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Guest AndyCr15
Posted

I notice this sparked up in one of the ROM threads, so figured it is worthy of it's own thread.

I've done a little experimenting, made a spreadsheet and all, to see what makes a difference to the battery drainage. Here are my findings -

Live Wallpaper: YES

Connection: 3G

Taskiller Widget: YES

Battery Drain: 7.5% per hour

Live Wallpaper: YES

Connection: 3G

Taskiller Widget: NO

Battery Drain: 4.5% per hour

Live Wallpaper: NO

Connection: 3G

Taskiller Widget: NO

Battery Drain: 4.4% per hour

Live Wallpaper: YES

Connection: 2G

Taskiller Widget: NO

Battery Drain: 4.15% per hour

On average, using one of the 4.XX% scenarios, if it was left asleep for the hour it drained battery 2-3% per hour.

Heavily used for the hour, browsing the web on lunch drained battery 6-9% per hour.

Mind you, today has been relatively light use all day, Live WP, 3G and I've got 3.7% all day. At this rate, I would probably get 27 hours use. The battery does seem to get better after a weeks use, so don't judge it straight out of the box. I know some people said using 2G would save battery, I was surprised how little it did.

One thing I used to do on my Hero to save battery was turn of auto rotate. Tomorrow I might try that and see how it helps battery life.

Are there any other things you'd like me to test?

Guest slyydrr
Posted

For these types of results, you should post the ROM being used as well. Some ROMs have some issues w/ battery life management.

I think one thing that would definitely help put some perspective around these numbers would be posting the data from the Battery usage screen where it shows the overall times and % breakdowns.

I say that because I can get over 48 hours on my phone, which equates to around 2% drain overall an hour when you average it out. But I'd also be willing to bet that my usage is less than yours.

Regardless, this is a good idea and will help people with making their phones more power-efficient.

Guest AndyCr15
Posted

Some results where on Cyanogens and I switched yesterday to MCR 1.5

This isn't meant to be any kind of science, I've just been trying to get an idea of what I can do to get more life from my battery. If I find certain apps help or hinder, I will let people know, that's all...

Guest slyydrr
Posted
Some results where on Cyanogens and I switched yesterday to MCR 1.5

This isn't meant to be any kind of science, I've just been trying to get an idea of what I can do to get more life from my battery. If I find certain apps help or hinder, I will let people know, that's all...

Oh I definitely agree with you! Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I think what you're doing is perfect: helping people realize certain options/applications that may hinder battery life. I was just making my comment so that people realize that their results may vary depending on use, etc.

But definitely good stuff!

Guest AndyCr15
Posted

Okay, so today I've been using it at 614mhz and it looks like it's made no difference...

The bigger difference is I've used SetCPU app to lower my CPU speed to 245-384MHz when in standby. This is moving things to about 3½% per hour. With the CPU limited to 614, the screen is still the main drain at 53% of battery usage and when I used the phone heavily, it still dropped quite a bit, so I don't think it's worth losing performance for minimal gains.

I will still leave SetCPU to limit the CPU to 614 when it gets to 30% of battery left. If I get that low, I guess I need to do all I can to lengthen it's life!

Guest AndyCr15
Posted

I'm finding Cyanogens ROM seems to be more battery intensive. The display now only takes 6% while cell standby is 35%, phone idle 30% and Android system is 25%. I'm sure with MCR 1.5 the display was the main drain and the battery lasted about 10 hours longer...

Is it just because I'm now on the ERE36B ROM? If I switch back to MCR1.6, which uses ERE36B right, it might be higher drain?

Anyone else got ROM swapping experience on battery drain?

Guest slyydrr
Posted
I'm finding Cyanogens ROM seems to be more battery intensive. The display now only takes 6% while cell standby is 35%, phone idle 30% and Android system is 25%. I'm sure with MCR 1.5 the display was the main drain and the battery lasted about 10 hours longer...

Is it just because I'm now on the ERE36B ROM? If I switch back to MCR1.6, which uses ERE36B right, it might be higher drain?

Anyone else got ROM swapping experience on battery drain?

Yea, Cyanogen's ROM has very high Android System usage. From what someone else mentioned in another thread, Cyanogen's ROM is built off of a different base. The issue you experienced was the reason I removed Cyanogen's ROM from my phone after an hour. So yeah, it is unrelated to ERE36B ROM. I'm on MCR 1.6 now w/ minimal Android System usage.

Guest AndyCr15
Posted
So yeah, it is unrelated to ERE36B ROM. I'm on MCR 1.6 now w/ minimal Android System usage.

And to confirm, you are now getting better battery life from MCR1.6?

It's so odd, my battery's having such an odd day today (sorry, I'm sad, I'm still tracking it almost hourly...) I woke up and unplugged it at exactly 5am. For 7 minutes I checked e-mails and twitter and it had dropped 3%!!! By 8am I was down to 82% (ride in to work, listening to music for 25 mins, thats about all) I was thinking this was getting silly. It's now 5pm here and I'm still at 61%?!?! So, over the first 3 hours it went 6%ph, since then it's done 2.3%... that's the best I've ever got from it.

Now I'm in two minds of whether to flash to MCR or not. In some ways I'm thinking if it can maintain this, don't mess...

I guess I can Nandroid it and have a play.

Guest slyydrr
Posted
And to confirm, you are now getting better battery life from MCR1.6?

It's so odd, my battery's having such an odd day today (sorry, I'm sad, I'm still tracking it almost hourly...) I woke up and unplugged it at exactly 5am. For 7 minutes I checked e-mails and twitter and it had dropped 3%!!! By 8am I was down to 82% (ride in to work, listening to music for 25 mins, thats about all) I was thinking this was getting silly. It's now 5pm here and I'm still at 61%?!?! So, over the first 3 hours it went 6%ph, since then it's done 2.3%... that's the best I've ever got from it.

Now I'm in two minds of whether to flash to MCR or not. In some ways I'm thinking if it can maintain this, don't mess...

I guess I can Nandroid it and have a play.

I never used Cyanogen long enough to see how the battery life lasted on a full day, but I can confirm that the battery life I get now is no better/worse than the battery life I got w/ MCR 1.5.

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