My experience of undervolting reflects what is widely said, as you undervolt more and more, the device becomes less and less stable, and the battery drain become more difficult to measure in battery monitor. The only plus side is that there is less heat produced.
I noticed that extreme undervolting (using least stable voltage possible on all clock speeds) does decrease battery drain, but only in certain circumstances. When i undervolt and underclock during gaming, the current comsumption decreases dramatically (40~60%) compared to standard voltages. However, when i try to use internet/data on wifi, 3g or 2g on undervolt+underclock, the opposite effect happens, and a lot more current is drawn and the battery life is dramatically reduced. This affects the standby time of the phone the most (even with no data). The theory is that because more power must be used (during radio data transmission and to maintain radio signal), less voltage means more current is drawn. However, other people have said that is not true. In phone calls however, undervolt/underclock doesn't seem to change the current drawn much.
Since I browse the internet on my phone all the time, my battery sucks when I undervolt. So I'm thinking that it's only better to undervolt if you have the phone on all the time only game all the time and have the phone in airplane mode.
I only have undervolted one phone, the HD2, but I would like to know what are you experiencing in terms of undervolting your phone? Do the things I said above happen on other devices?
i have u20i with custom kernel and rom, undervolted also, but it's stable
Just a little laggy on startup
Related
I think I may have a simple yet very inefficient method of ensuring stable overclock at higher frequencies. I have been messing around with many different OC kernels (along with many different roms ), and have noticed the same situation. While charging, all overclock speeds beyond 633 are pretty stable. It may take a few attempts to reach a certain speed (as the phone might reboot), but once successful its all golden!
I'd previously though instabilities were due to the fact that these kernels were undervolted and thus, after a certain frequency, needed more juice to function properly, but when I removed the charger. My god...it still ran! Just as effectively for extended periods of time.
The only problem was the phone would either reboot or hang if the screen was powered-off and idle/sleep for more than 1-3 secs. So I tried using SetCpu's profiles to lower the clock speed to various speeds below 633 during sleep. Yet to no avail. The phone would always freeze/reboot when it attempted to clock back up.
So if someone were to develop an app that would implement a toggle feature, or make modifications to the current kernels to disable sleep for test purposes I believe that might help. I am far too inexperienced a programmer to dev this but know there was a command under reference called "Partial Wake Lock" that can disable cpu sleep.
Also I realize, if implemented as is, this will destroy battery life. But with a good toggle switch it can be treated as an Overdrive mode!!!
Forgot to mention that while charging and clocked beyond 633 it always awoke with no problems.
My phone will clock to 710 before freezing up but it's crazy unstable. It seems to behave well at 652 with a freeze up roughly every 6-7 hours. I've never tried it that high with the charger though. Seems interesting.
extended batteries also reduce overclocking, my 2600mah battery peaks at 595, where as the official battery gets me to 633
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Sent from my HTC Magic
I have exactly the same issue. My G1 runs stable on 672, while plugged in into
the charger. Even using GPS for navigation, browsing and so on, everything works great. As soon as the charger is plugged out and the phone goes into sleep it reboots.
I end up in changing the frequencies on demand with setCPU. When i need more speed, e.g. browsing the web, i set it manually to 672. And before putting it in my pocket i reduce to 614. Even on battery i can use 672.
Also tried profiles in SetCPU but this did not help.
BTW. Using 5.0.8t4, same was on t3
Damian
Nagoki said:
I think I may have a simple yet very inefficient method of ensuring stable overclock at higher frequencies. I have been messing around with many different OC kernels (along with many different roms ), and have noticed the same situation. While charging, all overclock speeds beyond 633 are pretty stable. It may take a few attempts to reach a certain speed (as the phone might reboot), but once successful its all golden!
I'd previously though instabilities were due to the fact that these kernels were undervolted and thus, after a certain frequency, needed more juice to function properly, but when I removed the charger. My god...it still ran! Just as effectively for extended periods of time.
The only problem was the phone would either reboot or hang if the screen was powered-off and idle/sleep for more than 1-3 secs. So I tried using SetCpu's profiles to lower the clock speed to various speeds below 633 during sleep. Yet to no avail. The phone would always freeze/reboot when it attempted to clock back up.
So if someone were to develop an app that would implement a toggle feature, or make modifications to the current kernels to disable sleep for test purposes I believe that might help. I am far too inexperienced a programmer to dev this but know there was a command under reference called "Partial Wake Lock" that can disable cpu sleep.
Also I realize, if implemented as is, this will destroy battery life. But with a good toggle switch it can be treated as an Overdrive mode!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The speeds will be different on different phones due to the hardware even slightly different depending on where the phone was made mine can go to 720mhz while others 614mhz which means unless another way of overclocking is found then we won't have a stable overclock for a while :/
mejorguille said:
My phone will clock to 710 before freezing up but it's crazy unstable. It seems to behave well at 652 with a freeze up roughly every 6-7 hours. I've never tried it that high with the charger though. Seems interesting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lemme know how that goes. I've noticed higher clock frequencies are much more stable while charging.
