Develop Bugs

SetCPU saving power potential?

Heya,
I've heard of this SetCPU program, and figured it has some solid potential of saving battery power.
My question is - does it work? I've read several post claiming that SetCPU doesn't work on HTC phones.
If it does - will using the "Mix \ Max frequency" mode will save battery during stand by and normal usage, or just slow down the phone?
Using Rooted Desire, LeeDroid 2.2d.

Its primary use is to overclock the CPU, its secondary use is to create profiles and reduce the clock or change the governor. This will improve battery life slightly but also decrease responsiveness, depending on how far you go.
You'll need root if you want to use it.
To really increase battery life you have to use a custom ROM with an undervolted kernel.

So you're saying that the saving in battery life is insignificant considering the slowdown in performance?

yes, you use LeeDroid which is undervolted, thus perfect conditions.
It also uses a custom governor 'Smartass' which gives you best performance while using it and limits the max. clock while sleeping. That's the most common method to increase battery life with SetCPU while maintaining performance. So no, you don't need SetCPU, LeeDroid handles everything perfectly already.
However, the Desire has a very powerful CPU, compared with other Smartphones. So you can use SetCPU to limit the clock to maybe 700MHz or 800MHz. This will increase the battery life but also reduce the processing power. If you don't play games, don't do a lot of simultaneous things or browsing huge websites, don't use heavy loaded homescreens, it's possible that you don't notice the reduced processing power.

Thanks again
I guess there is no damage to the SnapDragon if I lower clock speeds a bit...
But, if I want to do some overclocking - how far is it safe to go?
When I OC'ed my Q6600 CPU I used the TheremalRight Extreme 120 with two Slip Stream fans to cool it off.. So, will heat damage be a constant threat to an overclocked Desire?
I currently live in Israel, and it's hot as hell even on stock speeds

CoreOxide said:
Thanks again
I guess there is no damage to the SnapDragon if I lower clock speeds a bit...
But, if I want to do some overclocking - how far is it safe to go?
When I OC'ed my Q6600 CPU I used the TheremalRight Extreme 120 with two Slip Stream fans to cool it off.. So, will heat damage be a constant threat to an overclocked Desire?
I currently live in Israel, and it's hot as hell even on stock speeds
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I for one has chosen to disable the default powersave in Auraxt sense, and then using SetCPU to control it, i get a day of power easily, and still goes to bed wit 50% power, that is with stock clocks on normal usage, but with minimum power (245) on screen off

Re overclocking:
To reach high clock speeds you also increase the voltage on your PC, else you can't increase the frequency that drastically.
Because you can't improve the cooling on the desire you have to keep stock voltages but also can't overclock that much.
The overclocking methods on the desire keep the voltage at stock values or even lower (defrost rom).
I don't know the voltage values for LeeDroid.
I it shouldn't get warmer. In the worst case it will crash and reboot until you reduce the clock speed.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

[Q] SetCPU scaling governor?? Which is bes?

I'm running calks rom, and i have setcpu with his profile settings, i just flashed the the newer kernel in the development section for superior battery charging and it has the "smartass" scaling as an option?
Which scaling governor works best? with battery and performance both in mind
"smartass" or "on-demand"

A lot of people say that interactive is really good. my phone doesn't like to play nice with it. I use performance with screen on, battery life isn't a huge factor for me. I set mine to the lowest possible with screen off. I have also heard a lot of good things about smartass, but I have never used it. I would play around with smartass and interactive and see which one works best for you
Swyped from my dark and cyanogenized EVO

I have mine all set to Smartass.
If you select a governer leave setcpu turned on and let your phone idle with the screen on and watch it.
You don't want you CPU maxing out when it's not in use.
I find smartass to keep it at the lowest clock (245 for me) better than any other governers.
Probably should add, i'm getting 20+ hours off a charge with pretty heavy use. but that's with profiles scaling my cpu down as my battery dies, all set to smartass.

