Hello all,
I've been suspicious of the power draw of the screen on the GNex, and so decided to figure out how much a difference brightness made.
This is to test the difference extreme brightness settings make to battery run times. Including text, browsing or having radios on will dilute the results. I'm only interested in the efficiency of the screen and its supporting infrastructure people!
Here's my testing method.
1. Charge phone to 100% using a PCs USB charging (should give a more full charge than the wall adapters quick charge, I think, otherwise no harm done). Leave attached to USB cable
2. Switch the phone into Airplane mode.
3. Switch off Auto Brightness and turn brightness to Max
4. Restart Phone. Leave it to settle for a few mins
5. Fire up "Just Pictures" and the image "TotalWhite.jpg" (attached). No other photos in the folder where it sits.
6. Disconnect USB charging
7. Start Slide show. Record the start time.
8. Every now and then (about 45 mins to an hour and bit) I quickly pop into settings and take a sneak look at charge level - don't want to get caught out!
9. Resume Slide Show.
10. Wait until the phone switches off, which is less than 2% charge
Now, it's not a quick process as I'm going from 100% Batt until auto shut off. So I'll be updating this post in installments. Today is the Max Daddy Full Brightness White image!
Full Brightness, White Image:
100% 00h00m
85% 00h39m
60% 01h53m
35% 03h08m
0% 05h00m
Pretty good I think!
Battery status stated that Screen was 91% and Android System was 9%. Screen on time was the same as the run time. It never went off.
There's a heavy set of disclaimers to go with this though: The White Image isn't quite the right aspect for it to display across the full amount. Check out the image "White Full The Phone.jpg" - it's pretty close though. Just Pictures isn't so full screen that it takes over the Android buttons - Anyone know a 100% full screen picture view BTW? Between the point where it comes up with "Please connect your charger" (15%) and 6% it said that message over the White image and partly dimmed the screen - I'm at work and was in the middle of something when it happened.
Minimum Brightness, Black Image:
100% 00h00m
85% 01h26m
82% 02h05m
18% 08h54m
0% 10h47m
Battery status stated that Screen was 85% and Android System was 16%. Yes, that's 101%, but there you go... Screen on time was within a minute of the run time.
Again, some notes on the testing: From the "connect your charger" point (i think 15%) to 8 % it had the message on the screen. Just before the end I accidently touched the screen and ended the slide show for up to 15 minutes and the screen went off. Switched it back on and it was at 2%. It then lasted something like 30 mins before auto shutdown. Black isn't Black! check out my the photo "Black Dim The Phone.jpg" - ignore the strange black specs, it was 1 seconds exposure at F1.4, with the camera facing down - think there's some crap in my camera body/lens.
Minimum Brightness, White Image:
100% 00h00m
0% 10h20m
Again, Battery status stated that Screen was 85% and Android System was 16%. That's the same as when I ran it on Min Brightness, Black Image...
Maximum Brightness, Black Image:
100% 00h00m
0% 10h52m
Battery status stated that Screen was 90% and Android System was 11% (again 101% also probably due to some rounding going on). Screen was on 100% of the time, Android OS was awake for 100% of the time, CPU time 23 Seconds
Overview:
Maximum Brightness White Image: 5h00m
Maximum Brightness Black Image: 10h52m
Minimum Brightness White Image: 10h20m
Minimum Brightness Black Image: 10h47m
Well, well, what's happened here? Maximum brightness with a black image scored the longest run time - unbelievable, right? Yeah pretty much: On the minimum brightness black run I did check the battery stats a few times. The black image run had a greater Android OS drain (11% vs 9%) compared to the white image. As I switch the phone off in preparation for the test it's possible I inadvertantly bump charged the phone. In addition to this, I was trusting the phone a lot more in this, the final test and didn't check the battery status near the end, so perhaps drawing a lower current happily sitting there doing nothing other than displaying a blank image the phone managed to syphon off the last dregs of power, as opposed to spending CPU time with me rummaging through the settings screens for battery stats. Let's put it all down to being in the margin of error and consider the Black images to have the same run times, despite the Android buttons blazing away on Bright (but they aren't many pixels).
