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Dissapointing battery life test

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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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)

Normal working temperature of the TF700?

Hi guys, I asked my dad to buy the TF700 (this would be my first tablet) in my home country because the model hasn't been released in the UK (it should be today) and it's cheaper there. A friend of mine will be bringing it to me when he comes back from summer holidays.
So I've had him do the proper inspection on my tablet (according to this thread) by alienedd), and so far the tablet has passed most of the tests. But just now he noted that the tablet feels a bit warm (in particular at one of the corners of the tablet), considerably warmer than the iPad (he has been reading blogs and watching youtube HD videos using the tablet).
I wonder what kind of normal temperature should I expect for this tablet? and whether I should be concerned with what my dad noted.
Thanks in advance!!

zack1_89 said:
Hi guys, I asked my dad to buy the TF700 (this would be my first tablet) in my home country because the model hasn't been released in the UK (it should be today) and it's cheaper there. A friend of mine will be bringing it to me when he comes back from summer holidays.
So I've had him do the proper inspection on my tablet (according to this thread) by alienedd), and so far the tablet has passed most of the tests. But just now he noted that the tablet feels a bit warm (in particular at one of the corners of the tablet), considerably warmer than the iPad (he has been reading blogs and watching youtube HD videos using the tablet).
I wonder what kind of normal temperature should I expect for this tablet? and whether I should be concerned with what my dad noted.
Thanks in advance!!
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What sort of tests was he running? High performance activities like certain games will push the temperature up. it could feel pretty warm, but will cool off before damage is done.
Just web surfing, and typing this, my TF700 is running at 25C.

My top left corner of the tablet (where the power button is) gets a bit warmer than other spots while watching youtube videos.

zack1_89 said:
Hi guys, I asked my dad to buy the TF700 (this would be my first tablet) in my home country because the model hasn't been released in the UK (it should be today) and it's cheaper there. A friend of mine will be bringing it to me when he comes back from summer holidays.
So I've had him do the proper inspection on my tablet (according to this thread) by alienedd), and so far the tablet has passed most of the tests. But just now he noted that the tablet feels a bit warm (in particular at one of the corners of the tablet), considerably warmer than the iPad (he has been reading blogs and watching youtube HD videos using the tablet).
I wonder what kind of normal temperature should I expect for this tablet? and whether I should be concerned with what my dad noted.
Thanks in advance!!
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Click to collapse
Just have him install Cool Tool @ playstore. You can set it as a floating widget. It monitors everything that you choose it to monitor. I have it monitoring battery temp. CPU speeds and WiFi signal strengths. This will help you determine much more accurately if your temp is getting to extreme. On my daily use with my Infinity, my temps never go above 100 degrees unless I'm pushing it with heavy gaming.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda app-developers app

With brightness set to ~20-30%, I normally see room temperature + a few degrees, basically 24-27*C, sometimes more, sometimes less.
With brightness set to max. and in some sunrays at it, I was getting as high as 41-47*C.
Edit: I meant the battery temperature, as this is what I have monitored in the tray.

The tab I have shows 120.07F degrees right out of sleep.
Then after browsing it ramps to 140.00F degrees in balanced mode with nothing forced.
Never seen the temp above 140.00F
I use system tuner to look at the CPU temperature.
I guess SysTune is accurate...I wouldn't know if it was lying anyhoo.
My previous Acer tablet was returned because it was showing temperatures in the 195F-225F degree range with below normal use.
That thing started crashing all over the place.

Thats OK said:
The tab I have shows 120.07F degrees right out of sleep.
Then after browsing it ramps to 140.00F degrees in balanced mode with nothing forced.
Never seen the temp above 140.00F
I use system tuner to look at the CPU temperature.
I guess SysTune is accurate...I wouldn't know if it was lying anyhoo.
My previous Acer tablet was returned because it was showing temperatures in the 195F-225F degree range with below normal use.
That thing started crashing all over the place.
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Click to collapse
Holy what? That's insane. My computer doesn't even hit 100F.