With an evo and fresh 3.5.1, n4.3.1 kernal havs, bfs, sbc, the phone has been running very stable @ 1190 but the smartass setting doesnt seem to be playing too well w my phone after many benches w basic setcpu program "long bench" I have determined my phone runs optimal at conservative and performance. Battery isnt terrible on performance as if I stayed by a router for 60% of a full seidio 3500 would be 48-55 hours. This has been best combo for me for speed and life that I have found. no reboots or basic lockups occasionally for an extended time. Maybe its the way smartass looks for what to do by scaling when performance is all way looking for next task that would help it work. But thats my phone, my old droid reponded very dif to kernal swaps as I flashed many too. Battery life off the wifi more has netted me in the 40ish hour charge point. Regardlesd has held 2 days morning to evening routine.

Setcpu Profiles

Hey guys, I'm just wondering what settings do you have on your setcpu for the best performance and battery life? I'm totally new to this lol
Sanks

kazemagic said:
Hey guys, I'm just wondering what settings do you have on your setcpu for the best performance and battery life? I'm totally new to this lol
Sanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i i think that ondemand is the best for daily using... i'm using cm10 rom and i have some music problem so i'm using interactive and it's ok. if you don't use games or heavy apps, you can underclock it to 1ghz or even less and put on powersave.. but you have to try and find the best for you

My setup is a little complicated. I use the ondemand governor, then for the profiles I make it use powersave and under 760mhz between 1am and 8:30am which seems to really help during the night. Also set it to use 760mhz max when the screen is off.
When charging or above 40% battery I allow it to run full speed, but only when the screen is on, therefore helping charge times. On charge or above 80% I set the governor to performance.
In call I set the clock to max 1000mhz and conservative to try and allow calls on low-battery to work properly without lag but also without killing the battery.
I have a couple of other options set for very low battery ( < 12% ) too, but those are only to extend the battery if it's dying.
I wouldn't say all this is necessary... but I need my phone to keep working at all times as I use it for receiving business calls.
It's just a matter of playing around really... depends what you use the phone for. For the most part tell it to use lower clock speeds when you don't need them so much (when phone is off, during the night, during call etc) but you will really notice the speed difference if it's underclocked while you use it, so I tend to allow it to use full whack when screen is on, unless the battery is low.
I also set up profiles to make things like Bloons TD4 run in performance mode and min of 1000mhz, to keep them smooth . Drains the battery though!

lol setcpu does a really good job at battery saving. When using ondemand, my phone can last more than 2 days (if it's on standby)
Have you guys tried under-vaulting? What does it rlly do?

kazemagic said:
lol setcpu does a really good job at battery saving. When using ondemand, my phone can last more than 2 days (if it's on standby)
Have you guys tried under-vaulting? What does it rlly do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you mean decreasing the voltage on the CPU, no I haven't. From my experience in desktop PCs however, if the CPU voltage is too low it can lead to hardware issues and instability.
If something needs a certain amount of power, and you give it less, it will either try and draw more amps which increases heat and can fry components, or won't work properly. You could probably "under-volt" the CPU at the same time as reducing the clock speed however, but your performance will suffer. When the processor is set to be ondemand it underclocks itself when not in use anyway
The biggest battery drain is screen and radios, concentrate on using them less. Underclocking the CPU will make the phone last longer when in use, but usability will suffer and turn your super fast smart phone into a sluggish one. I only make mine stay underclocked when the screen is off, during a call, or on low battery. During general use I let it do its thing .

