yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Desire General] andycted:
I have the habit of testing dubious placebo programs all the same. I was convinced it really couldn't give you that boost but I was curious how it fooled you into believing it (apparently a big bold yellow number telling you "x2" is enough, sort of apple marketing). However I must admit my ignorance in believing that 3g data on all the time on idle would make some difference. It actually turns out it make some small difference (lets say 3mAh x 15 hours = 45mAh) which isn't enough for me to justify the loss of an excellent feature like an "always connected" phone (push notification, instant on connection, custom times sync, etc)

You will basically save more by turning brightness a very small bit down.

One other surprising bit is debunking the fact that auto-brightness sensor burns a lot of battery. While its probably hard to ascertain (and I mean to do more tests) since it will only spike at times, it didn't seem worth disabling.
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Nothing to add here - agree 100%.

I have the problem that even OpenDesire, which has Auto Brightness set relatively dim compared to other ROMs, the brightness level is always higher than would set it manually - when I'm browsing the web or reading an eBook, all I need is legible text - and that's possible with far lower display brightness than is automatically set.

Watching videos or playing games is another story of couse...
[Desire General] andycted:
I understand, it's different usage patterns. I have a kindle to read books and right now most of the time I'm in blinding italian summer sunlight, so it usually ramps up to Max brightness

I agree HTC roms have auto brightness a Tad high, but what people say is that the brightness sensor drains a lot, which I think unlikely
[Desire General] andycted:
You might be happy to know that last cyanogen mod has auto-brightness levels customization
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Interesting... guess I'll hope for an OpenDesire port ;)
[Desire General] andycted:
I dropped opendesire partly because I prefer cyanogen, partly because of his arrogant response in a recent thread to the guy with s-off (Yes, I know, one shouldn't care). Anyway, I have right now my old touch hd beside me at the beach. Both on Max brightness, with a dark background on the desire launcher it's 140mAh vs 180mAh in favour of the desire. With all white background however it's quite different, as the desire easily ramps up over 300mAh.

The touch hd stays almost constant regardless of the colour.
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Not surprising, as the backlight doesn't change in intensity for different colors :)

On AMOLED screens, the tiny little AMOLEDs themselves light up, and for white you need to light everything (red + green + blue) to full brightness - that's why brighter colors need more power in general on AMOLED...
[Desire General] andycted:
Yep, but it was interesting to note how the difference went up in the upper 3/4 brightness. Up to 1/2 black vs white is bearable, afterwards you really want to avoid white backgrounds.

All in all amoled does make you save battery, but you should be careful what you look at in top brightness
[Desire General] th3:
What I'm suggesting is IF the phone has a bus like I2c which can be software read and IF there are register fields storing the various power draw values somewhere which we can access? Android has access to them so they're being stored as raw somewhere... and very likely with higher granularity than what we can currently see.

Not really as so because you didn't have the complete data to do the sums. I'll explain just so you don't get mixed up again :P

Firstly, when the compass is used the CPU is pegged to 55-90%. The Android battery info returns power usage under "Compass" but includes the Core/RAM power at those periods for certain. The compass hardware alone is 6.8 mA rated max. Typically, it won't be using more than 75-90% of that.

Secondly, the compass app was listed to use 11% of the approx 7% of the full 1400 mAh within 2m47s of usage. So in effect, rounded up, total discharge equates to 98 mAh of which 10.8 mAh was by the compass. That ends up equating to the ~220 mA I briefly listed earlier.

26% of the battery remained in that case: http://bit.ly/aXQc2f

At 14% the phone shuts down. The display was on for 6h6m48s at 0% brightness as mentioned because I was using the phone at those times. 10-14% for the display battery usage is the norm for me daily on a full discharge. I don't know why you think that is not possible.

BTW, I still can't get this current app working. It would be good if someone could use [url =http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=745248]this awesome screen colour calibration app[/url] to test power use after manipulating the RGB values. In particular, the blue spectra which causes the highest power draw and features the least luminous efficiency.