Keion said:
Holy what? That's insane. My computer doesn't even hit 100F.
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Sooo if my tablet is at 102F right now just from browsing websites (5 tabs open) do you guys think i should try to exchange it for another? It got pretty hot yesterday when i played zenbound 2 for maybe 15 min. Brightness on about 2,% performance mode to get it to stop altering screen brightness ( auto is off).

Misera said:
Sooo if my tablet is at 102F right now just from browsing websites (5 tabs open) do you guys think i should try to exchange it for another? It got pretty hot yesterday when i played zenbound 2 for maybe 15 min. Brightness on about 2,% performance mode to get it to stop altering screen brightness ( auto is off).
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I just played ShadowGun for 10 minutes then quickly checked temp and found it was only 93F in ~80F ambient temp. Highest I've seen on my tab (outdoor use) is 118F during the hottest part of Midwest summer when it was 100+F for days on end. Based on my experiences, anything above 120F would seem a bit abnormal.

Just checked mine using System Tuner and it was at 120F after short use of Tapatalk, etc... I believe this is completely normal - its not even warm to the touch on the outside...
For those that say it theirs never even reaches 100 degree F, what are you using to check the temperature?
EDIT: Ha! Cool Tool reports 95F while System Tuner reports 127F! Obviously, one of them is wrong - or one is monitoring CPU temp and the other is battery temp. Guess we need to clarify which tool is reporting which temp...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

Thats OK said:
The tab I have shows 120.07F degrees right out of sleep.
Then after browsing it ramps to 140.00F degrees in balanced mode with nothing forced.
Never seen the temp above 140.00F
I use system tuner to look at the CPU temperature.
I guess SysTune is accurate...I wouldn't know if it was lying anyhoo.
My previous Acer tablet was returned because it was showing temperatures in the 195F-225F degree range with below normal use.
That thing started crashing all over the place.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That doesn't sound right. Your tablet would literally be smoking and smelling if it were that high wouldn't it?! Having it functioning alone with such high temps shouldn't be possible. It will literally be too hot to touch and would definitly fry your cores? Mine when it reached 104 degrees F. It was hard to hold due to the amount of heat. I can't imagine temps going 140 and above!
Edit: using Cool Tool.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda app-developers app

jjdevega said:
That doesn't sound right. Your tablet would literally be smoking and smelling if it were that high wouldn't it?! Having it functioning alone with such high temps shouldn't be possible. It will literally be too hot to touch and would definitly fry your cores? Mine when it reached 104 degrees F. It was hard to hold due to the amount of heat. I can't imagine temps going 140 and above!
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Click to collapse
I don't know what to tell ya...
It's hit a 140 a few times as reported by Sys Tuner.
I've done some resetting in System Tuner and have gotten the temps back down.
Out of sleep I'm seeing 103 degrees now.
It still hits 140 occasionally.
I can tell when it's cooking because the area under the back camera gets warm.
Like I said in my original post I wouldn't know if Sys Tuner is lying to me or not.

Yeah, I think Sys Tuner is reporting the temperature wrong - like I said, when SysTuner reports 127F, Cool Tool reports 95F, so something is way off - probably Sys Tuner is wrong is my guess...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

BxMxK said:
I just played ShadowGun for 10 minutes then quickly checked temp and found it was only 93F in ~80F ambient temp. Highest I've seen on my tab (outdoor use) is 118F during the hottest part of Midwest summer when it was 100+F for days on end. Based on my experiences, anything above 120F would seem a bit abnormal.
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Blah guess this one is going back to best buy.. I was using Cool Tool. The back was burning hot and during the middle of me editing my last post to say I was using Cool Tool the tablet crashed and went through a few boot loops until it finally loaded back up.. The 102F temp was just from have 5 tabs opened on browser, using the tablet indoors, almost full battery (just turned on), 20% brightness. I switched it back down to power saving mode just to see and the past few hours it's been at 93-98F from just 2 tabs opened on browser. No games being played since then. I also had it fully off for a few hours in between.
P.S. Do you guys know what serial number your units start with? Mine is C7. At the best buy besides the other C7 I opened the day before (had scratches) the rest of them were C6. Wondering if the batch makes a difference.