UV(Under volt) is actually not to bad. Don't ever set those values at boot, else when they are too low, it will cause BOOTLOOPS. It just reduces the amount of power allowed for the cpu to use, thus it won't use more than required. You can't really ask a person for his/her uv values, as no 2 chips are created equal.
People stating that they UC(underclock) their device is not quite right. We don't have much control over our cpu's to be honest. If you run tegra stats whilst using you're phone, you'll see what I mean. It will sometimes(happens quite often) just bump up to higher frequencies to which you UC them. Also as soon as the screen is locked and unlocked the max cpu frequency set by the governor will just return(for example: say stock is 1500mhz, and you set it to 1400mhz, it will return to 1500mhz after an unlock). Ondemand is very very good for battery and performance. But remember you have to tweak those values individually in order to optain the best possible performace for the given task you want. Whether it is for battery or performance.
It's actually also a lot better to just tweak those values as to TRY and uc. Uv will stick, UC not!
Here is a small example as to battery saving and performance values for ondemand governor:
sampling rate:---------60 000 ----- 30 000
up threshold:--------------95 ----- 60
sampling down factor:-------2 ----- 8
powersave bios: ------------3 ----- 0
ignore nice load:------------0 ----- 0
io is busy:------------------0 ----- 0

Underclocking and Battery life?

hi,
I am running stock jellybean with franco kernel. just wondering what is the optimal CPU setup that doesnt sacrifice too much performance while increasing battery life. Im not too concerned about games as I rarely play them. I ussualy use the phone for music, calls, text, email, and webbrowsing.
I am using the Franco updater app. I have 1228 max, 230 min
and screen off max is 384.
I also noticed in cpu spy that my highest two frequencies 1036, 1228 are combined less than 10%.
with all that information, what do you suggest?

hshaikh said:
hi,
I am running stock jellybean with franco kernel. just wondering what is the optimal CPU setup that doesnt sacrifice too much performance while increasing battery life. Im not too concerned about games as I rarely play them. I ussualy use the phone for music, calls, text, email, and webbrowsing.
I am using the Franco updater app. I have 1228 max, 230 min
and screen off max is 384.
I also noticed in cpu spy that my highest two frequencies 1036, 1228 are combined less than 10%.
with all that information, what do you suggest?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suggest to decrease your max CPU until you feel it affects performance too much. You can also try switching to a governor less aggressive than interactive (try ondemand).
Don't expect magic though. I've played with decreasing max CPU clock, max CPU screen off, governor settings etc with three different kernels. Gathered stats for at least one week each time. Never noticed a difference large enough to actually matter to me. For maximizing battery life, you can gain more by hunting apps that cause a lot of (partial) wakelocks and alarms, and use low screen brightness.

hshaikh said:
and screen off max is 384.
with all that information, what do you suggest?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
don't limit screen off cpu speed to 384. it will take longer to perform operations under wakelock, thus killing of more battery than it actually saves.
it would be nice if listening to music, since it's not an intensive task and it requires constant cpu usage. still, you'll most likely have stuff syncing in the background so i don't think you're doing any good by limiting it to 384 on screen off.

power isnt going to be conserved with lower clock speed. lower clock speed means it takes longer to finish the task. to conserve power, your phone has to do less. for example, lower brightness, no sound, less/no syncing.

Darunion said:
power isnt going to be conserved with lower clock speed. lower clock speed means it takes longer to finish the task. to conserve power, your phone has to do less. for example, lower brightness, no sound, less/no syncing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, there is an optimum somewhere. Higher CPU speed means tasks are executed more quickly, but higher clock speeds also draw more current from the battery. I agree that tweaking this has little effect on battery life though.

Petrovski80 said:
Well, there is an optimum somewhere. Higher CPU speed means tasks are executed more quickly, but higher clock speeds also draw more current from the battery. I agree that tweaking this has little effect on battery life though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are correct. there is a magic middle ground because power consumption doesnt scale in a linear way. but finding that spot would take massive testing and even getting to the center, would still probably only gain about 10-15mins average use on a battery charge :/

bk201doesntexist said:
don't limit screen off cpu speed to 384. it will take longer to perform operations under wakelock, thus killing of more battery than it actually saves.
it would be nice if listening to music, since it's not an intensive task and it requires constant cpu usage. still, you'll most likely have stuff syncing in the background so i don't think you're doing any good by limiting it to 384 on screen off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what speed show i set to max when screen is off.

