Related
I was almost 100% sold on the Polaris as my next device but battery life is very important to me. I currently have an HTC P3300 (well, O2 XDA Orbit) and with the increased battery capacity of the Polaris (1350mAh vs 1200mAh in my Orbit) plus the claimed better specs from HTC (GSM 7 hours talk/400 hours standby for the Touch Cruise vs 3.5-5 hours talk/150-200 hours standby for the P3300) I really hoped that HTC had dodged any battery life issues.
I just found this review however (http://www.mobile88.com/mobilegallery/phonereview.asp?phone=HTC_Touch_Cruise&pg=review&prodid=20785&cat=37) and it has me worried. The bit I'm worried about is right at the bottom of the page:
<Start of summary of review results>
The multimedia cycle tests in comparison to the results demonstrated by the original Touch and P3300 are given below:
Multimedia-cycle, video (AVI) Polaris=4:08 Artemis=5:20 Elf=5:38
Multimedia-cycle, audio (MP3) Polaris=13:49 Artemis=21:34 Elf=18:07
<End of summary>
You can see that for MP3 the Polaris is way worse than the Artemis (I'm assuming the numbers are <hours>:<minutes> of play time). With what I commented on in my first paragraph these results really suprise me.
Does anyone know the conditions/details of the video and audio multimedia-cycle tests above? I'm wondering if somehow the conditions for the Polaris test were less favourable than those for the Artemis. Maybe the MP3 decoder software was different between the Artemis and the Polaris and the latter was dramatically less efficient although I'm probably clutching at straws here. Any other thoughts, comments or real life results from owners?
- Julian
funny how the 2 wm6 devices have lower batt time then the wm5 device
would be intresting if a test with an aramis with wm6 was don
Rudegar said:
funny how the 2 wm6 devices have lower batt time then the wm5 device
would be intresting if a test with an aramis with wm6 was don
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a really interesting point. I was considering upgrading my device to WM6 using one of the cooked ROMs from this site, or the official O2 Orbit one, but I decided not to after seeing quite a few posts here by people who had done it and reported that the battery life on their devices went down a lot after upgrading to WM6 so I do wonder if that is the issue.
- Julian
I already ordered a second battery. I always do regardless of the device. One less thing to worry about
I am impressed with the battery capacity of the Polaris compared to my MIO A201. Running Tomtom without charging on the MIO A201 about 2 hours, with the Polaris 4 hours.
---Alex--- said:
I am impressed with the battery capacity of the Polaris compared to my MIO A201. Running Tomtom without charging on the MIO A201 about 2 hours, with the Polaris 4 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What screen brightness is that set at? I'm assuming that the MP3 test results I quoted are with the screen blanked because if not then almost 24 hours on an Artemis with the screen on is pretty amazing.
If the tests do involve the screen being on (and surely they must with the video tests?) then I do wonder if the brightness settings were the same between the Artemis and Polaris tests.
If you look at some pictures further up in the review that I linked to in the first post of this thread then you can pretty clearly see that, I assume with both set to maximum brightness, the Polaris screen is noticeably brighter than the Artemis, so it isn't really fair on the Polaris to run any <screen on maximum> tests with both having the backlight set to full; it would be much fairer to adjust the Polaris backlight to give as close to possible the same brightness as the Artemis screen on full. Just maybe this accounts for some of the difference.
Thanks a lot Alex for the info on the TomTom results but I'd love to hear some real-life results of people playing music in a loop with the screen blanked and also discharge rates with the device just left at idle but with the auto-off and backlight-off disabled so that the screen stays alive. How much does the battery drain after 2 hours of sitting idle like this?
The reason I ask my questions is because the things that burn the most "activity hours" on my device are playing music with the screen blanked (hence my first request) and reading ebooks, for which my second requested test is probably a fairly reasonable approximation.
- Julian
They're comparing it to two devices with OMAP processors. Power savings is one of the reasons the OMAP was used before. It's either power or battery, rarely both unless the device is large. You could probably underclock to increase battery life.
JwY said:
They're comparing it to two devices with OMAP processors. Power savings is one of the reasons the OMAP was used before. It's either power or battery, rarely both unless the device is large. You could probably underclock to increase battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You hit the nail right on the head. I have not bothereed to check the source so I do not know the purpsoe of the test. In any case if you want 3 days of music you would be better of with an iP.... If you want processing power then you look for a device that will not make you fall asleep just waiting for a page to refresh
JwY said:
They're comparing it to two devices with OMAP processors. Power savings is one of the reasons the OMAP was used before. It's either power or battery, rarely both unless the device is large. You could probably underclock to increase battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was expecting someone to say this and I'm afraid that my hunch, which I am willing to admit could be wrong, makes me disagree with this. There is some reasoning to justify my hunch and it goes as follows.
Make the following assumptions (all numbers chosen for ease of arithmetic rather than accuracy since I am just trying to demonstrate a principle rather than derive results):
1) Yes, the CPU in the Polaris is more powerful than the one in the Artemis and lets assume that the Polaris CPU (PCPU for short) is exactly twice as powerful as the Artemis CPU (ACPU for short). By twice as powerful I mean that in any given second the PCPU will process twice as many instructions as the ACPU.
