Do Android smart phones wear out? - General Topics

EDIT: I did manage to find a couple of good sources that I've given below.
I've been using Galaxy s7 exynos for a long time now. I recently had the battery replaced because it had gone to about 50% of its original battery and that got me wondering, does the physical phone itself wear out? Do the chips degrade over time, does the RAM start going bad, that kind of thing. I've rooted and have used factory reset and custom ROMs along the way, so what I'm looking for is information completely apart from the fact that software concerns can slow a phone down and make most owners think their phone is getting old and wearing out. Also I realize that as time goes on and hardware gets better that sometimes apps will outstrip a phone's original abilities but I'm not talking about that either. I've done some googling and mostly what I find is articles talking about "my phone is old now (because better phones with better hardware are now available)" and "if your phone slows down just do a factory reset".

After more googling, I found this information on Quora at https://www.quora.com/Do-smartphone-chips-wear-out-over-time, by Valerie Cietto. This may help someone else with the same question :
Yes, but very slowly. Flash memory has a limited number of writes, usually in the order of 10^5 to 10^9. After that number of changes it become as read only, but it doesn't fail all at once, just some byte at once. Then that sector is marked as bad, backed up and ignored, so the memory still works, with a small reduction in capacity.
Newest flash memory file systems even do wear leveling, so writes are scattered over the whole memory, so that the memory lasts more.
Flash memory also have a definite lifespan due to electromagnetic noise and other kind of radiations. While this is a serious issue on space or other planets, memories on Earth are expected to last at least 20years.
Speakers and microphones wear down due to dust, humidity and loss of magnetic charge. Expect to need to change them after 20-50 years.
Camera sensors degrade due to light radiation. Hardware corrections automatically hide dead pixels. Unless you love to make timelapses of sun every day, this should not concern you. And even if you do you have noticeable effects only if you get raw images.
LCD has a definite lifespan before showing dead pixels. LCD TVs are rated for 4-10 years before some key component, but common faults for LCD TVs are not the screen or the pixels, but motherboard or power supply. Smartphone LCD should last much more, in part because they don't need electrolytic capacitors, and are lower powered. Some reviewer has pointed out that pixels lower brightness year after year, with noticeable effects on always on devices. The too dim to read thresold may be crossed after 10 years of normal use.
Also CPU degrades over time, but not with a noticeable effect unless you benchmark them. The main cause is the clock, that drifts over time.
Processors have negligible wear due to use, and lower the power is, lesser the stress on the circuit is.
Underclocking may extend the lifespan of the CPU, but it's more useful to save battery, rather than making the phone last more.
Overclocking, high temperature or voltage spikes can damage CPU. Once the processor is burnt, is gone, and must be replaced. Unfortunately just changing the CPU block is not feasible without damaging other parts.
CPU and RAM are on the same chip or soldered together in most smartphones, so if CPU burns you need to replace the whole motherboard.
RAM degrades like flash memory. When a bad sector of RAM is found it is marked as bad from the memory processor and ignored. On small RAM system a bad RAM read can cause an application to crash unexpectedly.
WiFi, GSM, GPS, Bluetooth radios are rated for 10 years of operation, but can last probably more. The failing cause is the driver IC, which includes a microprocessor and flash memory. Newest phones are highly integrated, so that IC could be bundled inside together with CPU, RAM and Flash.
Motherboard solder joints may break due to shocks or bending.
Battery of course is the component which degrades faster.
As an holistic analysis, most phones go out of service when they can warrant other 5-10 years of use. And even "broken" phones will live again with some inexpensive replacement. All components except motherboard and connectors fail gracefully, as they slowly degrade in performance, instead of stopping to work at all suddenly, so the phone ages well if it doesn't receive shocks, immersions,too much heat, massive radiation or fine dust.
Don't worry to use the phone in daily use, other technologies have more weak points.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

And this article seems pretty well written to explain the software / OS reasons why a phone seems to perform less well over time:
https://lifehacker.com/why-your-smartphone-seems-to-slow-down-as-it-ages-1798440451