Conclusion:
Back to my original concern, that the screen was abusing the battery more than necessary. I'm mostly happy with the outcome - Black bright and dim screens draw substantially less than a very bright white screen on this phone, as it should. It's surprising to see that on dimmest setting the white screen got so close to the run time of the black screens. It's producing a lot more light than either black screen. It's drawing c5% more power than the black screens, but I would expect a lot more. I'm guessing that the circuitry to run the Screen and the small amount of power used to make the "Black" OLEDs glow dark dark grey draws only a little less than the white screen.
And that's a shame. I wanted to run an app such as "Off-Clock" to have a clock on the screen like the Nokia N8 used to do, but i'm thinking this will eat the battery in 10 hours 20 minutes. Only one way to know for sure....
My initial annoyance that Black never is actually Black whilst the screen has faded. Many of you good folks have pointed out (and after more Googling) that all OLED screens have this, although the reason for it isn't clear. It's either to ease the transition from black to lit by having the LED at the threshold already, power seeping into the circuit somewhere or something else. Who knows, maybe we'd get better run times if the screen was on full brightness but used PWM or a fast strobe to show a dimmer image!
That's all folks, discuss, and remember - continue testing...
I love you for doing this. Please don't stop.
Some tidbits: The whole phone was warm, front and back. Not scary hot, but like a nice hand warmer. The screen shots were actually done after I connected the charger and restarted the phone. You'll see the graph shows it starting to charge, but all the stats are for when it was last on the battery - in the test.
Thanks for testing this.
How do you define min brightness?
The black color, do you mean #000000 hex color code?
That will last days!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
excellent thread that's it's about screen time on no idle time
gogol said:
Thanks for testing this.
How do you define min brightness?
The black color, do you mean #000000 hex color code?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not too scientifically - I made it black in MS Paint. It's a JPG. I tried it out in portrait and landscape on full brightness and I can't see the edges of anything on the screen, so it's as black as the rest of the black in Gallery. If you have a better way, then I'd gladly take a 16x10 black image if you think it is more black.
Min brightness will be using the brightness slider in settings. I haven't rooted the phone so don't see any way to get it lower. I tried the app "Dimmer" but it's the same brightness as far as I can tell as min setting. Also I figured the min setting was relevant to more users than something they can't easily get to (or probably see on screen!).
Do you have any suggestions? I want to root, but my home PC can't see my GNex. It's being a pig about it and I haven't got Broadband ATM... Hope to root as soon as I can.
Just a quick input. If you just show a picture for 5h how does the cpu perfom in this time? Isn't it really bored?
In addition if you switch it to air plane mode it doesn't use any power for transmitting a signal. I know this point is really tricky due to the fact that not everybody receives the same signal strength.
Isn't there a more realistic way to test it? Like a combination of stability test and the white picture?
Or a slide show with specific pictures, for example a picture with lots of green, one with a lot of red, one with blue, one with white and one with black?
I really like the idea but if we could create something like a standard which tries to simulate real usage that would be great for future testings.
So that we could say something like:
Galaxy Nexus with Vanilla Android -> 5h with XDA battery benchmark
Galaxy Nexus with CyanogenMod 9 -> 5.3h with XDA battery benchmark
We could compare different settings and see how good they perform based on a "standardized" procedure.
Hmm is this probably a bit too much?
I like the idea of a standardized battery procedure for XDA.
Only thing is, i feel like just web browsing would give a better idea, mostly white website sites and it uses data and CPU/GPU still to give real world usage results.
Nebucatnetzer said:
Isn't there a more realistic way to test it? Like a combination of stability test and the white picture?
Or a slide show with specific pictures, for example a picture with lots of green, one with a lot of red, one with blue, one with white and one with black?
I really like the idea but if we could create something like a standard which tries to simulate real usage that would be great for future testings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Nebucatnetzer, I get what you're going for and think it would be a great test. My original goal was just to see how much of a drain the screen was. I used it on Airplane mode as I do not want to have any other drains diluting the result. As you say, signal strength changes, and so this becomes an uncontrollable variable. I'm only showing a white image as it's the most uniform full power test of the screen I can think of. As the display is RGBG, maybe a greenish white would draw more, but I can live without that - web pages are predominantly Plain White and Text in ICS is white.
I actually think that 9%/10% drain for Android OS may be a bit high for 5 hours. I think Just Pictures may be the cause for it as it does every minute change the image in a slide show... to itself...
pewpewbangbang said:
I like the idea of a standardized battery procedure for XDA.
Only thing is, i feel like just web browsing would give a better idea, mostly white website sites and it uses data and CPU/GPU still to give real world usage results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was one of the things which annoyed me the most here. Everyone says he has the ultimate tweak to save juice but you never really could measure it.
