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Anybody notice one performing better than the other with regard to battery life? I have the paid version of SetCPU which I bought for my G1 a while back but I'm not sure I really need it for the CPU throttling on the Vibrant but it does seem to improve battery life and I was wondering if Juice Defender might be better.
JuiceDefender was fabulous for battery life but it did slow down my phone a lot. I ended up uninstalling it. If you want to try toggling your data to save battery, I recommend DCSwitch widget. Works like a charm for data control.
I just started using SetCPU on this phone so I can't say how it affects battery.
Tasker is better then Juice Defender. It does everything JD does and MUCH more stuff.....unlimited possibilities
You should probably understand that lowering the frequency of your processor doesn't save a bit of battery. The only way you can save battery is to lower the voltage which neither of those apps can do so whatever you're seeing as "saving battery" is a placebo effect. When the phone is in sleep mode the CPU is defaulted at 245mhz. Lowering the "Max" frequency does just that; it lowers the maximum frequency the processor is able to use.
bmj1086 said:
You should probably understand that lowering the frequency of your processor doesn't save a bit of battery. The only way you can save battery is to lower the voltage which neither of those apps can do so whatever you're seeing as "saving battery" is a placebo effect. When the phone is in sleep mode the CPU is defaulted at 245mhz. Lowering the "Max" frequency does just that; it lowers the maximum frequency the processor is able to use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's true that reducing voltage (which we can't do) would be more effective as power consumption at a given clock frequency is proportional to the square of the voltage, but you're wrong to dismiss frequency control as a power saving strategy because at any given voltage, power consumption is proportional to frequency. Hence Intel's "speed step" technology used in notebook CPU's.
Juice Defender and SetCPU are doing more or less the same thing as Intel speed step.
We CAN reduce voltages with the right kernel... Dragon TEST 5 kernel.
^ correct with the voltage control app from the market i believe.
Between setCPU and juice defender..
i say juice defender.
Set CPU is a hassle.
It shuts your phone off sometimes with profiles on, and freezes it etc.
If your phone experiences any of those problems, uninstall setcpu and bam, your phone is normal again.
SetCPU is only good for overclocking, and sometimes sucks at that too.
xriderx66 said:
^ correct with the voltage control app from the market i believe.
Between setCPU and juice defender..
i say juice defender.
Set CPU is a hassle.
It shuts your phone off sometimes with profiles on, and freezes it etc.
If your phone experiences any of those problems, uninstall setcpu and bam, your phone is normal again.
SetCPU is only good for overclocking, and sometimes sucks at that too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's what happened to me with setcpu. Every time the screen turned off, the phone turned off as well.
With juice defender, I lost a lot more battery. About 15% in 3 hrs of standby vs. 3-4% in 3 hrs of standby without any power saving apps.
If people are having good results with both apps, could you please show how you set it up? I may have not set it up right.
burntrat said:
With juice defender, I lost a lot more battery. About 15% in 3 hrs of standby vs. 3-4% in 3 hrs of standby without any power saving apps.
If people are having good results with both apps, could you please show how you set it up? I may have not set it up right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here.
I figured that people who got positive results from all the battery-saving apps are the ones that use their phones aggressively and switching between all types of connections (wifi/bluetooth/gps). I use my phone normal, so I'm better off without apps like that.
Yeah, that's what happened to me with setcpu. Every time the screen turned off, the phone turned off as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I remembered correctly, it's because you've set the frequencies way too low for your phone to function properly.
I got 12% battery drain in 17 hours, standby. I'm not a pro at android but I might give a little tut. on how to save battery life to the max. Atleast, it works for my P500 so it should work for you & for any other android device as well.
Uninstall every unnecessary app, including system apps (those apps, that does not mess up with the system stability - If you uninstall Email app, you will not solve your problems with Gmail app).. same with Messaging. That said, leave as minimum apps in the background as you can. App killer does not solve this problem, it just closes bg apps - they restart after some time. I'm using ATK (Advanced Task Killer), It usually kills 1 - 3 apps, so.. I have a minimum of apps running in the bg.
Basic stuff.. turn off your 3G, wifi, bg sync, gps when not in use. If you need to check your email, use 2G network only option, not 3G. Use 2G always when you don't need 3G speed. Screen brightness is not that important if you set it to anywhere below 70%. It should not drain the battery that fast.
