Icon / Wallpaper impact on battery life due to % of lit pixels - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey has anyone ever contemplated the impact of how much white we have on our homescreens vs. battery live?
People are undervolting their CPUs by ~50mv to save power, but that's really only ~5% difference.
Looking at my logs, display accounts for over 70% of drain. So if we light up less pixels with a mega-black screen, shouldn't that account for more savings than any undervolting can?

you can adjust your colour settings in voodoo to make everything red. This will save battery on amoled.

I made such test on HTC Desire and record the current drained with Battery Monitor Widget.
Screening a fully black photo drain about 100mA
Screnning a fully white photo and setting the screen lighting at 50% drain about 300mA
It is very important to put in mind that the sceen is one of the major battery drain source.

Cool... I will try this as well. I didn't know that there was a program that'd report the actual current draw of the phone
I imagine that the differential will be larger for organic LED devices, since we don't need to keep a backlight on.
Time to rethink the types on icons on my home screen!

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Again with the Battery

Is anyone that is having battery issues running Adao Task Manager and Battery Status Pro?
I just factory reset my phone and I got 24hours of batter life. About 8 standby but a good deal of texting, web, some calls and some you tube.
I installed Task Manager and Batter Status Pro last night and my battery this morning went down 15% in about 1hr.
I uninstalled these today and will post again but has anyone else seen big battery drain from these apps or does anyone that is having issues running something similar?
I have been playing with the battery for about a week now.
For me this phone runs pretty good during stand-by. I would have about 2-3% drop for a whole night (7 to 8 hrs), with Google (push), Twitter and weather syncing.
The problem is when you use it, it drops like crazy. When I read news or surf the web, it would drop 1% every 1 or 2 min.
This morning I read an ebook, with black background for about 30 min, it dropped about 3%.
So basically i think the screen, data connection, and non-black background are the ones that kill the battery.
Yea, I agree, the S-AMOLED screen in this thing is an energy hog. OLED's are supposed to be more energy efficient than typical LCD's but I'm just not seeing it. Whenever I look at battery usage stats it shows the display at 70-75% of battery usage. Thats ridiculous. I have until the 18th, but I'm quickly leaning towards returning this and just getting an iphone4. This phone is becoming more and more disappointing the longer I have it.
This morning I have been uplugged 4.75hrs and used 16% no battery monitor and no app killer. Basically done the same things I did yesterday. Some Bebbled,texting, email, phone calls .
I will update tomorrow with total hours battery life for today. Would be happy if I can replicate the 24hours I got the day before installing those apps.
I got like 45 hours of battery with moderate usage during the two days. Seems fine to me, I occasionally used system panel to monitor if anything was using high and constant CPU
This is pretty typical of a 1ghz phone My nexus would last a day of heavy usage, 2 days if i use it lightly. We need to wait for undervolted kernels to be developed xD
Also, it really helps if you disable 3G when you don't use it. This allows me to get 3-4 days of light usage out of my nexus. I haven't played with the Captivate long enough to know how much of a difference this makes on this phone though
when you guys refer to "stand by", what exactly do you mean? Just screen off/phone idle? The battery usage on my phone when I use it seems to be OK even if not amazing, but it continues to sap life from the battery when I'm using it at an alarming rate.
Standby is when the phone is idle/screen off/locked.
The display is definitely power hungry. Using the Power Control widget that comes installed definitely has helped with battery life. It will let you toggle WiFi, BT, GPS, Data Sync, and Brightness (at 3 levels). When I'm not using anyone of those, I turn it off. When I'm indoors, I'll set the brightness to the lowest level. I'm usually at my desk when I'm streaming music, so I'll have it plugged in.
derek4484 said:
Yea, I agree, the S-AMOLED screen in this thing is an energy hog. OLED's are supposed to be more energy efficient than typical LCD's but I'm just not seeing it. Whenever I look at battery usage stats it shows the display at 70-75% of battery usage. Thats ridiculous. I have until the 18th, but I'm quickly leaning towards returning this and just getting an iphone4. This phone is becoming more and more disappointing the longer I have it.
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Actually they are more energy efficient on black screens, But screens with a lot of white in them suck battery bad.
alphadog00 said:
Actually they are more energy efficient on black screens, But screens with a lot of white in them suck battery bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true the white screens burn the battery etc. I just wanted to let everyone know what I did to make my battery last more that 24hrs.
First, read the Wiki guide and apply some of the battery saving tips.
Second, UNINSTALL a program called "gReader" created by noinnion. This program is a huge battery hog! At least it was for me.
Hope this helps.
Well I guess I am one of the "lucky ones" Im running a live wallpaper and have not run my battery down since the 1st day. Right now Im at 40% life and at 15 Hrs 30m since unplugged. This is with checking facebook, twitter, email, phone calls, internet browsing\video watching and following the steps for the GPS fix. The only thing I have done is install ATK on the phone, besides that its all stock.
One thing I know is a huge battery drain is Time without Service. Check that stat and see if you have anytime at all without service, if so, I am pointing to that as a major drain on the battery. I know currently I have 0% Time without signal, my fiancee however is usually in the 20+% range and her battery drains like many reports I have seen here (she has an EVO).....
Yesterday I only managed 16 hours. Web, Email, A bluetooth file transfer, short bit of gaming. I have about 5% of the cell standby time (26%) without signal. My girlfriend has the Aria which is running Android 2.1 also, has all sorts of widgets, haptic feedback on and can make it at least 24 hours. I get that it has a smaller screen but it is also an LCD. Shouldn't the Super Amoled be saving our battery some display consumption.
i get about 14 hours or so moderate usage and at the end of the day, i have about 35% left at night.
If you detail the "Display" usage in the battery usage details how many minutes has your screen been on? Mine says 1hour 2mins ...this is for 8 hours of running time. My display is using 50% of the battery (which is at 68% now).
W00t W00t today I have reached a new high 2 Days 6 hours and 29 minuts with 12% battery left.....
What I have found is keeping Wifi on while I am at work and home like almost doubled my battery life. Which is great that I can use Wifi all day and not drain the battery so fast like my Fuze. Right now been off charger since 7:30am and I have 84% left. Yesterday after 9 hours I was still over 50%. For me its better than any other smartphone I have owened.
I used manual brightness, (swipe notification bar), turn off GPS/BT. black wallpaper and set Wifi to never sleep. Also the power saving mode in settings is off for other reason and doesn't affect battery.
At 18% right now and it's been off the charger for about 30 hours. I noticed yesterday that while I was connected to wifi at home (with Y5 app), it was draining faster than when I was connected to 3g. Did some tested back and forth and JuicePlotter clearly had a noticeably steeper downward slope for when wifi was connected than when it was using 3g. Weird :\