did you read anything that Darunion and Petrovski80 wrote? I keep mine at it's max, i don't care, i don't live in the woods with no electricity.

thanks for your inputs. i have experimented and I found out that changing the cpu speeds has minimal effect of battery life. the clock speed is not killing the battery the screen is. no matter what cpu settings i use i get 3-4 hours screen on time.
if i dont use the phone alot that day (like 1 hour screen on time) the battery will still be 40% after a day.

hshaikh said:
thanks for your inputs. i have experimented and I found out that changing the cpu speeds has minimal effect of battery life. the clock speed is not killing the battery the screen is. no matter what cpu settings i use i get 3-4 hours screen on time.
if i dont use the phone alot that day (like 1 hour screen on time) the battery will still be 40% after a day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. I get similar performance.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Q] UV, UC, other Kernel options.

Android 4.2.1
CyanogenMod 10.1 Snapshot M1 (21/1/13)
Franco Kernel R364
I'm trying to maximize my battery time.
(Power mode BeastlyBattery 192MHz~1036MHz, Governor: Lazy, IO Scheduler: deadline, Screen of Max Frew: 384MHz)
I want to UV my CPU (and maybe IVA and GPU also, does it helps too?) to save some battery.
Should I just decrease the voltage a bit, use stability test app and keep going till there will be errors,
or I can just decrease like someone else on the web and then keep going..?
Can it do something to the device? (because Its just undervoltage..)
For how long I need to run the stability test?
I saw this topic:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1599025
and he says:
"1. It has been tested that the 700Mhz frequency is prefereable over the 300Mhz one, due to the drops on frequency signal of the phone."
Anyone tested this?
Does UV degrades preformance?
What is SmartFlex?
Anything else I need to know about that?

Im gonna make this one quick, so my apologies if I don't address your questions directly.
Prior to my Galaxy Nexus, I had a T-Mobile SGSII. I too had the belief that undervolting/clocking would improve my battery life substantially. It seemed to work but then I was only getting the results that I wanted to get, and thats because I went to extremes to lowering my screen brightness to minimum and using my phone a fraction of what I used to.
With the help of others and trial and error, my major conclusion is that undervolting/clocking, though normal headset use will not improve your battery life by a landslide. Android is so well optimized to save you as much battery as it can. Sure there are things here in there that interrupt that optimization such as bugs or kernel issues but that something even undervolting/clocking will not be able to solve.
If you do go into undervolting/clocking your device, please keep in mind that the most you will probably get out of it is maybe 45 minutes to 1hr extension, but thats not display time.
What you can do to improve your battery life is turn off whatever sync services you don't use, lower your screen brightness ( the display is the major battery hog in the GN and SAMOLED devices), use dark wallpapers and dark themes if apps support it, use wifi, disable 3G when not in use. The radio you use can also potentially affect your battery life and signal quality.
Those are just a few suggestions, the rest is up to you.
Good luck!
P.S. Kernels also add variation to the longevity of your battery life. It's been a very long time since I touched CM10 so I'm not gonna go and defame that ROM but do try something else that possibly offers better battery life. If MODs are a MUST for you, then you will be faced with a lower battery life compared to stock based ROM's. It won't be an extreme difference but the difference will be there. If I may suggest a ROM, try this one. I can honestly say I can get up to 3-4 hours of display time on it with about a 12 hour standby.

I read a lot on the web that it does help to battery time.. :S

anyone?

You're not going to see much difference. Running the cpu at a lower clock speed just means it will take longer to complete the same operation so you'll use just as much battery.

063_XOBX said:
You're not going to see much difference. Running the cpu at a lower clock speed just means it will take longer to complete the same operation so you'll use just as much battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And undervoltage?
Different overnor?

Undervolting will have minimal effect during actual use and a governor is based on specific user needs. One might save me battery while another works better for your usage. You need to actually mess with setting instead of just asking others what they use.