Setcpu - profiles - governors--
My profiles are as follows
Charging - 480min - 748max
Battery <90% - 245min - 600max
Battery <70% - 245min - 600max (U can live with one profile for the battery, I have 2 in case I want to change the 2nd profile)
Screen off - 122min - 245max -- This is what saves my battery in standby.
The governors are ondemand for usage & conservative for screen off.
I'm using Void.echo rom with tapps & gapps modules, uninstalled everything I don't need.
I hope this helps If anyone has a better idea on how to save battery life, please share yours as well.
Thanks for your post, but actually most background apps don't drain battery. I have made lots of experiments (removing system aps, preventing autorun etc., and I don't see any major difference in battery life. So now, I'm on stock 2.2 and I'm now at 80% after almost 30h use: about 20 min talk, 10-15 min wi-fi (mail), 10-15 min EDGE. The latter by the way drains battery more than wi-fi. So instead of messing with system apps I recommend putting the phone in airplane mode during the night and as mentioned in the above post - not using 3G when not needed (EDGE has decent speed).
thats the why linux works !!! use all the memory u possibly can...These Microsoft *****es have changed the way computers were supposed to be used not reinstalling windows and other crapware all the time..Switch to Debian while its still time
And i use these settings
screen off 245-245 powersave (otherwise phone gets hot Its summer in india)
600-245 ondemand otherwise
kopchev said:
Thanks for your post, but actually most background apps don't drain battery. I have made lots of experiments (removing system aps, preventing autorun etc., and I don't see any major difference in battery life. So now, I'm on stock 2.2 and I'm now at 80% after almost 30h use: about 20 min talk, 10-15 min wi-fi (mail), 10-15 min EDGE. The latter by the way drains battery more than wi-fi. So instead of messing with system apps I recommend putting the phone in airplane mode during the night and as mentioned in the above post - not using 3G when not needed (EDGE has decent speed).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If there are many apps running in the bg, phone runs out of ram, so it tries to free up some space constantly. I think that drains battery, not the apps themselves. As well as the more cpu power is used, the faster it drains battery. Airplane mode shuts off any connection, so either that or you could just shut down the phone during night. Hmm you could tell me how to prevent app autorun, i have not looked into that.
btw juicedefender does wonders with the phones battery i had a 2% percent over night normal mode (not airplane) no 3g/Edge/Wifi/Bluetooth active and just sleeping
sarfaraz1989 said:
thats the why linux works !!! use all the memory u possibly can...These Microsoft *****es have changed the way computers were supposed to be used not reinstalling windows and other crapware all the time..Switch to Debian while its still time
And i use these settings
screen off 245-245 powersave (otherwise phone gets hot Its summer in india)
600-245 ondemand otherwise
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True about windows & linux hehe. You havent tried 122-245mhz on screen off? Ofcouse, it lags even when i receive an sms, it's something like this - the screen turns on, then after 2 sec. i hear a notification, then after 1 sec. i see the sms but that does not make any problems for me, it's extreme powersaving
I don't get the point of airplane mode while you're sleeping.
If you don't want to get calls while sleeping, shouldn't it be better if you turn off the phone?
I had a good experience with JuiceDefender until now too. Last night my phone was 100% and no airplane mode while sleeping. It drained only 3%.
SoundTone said:
If there are many apps running in the bg, phone runs out of ram, so it tries to free up some space constantly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've read, Android doesn't swap. It'll just kill the background apps on it's own. I don't think there even is a swap unless you root, rom and create one on your uSD.
rapharias said:
I don't get the point of airplane mode while you're sleeping.
If you don't want to get calls while sleeping, shouldn't it be better if you turn off the phone?
I had a good experience with JuiceDefender until now too. Last night my phone was 100% and no airplane mode while sleeping. It drained only 3%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's more convenient, because the on/off process is quite slow...in contrast - airplane mode on/off is 3-4 secs. In airplane mode you can still use wi-fi. Last night the battery drained only 1%
i read somewhere that changing the CPU speed doesnt change the voltage, thus it does not affect battery life... anyone can confirm this???
As far as I can remember from school, a logic gate uses more power when switching, thus a higher frequency would also mean higher power drain (higher frequency = more switching of the logic gates), without voltage modification.