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- Sent via my HTC Desire -
[Desire General] andycted:
Did you actually read my battery testing ? It's already done

And some guy over at that thread I've point probably hacked the widget for HTC roms

EDIT: I've just found out you can also turn buttons backlight off in latest cyanogen. Unfortunately it's an on/off setting apparently, as there is no way to dial down the brightness there. The auto brightness settings are really nice anyway.
[Desire General] Tander_ZA:
I also think what ROM a person is using makes a difference?
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
That would be awesome. Will keep my eyes open ;)

Where is this power data usually stored in regular x86 Linux? Maybe that would be a good place to start looking...

Thanks for explaining that... never would have thought you were talking about the actual hardware digital compass itself, but rather one of the many digital compass apps - which would, of course, include CPU and GPS (as most of the Compass apps also provide GPS coordinates) usage in the power statistics :)

That's insane. I NEVER get less than 50% power used by the display, even on days where the phone was on for 24 hours and the display was only on for an hour or two... I assumed this was the norm for the Desire (and my experience on my old Milestone was similar).

Could you give some details as to your software configuration (ROM, Radio, power settings etc.)? What sort of battery life do you usually get?

-edit- Are you using a Sense ROM by any chance? Apparently they show extremely low display usage (5-20%), while vanilla ROMs like OpenDesire and CM show 40-75%. Since I can literally watch my battery life tick away as soon as I turn on the display, I'm going to assume HTC screwed up with the battery reporting in Sense... or are you guys getting the battery life to back that up?
[Desire General] andycted:
There are some posts around that mention the display usage statistic on open desire as buggy
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Yep, but going on the measurements we made with the current widget, the display uses far closer to 60% of the battery than 10% of the battery - especially if it's on for more than an hour or so of the discharge cycle.
[Desire General] andycted:
Tiny finding: black notification bar vs white bar makes about 5mAh difference
[Desire General] th3:
I sure did read all of your data as always. This is the first tool which allows what I'm suggesting on the Desire and it has only just become available, before the period when you made those posts ;)

This doesn't control brightness; It allows you to control the luminous balance and output of each RGB spectra which directly affects the display power draw i.e. with a fixed white screen, fixed brightness 0% (not value), lower light output set equals lower power draw. You didn't mention doing this. I don't see you having changed RGB light output levels yet. Try it, you'll see what I mean. What I understood from your tests was that you changed the screen display item in terms of what colour(s) it was primarily displaying and the brightness.

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- Sent via my HTC Desire -
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
I suppose technical documents from TI & Qualcomm have all been tried? Are there even any available? :(

Good to know :)

I don't think I get even 7-9 hours of display on... maybe really should try a Sense ROM to compare - this does sound like there's something wrong with the vanilla ROMs - maybe a driver problem that's causing the screen to use too much power?

It's a real pity that the Widget doesn't work on your ROM... being able to compare current drain values would be awesome.

Yep, I had the SoC sleep vs. awake difference in there too. Does keeping the screen unlocked (even though it's off) always keep the device awake?

Because I just tested that with a new OpenDesire option (you can now set screen timeout and lock timeout separately) set to lock after 15 minutes, and I still get 5mA with the screen off. :confused:

Not going into sleep mode when the screen goes off would be very counterproductive, wouldn't it? Most people who use something like Lock Delay wouldn't want to keep their SoC awake, but rather just don't feel like unlocking their phone when they've only been gone 60 seconds...

Hmmm, other than connectivity (I always have WiFi on when I'm in range, which is usually most of the da, and mobile data is on the rest of the time, with syncs on), there's not that much difference between our setups.

Maybe it really is Sense that's making the difference, because I really don't think I've ever heard of a vanilla user getting 15+ hours of battery life even though they used the screen for 7-9 hours - because in that case, most would have a battery life of about... 7-9 hours :p

That's the $1M question, huh? Your battery life really does seem better... guess I'll have to do some testing with the stock Froyo ROM :(

-edit- Is this your ROM? http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=741663
[Desire General] th3:
I will get back to the rest as soon as I can. But quickly; my daily ROM is: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=741775

I'm assuming this is yours: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=712615

Finished downloading it in the background a few seconds back so will flash it and test. However, I am only one sample so ideally we need more testers to reach some confidence level.