Jedipottsy said:
extended batteries also reduce overclocking, my 2600mah battery peaks at 595, where as the official battery gets me to 633
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Sent from my HTC Magic
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's strange. Maybe its a voltage difference between batteries that makes its more unstable.
vassloff said:
I have exactly the same issue. My G1 runs stable on 672, while plugged in into
the charger. Even using GPS for navigation, browsing and so on, everything works great. As soon as the charger is plugged out and the phone goes into sleep it reboots.
I end up in changing the frequencies on demand with setCPU. When i need more speed, e.g. browsing the web, i set it manually to 672. And before putting it in my pocket i reduce to 614. Even on battery i can use 672.
Also tried profiles in SetCPU but this did not help.
BTW. Using 5.0.8t4, same was on t3
Damian
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe when the phone is charging the operating system either suspends or extends idle/sleep when the screen backlight is off. This would explain why it reboots on battery and not while plugged in. Also the SetCpu profiles would work if only overclocking wasn't so unstable.
xillius200 said:
The speeds will be different on different phones due to the hardware even slightly different depending on where the phone was made mine can go to 720mhz while others 614mhz which means unless another way of overclocking is found then we won't have a stable overclock for a while :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is true, but if we can help the relative stability of each clock rate past 528 by using simple methods (i.e. overclocking while charging), we can simply aim to improve its reliability until a better way to overclock is found.
I am loving my Android experience so far coming from and iPhone 4. I am running LeeDroid and have been playing around a lot with SetCPU. At this time, I am not concerned about battery as of yet. I am asking this question in regard to optimal, blazing fast performance with minimal hiccups.
I have done Quadrant testing at various min/max CPU levels. I had excellent results at 1804 high 904 min. However I had to yank the battery after not being able to unlock the device.
For profiles, real basic, again I am not concerned about battery charge life ATM. I have it set to revert to stock performace (1036/245) if the battery temp reaches 100F.
With the screen locked, I have it set to 499/245. All of my settings are using the "ondemand".
I would like to know what an ideal minimum is for PERFORMANCE as well as ideal max (1804? Highest might not always be fastest?). I got amazing results with Quadrant full benchmark with settings of 1804/499. This also caused a lockup when trying to unlock the device though. Maybe because there was a conflict with my lockscreen max setting? I would think the app would put priority to the lock profile though.
Also, does this phone have a built in CPU temperature sensor that I could utilize with a CPU temp widget?
Thanks for reading my lengthy ramblings.
Ray
Not all Processors are created equal and therefore some can OC to 1900+ and some cant overclock at all. Most will be in between. Sounds like you are over doing it. I clock mine to about 1400 when charging. I have had it to 1700 without an issue at all, but I don't find a need to be faster then 1400. When screen is off I actually tell it to go to 250MHz. Sometimes its alittle slow to "wake". But it saves mucho battery. When just on battery I am running at about 1250. Been this way for about 3 weeks. Not an issue.
I have never had to yank my battery and quite frankly if I did I would never run it that high again. You are going to burn it up running it at that speed. Nothing over 1500 for extended periods. 1800+ for showing off maybe? But that's kinda dumb too.
I have not read about any built in temp thing so can't really answer that.
I don't know what kind of power hungry apps you guys are running, but I run mine underclocked to 906MHz. Snappy as ever.
I am playing a bit with underclocking my DS (Using UNITY v4 kernel atm, will update to v9 later).
However, I'm figuring out the usefulness of it (to extend battery life mainly).
Does it really save battery life? I'm already using JuiceDefender, and its SetCPU function.
Or is it not very useful since the most batterydrain comes from radios anyway.
What are the best values for it?
What's the standard clockspeed for the DS? And what is the best Max IDLE clock speed?
Well, i wont underclock at all.
First of all there is no need to do that to get good battery life. You can do lot other stuff to do so.
Under-clocking is risky as it might now have enough power that needed to the phone. that means that some stuff might not get processed like calls and stuff.
Right now with me using miui i get life for about 3-4 days.
Standard clock speed is 1,000mhz.
I have mine underclocked to 600mhz during idle times and it's perfectly fine.
Never had any issues at that speed and it keeps my Desire S much much cooler which can only be a good thing.
As for it's ability to extend the battery, I don't think it does so much in my case. I typically run WiFi overnight and G/3G/H during the day and my display usually chews up 60-70% of my overall battery usage even on a very dark screen.
I'd pick a setting that you feel comfortable with but have low expectations of the benefits.
The only time I use underclocking is for using Google Navigation.
On a hot day using Navigation for over a couple of hours, my DS would over-heat and restart (usually as I was approaching my motorway exit). So I have Tasker dialing back CPU to 768Mhz when using Navigation, and it does seem to help the phone run a little cooler. I no longer have to take it out the case for example.
