[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Now that we can agree on - I just wasn't quite sure which point you were trying to make with your explanations. :)

Agree on all points - these features and abilities are necessary for Android to be able to provide the battery usage statistics that are accessible. However, I still don't understand what point you're trying to make here. The facts and assumptions you're making are all correct AFAICT, but I'm missing a conclusion ;). Are you saying that there should be better places to measure the current than .../battery/current_now? Maybe values that are updated more frequently?

OK, just sounded like you were forgetting that the chipset isn't actually the most power-hungry part of the device in most conditions. The Snapdragon SoC may have a Pmax of 350mW, but the display alone probably draws something like 200mA when running at full tilt (guessing according to measurements).

That's actually a good question. It is, once again, just an educated guess. The current_now file seems to be refreshed about once every 60 seconds, and it makes sense that the system would be averaging readings sampled at smaller intervals within these 60 seconds. A momentary reading every 60 seconds would also be possible, of course, but that would be far more impractical in my opinion.

If you find any more information, I'd love to see it too, and I'll be certain to pass along anything I find :)

I don't think I'd have much of a problem running down the Desire's battery in 5 hours with certain games. Display, radios, the whole chipset - hell, I wouldn't be surprised if running everything at full tilt all at once killed the battery in 3 hours ;)

Actualy, I just assumed that your statements here

were meant the way they were written. You're stating that using the compass for 2m47s used 11% of a full 1400mAh charge... that's 154mAh, meaning the compass alone draws a current of 3.32A (not mA, but full Amperes!) - and that's just wrong ;)

I realize I skipped over the end results you posted, but they're relatively incongruent - According to your results the display used only 12% of the power in the whole discharge cycle - but it was on for 6 hours and 6 minutes? Sorry, but that's just not possible. Or do you mean display off by 0% brightness?

What sort of "lenghty sums" did you use to get these figures?

True, but the errors aren't such that we're going to be off by that much, unless the method itself is inherently flawed - as long as we're not off by 100% or more, I'm alright with that ;)

As is now, the values from .../battery/current_now are pretty much in line with my expectations, and while that may not be very reassuring for you (and why should it be? :p), I think we've got a relatively decent way to measure the current draw.

I know I'm being pedantic, but it really is important. If we're each to understand what the other is saying, we need to find a common demoninator in terminology ;)

Of course, if that was just a typo, I apologize :)

A little more pedanticness (you have my permission to be a little pedantic yourself if you know what the proper word for this is :D... pedanticity? Pedanticalness? Pedanticality? :p): mAh has nothing to do with current values per hour... ;)

That was just an idealised example :)

Feel free to pedant a little yourself... meanwhile, I'll be looking up pedant/pedantic to see what the different forms are :D

-edit- Wow, I'm a little disappointed... the verb form of pedantic is "to be pedantic". Time for an addition? I've already proposed a usage form right above :D