Related

HTC thermometer

Hi,
I have a quite naive, ambicious and just theoretical question. HTC HD has a thermometer on CPU as probably most of todays PDAs. But, wouldn't be possible to count the temperature in the room(or wherever you are) due to the informations from this thermometer? Of course you would have to count a bit with the current performance of CPU(find out how much the CPU temperature affects data going out of the thermometer. But maybe after some mathematical operation it could work. I know it is very naive questin, but I just wanted to ask.
So thanks for the response
Nice idea, but cant see how this could work accurately as the variable (cpu/battery temp) various wildly depending on how heavily you are using it.
Be better (and more accurate) to rely on the weather app/msn weather widget for the external temperature.
Saying that, a developer might like the challenge
the thermometer is build into the cpu chip itself
and cpu usage have a much bigger impact on the temp
then area temp does
more so when these devices don't have big air grills for air circulation
so doubt it would ever work well as a room temp measuring device
I realize it would be complicated if not impossible .. but it was just an idea so I put it here.
Shooter92 said:
I realize it would be complicated if not impossible .. but it was just an idea so I put it here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actualy it was an application like that, it was for smartphones running wm2003, it wasn't so accurate.I was lookinking for something like this on the net but nothing found for pocket pc
Theoretically, a program could measure the temperature of the device overtime, taking the cpu usage, battery drainage, etc. to determine an equation to use in calculating the only missing variable: the outside temp. The equation could mathematically deduce that based on a given temperature with given variables (cpu usage, battery heat based on drainage, etc.).
However, the program would reasonably need to be device specific. Otherwise, small changes in hardware would change the results dramatically. Of course, the program could determine that, as I mentioned above, but it would introduce an entirely new set of variables and would probably need to run for a given time to sample the device (at least a week). It still may not even be possible that way because the device would not be able to reach the maximums and minimums of each variable...still, math could theoretically fill in the gaps.
That being said, it still would not be very accurate because there is actually 2 blank variables. If the temperature surrounding the phone was static (the same all the time) then this would work. BUT since you will be changing air temps quite frequently, the air temp would not have time to affect the device. It would be a slow increase or decrease until it finally levels out. Its like taking water and putting it in a freezer. It won't freeze immediately, but it will freeze over the course of several hours. You can be outside in 90 degree weather for several hours then walk back inside to 70 degree air. Your phone would still calculate the air temp as some where around 90 for quite a while.
Does that make sense?

[Q] What technology improvements are needed to improve smartphone batteries?

Okay, needless to say, operating systems like iOS and Android are improving plus the new processors heading to dual core. However, battery technology is way behind I think. What improvements are needed in this field to get a smartphone working for a week on one charge (not realistic but ideal)?
Fuel cells?
New alloys?
What would work to help our battery technology which is falling behind?
Battery technology is far behind but it has been for over 100 years. For electric cars Toyota claims to have a new battery with 2-3x the power density of current batteries. Although for general purpose I believe Lithium Phosphate is still the current state of the art technology.
Fuel Cells are neat technology but not yet that practical just like 10year miniature nuclear cells.
The biggest problems in my opinion are
1. phone size (everything is getting so thin or small in general) leaving less room for a battery
2. screen size (huge touchscreen = big power draw), and other things too that impact battery life.
3. things that run in the background keeping the phone cpu in something other than its lowest power state
4. screen brightness. Seems trivial but can make a big difference and I think all phones should have ambient light sensors are change automatically.
5. internet connectivity. It goes along with #3 in that it wakes the cpu, but also the current wireless chipsets don't seem all that energy efficient. Using any connectivity cellular, wifi, or bluetooth really eats the battery. Many report turning off wifi, bluetooth, and using 2g when possible significantly improve battery life.
Personally I have the biggest battery I could get for my phone and my laptop too. My 17" laptop runs 4.5 hrs at lowest brightness and 3 hrs at the brightest setting. Most phones aren't much different.
Sorry long rant...... does that break down your question correctly?
landoftheeskimos said:
Battery technology is far behind but it has been for over 100 years. For electric cars Toyota claims to have a new battery with 2-3x the power density of current batteries. Although for general purpose I believe Lithium Phosphate is still the current state of the art technology.
Fuel Cells are neat technology but not yet that practical just like 10year miniature nuclear cells.
The biggest problems in my opinion are
1. phone size (everything is getting so thin or small in general) leaving less room for a battery
2. screen size (huge touchscreen = big power draw), and other things too that impact battery life.
3. things that run in the background keeping the phone cpu in something other than its lowest power state
4. screen brightness. Seems trivial but can make a big difference and I think all phones should have ambient light sensors are change automatically.
5. internet connectivity. It goes along with #3 in that it wakes the cpu, but also the current wireless chipsets don't seem all that energy efficient. Using any connectivity cellular, wifi, or bluetooth really eats the battery. Many report turning off wifi, bluetooth, and using 2g when possible significantly improve battery life.
Personally I have the biggest battery I could get for my phone and my laptop too. My 17" laptop runs 4.5 hrs at lowest brightness and 3 hrs at the brightest setting. Most phones aren't much different.
Sorry long rant...... does that break down your question correctly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It sure does for me thanks
nova display and amoled plus is good for battery
li-po is more efficient than li-ion
dual core is more efficient about 40% than single core (in ginger bread)