We probably have to skip the data part due to asimilar signal strengths.
And it would be really cool if we could find something which works for every phone.
pewpewbangbang said:
i feel like just web browsing would give a better idea, mostly white website sites and it uses data and CPU/GPU still to give real world usage results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! I'm not trying to do a real world test as such. I'm trying to find out how much of an impact a white screen has compared to a black screen. I have a suspicion that the Black screen will draw more than it should do. I've been using my phone on Auto Brightness and at night, min brightness and have found the screen is caning the battery. There's more to the screen than the AMOLED - there's also a MIPI Framebuffer controller, plus whatever interfaces that has to the rest of the phone.
I'm aware that ICS and the other internals of this phone seem quite efficient, so any savings I can make on the screen (which really does suck the juice) should translate into big run time gains... Surely...Right?
If it turns out that there's very little different in battery life between a Black screen and a white screen, then I'll crank up the brightness to revel in its retina destroying beauty. If there is a difference, then i'll stick with my black homescreen background....
The black screen shouldn't draw any power virtually as long as its truly black. SAMOLED functions where black doesn't turn the pixel on so no energy is used. I think the black test has been done by someone, you can probably google it.
We we aren't criticizing you specific we just hijacked the thread a bit sorry for that .
Nebucatnetzer said:
We probably have to skip the data part due to asimilar signal strengths.
And it would be really cool if we could find something which works for every phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
would be good if someone could make a benchmarking program which pumps out signals in a set pattern on all devices at set frequencies and at a few different power levels. It would't need to wait for a response from any cells or WiFi routers, just talk to itself and only itself. Maybe this would need too low level access to work, below root.
Then you'd have your predictable Radio part of the test. If it's even possible.
pewpewbangbang said:
The black screen shouldn't draw any power virtually as long as its truly black. SAMOLED functions where black doesn't turn the pixel on so no energy is used. I think the black test has been done by someone, you can probably google it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I hope a black screen will draw considerably less. We shall see. Or it will be a revelation... Or everyone will get to witness me finding out that my phone is defective. Hahaha... oh...god I hope not...
I may run the black test overnight. It should last the night. If it doesn't I can always hook it up and check the last "On Battery" status as I did earlier. Then I can run two tests tomorrow!
Davidsmonkeyroost said:
would be good if someone could make a benchmarking program which pumps out signals in a set pattern on all devices at set frequencies and at a few different power levels. It would't need to wait for a response from any cells or WiFi routers, just talk to itself and only itself. Maybe this would need too low level access to work, below route.
Then you'd have your predictable Radio part of the test. If it's even possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This sounds more than difficult. Not a clue how one could do this.
As soon as I have my device I'll probably start a thread where we can think about a standardized (what a stupid word) battery test.
Curios how your second test goes.
Instead of the black screen test, amoled screen, you could do a white background with black text. This would give better overall real world stats.
Text generator http://www.lipsum.com/feed/html
Second test - black on lowest brightness - is underway.
Some bad news, which you may already know about: Black isn't black. It's very dark, but the phone isnt switching all the pixels off. I took a photo with my SLR in the dark but can't upload at the moment, will upload tomorrow.
Just took a sneaky look at the stats.
85% 01h26
The draw is 85% screen and 16% Android OS. Yeah, I know they don't add up, but that's what it says.
So far, the draw is higher than I expected for lowest settings with a black image. Odd. The phone isn't warm though, like when the screen was showing a white, max brightness image. It's cold.
Sure hope it doesn't start moaning about running flat whilst i'm asleep...
Last check before I go to sleep: 82% 02h05
Same split of 85% screen and 16% Android OS. Who says percentages have to add up to 100?
Davidsmonkeyroost said:
Last check before I go to sleep: 82% 02h05
Same split of 85% screen and 16% Android OS. Who says percentages have to add up to 100?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most likely rounding bug.
Related
Can a dev please make a patch implementing this app/script/hack. The Inc has a red theme so I may be willing to go with a red display if it truly doubles battery time. I read something about adding an option to the developer app. Being able to turn it on and off would be ideal.
Thank you all in advance,
dL
http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/
https://review.source.android.com/#change,15614
http://androidandme.com/2010/07/news/night-vision-mode-could-double-your-androids-battery-life/
I would also be interested in something like this, if it can give me longer battery life.