2) I am assuming that both CPUs have some sort of speed stepping technology such that, when they are not under load, the power consumption drops significantly to a fairly trivial value and I will assume that for both CPUs the idle power consumption is equivalent.
3) Assume that at full load the PCPU has twice the power consumption of the ACPU.
4) Assume that it takes a 100,000,000 instructions to decode and play 1 second of music (i.e. 100MIPS = 100 million instructions per second) and that the ACPU can only just manage this so when playing music the ACPU is at 100% load for 100% of the time.
With the above assumptions my point now is that a more powerful CPU won't create a serious decline in battery life when playing music because the 100 million instructions required to be executed for 1 second of music is constant so a 100MIPS processor will need to run flat out constantly to play music whereas a 200MIPS processor will only need to be at 100% load for 0.5 seconds in any given second and for the rest of the time it can be speed stepped right down. With the idealised assumptions above there would actually be no impact whatsoever on power consumption for any arbitrary processor power (for processors that have at least sufficient power to keep up with the music stream).
A further piece of real life evidence is, if it is solely or even predominantly down to the processor, then why is the Elf managing 18:07 on the MP3 test compared to the Artemis 13:49 (and that I believe this is with a smaller battery than the Artemis, 1100mAh vs 1250mAh; info taken from the specs on the HTC web site)?
Maybe assumption (2) is wrong which does hurt my argument somewhat, or maybe there are software differences, in the MP3 player and/or in WM6 itself, that stops the PCPU dropping its power consumption down as much when it's not actively decoding, but that Elf vs Artemis test result difference still makes me wonder what else is going on.
Honestly, I'm really hoping this is just due to a badly run test on the Polaris (not same conditions as Artemis test) and that the result is an Anomaly.
- Julian
I've had the xda Stellar (tytn II), which is very very similar to the polaris, for the last week, and the battery is, I'm sorry to say, the worse I've ever come across.
For the first few days, I was using it heavily and managed 1.5 days. Figured this would increase as I used it less. Took it off charge 5 hours ago, made a 20 minute phone call, sent 3 text messages, and used the word processor for 30 minutes. 75% battery left.
I'm sending it back and waiting for the Orbit 2 to be released. Fingers crossed the keyboard has some strange battery draining feature.
sonesh said:
I've had the xda Stellar (tytn II), which is very very similar to the polaris, for the last week, and the battery is, I'm sorry to say, the worse I've ever come across.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Stellar only has an 1100mAh battery while the Polaris has 1350mAh. Sounds little but makkes a differece of 200 (yes, 200!) hours of StandBy time.
This means the Stellar specs say 250h whereas the Polais spec sheet says 450h.
sonesh said:
For the first few days, I was using it heavily and managed 1.5 days. Figured this would increase as I used it less. Took it off charge 5 hours ago, made a 20 minute phone call, sent 3 text messages, and used the word processor for 30 minutes. 75% battery left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. That's very bad. I wonder if there's something wrong with your unit. According to the spec on the HTC web site you should be getting talk time of "Up to 264 minutes for UMTS - Up to 420 minutes for GSM". As far as I'm aware holding a call is by far the most battery-draining thing you can do on a device so if we count your 30 minutes of word processing as another 30 minutes of talk time we're probably grossly over-estimating but, on that assumption (and adding 5 minutes for the texts) that's only an equivalent of 55 minutes of talk time. Were you on 3G or GSM for all this? I suppose if it was 3G then maybe you could have expected the battery to be down to 79% but if it was GSM then the battery really shouldn't have been much below 87%.
Admittedly I think these talk time figures quoted by manufacturers are in very ideal conditions (i.e. very high signal strength from the mast) so what sort of reception area you were in when you made the call is an issue but I think that is probably counteracted by the fact that I probably vastly overestimated the power drain when word processing.
An interesting (free) utility is abcPowerMeter (http://www.acbpocketsoft.com/). It would be very interesting to compare the current consumption on the Artemis, the Polaris and the Tyan II.
If anyone is up for this then I suggest the state to test would be with the system sitting on the today screen, disable the auto-off but do allow the backlight to go off or manually disable it so that differing screen brightness isn't a factor. Also put the phone into flight mode so that all radios are off (to factor out any effects of different signal strengths) and then start abcPowerMeter and let it run for about 30 minutes during which time it should, in theory, settle to a pretty straight line showing the current drawn from the battery in this state.
I would most certainly do an Artemis (or rather O2 XDA Orbit) test but unfortunately the reason for my intense interest in all things Polaris is that my Orbit died on new year's eve (no, I didn't drop it or sit on it at a party!) so my device is totally dead.
- Julian
Could the Today plugins be making a difference? I'm thinking particularly the weather plugin. I've seen other discussions where people report battery life problems on various devices and one often-mentioned that people suggest to check is what Today plugins are running.
With the new devices now 3G, and 3G using a lot more power than 2/2.5G when active, I'm wondering if the weather plugin is causing 3G to be active and hurting power. How often does the weather plugin connect and can it be disabled? Not wanting to take the thread off topic but one thing I'd like to do if/when I get a Polaris is to disable the weather plugin on the Today screen, is this possible?
For my use, since I am concerned about battery life, I intend to keep my device in GSM mode and only switch to 3G when I want to connect to the internet and, when finished, I will immediately disable 3G again. I certainly don't want any plugins regularly polling the internet and turning stuff on without my permission.