I don't think 100F is out of bounds for this device - like I said, mine was at 95F just using tapatalk. Having 5 tabs going in a browser would certainly make it run hotter than Tapatalk...
EDIT: Just out of curiosity, try loading Dual Battery Widget and see what temp is reports...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

jtrosky said:
I don't think 100F is out of bounds for this device - like I said, mine was at 95F just using tapatalk. Having 5 tabs going in a browser would certainly make it run hotter than Tapatalk...
EDIT: Just out of curiosity, try loading Dual Battery Widget and see what temp is reports...
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makes me miss my original prime. I could have 2 browsers with multiple tabs up, checking gmail, playing games, on performance mode (to get away from screen changing brightness even though auto brightness off) and it would only get warm. Now if their updates didn't break my gps and make my screen bug out all the time..
What does dual battery widget do besides monitor battery? I installed it but it just logs battery right? CoolTemp is still at 91F right now. 100F was whatever for a powerful tablet since my laptop burns my legs normall, but once it got to 102+ it started going through boot loops from overheating.

Misera said:
makes me miss my original prime. I could have 2 browsers with multiple tabs up, checking gmail, playing games, on performance mode (to get away from screen changing brightness even though auto brightness off) and it would only get warm. Now if their updates didn't break my gps and make my screen bug out all the time..
What does dual battery widget do besides monitor battery? I installed it but it just logs battery right? CoolTemp is still at 91F right now. 100F was whatever for a powerful tablet since my laptop burns my legs normall, but once it got to 102+ it started going through boot loops from overheating.
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Click to collapse
Dual battery widget also reports the temperature - just curious if it reports the same values. But regardless, my tablet seems to reach the same temps as your - I don't think the temp is problem...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

jtrosky said:
Dual battery widget also reports the temperature - just curious if it reports the same values. But regardless, my tablet seems to reach the same temps as your - I don't think the temp is problem...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
How do you get it to show the temp? On the bottom right it just shows a battery icon, and when you click into the widget it just shows a line graph of the current battery % of the tablet.. while the system menu on bottom right shows the dock %.

Misera said:
How do you get it to show the temp? On the bottom right it just shows a battery icon, and when you click into the widget it just shows a line graph of the current battery % of the tablet.. while the system menu on bottom right shows the dock %.
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Click to collapse
I actually turn the notification icon off completely. Create a widget with it instead and then click on the widget - it reports the temperature.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

jtrosky said:
I actually turn the notification icon off completely. Create a widget with it instead and then click on the widget - it reports the temperature.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
Umm how to do you create a widget? It's not listed in the widgets tab on app screen.

Potential battery savings from txpower adjustments?

I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but it does kinda make sense. I am seeing what "appears" to be a pretty solid increase in battery life during browsing and bulk transfers. I was able to download 3.5gb of data over wifi at about 1MB/s (around 1hr of nonstop transfer, data for Horn and NOVA3) and only knock off 17% of the battery with only 2bars. I am currently at 3:35/5:47 screen-on for the day and still have 68% left. The nonstop pulling is worse than regular browsing, and at this pace getting to the 8hrs of browsing seems like an actual possibility. As I am running on Balance with CleanROM 3.4.4 at the moment, switching to powersave could probably eek out addition gains.
IF YOU BLOW SOMETHING UP DO NOT BLAME ME...ETC ETC ETC
If anyone wants to check this out, and see if it's just fluke, here is what I have tried.
..pre-post revision...I started out doing the changes manually via terminal, but found some resources on XDA and the play store to make it a bit easier, so I am linking that stuff instead. A user has a pretty good guide for the Thunderbolt that I retested with and it works fine.
Just follow the steps here Solved: WiFi TXpower app error issue with missing iwconfig file to get the iwconfig file, and the links for the WIFI TXpower app.
I used Root explorer, so renaming the iwconfig.txt, moving it to xbin, and changing perms was trivial. As for WIFI Txpower, I have been running on 4db(398 DBM) with no really noticeable problems. I imagine it may have a steeper dropoff based on distance, but the plastic strip on the TF700 really fixed the range issue.
..UPDATE: I have noticed that when you turn the device on after a wifi sleep event, it seems to come back up full blast. So my estimates may be off by quite a bit, as I didn't check it between downloads and browsing sessions. Tom make the settings stick, there may need to be some modifications to the init scripts. I just wanted to get this info into the hands of more people to poke at, and determine if this is something worth adding to Aroma for our TF700 roms.