Ehh if youre really desperate for battery life why not just do the recalibration trick? I'd rather have the battery run out quicker then have the phone look like that anyway.
The thing i don't get about this is they claim it can give your phone double your battery. Wouldn't the only thing this effect is the draw from the screen? I mean we already went from the lcd screens to the amoled screens and they are supposed to use alot less power and i haven't noticed any difference. My screen is only like 5% of my battery draw also....
th3drow said:
The thing i don't get about this is they claim it can give your phone double your battery. Wouldn't the only thing this effect is the draw from the screen? I mean we already went from the lcd screens to the amoled screens and they are supposed to use alot less power and i haven't noticed any difference. My screen is only like 5% of my battery draw also....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is correct. it won't make our batteries last twice as long, but it may reduce the power used by the display by about half. our display is not a battery hog to begin with. AMOLED is more power efficient than lcd 3/4's of the time. the only time AMOLED draws more power is on an all white or mostly white screen. this is why the web browser appears to kill the battery so fast.
th3drow said:
My screen is only like 5% of my battery draw also....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that's a reporting bug with the stock Incredible ROM, because screen shots from a Nexus One show the screen being far and away the largest power draw. Flashing my Incredible to CyanogenMod also showed the screen as a large power draw (75% or higher). I didn't notice any appreciable difference in battery life either.
check out surface flinger http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/
Oops see post above, disregard
I had similar results using the yeti rom. Display was always in the fifties or higher.
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I'd rather not use my phone at all if I had to use it with that red tint. I understand someone using this to test but why would you want to use this all the time? If you need more battery, go buy a new one. Turning this on defeats the whole purpose of having such a nice phone and screen. It's like buying a V8 and disabling 4 cylinders to save gas.
ludeboy said:
I'd rather not use my phone at all if I had to use it with that red tint. I understand someone using this to test but why would you want to use this all the time? If you need more battery, go buy a new one. Turning this on defeats the whole purpose of having such a nice phone and screen. It's like buying a V8 and disabling 4 cylinders to save gas.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can see how it would be useful to toggle on in certain situations (emergencies, etc). The amber tint didn't seem quite as hard to look at as the red did.
russphil said:
I had similar results using the yeti rom. Display was always in the fifties or higher.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, I'm quite sure that number/percentage is a weighted average. That's why "cell standby" appears so high, I think each one of those categories could be duty cycle or total percentage of potential power drain, such as 65ma/120ma= 55%, although it's obvious that the display will be one of the major drains -- it's always "on" unless the screen is fully asleep or the phone is off--let's not forget the backlight, which is totally independent of pixel intensity/color's specific power draw.
I'd like this as well, if only because the lowest brightness is pretty bright to my eyes in complete darkness!
I am really interested in seeing this on the incredible.
I am an amateur astronomer, and the night vision mode would be really nice to have.
We may have AMOLED screens but soon there will be a ton a people with LCD screens... remember the switch because of the screen shortage?
Granted I probably wouldn't use it much... it'd be more of a novelty for me.
rynosaur said:
Yeah, I'm quite sure that number/percentage is a weighted average. That's why "cell standby" appears so high, I think each one of those categories could be duty cycle or total percentage of potential power drain, such as 65ma/120ma= 55%, although it's obvious that the display will be one of the major drains -- it's always "on" unless the screen is fully asleep or the phone is off--let's not forget the backlight, which is totally independent of pixel intensity/color's specific power draw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Backlight? You are aware how OLED technology works right? Unless you're referring to the upcoming batch of LCD Incredibles that hasn't shipped yet (as far as I know), you should go read up...
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Hi devs,
since i've read that the amoled display needs no or nearly no battery for black, i've thought about how one could change colours of display.
A lot of us are reading newspaper articles, blogs, mails,... on our desire - so why not change colours to read white text on black background? That would change the battery life extremely!
For a first step it would be enough to invert the keyboard and "text input areas". Later maybe new colours in maps and market,...
After this http://jsharkey.org/ it's maybe only a matter of time and batterylife will be much more longer and every desire or nexus user can choose from a few themes (15%,30%,50%,75% less battery usage theme). The great devs of this forum will have much better ideas!
So what do you think about?
Sent from my HTC Desire
I read about this but if its real why HTC or Android dont know this?