[GUIDE] Undervolting and You

Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
Reserved
Thanks for the info CFB
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
cajunflavoredbob said:
Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great post but I still have a few questions - How do we know what are safe values to undervolt to and what aren't? I'm on the HTC Mecha so my issue may be slightly different.
Klonopin said:
Great post but I still have a few questions - How do we know what are safe values to undervolt to and what aren't? I'm on the HTC Mecha so my issue may be slightly different.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Re-read the heading in the OP that says "How to undervolt."
Great guide for anyone wanting to learn about undervolting and CPU. So simply stated that Even an apple user could understand this. :thumbup:
AT&T SGS3
ParanoidKangDroid 1.1.0
KT747 10/28 OC'ed & UV'ed
Medical MJ Supporter
Dankest said:
Great guide for anyone wanting to learn about undervolting and CPU. So simply stated that Even an apple user could understand this. :thumbup:
AT&T SGS3
ParanoidKangDroid 1.1.0
KT747 10/28 OC'ed & UV'ed
Medical MJ Supporter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aww. That's not nice. Lol
cajunflavoredbob said:
Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
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thanks for the information!!!
Good job guys. Why don't I requote the entire passage to thank the op instead of hitting the thanks button.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2
hariskoirala said:
thanks for the information!!!
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Thanks for quoting a long post like a douchebag.
Markuzy said:
Good job guys. Why don't I requote the entire passage to thank the op instead of hitting the thanks button.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2
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Oh, please do. You're not cool unless you do it. /sarcasm
I don't understand those guys...
cajunflavoredbob said:
Thanks for quoting a long post like a douchebag.
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He's probably post farming with useless "Thanks/me too/excellent/this is useful" posts to get the min 10 posts...
All such people should be reported.
Markuzy said:
He's probably post farming with useless "Thanks/me too/excellent/this is useful" posts to get the min 10 posts...
All such people should be reported.
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Probably so. Those guys don't understand how easy it is to make ten useful posts.
Epic thanks for the guide its pretty easy for dummies like me to follow
nikufellow said:
Epic thanks for the guide its pretty easy for dummies like me to follow
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I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was hoping to make it as simple as possible. I'm glad it worked.
Very useful info
Thanks
Sent from my ST25i using Tapatalk 2
Really informative thread. Helped clear a lot of confusions. Wish everyone explained things this nicely.
Very nice. Thanks be clicked.
WHO DAT!!
Can you please tell a rough estimate of safe range. Or is there no danger in undervolting?
Sent from my IM-A770K using xda app-developers app
When I undervolt, I do a little at a time and make sure things are stable before trying again.. Make sure u do a nandroid and if u have any trouble, you can always boot into recovery and restore if u can't change ur voltages back to where they were stable.. Just my 2¢
From my rat infested note ii

[Q] Overclock is sure?