- Julian
acbPowerMeter
I installed acbPowerMeter this afternoon, after noticing that my battery was draining extremely fast (~ 4 to 5 hours). The tool showed that the TC was using approx 320mA on average
I've been running the tool for some hours now, and after two hours the power consumption slowly lowered. I've been switching the screen off and on and have had the GSM radio on all the time. The avg value returned to ~20mA.
I'll keep an eye on power consumption, because now I don't trust the device anymore. I don't know what caused the huge change in power consumption in the first place.
Thanks for those test results Muyz. It's great to have some real data, but I'm sorry to hear that you're having battery problems too.
Regarding your results, did you start abcPowerMeter (APM for short) while your device was still plugged into the USB port? I noticed that when I had APM running when my device was charging then I got a very high mA reading (about 250mA on my 1200mAh O2 XDA Orbit) so I think the fact that there is charge current coming in confuses APM somewhat and, for the average, it could be that after you unplug it will take a while for the minutes or hours of false high readings to creep out of the statistics. I always made very sure that my device was fully unplugged before starting an APM session.
Regarding the 20mAh reading, that actually sounds very good to me. Unfortunately I'm recalling all this from memory because, as I said in an earlier post, my device is now totally dead, but I seem to remember about 29mA as as low as I saw. With the screen on the figure of 79mA sticks in my mind. As with you, these figures were all with GSM on. I had Bluetooth and WiFi disabled.
One thing that really suprised me with my tests was that, when I had a good GSM signal, I couldn't detect any difference in current drain between having GSM switched on or off (just registered to the network of course, not actually with a call active). The additional current drawn from having GSM on didn't even seem to be 1mA. The story is different in a no-signal area where the GSM keeps searching for a signal, that drained the battery really quickly.
- Julian
3G CONNECTION need more battery consumation(if you dont need disable), configure for normale use GSM, and the duration is guarantee...
New battery monitor tool
I've discovered a serious bug in the acbPowerMeter tool. The implementation of the tool does not use the proper types
This is why I've done a little programming myself last evening. The attachment to this tool contains a preliminary version of my own battery monitoring tool. It provides the correct battery readings for remaining power and current power consumption. One can adjust the polling frequency. I will complete the tool somewhere this or next week and put it on my website for download (freeware).
Muyz said:
I've discovered a serious bug in the acbPowerMeter tool. The implementation of the tool does not use the proper types
This is why I've done a little programming myself last evening. The attachment to this tool contains a preliminary version of my own battery monitoring tool. It provides the correct battery readings for remaining power and current power consumption. One can adjust the polling frequency. I will complete the tool somewhere this or next week and put it on my website for download (freeware).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Muyz,
Not wanting to jinx this, but I'm cautiously optimistic that I just un-bricked my O2 XDA Orbit (Artemis) so, as long as it doesn't go bad on me again I might now be in a position to contribute Artemis (or re-branded Artemis) data for comparison.
In preperation for the tests I'm really interested in what are the problems you found with abcPowerMeter. You say above that it "does not use the proper types". What do you mean by this? As a (fairly old) computer scientist this immediately makes me think of types as in a typed computer language (e.g. it's declaring something as int instead of long or short instead of bool). Is this what you mean? Please excuse my ignorance, I know theory but have never been anywhere near any Windows, let alone Windows Mobile, programming environments; if you do mean language types then how did you detect this without the source code (or did you find that somehow or disassemble)?
If you don't mean variable typing then what do you mean?
In any event, many thanks for the work Muyz.
I un-bricked my device by re-flashing (twice) the official O2 WM6 ROM so when (assuming my device stays stable) I start running current consumption tests then I think it's probably quite good that I upgraded my device to WM6 because that removes one variable (is the current drain a WM5 -> WM6 issue?) so we can at least compare Artemis to Polaris on a fairly like-for-like basis regarding the OS version.
I'm really glad I started this thread, I think there's been some really interesting and useful discussion here and I certainly wasn't expecting to have people jumping in and posting fixed versions of the current-monitoring software, that was a really nice surprise (but I'm still really looking forward to hearing exactly what the issue was).
- Julian
Battery life in cooked ROMs - weather plugin
Hi guys,
in some cooked ROMs there seems to be a bug in the radio rom or simply in general. I've read several posts where people had the gsm units in their Artemis on full power most of the time causing the device to lose power very fast. This happened only with cooked ROMs, not with official versions. They noticed that when they had their phone close to speakers which caused the buzzing noise that you usually get when there is an incoming call or short message.
The other thing that consumes power is the weather plugin, but only when you have the auto-update activated! I disabled it and never had problems.
I think I'll buy this device anyways, haven't read any serious reasons not to buy it.
Thanks for your response, and I hope your device works properly now.
About the type issue: acdPowerMeter (obviously) uses the Windows API to retrieve battery information. It receives the information through a structure that contains signed integers. It seems as if acbPowerSoft managed to introduce a typing error by using unsigned integers instead of signed integers. The effect is that for negative values (e.g. when current is drawn from the battery), acbPowerMeter shows extremely large values. I discovered what is the most likely reason for this mistake: Microsoft shows an example on their website on how to retrieve battery status information. Their example shows the error clearly: the C# class use unsigned integers, whereas the native structure contains signed integers as you can see here. So I guess acbPocketSoft copied some code without checking the result
I do not have a clue on what caused the extreme battery drain I encountered a few days ago. I have not seen it since. Soon, my tool will include a warning mechanism. I first added a few other small things, such as battery temperature, as you can see in the new attachment
(Yes, I know, it contains a small glitch on exiting the application, but that will be fixed asap)
Hi there!!