Amoled is a highly sensitive technic dont know if it can handle so huge changes...
essentially the request is to re-skin the OSto predominantly black. doesn't seem much of a problem really for a dedicated artiste
This should be too easy U mean if i use Black Theme my Battery Life is Better?
In time i read it i knowed its true i had better Batter Life with Defrost 1.6 because i used Nextheme on it Now i usen the white Theme and Battery Life isnt as good as before ....
hmmm
xtcislove said:
This should be too easy U mean if i use Black Theme my Battery Life is Better?
In time i read it i knowed its true i had better Batter Life with Defrost 1.6 because i used Nextheme on it Now i usen the white Theme and Battery Life isnt as good as before ....
hmmm
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use DeFrost 1.8 with Black TaskBar mod.
I can promise you that you'll see a difference less than a 1% removing the back taskbar.
But, inverting webpages and other stuff would be a huge gain thou.
The red and green filters seem potentially the most useful to me - red, because they are (as proven in his tests) the lowest power diodes in an LED display, and the green because you genuinely get 800x480 in pure green, so text ought to be sharper/more readable.
I'm not sure if using the display with one of these filters on a regular basis would make a noticeable difference to the screen, causing the red or green pixels to fade before the others (although I suspect this would be an issue even when displaying a constant white as I seem to recall blue pixels on OLED displays have a much shorter life than the others?) - however, I'm not really certain whether fade or burn-in on an OLED display is really going to be a huge issue within the lifespan of the phone anyway....
Just like GPS status app in night mode, more apps should support "night mode".
Would be so cool if we can be able to control it with a switch to turn it on and off.
brianius said:
Hi devs,
That would change the battery life extremely!
batterylife will be much more longer and every desire or nexus user can choose from a few themes (15%,30%,50%,75% less battery usage theme).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is about the biggest BS i've read in a long time. Out of all the things that consume power, 'Display' is about 10% (look at your battery usage stats, mine is at 7%). So, you want to go through all this hassle to save maybe 50% of 10%, so you win 5%? Even the non-scientific test had a gain of 6% battry per hour, but you would have to use the screen the whole hour to achieve this.
pwhooftman said:
This is about the biggest BS i've read in a long time. Out of all the things that consume power, 'Display' is about 10% (look at your battery usage stats, mine is at 7%). So, you want to go through all this hassle to save maybe 50% of 10%, so you win 5%? Even the non-scientific test had a gain of 6% battry per hour, but you would have to use the screen the whole hour to achieve this.
But wait a minute, i have a even better idea! Turn off the screen while playing music, and you'll never run out of battery! Ever!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah and you rely on the infos of android? When you update to FroYo, Display takes up to 50% of power...so...yeah, those numbers don't tell us anything.
But I would NEVER EVER change the display like THAT just to have better batterylife...that's a bit ridiculous imho.
It would be better if someone finds a way to calibrate the display properly.
I use the desire often for listening to music with gsm+wifi on. Make a simple test:
- music + gsm + wifi + display off/night screen and
- music + gsm + wifi + display on with light sensor and bright wallpaper
There will be a big difference not only 5-10%. When we could "only" save 15-25% it would be a big thing!
Very good idea to make colour themes similar to gps status app btw!
Think about chatting on icq or sms with girlfriend,... with green/red/blue... text on black background, would be make a difference
If this could stop my battery from draining - why not?
Sent from my HTC Desire
Eggcake said:
Yeah and you rely on the infos of android? When you update to FroYo, Display takes up to 50% of power...so...yeah, those numbers don't tell us anything.
But I would NEVER EVER change the display like THAT just to have better batterylife...that's a bit ridiculous imho.
It would be better if someone finds a way to calibrate the display properly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
50%?
LOL. Mine takes up about 5-10%. Don't know what you've got runnin' on yours.
My Froyo is dark as it is. Maybe I could squeeze another 1-2% battery time by making all icons darker, but whats the fun in that?
As I said previously. Being able to invert websites from black on white, to white on black would be one of the worthwhile things. Or invert apps that have a light theme. Don't have any of those myself thou.
Daelyn said:
50%?
LOL. Mine takes up about 5-10%. Don't know what you've got runnin' on yours.
My Froyo is dark as it is. Maybe I could squeeze another 1-2% battery time by making all icons darker, but whats the fun in that?
As I said previously. Being able to invert websites from black on white, to white on black would be one of the worthwhile things. Or invert apps that have a light theme. Don't have any of those myself thou.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Read in the different threads, most people report 40%< with FroYo.