Day one with lots of power switching back to lower levels. Balanced mode with stock _that at interactive + row. Auto brightness.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

Looks promising

Thanks for reporting this -- and thanks for trying.
Which interface name does it report in your case -- I get a wlan0 interface name instead of the eth0 reported in the original thread. I just picked wlan0, as it stays there even if I pick "Auto".
EDIT: I used Root Explorer succesfully -- no trouble remounting /system as R/W, so the one fluke I found may reside in the original thread.

Yes, it should be wlan0 for the wireless. The biggest problem is that after the interface goes to sleep (screen timeout), it will come back up at full burn, and you have to turn it down again. It will need to be cook into the ifup scripts to make it survive.

helfrez said:
Yes, it should be wlan0 for the wireless. The biggest problem is that after the interface goes to sleep (screen timeout), it will come back up at full burn, and you have to turn it down again. It will need to be cook into the ifup scripts to make it survive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the tip! seems to be the real deal!
i had a test and notice only the 4 and 11 seem to line up with our tf700's ... is same for you?
stock @ 1496dBm
[email protected]
[email protected]
others don't seem to change on mine?... and no button for getting back to stock(full power)...

Yes I think we really just need to call true power via dbm to be accurate. The wifi power app was a quick way for people to validate what I was experiencing. I want to do some more playing around over the weekend and maybe a mod for cleanrom to handle the sleep issue. I am seeing a pretty significant drop in power drain while browsing and doing anything with wifi. I am having to force usage patterns to drain the battery versus just firing up a browser or online game.

snypa said:
thanks for the tip! seems to be the real deal!
i had a test and notice only the 4 and 11 seem to line up with our tf700's ... is same for you?
stock @ 1496dBm
[email protected]
[email protected]
others don't seem to change on mine?... and no button for getting back to stock(full power)...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use the command line to change the parameters. Use "iwconfig wlan0 txpower 1"to get down to 100dbm. Which works great as lo g as you are near the router.
"iwconfig wlan0 txpower 15" brings you back to 1496dbm

I am running this now with lowest settings for almost 24h.
I am not seeing any improvements in battery life.

jupppo said:
I am running this now with lowest settings for almost 24h.
I am not seeing any improvements in battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It currently resets on (at least wifi) sleep, so you shouldn't be seeing any improvement unless you kept your poor 700 awake all those 24 hours.
The criterion is the "screen on" time, which may well be longer with the mod in place and active. Don't forget to activate it every time you wake up the 700.

I'm not sure when it was incorporated, but I know the 'Wi-Fi optimization' option in the advanced Wi-Fi settings effectively does this dynamically. If I recall correctly, it showed up after the last stable release but I've certainly noticed a big difference in battery life since I keep my Wi-Fi on always.. and no need to iwconfig depending on how much traffic you're planning on pushing! Anyway, it would be under Settings -> Wi-Fi -> (Menu) -> Advanced -> Wi-Fi optimization and that seems to do the same sort of thing and takes into consideration some of the weird PM issues related to the hotspot AP code. Just my two cents though..

MartyHulskemper said:
It currently resets on (at least wifi) sleep, so you shouldn't be seeing any improvement unless you kept your poor 700 awake all those 24 hours.
The criterion is the "screen on" time, which may well be longer with the mod in place and active. Don't forget to activate it every time you wake up the 700.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes thank you, but that was mentioned earlier already and I took it into consideration and switched back on every use.
I have 6h screen time with reduced tx settings as well as without.
Really no effect here. I also reduced to 100dbm.