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- Sent via my HTC Desire -
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Apparently AdamG (the developer of OpenDesire) has changed the power usage statistics to work in the same way as HTC's Sense ROMs, as of OpenDesire 3.1.0.

Not sure if it was corrected (read:changed) because HTC's way is more accurate, or just because people assumed that HTC's way is more accurate :p

Doing a long-time battery test today - screen on permanently, surfing the web a lot. Only been on for 1h26m and I'm already down to 80% battery left - but Display is now listed as having used 13% instead of 50%+...

I doubt I'll reach your 7-9 hours with the display on + 5-7 hours of standby though...
[Desire General] andycted:
Then I apologize as it's me that didn't understand, I thought you just meant the solid color renders (blue/red/green/etc), while I remember I've seen in latest cyanogen thread the explanation about what you said, some kind of differently 'balanced' colour filter. I'll try it as soon as I can and report back.
[Desire General] andycted:
Regarding Stock HTC vs vanilla Android/cyanogen/opendesire, I've tried most of them and did some rought testing about battery life basically every day. Without that tool (which however can probably easily be converted to read the value on HTC roms) it was obviously harder to ascertain current drain and precise values, but my experience is that HTC Sense roms last a tad less than plain android ones.

I actually think there isn't much difference, probably in the realm of 10% and probably due to different setups, in particular I think this is what saved battery (in my case) on opendesire was all down to the screen:

- way dimmer autobrightness levels

- no htc clock with big white numbers

- using HTC Sense applications for twitter, news and something else have black text on white background. Other tools I use without sense have white text on black background

There might be of course something else going on, but I tend to think that you can't work miracles given the same hardware.

If HTC Sense have better battery than stock android, I'm not sure I've noticed it, probably because of the aforementioned screen management differences and probably because the difference would be minimal.

I can't get more than 5-6 hours of always-on display + _moderate to heavy usage_ . But I can get some 5-6 hours of screen + very light usage and reach the end of the day on idle.

I'm also VERY interested in knowing the difference that a 3G only network makes. I've seen everywhere that there is a big difference on idle vs calling compared to 2G networks. Can you compare that ?
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
@Andycted: Your experience with Vanilla Android on the Desire is pretty much the same as mine: About 6-7 hours of display-on usage... and then it's dead :(

Been testing for 3h20m, with the screen on for 3 hours so far - down to 56%. Unless the battery percentage is off by a real lot, I doubt I'll get any more than 6 hours out of the charge.

:(
[Desire General] andycted:
Calibrated display from cyanogen

Alright, these tests were run with:

- wifi on, airplane mode on

- desktop with a few widgets and dark/black background

- buttons backlight on

all values in mAh

--- low brightness on 40/255 (default auto-brightness modified to be at 40/255 when in low light)

* on normal display colours: 117

* with calibrated (N1) colours (a bit yellowish): 117

* with calibrated (low red) colours (more greenish): 116

* with calibrated (cool) colours (a bit less yellow): 117

--- manual max brightness (255/255)

* on normal display colours: 148

* with calibrated (N1) colours (a bit yellowish): 141

* with calibrated (low red) colours (more greenish): 138

* with calibrated (cool) colours (a bit less yellow): 141
[Desire General] andycted:
Well, but I've been on froyo HTC Sense probably 50% of the time and I had the same exact battery life ! Probably less actually. I really don't mind playing around in order to optimize it, but I seriously think it's ok as battery life for a smartphone ! I also have a spare battery that helps
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
So Th3's Desire probably has a magic battery... 7 hours with the display on with 17 hours total runtime... that's insane. Do want!
[Desire General] andycted:
But he didn't say if it's just screen on, min brightness, laying on the desk hehe. Then I probably can get that battery life !

Just kidding, but what you do while the screen is on changes quite a bit battery life. I was very surprise to see a 3x drain in max vs min brightness, when the screen is totally white.

