[Desire General] th3:
Test: Part 2

Bemymonkey wished to see battery life compared between the HTC 2.2 and OpenDesire 3.1.0 ROMs including battery info stats. Mainly for the display portion. Here is the first part.

Notes:

* Same setup, similar usage (my typical), same user, same device.

* Similar but not fixed. Fixed was impossible for me for so many hours as it is my primary portable phone. The HTC 2.2 had no change in 2G/3G and screen brightness throughout the test while the OD 3.1.0 did. Without a doubt, the idle power consumption is lower on the OD 3.1.0. PowerTutor reads 0mW and it does seem close to true (leakage currents adding some 0.05-0.1mW). Because I was profiling power usage in other apps at the same time as this usage test (intentionally), I had brightness at 50-100% and 2G/3G, HSPDA/GPRS and GPS on and off for considerable periods.

* The OD 3.1.0 ROM by default shuts off WiFi on standby and saves precious power over the HTC 2.2. Basically, I found no change in the reported battery percentage when the phone was put to standby and switched back on after 6 hours on OD 3.1.0. On HTC 2.2, I lost 1-2%.

* I will post more fine grained data on the tests later but on the OD 3.1.0 test, 100% brightness on a pink, gray, white, green, red black and blue display image as wallpaper/picture/browser was tested for 62mins alone. GPRS and HSPDA were on for at least 15mins each. Factor this in to the end runtime and display battery usage.

* If I list only minutes and not seconds, they are rounded up.

* I multi-task heavily. I tried to stick to each app for the complete defined duration where I could but otherwise, the usage time values are cumulative.

* This isn't apples to apples - no such thing in daily usage, but it's close enough for me.

Abberviations I may use:

OD = OpenDesire

xhxmxs = x hours, x minutes, x seconds

Results:

HTC 2.2

Total unplugged runtime: 17h3m16s

Display on 0% brightness runtime: Shut-off before I could get a screenshot, 1% before expected. Closest I grabbed is at the 13h51m10s mark which shows 6h6m48s on. The final reading was just over 7h.

Display total battery usage: 10%

WiFi on: Shut-off before I could get a screenshot, 1% before expected. Closest I grabbed is at the 13h51m10s mark which shows 9h58m9s on. The final reading was just over 10.5h.

OD 3.1.0:

Total unplugged runtime: 16h42m9s

Display on mostly 0% brightness runtime: 6h36m41s

Display total battery usage: 12%

WiFi on: 6h53m54s

My typical setup:

Vibrate on for everything

Voice call volume at 2

HTC_IME keyboard with haptic feedback disabled

2G (GSM) only

Mobile data off

Auto-rotate off

Auto-brightness off

Auto-sync off

Location disabled

Screen off set to 2m

Whenever videos are watched, display brightness is set to 18%

Airplane mode for most periods where I have no reception

WiFi always stayed on but the WiFi sleep option is enabled on phone standby

Over 20 homescreen widgets which sync every minute

Pure Calendar/Messenger/Grid Calendar widgets used for texts, emails and calendar

I have a habit of hitting the standby button every time I stop using the phone :)

My typical usage per ROM:

2* outgoing call, 50-80s

3-15* incoming miscalls

1m-2m TiKL usage (voice chat)

43s TotalRecal phone call voice recording, 3m 100% volume playback

4m TapeMachine high quality WAV recording, 5m 50% volume playback

210-242 messages outgoing in Handcent, 95-103 incoming

eBuddy running with 3 IM accounts for 2h, 17-21m usage

2* 6.5m HD YouTube vids played back through the app

3.5-4h of Chrome browser usage searching and reading various fora

2-3 3-10MB file downloads via Chrome

Almost every 50m managing 700-800 of pics in the Gallery apps of each ROM

3* 33 NewsRoom RSS feed syncs, >30m reading

51m reading books in Aldiko

4* 3 GMail accounts sync'd, 3 emails sent

5-6* lengthy text copied into Springpad

4* tasks in Astrid

Apps Organizer, App Launcher and Astro used nearly every 5m of my phone usage

BioWallet Signature used for 6-7m

GPS, Compass, Maps, GPS Test, HereIAm2, Google Earth used for 16m including location finding

+200 screenshots taken on shake with screenshot app running in the background

CurrentWidget used every 10m per hour awake at least, polling every 30s

XDA forum browsed and written to using the Tapatalk app every 3-4h (black theme)

12-14m reading PDFs in Adobe

3 pics taken with camera, 3m10s in the app

1* image scanned via Document Scanner, ScanR and eScrap

2m3s Currency Converter usage, sync'd once

12-18m usage of Kreac calc

23m Kaloer clock running showing this screen

1-2m PowerTutor used

3-5m System app used

9-10* Chrome to Phone incoming data

2-4m Market browsing once

3 apps updated, 2 installed, 3 uninstalled

Application Manager used at least once per hour of awake time

That's pretty much it.

So with similar usage, both ROMs offer similar battery life and battery usage per hardware.