Seems to me no one hasn't began this knd of theme. So. Off. info:
Qualcomm MSM7201a
Two cores
ARM11 + ARM9
528 Mhz (one stated speed for two cores...)
So what is G1's heart for real?
This is quotes from here
#1
Jean-Baptiste Queru 26 нояб 2008, 20:37
Indeed, the CPU in the G1 is clocked lower than its maximum rated
speed to conserve battery life. It's running somewhere between 300 and
400MHz if I remember correctly.
JBQ
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#2
jdc4429 27 нояб 2008, 17:04
Hi Jean,
So your saying that the CPU speed is not controlled by the Android
software?
I was looking through the code and found this in the arch/arm/mach-msm/
clock.c file...
617 #define CPUFREQ_TABLE_MAX 4
618 static struct cpufreq_frequency_table cpufreq_table[] = {
619 { 0, 81920 },
620 { 1, 122880 },
621 { 2, 245760 },
622 { 3, 384000 },
623 { CPUFREQ_TABLE_MAX, CPUFREQ_TABLE_END },
624 };
It looks like the max speed is set to 384mhz and it seems it can be
easily changed.
It also seems that the phone already downshifts the CPU based on this
table and the
screen_open/closed speed setting...
702 if (screen_on) {
703 policy->user_policy.min = cpufreq_table
[2].frequency; // 245mhz
704 policy->user_policy.max = cpufreq_table
[3].frequency; // 384mhz
705 } else {
706 policy->user_policy.min = cpufreq_table
[0].frequency; // 82mhz
707 policy->user_policy.max = cpufreq_table
[2].frequency; // 245mhz
708 }
Sure looks controllable to me through Android. Is it really that hard
to add a setting to allow min/max settings
to be adjusted by the user?
Thanks
Jeff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#3
Romain Guy 26 нояб 2008, 20:39
> Can that
> be changed in software on the fly and was it set below maximum speed
> to help with the battery issue?
No and yes
> Also is anyone working on adding hardware acceleration so we can take
> full advantage of the processor?
We have a prototype of SGL running on top of OpenGL (it was actually
shown publicly in the SDK 0.9) but it's not the correct solution at
the moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Coclusion:
1) Google DevTeam does not know, or don' wanna tell, ca we\how to change CPU's speed or\when it would be possible to get the hardware accelariotion etc.
2) From stated 528Mhz we get 384Mhz maximum, as stated by Jean-Baptiste Queru and the code quote.
Both these I suppose seems not fare for us users)
So, can it be solved through the OS modifing??
Oh yeah that's another good point -- almost all of my experience on mobile
hardware has been that the memory bus speed was far more of a performance
bottleneck than the CPU was. It generally just wasn't useful to run the CPU
at its fastest speed and consume more power, because most of what it would
be doing was sitting there waiting on memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know what is more important, the memory/cpu ratio working at its best or battery life. We'll have energy plans soon for android me thinks..
interesting... Anyone want to give it a try?
It's very worthwhile to read the entire thread:
http://tinyurl.com/9kme8v
Of particular note, the effect on battery life of clocking the CPU at full speed, and the apparently minimal performance boost.
Of real interest, and the very obvious bang for the buck, is the speed of Dalvik. Note that it's 7-8x slower than comparable JITs. About in line with what you'd expect, but it does imply that if we want to see some serious speed increases - and, I would think, battery life improvements - replacing Dalvik would be the obvious place to start. Or making it JIT, of course.
might be but lets say im at home plugged in or what not... then we could scale our CPU... like BatteryStatus or integrate it into an app somewhat like Locale or Power Manager...
End users look at the End result. my phone is rated at 528mhz and it is running slightly over half its rated operating speed. Battery life? Give me 528mhz and let HTC and Tmobile Recall there $h*tty batterys
The only advantage I can think of for this is for demanding games for instance but any other time its good to have it under clocked to save on battery juice. and the phone is fast enough running at half its rated speed!
Phil
philje123 said:
The only advantage I can think of for this is for demanding games for instance but any other time its good to have it under clocked to save on battery juice. and the phone is fast enough running at half its rated speed!
Phil
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
once you get demanding apps installed such as hello aim. phoneplus dgalerts etc there is constant hiccups and the phone becomes bogged down like i said give me 528mhz and let htc,tmo replace there $h**ty batteries didnt they hear over a year ago there was a huge advancement in nano tech for batteries
diabolical28 said:
once you get demanding apps installed such as hello aim. phoneplus dgalerts etc there is constant hiccups and the phone becomes bogged down like i said give me 528mhz and let htc,tmo replace there $h**ty batteries didnt they hear over a year ago there was a huge advancement in nano tech for batteries
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, but *if* it is the CPU which is bogging down (which I am not convinced is the case), the solution is as I stated - speed up Dalvik - not to put the CPU into a mode which drains the battery down even more quickly than it does today. If the fix is to clock the CPU at a higher rate (which again, seems not to be the case), that's only a stepping stone to the ultimate solution, which is going to be removing some apps, since the battery life is marginal right now anyway.