Indeed if I can reach 6 hours with the display on, then leave my phone in the pocket on idle, it can reach the end of the day. Of course I'll put in on airplane mode because at the first ring it would exhale the last breath hehe.
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
You're right, of course... I was, however, assuming real-world usage on th3's part ;)

By the way: OpenDesire can now turn off the button backlight too :)
[Desire General] andycted:
So you can also set autobrightness levels ? it would be interesting to see what's everybody's best setting.

Mine are:

0-225: 40

226-399: 55

400-999: 70

1000-2999: 90

3000-:250

backlight on buttons only at lowest range. It seems to me the sensor stays on 225 while completely dark and with some dim indirect light
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
LOL, I just formulated a post with my autobrightness settings for the OpenDesire thread, because everyone's asking how it should be set :D

My key backlights are completely off at all brightness levels, of course... what would I need backlights for? :D
[Desire General] andycted:
They're spiffy !!! hehe

Hold on a second, those are extra-low levels ! How can you see something while outside - but - uh oh - ah, I see, you are from Aachen :D hehe. I've spent a couple of weeks in the summer near Husum and I recall it wasn't (obviously) so bright as here in Italy.

I have to crank it to the max to see everything well !

Aren't you worried by the 2sec interval hitting the sensor too much ?

EDIT: I've just found out my geography is a bit off. While we tend to assume netherland is way north from here, denmark is a lot more north. So being in germany near the netherlands is quite more south than being near denmark
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Works okay so far - but it's an overcast day. I may be cranking up the values in the future when it gets a little sunnier (as you seem to have noticed, that's not very common here :D), but for now I can read everything fine :)

Not really - default was 1 sec, I think, so shouldn't be a problem. Had it set to 5 seconds precisely because I figured it might save a little bit of CPU time, but the lag when going outside from inside a dark building annoyed me :p

Heheh... you still guessed right about the weather though ;)
[Desire General] andycted:
Oh I see, I had the desire off at the moment and assumed 5 sec was default. I probably can live with 2 sec, will try right now. Interesting is also the decrease in the reset sensitivity.

There is one thing that escapes me though: is the 'light sensor filter' functionality a tweak to enhance the sensor reliability, rather than to save battery ? Meaning that I'd like to understand what happens when you enable/disable the function from the top checkbox.

I guessed right about the weather because I can remember it well, my girlfriend dragged me there but I screamed and kicked to come back to my sunny beaches here hehe (it's packed with germans on holiday here). It was very nice in extra-snowy winter though.
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
It's only an enhancement for performance, as far as I can tell - shouldn't save battery at all. It just allows you to better define how the light sensor "sees" the brightness of your surroundings, so that it doesn't change every second (as was the case on some OpenDesire releases) :)

:)
[Desire General] andycted:
With those settings, brightness jumps up and down while on the doorstep !
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Really? Hmmm... try setting the highest range higher, or lower, depending on whether you want max brightness in the light conditions of your doorstep or not. :)

Try 2800-inf (then it'll use the highest brightness you've set) or 5000-inf (then it'll use the second-highest brightnes)...

You could, of course, try adjusting the hysteresis value, or the filter settings... maybe your Reset threshold is set too low.
[Desire General] andycted:
You know, I think I just realized I have to play with those settings and try to understand better what they do. Hysteresis and reset I mean.
[Desire General] th3:
The display isn't set to always on in my usage (that kills my battery fast!), just those hours listed as on is how much time I was browsing/texting/reading PDFs/reading books in Aldiko/using Ebuddy/playing around with the phone so the screen was on.