jhannah01 said:
I'm not sure when it was incorporated, but I know the 'Wi-Fi optimization' option in the advanced Wi-Fi settings effectively does this dynamically. If I recall correctly, it showed up after the last stable release but I've certainly noticed a big difference in battery life since I keep my Wi-Fi on always.. and no need to iwconfig depending on how much traffic you're planning on pushing! Anyway, it would be under Settings -> Wi-Fi -> (Menu) -> Advanced -> Wi-Fi optimization and that seems to do the same sort of thing and takes into consideration some of the weird PM issues related to the hotspot AP code. Just my two cents though..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Wi-Fi optimization option is not available in stock roms. I think that this is essentially what the non-Asus roms are doing with their wifi. The problem is that none of the non-Asus roms have made it to the 100% functionality mark, compared to something like CleanROM. If the day arises that they do, I would drop the stock rom in a NY minute, but until then, they are not complete replacements for me.
That being said, will you conserve power via wifi when running a aosp rom with these adjustments, probably not, but the aosp roms have never given me the battery life of CleanROM to begin with so it balanced out. I am having no problems breaking 8hrs screen on time with a stock rom and wifi adjustments.

jupppo said:
Yes thank you, but that was mentioned earlier already and I took it into consideration and switched back on every use.
I have 6h screen time with reduced tx settings as well as without.
Really no effect here. I also reduced to 100dbm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What rom are you using? If you are not on a stock rom like CleanROM, see my previous post.

helfrez said:
What rom are you using? If you are not on a stock rom like CleanROM, see my previous post.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Latest CleanROM version. iwconfig is working and new settings gets confirmed, but I have 0 power savings from it.

jupppo said:
Latest CleanROM version. iwconfig is working and new settings gets confirmed, but I have 0 power savings from it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No disrespect intended, but I doubt it is zero. It may be minimal and contingent on usage, which is why the feature is available in aosp roms. I doubt this is the optimal way of using it. What I can say is with my usage patterns I was getting an average of about 5-6hrs absolute tops on balanced with stock _ that kernel and auto brightness, and now I can normally get over 7of heavy browsing consistently.
YMMV
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

helfrez said:
No disrespect intended, but I doubt it is zero. It may be minimal and contingent on usage, which is why the feature is available in aosp roms. I doubt this is the optimal way of using it. What I can say is with my usage patterns I was getting an average of about 5-6hrs absolute tops on balanced with stock _ that kernel and auto brightness, and now I can normally get over 7of heavy browsing consistently.
YMMV
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whether it is 0 or 1% doesn't really matter for me. What matters is that is practically has no impact. I tried on 2 transformers now (one with CROMI and one with stock).
So it would be interesting to see the difference and see why your prime has significant power savings and others not
Unless there is some movement I will throw iwconfig from my tablets.
Anyway, thanks for trying.

jupppo said:
Whether it is 0 or 1% doesn't really matter for me. What matters is that is practically has no impact. I tried on 2 transformers now (one with CROMI and one with stock).
So it would be interesting to see the difference and see why your prime has significant power savings and others not
Unless there is some movement I will throw iwconfig from my tablets.
Anyway, thanks for trying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not using a Prime this is the TF700 Infinity forums. And feel free to toss it from your tablet though every other none stock rom includes it for a reason. If you have nothing further to add other than "my smartassv2 cfq hundkernel undervolted overclocked device doesn't magically have 10hrs of screen on time", please dismiss yourself from this thread. All devices are not made equal, and maybe your particular device(s) are not effected by these changes.
What is a fact is that different people have different experiences with these devices, some perform better than others in different situations. What I can state is that I am able to consistently get over the previous 6hr average, with my specific device, by babysitting the txpower.
I posted this information FYI and YMMV, so can we just leave it at that. If it is irrelevant, and doesn't work for anyone, the thread will age off of the page by itself. Thanks

Welp, that escalated quickly.

Need some input on Shield Tablet

I was looking at the Shield Tablet for the following purposes:
1. Watching anime via MX Player
2. Reading light novels
3. general note taking via bluetooth keyboard
Would it be okay for these things?

Yes.

I have done all except use a BT keyboard. I do use BT earbuds and have no trouble.