Hi all i want to ask if overclocking is a good think because i have a galaxy w and some month ago i clock my processor from 1.4 to 1.8 gHz (single core).. now the battery life is very reduced, but i don't know if it is caused by the clock or if is the time that have my phone.. i used the clock speed for one week max just for play a hard game with good graphics :eek. :good:
If you've already returned to stock clockspeed it's probably not the overclocking that's causing it. But just to be sure, go and check that the clock is at standard. It has happened for me that the phone has raised the clock by it self for some reason. If thats not the case just try going to the battery stats to see if any app is using a lot of battery. If not I dont know what could be wrong. Maybe it's just time for a new battery (or phone)
Overclocking is not a "good" or "bad" thing. It will use more battery while you're doing it and you can damage the hardware - it's a risk you choose to take.
It's possible something was damaged, but it wouldn't be my first guess.
I'd use something like BetterBatteryStats to find out why your battery is draining and go from there.
Honestly there's really no point your phone is engineered to a certain clock everything in your phone is engineered to run with that clock when you overclock now your straining not just the processor but your battery as well and everything(electronic component wise) is now going to run a lot hotter then it was engineered to run and you have tiny little low voltage surface mount transistors and diodes that don't like heat. So they stop the clock at where they do so they can achieve the best speed they can without harming components and without killing your battery. The more you run that phone like that the less and less your battery is going to last. Its like your poisoning it slowly. Just to archive less then microseconds of snappyness. Its not really worth it there's no point in breaking (not all devices will break but you don't know if you have one with a weak component in it somewhere or not. It might not break until you stress it out) something that intelligent entity's after pulling in matter and from this cosmos and putting it together to engineer such an amazing device. Why break it. Its very possible to do so. Some phones will run a year like that without starting to lag on you from burning out contacts inside components and creating tiny little spark gaps that takes signal and current longer to get where it needs to go so now you start to lag....that can start to happen the next day or an hour after you do it. Or even a year from now. Do you really need to be faster where you barely notice it that badly?
Sent from my SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
Just underclock it a little. Saves battery and reduces heat.

Differences in battery life between two identical U11.

I have two U11 (I'm going to return one, or both) and I noticed significant differences in terms of battery life between them.
Running PCMark battery life test, auto-brightness OFF, brightness MAX, one phone consistently gets 4h53 of screen on time, and the other one 5h08 (from 100% to 20% battery). That's a 5% difference and it's not negligible. Phones are the same otherwise in terms of apps installed. Problem is, the phone that has the worst battery life starts apps a TINY bit faster...
So the bottom line is, phones have significant manufacturing differences.... and I don't know which one to return.
They have same firmware and all identical? are you sure? maybe some app is configurated different or something.. or one battery its more degraded
5% is close negligible. I've got two U11 and they don't perform any differently. You aren't going to get identical numbers on two different handsets running benchmarks.
Hardware parts may be more or less efficient than each other. Radios on one device may be a few percent better. Honestly just send one back and get it done with. You also forget about coy CPU variances (no two chips are the same).
Different bin could be the reason there is a slight difference.
Ivancp said:
They have same firmware and all identical? are you sure? maybe some app is configurated different or something.. or one battery its more degraded
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Hardware/ firmware / software is identical.
Galactus said:
5% is close negligible. I've got two U11 and they don't perform any differently. You aren't going to get identical numbers on two different handsets running benchmarks.
Hardware parts may be more or less efficient than each other. Radios on one device may be a few percent better. Honestly just send one back and get it done with. You also forget about coy CPU variances (no two chips are the same).
Different bin could be the reason there is a slight difference.
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Well the geekbench and 3D mark are exactly the same (like give or take 0.1%).
ppaasseeii said:
Well the geekbench and 3D mark are exactly the same (like give or take 0.1%).
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Doesn't mean a battery benchmark is going to be within 0.1% the same as when you look at Youtubers who benchmark multiple of the same device and get somewhat different Antutu benchmark results.
5% is nothing to fuss over
Galactus said:
Doesn't mean a battery benchmark is going to be within 0.1% the same as when you look at Youtubers who benchmark multiple of the same device and get somewhat different Antutu benchmark results.
5% is nothing to fuss over
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It's like starting with a battery at 100% vs starting at a battery at 95%. For the rest of the life of the phone. Kind of a big deal.
Anyways, I'm running another test now with a low screen brightness, in case one screen was brighter than the other one (at max brightness) and drained more battery, I'll keep y'all posted.
Try with all radios (wi-fi, gsm, bluetooth, nfc, gps) off, even in location settings (disable scanning nearby devices for improved accuracy), and force stop all installed apps before the test. That gives me about 10 to 15 % increase on AnTuTu score. Maybe log cpu load and speed while testing as well.
I agree 5% is not a big deal, but would definitely keep the longer standing
Edit: force stopping because you may have installed the same apps, but most background processes won't load until you first time run their app, so one of the two "identical" devices may actually be running less apps in background. Best for testing would be to factory reset both devices and not load anything into them nor change any settings except the backlight for test.
How do you use both phones in the same manner to expect same result? You text same person with both phones making sure time taken to perform the task is same for both? And different phones have different usage pattern hence the 5% difference..??
Besides....that's 15mins. I definitely consider that as negligible. A 20% difference would be something to concern yourself about.

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