What I wanna say: the info you get from those percentages is useless. The display takes (of course it depends how much you use your phone) MUCH more than 5% when it's on.
Just test it. You can enable the option in Settings -> Applications -> Dev. Leave your phone 1 hour with enabled display and after that 1 hour with disabled. 5% my ass...
Hopefully the modification made on the following link will be possible for the Desire as well...
http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/
why don't you remove your display from your desire? so it would consume no power...
I've changed my background to a dark one and installed Handcent app to get black background while reading and messing with text messages and I must admit that I get at least 4 hours of more juice from my battery. Usually it lasted 24-28 hours. I get more 4 hours on average now.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
* DeFrost 1.7c / black taskbar mod.
* Unneeded tasks killed
* Waited for 5 min for essential software to refresh.
* 100% charged before test.
Battery usage/average based on SysFS battery output: lowest to highest
Code:
Screen off (standby): 117mA
Screen home screen / brightness off: 172 mA
Screen home screen / brightness med: 196 mA
Screen home screen / brightness full: 232 mA
Normal usage, auto brightness: 200-240mA
Screen 100% red: 244 mA
Screen 100% green: 302 mA
Screen brightness off / CPU 100% load: 305 mA
Screen 100% blue: 354 mA
Screen 100% white: 476 mA
My phone lasts about 3 days depending on usage (65-75 hrs).
My Display usage (according to menu) usually is on the range of 2-5%
Normal battery drain in the range of 175-250mA at average brightness and usage.
Making it darker than I already have, maybe I could squeeze out 25mA (50mA feels impossible).
I would guesstimate I could gain another 30-60min, if I'm very lucky.
Seems to me you'd have to use a monochrome dark red theme for the least power drawn.
Actually sounds rather cool
Sent from my Desire using XDA App
WhiT3Kr0w said:
I've changed my background to a dark one and installed Handcent app to get black background while reading and messing with text messages and I must admit that I get at least 4 hours of more juice from my battery. Usually it lasted 24-28 hours. I get more 4 hours on average now.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
considering your average usage varies 4 hours each lifespan (24-28 hours as you claim), how can you say you get 4 more hours usage?
where's the logic in that lol?
(lol, I totally agree with you the darker colors use more power, hence saving battery - I just had to point this out lol)
troedi said:
why don't you remove your display from your desire? so it would consume no power...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because then i wouldn't be able to watch Hannah montana
WhiT3Kr0w said:
I've changed my background to a dark one and installed Handcent app to get black background while reading and messing with text messages and I must admit that I get at least 4 hours of more juice from my battery. Usually it lasted 24-28 hours. I get more 4 hours on average now.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot! Will install handcent app now. I do have a plain black background (black dot as jpg) and think I have around 2h more at least, but to be sure I'll have to test it.
It's really frustrating if you come from a 5-7 day magic/mt3g to a 7-12h desire. Maybe I should root only for a battery reset
Sent from my HTC Desire
Hi
Has anyone tried the NoLed app on SGS2. This is an app that simulates a LED indicator.
The display technology on AMOLED screens is suppose to be highly efficient since each pixel is individual lit. Furthermore, the black areas on the screen are where the individual pixels have been turned off. That is why the Samsung skin makes use of such a lot of black areas.
The idea behind NoLED is that when you have a missed call it will display a small number of lit pixels on the screen….again, because it is an AMOLED screen over 99.9% of the screen can be turned off….so the device should only be using a negligible amount of power.
However, I have noticed that this app consumes a lot more power than it should. If I get a notification during the night I notice that the whole of the screen is very slightly lit….you would not normally notice this….I only did because it was night time.
Furthermore, I have noticed that the graph of the battery usage declines significantly after this point.*
Anyone else got any thoughts?
*
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
Have been using it since day 1. I don't see it as a big power drainer. Whether I have notifications or not, I tend to lose 5-10% depending on how much display on time I have.
I have it on for 15 min or so. So it shouldn't drain the battery if I don't check it for a long time like during the night. CM has a great feature/tweak that lets you choose a time that the screen never goes on. Just have to wait a bit longer for it.
I'm coming from a thunderbolt with an extended battery. I'm used to crappy battery life, and indeed I lose about a percent an hour playing music on my galaxy nexus with is way better than my thunderbolt.