Voltage is changed in order to keep stability - higher voltage means a more stable logic signal, and a faster switching gate, and thus people reccomend using a higher voltage for higher frequencies/lower voltage for lower frequencies.
Thus, a CPU with so many logic gates does not operate just like a simple resistor. In fact it is worse, because when you use higher voltage AND higher frequency power drain is increased much more.
On the other hand, most modern CPU's simply deactivate CPU regions when idling, so, in case of our hardware (constant voltage) there should not be such a great difference when idling (most of the CPU is powered down). The only thing is for the phone to be REALLY idling (no background tasks eating too much of the CPU when screen off).
Basically, what this means is that if you want extreme power saving use a governor with 128MHz minimum and have as few background services as possible (or at least the ones that are there should be optimized for the least CPU usage).
Now I use the standard governor (248 - 600) and I thing my idle power drain is OK.
I guess I will test a governor that is plain 600MHz and one wit 320 or 480 as a minimum, in order to see if power drain is higher when using a lower lag configuration.
And, just as a guess, if background tasks are triggered by timers, a governor with just 600MHz (or 320 - 600 or 380 - 600?) could (just a wild guess) mean that background tasks take less time to execute, and leave the CPU to si more in IDLE mode, causing a very similar power drain as an extreme power saving governor. But this is just a guess, i have not tested it yet. And it also depends on what apps you have (what the apps do when phone is sleeping).
Basically, my best advice would be to watch the apps (after you install a new app, wait for a night to see if the new app causes a higher drain; if it does, search for another app that does the same thing)
spaic said:
As far as I can remember from school, a logic gate uses more power when switching, thus a higher frequency would also mean higher power drain (higher frequency = more switching of the logic gates), without voltage modification.
Voltage is changed in order to keep stability - higher voltage means a more stable logic signal, and a faster switching gate, and thus people reccomend using a higher voltage for higher frequencies/lower voltage for lower frequencies.
Thus, a CPU with so many logic gates does not operate just like a simple resistor. In fact it is worse, because when you use higher voltage AND higher frequency power drain is increased much more.
On the other hand, most modern CPU's simply deactivate CPU regions when idling, so, in case of our hardware (constant voltage) there should not be such a great difference when idling (most of the CPU is powered down). The only thing is for the phone to be REALLY idling (no background tasks eating too much of the CPU when screen off).
Basically, what this means is that if you want extreme power saving use a governor with 128MHz minimum and have as few background services as possible (or at least the ones that are there should be optimized for the least CPU usage).
Now I use the standard governor (248 - 600) and I thing my idle power drain is OK.
I guess I will test a governor that is plain 600MHz and one wit 320 or 480 as a minimum, in order to see if power drain is higher when using a lower lag configuration.
And, just as a guess, if background tasks are triggered by timers, a governor with just 600MHz (or 320 - 600 or 380 - 600?) could (just a wild guess) mean that background tasks take less time to execute, and leave the CPU to si more in IDLE mode, causing a very similar power drain as an extreme power saving governor. But this is just a guess, i have not tested it yet. And it also depends on what apps you have (what the apps do when phone is sleeping).
Basically, my best advice would be to watch the apps (after you install a new app, wait for a night to see if the new app causes a higher drain; if it does, search for another app that does the same thing)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know about CPU's as much as u, but simple logical thinking helps here.. Low frequency + minimum of bg tasks = great power saving, I have now used the phone for 36hours without charge, 61% battery left. That is not only idling, i write about 50 to 150 sms a day & use the phone for other stuff too. So, those governors & frequencies i mentioned earlier in this post, helps a lot.
fransisco.franco thinks otherwise read the his post that contains the link to his rom devoid.francov6(ROM is cool btw and unfortunately i have a slow sdcard )
I think the first post is by far the best I have seen so far.
Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk
Wow, only 1% all night?
I'll take a deeper look at your tips!
I use devoid.franco with franco.kernel v12. From all ROMs I've isntalled, it's the best: great performance and long battery life.
I get 5% battery drain in 7:30 hours (at night), without doing anything special, without running a custom ROM and without uninstalling apps. I just make sure GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and data are off before going to bed.