The reason why Android is underclocked is posted in the full thread. After a certain point, the increase in speed you get by bumping up the CPU slows down, because it's limited by FSB speed. An example of this (not real numbers), is that a CPU running at 50% speed could actually be closer to 75% speed.
Sure, the CPU CAN run at 100% speed, but after the FSB slows it down, it'll only be 75%. So after a point, increasing CPU speed isn't worth it.
hmm
i wonder if we would get an app too monitor it or
under and overclock by adjusting a slider
anywhere from 50% to 150% or whatever is possible
that is anywhere from 264Mhz to 798Mhz which would be amazingly fast
gary, might as well just save your breath.
I believe JF has already tested some code to do this, but mentioned that it is highly unstable.
dirr said:
I believe JF has already tested some code to do this, but mentioned that it is highly unstable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Adjusting the speed breaks things, at least so far anyways. But like he said JF is playing with it.
djind said:
I don't know what is more important, the memory/cpu ratio working at its best or battery life. We'll have energy plans soon for android me thinks..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, it might not be entirely "worth" it in terms of performance/battery ratio... but that doesn't mean it isn't worth a try. People keep saying "don't bother" but nobody has actually tried an overclocked G1. Maybe it's worth it for demanding gaming or apps while the phone is (gasp) plugged in.
back when i had my wing and so did ttran. Which uses the OMAP processor it was able to overclock over 100mhz faster than it was meant to go. Had real good luck overclocked to 288mhz. Which made the phone run at the speed that it SHOULD have ran at... including faster loading web pages, faster loading everything basically. Which hardly is an issue with the g1, but imagine how much more snappy it would be with an extra 100mhz also? People say its not worth it and it drains the battery more.... umm... if anyone here owns a g1 (surely hope so at least!) you probably know that the battery sucks anyways and needs charging all the time. Would love to see a good OC app made for the g1 =-) (with scaling like battery status was for the wing, which underclocked when screen was off, overclocked when screen was awakened which was amazing for battery life, as the phone doesnt need much power to accept a call, but when the screen is lit.... scaling occurs and it bumps it right up to 288mhz)
I think its well worth a go.
We could start with very small increments.
Gary13579 said:
The reason why Android is underclocked is posted in the full thread. After a certain point, the increase in speed you get by bumping up the CPU slows down, because it's limited by FSB speed. An example of this (not real numbers), is that a CPU running at 50% speed could actually be closer to 75% speed.
Sure, the CPU CAN run at 100% speed, but after the FSB slows it down, it'll only be 75%. So after a point, increasing CPU speed isn't worth it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the question is... Are there any circumstances where this may help...
And either way how difficult is it to add a control under settings to allow you to modify the default method?
You could basically apply the same argument to anything... Until someone tries, we will not know for sure. What next? Don't bother trying to add a swap file cause it may not help? Don't bother trying to speed up Dalvik cause it will take too much memory?
That's the fun of open source...
jdc4429
FSB could really be the bottleneck here. From my experience overclocking mobile CPUs (PXA255, PXA263, PXA270, Samsung 300Mhz, TI OMAP 850) several percentage change on FSB speed or Memory speed could make significant performance changes.
The last WinMob device I had - Dell Axim x51v had a PXA270 [email protected] Pumping the bus from 208Mhz to 230Mhz and the CPU speed from 624 to about 700 did abput 50% improvement in several bencmarks (floating point, integer calculations, memory speed, graphics subsystem).
On the other hand pumping the CPU to 1014Mhz, (0.99GHz, the highest 24/7 stable for my device) while lowering the FSB to 185Mhz (23Mhz drop) led to about 10% lower result than at stock frequencies.
700Mhz CPU, 230Mhz FSB was totally 24/7 under stress tests with almost no extra heat, providing aboyt 50% extra performance, while battery life was about 30-40% shorter.
My experience with it showed that it could be worth for short speed bursts, while running many apps. When you are finished you return to normal frequencies.
Wow! Thanks for the info man!!
Thus we can see, that by increasing the CPU up to it's stock 528 Mhz would be perfect?
it will be perfect when the speed of the cpu uses 528Mhz and auto adjusts: high speed - mid speed - low speed - sleep, "ondemand"
android should use ondemand kernel module which does exactly that. (maybe this cpu cant do that?)
Mini Overclocking Guide
NOTE: The Steps Below were Tested on Froyo Roms. I have found different and perhaps better ways to test stability with CM7 Roms so I added a section for that too.
You can still use Stability Test but I don't use it too often anymore for CM7.
Programs Required for testing:
#1 Stability Test
#2 Neocore (please note that some kernels are not FPS unlocked meaning that the frame rate will not go over 56fps so make sure to compare apples to apples when testing different kernels).
For overclocking/undervolting you can use either Pimp My CPU or Voltage Control
Intro:
I posted this Guide in ROM thread but decided it might help someone trying to get a head start overclocking...just a reference not a bible.
First of all, please realize that no two CPUs are created equal. Just like with PC Overclocking, there is the luck of the draw involved here so just because one person can do 1.4Ghz it does not mean you will be able to do so nor it means that my UV settings will work for you.