How is the battery life on the shield tablet?

zxd3 said:
How is the battery life on the shield tablet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are only going to be using it for those things the battery life will be great. This is the best tablet on the market right now.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app

ShrekOpher said:
If you are only going to be using it for those things the battery life will be great. This is the best tablet on the market right now.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the shield tablet only have bad battery life if you are using gamestream? or are there other things that would kill its battery life?

zxd3 said:
Does the shield tablet only have bad battery life if you are using gamestream? or are there other things that would kill its battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Graphic intensive games and apps deplete the battery at a fast rate. Also, it gets heated up quite easily.

asim.sidz said:
Graphic intensive games and apps deplete the battery at a fast rate. Also, it gets heated up quite easily.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The battery does die quickly when you are playing some of the more graphical games, or even poorly optimized non graphical games.. But I have not had the tablet get anywhere near hot on me, even after playing it in console mode hooked to a big screen and then pulling it off and playing it for another hour or so it has not gotten hot on me. Granted I am comparing this to every other device I have owned which is quite a few... This one actually stays the coolest out of any I have used at this point since we went to quad core.

whoamanwtf said:
The battery does die quickly when you are playing some of the more graphical games, or even poorly optimized non graphical games.. But I have not had the tablet get anywhere near hot on me, even after playing it in console mode hooked to a big screen and then pulling it off and playing it for another hour or so it has not gotten hot on me. Granted I am comparing this to every other device I have owned which is quite a few... This one actually stays the coolest out of any I have used at this point since we went to quad core.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried the tegra 4 exclusive games and it does get hot for me. Try Half-life 2, Trine 2, Horn or Portal and see the device getting pushed to its limits within minutes.

asim.sidz said:
I have tried the tegra 4 exclusive games and it does get hot for me. Try Half-life 2, Trine 2, Horn or Portal and see the device getting pushed to its limits within minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have Trine 2 and Portal and played them quite a bit with no heat issues..

Could this issue be kernel specific? Or did Nvidia make different batches of slightly different hardware that we are not aware of? I'm unable to find a reason to this.

How's reading texts on this device? Like is the screen too small to pay attention to consistently? I plan on reading pdf textbooks to be specific, I'm really leaning towards this device against the Nexus 9 but not 100% sure yet as the screen might be too small.

MetTrax said:
How's reading texts on this device? Like is the screen too small to pay attention to consistently? I plan on reading pdf textbooks to be specific, I'm really leaning towards this device against the Nexus 9 but not 100% sure yet as the screen might be too small.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its great for reading. I'm coming from 720p devices. Compared to the 2012 N7 and original Note 10.1 its much sharper. Comfortable weight for reading too.

All Browsers destroy my battery

I am currently on stock Android 12. I flashed the unlocked stock image (non-verizon) a few weeks back. With Android 11, Android 12, LineageOS, etc. every browser I have tried including Chrome, Brave, Via, etc. all drain the battery way faster than browsers did on my previous Moto G5 plus. i would say when I am surfing the net on my browser (usually just reading forums, no video), the battery drains about 1% every 5 minutes or less. I have tried 2.4Ghz wifi, LTE, etc. and data connection type doesn't seem to impact anything.
Is this normal for this phone? anything to do to reduce browser battery drain?

If you go into battery usage graph, is the browser the only app listed as using up the battery (and not the screen brightness, or another app that may be contributing to the heavy usage)

JohnC said:
If you go into battery usage graph, is the browser the only app listed as using up the battery (and not the screen brightness, or another app that may be contributing to the heavy usage)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
correct. if I am using other apps the battery drain isn't near as severe. I keep the display setting "extra dim" enabled all the time and I keep it down as low as I can tolerate. I use a pitch black wallpaper use dark mode in browsers so they have mostly black background with white text.
Phone idle is the only other thing that seems to use a sizeable amount of battery according to the battery usage data in settings.

Sounds about right. Came from a Moto G7 Play (15 months back) and saw similar drain rates. All three devices have similar battery specs which plays into the units being used to assess drain. Is what it is.
FWIW - Opera

DB126 said:
Sounds about right. Came from a Moto G7 Play (15 months back) and saw similar drain rates. All three devices have similar battery specs which plays into the units being used to assess drain. Is what it is.
FWIW - Opera
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not gonna lie, it makes me want to go back to Motorola when this Pixel bites the dust.

badtlc said:
Not gonna lie, it makes me want to go back to Motorola when this Pixel bites the dust.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many Moto's bring a nice package with unique tricks. Gotta do your homework on what features are most important when the time comes.