I've install Rom Toolbox,
and i saw there is a "CPU slider" where i control the clock speed.
i've put it to 1000MHz instead of 1200MHz and tested it for several days
i really dont feel any difference in performance.
browsing seems same, games like asphalt is equally smooth.
heating is similar, equally warm.
the only difference is quadrant benchmark.
1200MHz scores 3200-3400
1000MHz scores 2600-2900
frankly speaking, i'm not sure if there's any difference in battery life.
is there any way to accurately test whether the clock speed affects the battery life?
i've seen other threads, where there are very different opinions.
some say it will improve battery life, and some say its worst.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=726019
Quote: (SetCPU doesn't make a difference in battery life, it can only shorten it. The kernal already has the best settings for CPU speed built in.)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1305465
Quote: (if you are able to stand the side effects of underclocking, it will surely boost your batery life.)
On my SGS2 program called CpuSpy shows that 1200MHz is about 1% of total cpu time (remember that governor is ondemand and CPU is at 1200 only when need it). If power consumption is directly proportional to clock speed by limiting it to 1000MHz you will get about 20% less power usage by 1% of time... looks like 0.2% power saved ? Soo if Your phone works for about 48h on one charging this way You can get about 6 extra minutes. It's just my guess...
Also have to consider if slower cpu causes screen to eat power for longer time... (because You have to wait longer for operation to complete)
slig said:
On my SGS2 program called CpuSpy shows that 1200MHz is about 1% of total cpu time (remember that governor is ondemand and CPU is at 1200 only when need it).
If power consumption is directly proportional to clock speed by limiting it to 1000MHz you will get about 20% less power usage by 1% of time... looks like 0.2% power saved ? Soo if Your phone works for about 48h on one charging this way You can get about 6 extra minutes. It's just my guess...
Also have to consider if slower cpu causes screen to eat power for longer time... (because You have to wait longer for operation to complete)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HI, thanks for replying. I understand what you mean. the phone dont operate at 1200MHz all the time. but when using browser, and playing games, such as asphalt, it runs at max CPU usage almost the entire gaming duration.
Anyway.....
the real question is whether the clock speed is directly proportional to the battery consumption.
while reading your post, i thought of a brilliant ideal how to verify this.
the CPU slider not only allows you to set the max CPU speed,
you can set the min CPU speed as well.
So, i thought of an experiment, lets set the min & max CPU to 1200MHz,
this way, the phone will be running constantly at max CPU even when its idle.
let the phone be turn on till it run out of battery, record the time, T1.
then repeat again with max and min CPU set to 1000MHz.
record the time it is turn on till it run out of battery, record time as T2,
then compare T1 & T2, this could certainly work.
it would be nice if any member here happens to have 2 sgs2, and tried them ;-)
There are two more things to consider
1. CPU is not the only element that consumes power.
2. SGS2's Exynos is always clocked at 200MHz when the screen is off - check if this minimum slider affects that too.
Please let know how your experiment goes.
Regards
when the screen is off, the phone will be in "deep sleep" state. i think thats less than 200MHz.
anyway, i wont be doin this experiment any time soon.
you see, this is my only phone, i need to use it.
i dont have much oportunity to leave it and wait for it to run out of juice.
still, i'll try it when i have the chance.
Hi Guys,
I am a noob here. I have never used a android phone before, not even a iPhone - so basically no smart phones.My first smart/android phone would be Nexus 4 which would be coming tomorrow.
I have been reading threads to understand andriod architecture and believe have understood to certain extent.
I have a question in clocking the CPUs and Voting.
As I understand, we have 3 states -Max, Min and Sleep for a single CPU core
Max - The frequency (clock speed) which CPU executes or maximum speed which CPU sends signals to its components and get the response back. This would be used when the system is on - which means when user is doing some process.. like texting, video chat, gaming (this case GPU is also involved) etc.
Min - This would be for background process when the user/phone is idle - that when screen is off (eq - gmail sync, facebook sync etc..)
Sleep - Screen off and no background process , the core will be in sleep.
And the battery level will be directly propotional to speed of CPU with respect to the volting.
Now lets say there is a single core processor in a phone which can clock upto 1.5GZ. and the stock kernel comes up with Max - 1.3GZ and MIN -0.5 GHZ.