Achieving 1.2Ghz should be feasible for almost all users since most of the code for it was already done by Samsung themselves. After that point though, it is a matter of luck. Many users can do 1.3Ghz but getting into 1.4Ghz the chances of stability drop dramatically.
Please note that with CM7 Roms it seems a LOT more people is able to hit 1.4Ghz and even 1.5Ghz fully stable. 1.6Ghz is also working although not as common. It is easier to use it if you select 1.6Ghz as the ONLY frequency but of course battery life will be affected.
So, start at 1.2Ghz and try to achieve stability with the lowest possible UV settings you can get to improve your battery life then when fully stable, go for a bit more speed if you like until you find your limit.
Process:
The following is the process I use to get 100% stability. Of course, you can use your own or tweak as you like as this is hardly the ONLY TRUTH of overclocking…I just hope it gives you a good idea on how to achieve stability.
I normally use these settings for 1200Mhz:
1200Mhz @ -100
1120Mhz @ -100
1000Mhz @ -100
900Mhz @ -100
800Mhz @ -100
400Mhz @ -100
200Mhz @ -100
100Mhz @ -100
After setting those up , click the Apply Now button but do not save to the Boot settings until you are sure they are stable for you.
To check stability I first run the Stability Test program and let it loop about 30 times or at least 20 of the CORE (not the RAM).
If it fails give it another shot if it fails again then it is time to adjust the voltages for 1200Mhz.
My experience has been that Stability Test crashes to the home screen when it needs more voltage so if it crashes for you change the UV to -75 and test again.
When you are able to pass that test , you can go to Neocore and try looping Neocore and let it running for about 5 to 10 minutes.
If Neocore freezes, at least for my phone, it means that voltage is too high so I need to drop the UV.
Right there is where the whole trick is. Trying to find what UV voltage is enough for Stability Test to pass but still low enough so that Neocore does not freeze.
This takes a lot of trial and error specially when going for 1.4Ghz!
Another thing is that the UV setting for the frequency below the one you are going for, like 1120 and 1000 for example, do have an effect on the stability you are trying to achieve on 1200Mhz because the phone does not seem to like big voltage jumps .
Some times changing the voltage for the frequency below the one you are adjusting is a good way of achieving stability.
This becomes more important when for example you find out that changing 1.2Ghz to -50 gives you stability for Stability Test but then you need -75 in order to pass Neocore test. What do you do then? What I have done with relative success is , use -75 but then increase the voltage to the frequencies below 1200.
For example if I had
1200Mhz @ -75
1120Mhz @ -100
1000Mhz @ -100
I would change it to:
1200Mhz @ -75
1120Mhz @ -75
1000Mhz @ -75
then test Stability Test to see if those changes help you pass it without having to increase the voltage for 1.2Ghz directly thus avoiding the Neocore freezing issue.
Another process some users are doing is just run Neocore for about 30 minutes and it seems to be a good alternative for some. Guess it all depends on your particular phone.
So, as you can image, this means a LOT of trial and error and restarts of your phone. For 1.2Ghz it should be painless but if you want to go higher, prepare to do a lot of the steps above.
Another thing to consider is that some phones seem to work better with kernels that only have one top speed after 1Ghz as opposed to kernels that offer multiple speed options so this is yet another variable to work with.
Also, remember that to restart your phone, there is no need to pull out the battery. Just press and hold the Volume Up and Power button and it will restart.
I am sure this guide can be done a lot better and will be glad to add or edit with any recommendations you can offer.
I hope this helps some of you trying to push your phones to the limits and have fun!
UPDATE for CM7 Users
With CM7 what we considered THE holly grail of speeds, 1.4Ghz with Froyo Roms suddenly became a VERY common thing.
I have no explanation as to why but a LOT of users are able to get 1.4Ghz and even 1.5Ghz perfectly stable on CM7 and the phones just fly at those speeds. Some are also able to get 1.6Ghz stable but that is harder.
Setting only one speed like 1.6Ghz dramatically increased the stability as well. Just a hint for you guys wanting to do some benchmarks.
You can use a program like Pimp My CPU or Voltage Control to set the voltages and the Maximum and Minimum speed.
Now while the Steps at the beginning of the guide (for Froyo roms) should be fine for CM7 as well ...I have noticed, at least with my phone , that a video player called Moboplayer is VERY good for stability testing CM7. In fact, I do not even use Stability Test any more since I moved to CM7.
When the voltage is a bit low on my screen it creates some artifacts, usually green spots that come up and go in random areas until it freezes.
My actual favorite player for CM7 is Dice Player because for me it plays 720p files better but I like moboplayer a lot as well specially because of the artifacts it shows when I am not stable so it is a quick way to tell the settings are not going to work.
Another thing I love to use if the Riptide Game (tegra 2 game) with Chainfire 3D plugin to make it work on our phones. That game will just close without warning when my speed is unstable. So I just let it running the demo on its own for about 10 minutes.
So basically, I use Moboplayer and Riptide to test my stability and with those tests my system is ready to go and takes less time than the steps I used to do.
Of course you can come up with your own preferred tools since our phones are quite unique and seem to have their own personalities.
It seems some users are having luck with my settings so here are my settings for 1.6Ghz This is for GLITCH kernel (V10C VC). Remember that each kernel has different voltages so instead of giving you a minus value like -100 I will give you the actual voltage I am using for each speed.