[Q] battery life

is it possible that "active" wallpapers are draining the battery more than "passive"?
I use Galaxy. On a 1900 Anker or the OEM, I seem to burn thru batts since the 2.3.4 update.
60% or more going to display use.
That's with Brightness at 16% and very little use during the day, 30 mins or so.
metropical said:
is it possible that "active" wallpapers are draining the battery more than "passive"?
I use Galaxy. On a 1900 Anker or the OEM, I seem to burn thru batts since the 2.3.4 update.
60% or more going to display use.
That's with Brightness at 16% and very little use during the day, 30 mins or so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I would have thought that the fact that it is "active" means that it is doing something.
Therefore it will use power to do so.
Install watchdog from the market to see what processes are preventing your phone from falling asleep.
Sent from my HTC Sensation
The Live wall papers drain the battery thats Confirm. I installed that Live aquarium 3D wall paper which is so awesome but Drains my battery and gives me 30-40% lesser battery life..
I dont know why doesnt Android shutdown all processes.. On my CPU tracing I was getting constant 800Mhz usage even when the screen was off.. This proved that battery was being used by that 3D lieve wallpaper..
normal to all sensation user?
I would never, ever use live wallpapers. While many will turn off when the screen is off and barely affect the battery, others are always running, and will obliterate it. But to answer your question, yes, all phones are negatively impacted in battery life by all live wallpapers.
Even the good ones still affect battery life, oftentimes tremendously. If you're concerned with battery life, just switch to a static one.

Is maximum brightness bad for your phone? shortandlong term?

I noticed that most phones default setting is not max brightness but maybe one or two levels lower. Aside from having bad battery life, do you think there is anyway having your screen on maximum brightness bad for it? Will the LED bulbs burn out faster in the long run, etc? Just a curious question as it is something I never thought about before.
p.s. Obviously many things that are running on max or pushed to it's maximum wears and tears faster.
led bulbs can last a very long time, over 10 years minimum
chances are you will have a new phone by then
i use lowest brightness at night if i am out as its too bright at night or if im in bed and auto in the daytime, and maximum brightness if its a very sunny day
LEDs tend to last 25,000+ hours active before finally dying, diodes tend to last a while. There is absolutely no negative effect running them at max.
i run at minimum brightness 90% of the day, only in direct sunlight do i use auto only to conserve battery life.
on an aside, i carry around a charger with me, and i'm OCD i only charge when the USB is plugged into the wall to keep the battery from heating up. using lower current through your computer means, lower heat, and your battery should theoretically last longer through wear and tear.

Screen taking up a high amount of battery

So after returning my previous model due to issues with battery I'm experiencing some more battery issues. My screen is taking up >60% of the battery through a full battery life. I have auto brightness on. I have color correction preset on sRGB. I'm only getting about 3 1/2 hours screen on time with moderate browsing and gaming. Is this normal? I'm on 4.4.2 if that matters. Just wondering if the Shield just has a mediocre battery or if this is a fixable/defective issue...
Thanks for any help.

always on display battery drain

Hi, I have AMOLED display for the first time, so I dont know what to expect from the battery life, it seems that it drains 2, almost 3 percents an hour? I use only simple digital clock with date and battery. Nothing fancy, no background. Just the clock. Is the battery drain normal?

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