The issue comes that when I have the screen on I lose about 1-2% a minute, even if I'm just reading an ebook. Calling is fine, DOWNLOADING/STREAMING is fine, but the screen on just kills the battery.
It also gets very, very hot on the upper portion of the screen, but doesn't if I'm downloading something with the screen off.
My question is, is this normal?
As well, the screen has a yellowish tint when looking at it directly, but takes a blue tint at a very slight angle (annoying) is THIS normal?
I want to know how much arguing and yelling I'm going to have to do when I try to exchange this phone.
Writing this took me from 22% to 13% D=
I'm new to Galaxy Nexus phones, but i've been here long enough to know that the yellow tint and blue side view tint is a manufacturer defect.
My battery drain, too, is really bad.
currently, it's 57% of my battery drain, but its been as high as high-60's before.
Facebook comes in 2nd, killing 10%. Almost makes me want to uninstall it.
Today, I noticed it was hot when it was idle in my pocket throughout the day.
It could be bad heat dispersion because of the slim design or cpu usage.
I feel your pain though. My battery went from 100% to 56% in 5H 20M of idle time and 40M of texting / light surfing usage.
Mobile data was off for the 5 hours and 20 minutes, too. >.>
My phone does all that too. Including the upper part getting hot. I would like to know more about this too.
What's your brightness set at?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Mines about 60%
The CPU is in the top right hand corner, mine has hit 60°C before, still fine.
Having your screen on and at a high brightness will absolutely murder your battery and will help raise the temperature.
Screen will always be the highest drain as it is big.
Lower brightness to save battery and delete that damn Facebook app, it stops your phone going into deep sleep which drains your battery.
As for the yellow tint, flash a custom kernel and modify the colours.
My whites are perfect, not a sign of yellow.
My brightness was set to auto, but I predominately work/play in dark rooms, when I wrote the post yesterday over a period of a couple minutes it was in a completely black room.
This is all in relation to the Thunderbolt, though. The screen uses more battery, but I thought AMOLEDs are very efficient (black wallpaper, yay minimalism!). I'm getting about the battery life as my Thunderbolt did with its stock battery, but considering it was the first LTE phone in the US I would think it would be a more inefficient and cumbersome radio chip. It doesn't get nearly as hot as the Galaxy Nexus did, which is why I am so alarmed.
I don't want to have a phone that I can only use the screen for an hour and some change, and while I don't expect to use it solidly for eight hours, I did expect it to last at least as long as the Thunderbolt did. Is there a larger extended battery than the one sold by Verizon that adds very little bulk? I may try investing in one.
afinita said:
My brightness was set to auto, but I predominately work/play in dark rooms, when I wrote the post yesterday over a period of a couple minutes it was in a completely black room.
This is all in relation to the Thunderbolt, though. The screen uses more battery, but I thought AMOLEDs are very efficient (black wallpaper, yay minimalism!). I'm getting about the battery life as my Thunderbolt did with its stock battery, but considering it was the first LTE phone in the US I would think it would be a more inefficient and cumbersome radio chip. It doesn't get nearly as hot as the Galaxy Nexus did, which is why I am so alarmed.
I don't want to have a phone that I can only use the screen for an hour and some change, and while I don't expect to use it solidly for eight hours, I did expect it to last at least as long as the Thunderbolt did. Is there a larger extended battery than the one sold by Verizon that adds very little bulk? I may try investing in one.
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Click to collapse
This. I also had a thunderbolt. I expected this Nexus to out perform it in the battery field but no way. My thunderbolt with stock battery would last from 6am to 6pm which was fine for me. Id just start charging when I got home at 3. This thing when I get home its at like 3% and these past 3 days Iv had the nexus off half the day to save battery while I took AP Tests.
This phone is perfect, except for the battery. As for brightness anything under 60% gives me that yellow tint. Im using the Apex rom right now. I dont see any custom color settings. What rom do you guys use?
afinita said:
I'm coming from a thunderbolt with an extended battery. I'm used to crappy battery life, and indeed I lose about a percent an hour playing music on my galaxy nexus with is way better than my thunderbolt.
The issue comes that when I have the screen on I lose about 1-2% a minute, even if I'm just reading an ebook. Calling is fine, DOWNLOADING/STREAMING is fine, but the screen on just kills the battery.
It also gets very, very hot on the upper portion of the screen, but doesn't if I'm downloading something with the screen off.
My question is, is this normal?