Question is abt overclocking minimum frequency
1. why not overclock the Mn frequency to 1.3Ghz? because the backgroundprocess would be fast and phone/core will be sleeping after that,
which means process consumes more battery at that particular time but overall baterry should be efficient as there would be more sleeping time.
2. About volting, so far I have not seen min and max volting. So is there only one voltage/power drawn for max and min CPU speeds by CPU?
Please correct me if any of my statements is wrong.
Appreciate your help,
Thanks,
Franklin B.
Overclocking the minimum frequency to 1.3ghz would probably decrease your processor's life if you use your phone too much but I have been actually increasing my phone even 200mhz more than it was in stock ROMs, i've been using my device for more than 2 years and it still works perfectly. Finally, it all depends on how much your phone is good.
I also decreased the cpu min and max frequency when phone sleeps to 256 mhz which decreased a lot battery consumption.
Hope i helped !
Don't forget the THANKS button
1.you can but your battery life will be drastically reduced! There is a good amount of time after the screen is off and before the phone sleeps! So if over clock the min to 1.3Ghz, the processor will be running at 1.3Ghz till it goes to sleep! But if that's what you want you can do that!
2 . I'm not so sure about this topic either but I think the processor operates at a particular voltage and I could be wrong!
Sent from my GT-P3100 using Tapatalk 2
Thank you Guys
Franklin Bernard said:
1. why not overclock the Mn frequency to 1.3Ghz? because the backgroundprocess would be fast and phone/core will be sleeping after that,
which means process consumes more battery at that particular time but overall baterry should be efficient as there would be more sleeping time.
2. About volting, so far I have not seen min and max volting. So is there only one voltage/power drawn for max and min CPU speeds by CPU?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I received your PM. I agree with the guys about the heat issues, longevity, and battery life etc. The answer to your question #2 will help you better understand things.
In all kernels, there are frequency/voltage scaling tables. For every frequency step (clock speed) in the table, it corresponds to a specific voltage. It gets a bit more complicated than this of course, but that is the basic way things are setup in the kernel. The higher the frequency, the higher the voltage is required to be to keep the CPU (or GPU, bus, RAM etc.) stable at a given clock speed. The more voltage, the more current, and the more heat is generated. The longer you stay at higher clock speeds/voltages, the better the cooling system you need to have. Supply regulators are defined to feed the core and rail voltages so that the processor can live in a happy environment no matter what it is being asked to.
As far as power consumption, it's all about getting a unit of work done in a timely/efficient fashion using the least amount of power consumption. If the phone is sleeping, the word "timely" takes on a different meaning so then it is mostly concerned with power consumption and getting the background tasks completed effectively without having the phone experience the sleep of death (SOD). What you are talking about is the theory of "race to sleep" so that the work can be done quickly and the phone can go back to sleep where it uses the least amount of power (clocks actually turn off during deep sleep and cores are turned off). However, there is a happy medium to this theory and heat and battery consumption are the main enemies. Heat can also rob efficiency, more current is required when a circuit heats up. The more a phone wakes up to do syncs for email, apps, social networking, missed calls etc., that work can stack up throughout the day. The question comes down to how can the device get this work done using the least power and keep the device cool. On the N4, the lowest frequencies can use ~700-800mV per core while the highest frequencies can use ~1100mV. There is a drastic difference in the amount of heat generation between this range.
I think this should give you the general idea and maybe more that you wanted to know! Here are some links to check out if you are interested. Google and you will find many many more articles and research papers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_and_frequency_scaling
http://atrak.usc.edu/~massoud/Talks/Pedram-dvfs-Taiwan05.pdf
Thanks a ton !!!
For few days I will not have access charging my battery. I am thinking about disabling cores and lowering maximum cpu frequency for better battery life. I have root and carbon rom. Is it efficient disabling cores and make one core at %100, or 4 cores at lower use percentage? And what are my other options to save battery? I don't care much performance. I don't mind slowing down. I wish I could test myself but I don't have time to test.
Daily I use 3 cores at 1036MHz without excessive lags. I'm using SetCPU to do it. It's possible to create profiles and set frequency, governor and scheduler when a specific app is launched, when battery reaches into a low level, when screen is On/Off, etc.
Screen time about 7,5 hours.
For gaming I need to change it, of course.
I'm using Abricot kernel.