1.6Ghz - 1425mV
1.5Ghz - 1400
1.44 - 1325
1.4Ghz - 1325
1.3Ghz - 1275
1.2Ghz - 1275
1.0Ghz - 1200
800Mhz - 1100
400Mhz - 950
200Mhz - 850
100Mhz - 850
For Governor I normally just have Smartass and the Scheduler is NOOP.
Not that while for 1.6Ghz my current setting is either -50 or -75, if I were to select only 1.6Ghz as my max and minimum speed, I am then able to lower the voltage to -100 perfectly stable. Just an interesting thing for you to play with.
Important Note for CM7 users getting many FCs like google service or android service.
CM7 has a much smaller data space for application installs and every time I get to that limit my phone gets crazy with FCs. You can check that by going to your applications and launching the TERMINAL application then type df (in lower case) and pressing Enter.
Look at the top table listed for /datadata and make sure you have some available space.
As long as I keep that from filling up (in fact I prefer to keep it around 60% max to give me some room) my phone works like a charm.
You can use an app like APP2SD to move application data to the SD card to free up space.
Have fun and enjoy your pumped up phone!
UPDATE 12/30/2011
CyanogenMod 9 (ICS) users with Glitch kernel using LiveOC you can use my settings as a starting point.
This is what I use for 1603Mhz
Voltages:
ARM voltage
from 1500 to 1200 = 1.5V ; 1000 = 1.375V ; 800 = 1.250V ; 400=1.100V ; 200=950mV ; 100=900mV
Int from 1400 to 1200 = 1.2V ; 1000 = 1.15V ; 800 = 1.125V ; 400=1.100V ; 200=1.100V ; 100=1.000V
Then 123% LiveOC using 1300MHz step (giving you 1.6GHz)
Governor I am still testing but usually Smartass V2
You can of course use it as a starting point for lower speeds if you like.
Nice man. Saves alot of frustration with this.
Awesome! Thank you!
You are the OC master, Shaolin.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using Tapatalk
I wish I was a master indeed but I just have a lot of patience I guess to test ..and test...and crash..an test some more
I think I saw a post that said that any temperature below 56 degrees Celcius is fine for the captivate. I still start to worry though if it reaches 50 during a stability test, what's your opinion?
I noticed that mine when it its 50C or so for any reason (battery temp IIRC) it stops charging so that is where I normally draw the line. If I cannot keep it under that I dont feel comfortable.
That 50 is pretty high, at least for me. Even with stability test going for an hour or so at 1400, I only hit 46. Haven't seen anything higher
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA Premium App
Depends on ambient temp of course...you cannot compared devices temps without knowing the ambient temp. In any case, I saw that when I was using the first Trident kernel. That one even made my screen feel very hot...kinda scary lol
Right now, the only app I have that makes my phone stop charging, even when temp is low, is the Justin TV viewing app....weird. I even ran the phone at 600Mhz only to make sure.
AReynante said:
That 50 is pretty high, at least for me. Even with stability test going for an hour or so at 1400, I only hit 46. Haven't seen anything higher
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA Premium App
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I was testing out 1500 1400 is fine for me with -100 for each value. 1500 is a different story since I haven't managed to find a stable combination yet (that doesn't reach 50 degrees Celcius).
Sweet. Are you getting to 50C with a specific app? I only get there with some streaming apps but I really only use 1.5 for fpse emulator for example.
I don't have an app that tells me the temperature so the only time I know is if I do a stability test. I'm not sure if I really have a need for 1500MHz since I don't use emulators much but it's more of a "yea my phone can do it" kind of accomplishment - unless I'm missing out on some other benefits of 1500Mhz over 1400Mhz besides possibly more smoothness.
zuN! said:
I don't have an app that tells me the temperature so the only time I know is if I do a stability test. I'm not sure if I really have a need for 1500GHz since I don't use emulators much but it's more of a "yea my phone can do it" kind of accomplishment - unless I'm missing out on some other benefits of 1500Ghz over 1400Ghz besides possibly more smoothness.
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Lol 1.5 terahertz I want that phone!
studacris said:
Lol 1.5 terahertz I want that phone!
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Wow didnt notice that....thats Fing awesome!
Stability Test question
Hey Shaolin,
Just a quick question here, when you mention running stability test through 30/50 runs, are you referencing the RAM runs or the core runs? Just checking, since the RAM runs complete within a few minutes whereas the core runs take closer to half an hour, etc.
Thanks for posting the guide, much appreciated!!!
Since the new version I am only doing 30 of the core runs since it seems to take longer than before.
You are welcome amigo
shaolin95 said:
Since the new version I am only doing 30 of the core runs since it seems to take longer than before.
You are welcome amigo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey mate, maybe you can add this to your guide as I thought before that stability test and several runs of new core, nenamark, etc...that after passing those tests you're probably stable but what I found out that I can pass those tests without problems and just recently those test are not enough for you to be sure if you are really stable what I have found is to run or record in your phone video cam in its highest resolution about 720p for 200mb worth of data if your phone won't freeze then it's pretty stable you can delete those files afterwards.