As well, the screen has a yellowish tint when looking at it directly, but takes a blue tint at a very slight angle (annoying) is THIS normal?
I want to know how much arguing and yelling I'm going to have to do when I try to exchange this phone.
Writing this took me from 22% to 13% D=
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Download from toolbox lite and use it to disable some apps from loading at startup that you know you don't need. This got rid of the issue for me. Installing Franco kernel further helped my battery. I am on stock rom.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Hello,
I've been using this device for about 5 months now and the battery life for me has been great so far, but there's so much you can do when you need the juice in your battery last longer. In order to help those who want to get the best battery life out of their phone, I've compiled a list of things I do to make my phone last longer.
We'll go from the things most effective to the least and mind you, all of these can be done without rooting of using ADB etc. So let's start
'''Turn on Gray Scale'''
As we have an AMOLED screen, turning on grey scale will give you an improvement in battery life of around 25-35 %, and it's especially noticable if you use your phone in high brightness mode.
'''Dark theme'''
Dark theme obviously saves battery on our phone, there's and awesome guide on XDA guiding you to do it without rooting or using any theme engine.
'''Set brightness to 50%'''
Our eyes don't perceive brightness linearly, so 100% brightness will take around 50-70% percent more battery than 50%, but going much lower won't help either cause increasing brightness from 0-50% results in around 20-30% extra power draw.
'''Restrict background running of less used apps'''
You can restrict an app from running in the background and this setting is baked right into the App Info settings,
Go to app info and tap on battery usage, from there, restrict the app.
'''Enable data saver'''
This can be enabled via Quick Settings menu and this can drastically save battery if you're mostly on Mobile data.
'''Turn off Auto Sync'''
It is long known that doing this can save a bit of battery.
'''Enable Battery Saver'''
Pretty self explanatory.
'''Change minimum width'''
Set minimum width to anything less than 400, this leads to less information being displayed on screen which results in lower usage of GPU, and thus better battery (somewhat)
'''Reduce animation duration scale'''
This will speed up everything and improve battery life just a bit.
And that's it from me, if I remember anything else, I'll make sure to add it, and please make sure to tell me anything that works for you, I'll happily add it.
If you want to get absolutely the best battery life out of your device, you must install a custom kernel. I'm using Fenix currently.
Also, turn off printing service. This idiotic thing is turned on by default. It keeps sucking battery for no reason at all. I'm not using stock ROM now but you can find it by going to: Settings>Bluetooth & Devices (or something similar)
Can you post the link of the thread for enabling dark mode I would like to try that.
Another tip - switch to airplane mode, mobile network is one of the biggest battery consumer..
But seriously, how does greyscale mode save the battery? Instead of glowing one of the subpixels for displaying a color, all of them must be shining to provide different shades of white color. It might even use more power.
Width change and animation duration scale have some very interesting thinking behind them, it will have absolutely no impact on the battery.
Dudes, just enjoy and use the phone. Why do you want to cripple your experience just to gain extra few percents of battery per day? If you're living of the grid, there are much better phones for such a lifestyle.
_mysiak_ said:
Another tip - switch to airplane mode, mobile network is one of the biggest battery consumer..
But seriously, how does greyscale mode save the battery? Instead of glowing one of the subpixels for displaying a color, all of them must be shining to provide different shades of white color. It might even use more power.
Width change and animation duration scale have some very interesting thinking behind them, it will have absolutely no impact on the battery.
Dudes, just enjoy and use the phone. Why do you want to cripple your experience just to gain extra few percents of battery per day? If you're living of the grid, there are much better phones for such a lifestyle.
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There's an XDA article comparing battery saving with AMOLED on black and grey theme, you might want to check it out, or you can also watch a video by Mrwhosetheboss to see how it went for him. As for animation speed and DPI, they have the least effect on battery life as I've stated above. Kindly do some research before you start making claims.
FranzScarrey said:
Can you post the link of the thread for enabling dark mode I would like to try that.
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Click to collapse
It requires you to have Magisk tho.
RizwanH20 said:
There's an XDA article comparing battery saving with AMOLED on black and grey theme, you might want to check it out, or you can also watch a video by Mrwhosetheboss to see how it went for him. As for animation speed and DPI, they have the least effect on battery life as I've stated above. Kindly do some research before you start making claims.
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Click to collapse
Where exactly in the article does it say that monochrome display saves power over colored one? Actually it's you who started with unique claims, so please provide some proof.