Using the smartass governor (I believe) automatically knocks the CPU back to 240Mhz when sleeping. Not 100% on that though.
I'm currently testing a new kernel, and I spent an entire charge cycle on 'Smartass' and then an entire charge cycle on 'Powersave'. Aside from lots of lag on the latter one, the battery life was pretty much the same!
How about battery life in Overclocked phones?
Depending on how its clocked, if your needs are speed and usability it lowers the battery life.
Though you can clock it moderate and set the "min" clock frequency down and save battery while its in your pocket.
benjamin336 said:
Depending on how its clocked, if your needs are speed and usability it lowers the battery life.
Though you can clock it moderate and set the "min" clock frequency down and save battery while its in your pocket.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
benjamin336 is absolutely right. I've also found that you have to adjust the settings differently depending on the phone.
There are threads pertaining to adjusting voltages and clocking where people describe what combinations have worked best for them.
99% of the time if you're looking to overclock you're looking for performance meaning 99% of the time you are going to have crappier battery life.
Hello guys
I'm not a new user in kernels or ROMs .
I have a low-decent battery life ,and I'm sure there's a way to get a better battery life with undervolting .
I want to know
what is "undervolting" ?
What is the biggest damage it can cause?
What is PVS?
How do I know ,how much I can UV?
What are the steps to undervolt?
What I gain from UV (despite battery life)?
For your info ,I'm using AOSPAL ROM +FAUX's latest 16u kernel .
Thanks
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2537000
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Hi,
Most of your questions have a reply:
About undervolting: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/nexus-5-undervolting-thread-t2537000.
CPU binning: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/cpu-binning-nexus-5-t2515593.
The "risks" are instability like hard reboot, SOD, etc.... To find a "safe" value you will need to test by yourself to find what undervolting your CPU can handle, not all CPU's are equals.
Undervolt by steps like - 25mV, don't set your new values at boot unless your are sure it's stable (or you could encounter bootloop), test for a few days under different conditions (as your use).
The gain apart battery life (but you will not gain that much as people tend to think) is a little less heat, but again nothing huge..., better is to test by yourself and see what you will gain... or not.
Battery life depends mainly of your use, apps, signal quality and settings like, screen brightness, synchro, CPU governor, etc... In my opinion check first what could be the cause of your low battery life (and what is low battery life for you???) before play with undervolting.
As said above, undervolting will get you very minor battery life increases.
More than likely you have an issue, or its just your setup and usage giving you the battery life you are seeing.
Undervolting will not change any of this.... You'll gain only minutes of battery time.
Try some troubleshooting in the below thread to see if you have an issue, or how to setup for better battery life. Read through it a bit, from the last page and work back a bit. You can post meaningful screenshots there too. From gsam or BBS.... not the stock battery screen, it has no real useful info for finding issues. Good luck!!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2509132
Nexus 5 Battery Results
I've been undervolting many systems for many years, primarily Linux desktops and some servers, and the primary benefit is that you get less heat output which means when running cpu-intensive tasks the temperature climbs slower so the throttling of the clockspeed kicks in later, so your phone will be faster in certain situations. If you take a phone which has been idle for a while and run a benchmark, and then immediately run that benchmark again, the 2nd time gets a lower result as the phone is still hot from the 1st. This makes drawing conclusions about settings really dificult but it illustrate that throttling from heat is affecting speed.
For most users their perception will be the phone runs cooler.
You do undervolt at each step in the processor's frequency, and each step is a trial+error activity, the throttling I mention means finding a stable under-volt at the higher frequency which is labour-intensive,i.e take the max clock, and undervolt it a little, run a benchmark which forces it to run at high clockspeed, and if it passes that test then run it again at the next step down in frequency. Once you've got the most stable top clockspeed, then do it progressively for all the other voltages on the way down.
In some platforms in Linux and Windoze, we wrote scripts which save the stable voltages and then undervolts a little and runs a stress-testing benchmark and if the system hung it wouldn't save the current voltages so the previous higher voltages were safer, stick that script in a startup script area and leave the compute to do many self resets, and you've calculated your device's voltage range. I wonder if someone has that done for Android??? For a laptop the FAN would run slower saving battery time and for laptops that would lead to say 20% better battery life but on a phone it won't make much saving as no fan.
Your phone will run most of its time (like 95%) at its lowest frequency, so for effort/benefit just focusing on dropping its voltage will gain the most in the phone running cooler.
Battery life improvement is marginal, if you look at your battery stats its down to your application settings and screen brightness, i.e. how you use and what you do with your phone. So if your battery life is bad, use your phone less!
I carry a slim USB battery, it is the $/effort/benefit the best thing you can do, $20 doubles your battery life, if you get one with a 1.5A-2A output in just a few minutes when the phone doesn't mind a battery attached, will dwarth every possible tweak and hack anyone can form in benefit.