Indeed each phone and user can find specific things that work for them, for example with my phone I can just use mobo player and play some videos and I get artifacts when voltage is low or I had a game that with low voltage will always freeze at the same spot yet some user do not have the same effect.
I guess I can add a small list of other possible quick tests like that video one you mentioned as alternatives
I found out another way to test stability which is to do a batch operation of backing up apps with TiBu. I'm not sure what it implies if it crashes though
Hi shaolin95, can I link this post in my VoltageControl thread? (with credits ofc)
Just a little question, i have a x10 mini pro, and its processor runs at 600 Mhz.
Now with the Mini CM7 i can overclock it to 864 Mhz. So i've been testing it with 724 Mhz and my question is: if i set the maximum processor speed at 724 Mhz, and leave it like that permanently, would this affect my cellphone in some way?
What i'm trying to say is, if you set a maximum speed, it doesn't means that the processor is gonna be running at that speed all the time, just when is needed, for example in games so it won't increase noticeably the battery consumption if the phone is locked 85% of the time. Or it is actually draining more battery even if don't use it?
PS. (English is not my native language, so i'm sorry if the text is hard to undestand, tried my best to explain it well).
You do know the hazards of overclocking in general right? Unless you have the proper cooling, even on a cellphone you will eventually burn out the processor. That is the real issue you need to worry about, just because you can overclock does not mean that you should overclock.
I wouldn't overclock it to the max. That's just bad juju. Unless you plan on hooking up a perpetual ice pack to the phone as well. You'd do well to be a bit moderate.
And to answer your question, yes you will burn battery quicker.
Test at different speeds. If it runs stable, with no force closes, lock-ups, reboots, excess heat, etc., then you're good. You are correct, you are only setting the maximum. What your phone idles or runs at on will depend on what governor you are using, I recommend Smartass for good battery and performance balance, although I have been liking Smartass v2 lately. Obviously overclocking will affect battery life, but you will find that your choice of governor will make a huge difference too.
Well, thanks for the help, glad to see that there are people who are willing to help with small questions like this one. Keep the good job!
Hi all,
I've had my Surface Pro 2 256/8 since release and all has been fine until (possibly) the firmware update.
Turbo Boost was working fine and the CPU was going up to its maximum of 2.6Ghz but it is now seemingly capped at 2.23Ghz.
I've checked in PC Settings, Task Manager and CPU-Z, the maximum that the CPU ever reaches is 2.23Ghz, as indicated.
Anyone else experienced this? I have tried all power profiles (Performance, balanced, Power Saver and there's no difference).
Thanks!
EDIT: Having used HWiNFO64 on the High Performance profile I can see that the core is limited to x23 which is producing the 2.3Ghz clock speed. It occasionally indicates x26 (2.6Ghz) for a millisecond before ThermMon shows that it is being throttled back to x23. So it appears it's not reaching maximum speed to keep the heat lower, why this has happened is still inconclusive..
Have you tried to change the CPU maximum utilization in power settings?
Sent from CM10.1 U9200
>I've had my Surface Pro 2 256/8 since release and all has been fine until (possibly) the firmware update.
You've answered your own question. One reason to cap speed is for battery life. That's what the latest firmware update provides. You've found the downside.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5064026/microsoft-surface-pro-2-battery-life-firmware-update
So they cap turbo mode to increase battery life, given the SP2 is advertised as having an Intel i5 CPU with no mention of speed on the MS site I think they'll get away with it...
e.mote said:
>I've had my Surface Pro 2 256/8 since release and all has been fine until (possibly) the firmware update.
You've answered your own question. One reason to cap speed is for battery life. That's what the latest firmware update provides. You've found the downside.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5064026/microsoft-surface-pro-2-battery-life-firmware-update
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Well, in that case, the CPU shouldn't be capped when NOT running on battery power, should it?
There is also cooling to consider regardless of if it is on battery or mains. Although was heat particularly problematic pre-update?
>Well, in that case, the CPU shouldn't be capped when NOT running on battery power, should it?
As another noted, SP2 slicks never said CPU would be running at max spec.
PCs are normally more configurable. But if you enter SP2's UEFI setup, the only thing you can change is Secure Boot. MS is emulating Apple in more ways than one.
The cynics among us (guilty as charged) would say that MS handled this just right: Release the device with uncapped speed to get the best possible performance for reviews. Then afterward, cap the speed to claim "improved battery life" as well. If MS had capped the speed to start with, SP2 would be no faster than SP, and would get slammed hard. SP2 is already slammed as having minimal improvements over SP.
Reviewers aren't going to take the trouble to revise their reviews, and even if they did, not many people will re-read them. So, with this method, you can indeed have your cake and eat it too. Think of it as a more "legal" form of juicing performance tests without the explicit cheating that Samsung and others resorted to.
e.mote said:
> SP2 is already slammed as having minimal improvements over SP.
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Anyone thats knows the difference between the CPU's will know that theres not a huge speed increase though, the only thing they should of done was stick a decent SSD in there, I've got an unused PX-256M5M sat on my desk that reads/writes at near on full sized 2.5" SSD speeds where as the mSSD's have always had half decent read and poor write.
Other than that what else is there to improve on, the camera perhaps as per the Surface2, battery life, check, the only other thing the Pro/Pro2 needs imho is more accesories, yes they are coming but should of been ready at launch imho, I'm crying out for a dock...