DB126 said:
Many Moto's bring a nice package with unique tricks. Gotta do your homework on what features are most important when the time comes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I definitely did that. I only got the 4a because it was the perfect size and had a headphone jack. I assumed with a newer hardware set and similar sized battery compared to my old phone batter life "should" be better. Nope.

Na, it's more complicated. 4a sports more sensors, brighter/denser display, faster processors, etc. System and personal apps clearly play a role in longevity (behind screen brightness); you'd need to do a detail study to understand what's drawing when and why.
I use to fuss over such matters but find the device lasts a full day for my use case which is all that really matters. Charges up quick from a modest size battery pack when camping/traveling. Just like past Motos.
Not sure who I'll partner with in the next dance. Love Pixel cameras (especially in challenging conditions) and routine updates. Miss some of Moto's innovations, like active display and actions. Needs to be close to AOSP; no Samsung UX butchery. In the end form factor will likely be the deciding factor once non-contenders are ruled out.

badtlc said:
I assumed with a newer hardware set and similar sized battery compared to my old phone batter life "should" be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know what CPU you came from, but if the Moto only had "small" cores then of course it used less battery. "Big" cores use more power. They go faster too, but if you have a constant load, then they'll eat battery faster.
I don't know if there's a non-root way to disable the big cores, but I suspect you can do it with root (but don't know for sure).
Otherwise, you gotta get your browser to stop running JavaScript. If you're watching video you need to make sure the browser is offloading all the decoding to the hardware codecs rather than doing it on the CPU.
And if the screen is on, it might help to try and get it "more black" (eg. Use night mode) or turn down the brightness. The screen is often the primary user of power when a device is being used.

a1291762 said:
I don't know what CPU you came from, but if the Moto only had "small" cores then of course it used less battery. "Big" cores use more power. They go faster too, but if you have a constant load, then they'll eat battery faster.
I don't know if there's a non-root way to disable the big cores, but I suspect you can do it with root (but don't know for sure).
Otherwise, you gotta get your browser to stop running JavaScript. If you're watching video you need to make sure the browser is offloading all the decoding to the hardware codecs rather than doing it on the CPU.
And if the screen is on, it might help to try and get it "more black" (eg. Use night mode) or turn down the brightness. The screen is often the primary user of power when a device is being used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestions. My power complaints are just limited to the browser so I dont think it is just the larger CPUs. I think my standby consumption issues are related to Stock Android as I am now running GrapheneOS and my standby power consumption now matches my old Moto G5 Plus.
As for browser usage consumption, I have tried everything but disabling Javascript. I will try that and see if it breaks anything I use regularly. Thanks for the idea.
tangent back to general power consumption, I typically disable just about everything behind the scenes as I can. I keep the theme on pitch black. I use the extra dim setting to keep screen brightness as low as I can tolerate. I use night mode in browser to keep as much black background as possible. I disable all tap-to-wake or sensor based features. When I was trying to run Android 12, I disabled all the smart services and removed all the google apps I could. I removed all permissions I could. I restricted all apps I could. I disabled adaptive settings, etc. There is a bunch of stuff running in the background on Android 12 and I just could not

Welcome to the future. Older phones had better battery life

Locklear308 said:
Welcome to the future. Older phones had better battery life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont think it is all the phone. GrapheneOS has 40% better standby battery usage than stock android 12. On graphene, it matches my old Moto G5 Plus. It is either lazy programmers with inefficient coding these days or it is google having the stock OS do waaaay too much by default with no way to disable it.
I'm trying to figure that out now.

badtlc said:
I dont think it is all the phone. GrapheneOS has 40% better standby battery usage than stock android 12. On graphene, it matches my old Moto G5 Plus. It is either lazy programmers with inefficient coding these days or it is google having the stock OS do waaaay too much by default with no way to disable it.
I'm trying to figure that out now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally agree on the lazy thing. So many devs now days are so lazy. I develope QuickBase databases and constantly run into extremely poorly setup realms/apps. Just basic stuff. Lol