I'm in and fully setup on the same ROM as you now (OpenDesire 3.1.0). Just charging fully before testing: http://bit.ly/bJCvtk

1. The first very obvious aspect I noticed is that this ROM is like the Nexus One and unlike the HTC ROMs in colour calibration. It's very bluey, very. Looks like 8700k. Higher blue lumen output = higher display power. See my older post here about that: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=7390078&postcount=575

2. Preliminary cursory check on the battery usage data for 3 hours seems similar. Display was reported at 12%.

3. Auto-brightness on this ROM in complete dark goes to 8% lowest while I have it at 0% manually.

4. The current widget works but I only glanced over one result so far. Screen off (no sleep activated) did indeed drop to 3 mA whereas screen on fluctuated depending on what was on the screen. But the latter values were all north of 100 mA. Which is in-sync with what you guys found.

5. I don't think superior battery has anything to do with the battery info data but more so reporting accuracy, settings and usage. My screen will be off (manually) unless I'm using apps/browser which I do an awful lot, and tasks requiring CPU power. If you think about it, that all ends up with more SoC power draw (Core/GPU/RAM/NAND) and as expected I get "Android system" being listed as 40-60% total battery usage. The rest of the phones major hardware isn't in idle for the display to be the largest consumer. If I left the phone in idle literally doing very little with it, sure, the display usage percentage will be higher. It's all relative.

6. Typically, yes. Lockscreen = deep power saving activated. No lockscreen and it doesn't. I'm unaware of any hacks which circumvent this to date.

7. The TI and Qualcomm docs for those chips aren't available to the general public. I'm still searching for more though.

8. Thanks for the further tests andycted.

As always, I'll be quietly reading in the background :)

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- Sent via my HTC Desire -
[Desire General] andycted:
Don't know if it was ported to od, but on last cyanogen you also get the less blue render which could help regarding what you say.

About the display-on thing, it changes a lot compared to me, since I never passively read the screen, like an ebook or long web page, but I'm most of the times hammering the battery well over 300 mAh

Next test will be keyboards and text prediction, swype, smart keyboard, stock and htc, with or without vibration

By the way, while writing this I was at the mediamarkt, in order to take a look at the wildfire for a gift.besides the fact that they don't have it, you should have listened the clerk recommendations for battery charging and usage. I fled in horror.
[Desire General] andycted:
Keyboards tests

Ok first results for the keyboards typing tests, will post more later and probably try to repeat some of them, since it's not easy to get a continous typing flow to register when the widget reads the value. Also because of this, I've done 6 tests for each case and threw away the highest and lowest values (which usually was basically an idle value, while I wasn't typing in the middle of two words).

All numbers are mAh. Handcent has the dark theme.

Started from idle, on dark desktop, airplane mode, fixed low brightness: 114

Idle, on handcent, Swype keyboard up: 127

Typing on Swype, english, no vibration, slider with error correction almost all to the right: 235, 226, 207, 230

Idle, on handcent, Smart keyboard up: 148

Typing on smartkeyboard, english, vibration on: 237, 205, 225, 192 (quite slower than swype)

Typing on smartkeyboard, english, vibration off: 167, 143, 214, 164 (even more slow)

It's funny to note that smartkeyboard compensate for the less processing power used with it's white background and vibration, ending up in almost the same range.

I however have to underline the fact that I'm not that used at typing on smartkeyboard as in swype (still decent anyway) and that the lower values were obtained carefully typing words without errors. Without vibration, I was kind of lost, as the feedback really helped me with the rhythm of typing and got to a point where I thought I really couldn't care less about battery, but wanted my swype back. That can also account for the lower battery drain.

I'll keep testing these and some other keyboards, all in all though, given the small difference in battery drain and the fact that this gets compensated by me typing for less time on swype (I think I can type at least x1.5 speed of smartkeyboard), I'll stay with swype for everyday use.
[Desire General] bemymonkey:
Alright, after a day of testing, I can safely conclude that either my Desire hates me or th3's really is powered by magical fairy dust...

Turned itself off at 3%, after 10h45m. Screen was on for about 6h5m... Usage pattern was standard for me - lots of web browsing, 5 minutes of GPS use (augsatnav), some SNESoid, watched an episode of Futurama online with Flash...

The only things that would explain my poor battery life compared to th3 are CPU use or connectivity... but does that really explain all of it? I can't wait to hear what kind of battery life he gets from a full charge on OpenDesire... :)