpu and selected that profile, so i have no more error messages about reading the setcpu.txt file. I'll do another test tonight to see if it makes a difference. I am currently struggling to get more than 24 hours from my Pulse, and that's with practically nothing on (GPS, wifi, bluetooth etc), so any extra battery life would be welcome.

[Guest rss2k]

Thanks rss2k,

I reinstalled setcpu and selected that profile, so i have no more error messages about reading the setcpu.txt file. I'll do another test tonight to see if it makes a difference. I am currently struggling to get more than 24 hours from my Pulse, and that's with practically nothing on (GPS, wifi, bluetooth etc), so any extra battery life would be welcome.

I use 122MHz for sleep mode.

From a shell (ADB or terminal) use the command:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state

This will result in something like this:

122880 257399

245760 2339758

320000 48251

480000 71486

528000 1009029

This will show how much time is spent in each frequency, I guess it's in microseconds. I am a bit baffled by

the amount of frequencies. And I would have thought that only 2 frequencies would be used, not all. The Pulse

does not use the 122880 by default, normally the time spent at that frequency should be 0.

So roughly my phone is 70% spent in sleep mode and 30% in normal operating mode. Default the Pulse appears

to run in 245/528 mode. So in order to gain battery life one could go for 122/528 mode without loosing too much

performance, but personally I think it feels at bit sluggish like it is a bit slow in gearing up the frequency.

If you're willing to give up speed for battery life you could go with 122/480.