Android apps cause poor battery life-Google CEO says.

Re: Android appls cause poor battery life-Google CEO says.

Just like a computer, don't download crap you probably dont use and you would be fine.

 

Well we have discussed this several times before, but one person's day is not the same as another person's day. Are we talking about 8 hours of use? Obviously not. Most of these devices get 3-4 hours of actual use, whether it's talking or browsing or email or anything else. If you are idle most of the day, and don't intend to use it at night, maybe that's fine.

Let's assume we don't have any evil, battery sucking apps running, or if we do, we know how to use Astro or Advanced Task Killer or something similar, to find and kill them.

For me, even with a full charge in the morning, just one or two phone calls during the day, checking personal email briefly (of course it polls every 5 minutes anyway), and checking news headlines, there is no way I am over 50% battery by the end of the workday.

Now at this point, if I'm traveling for work, I want to go out have a nice dinner. I want to catch up on the tech news and forums like WA that I don't typically read during the day. I might get into a conversation with someone and need to look up something in Wikipedia or IMDB. The News comes on the TV and I get the urge to see Lahore, Pakistan or the Louisiana Gulf Coast in Google Maps.

How many hours can I do that before I am down to 30% battery and Power Manager starts shutting things off to conserve? An hour, max. OK, so then I override Power Manager, so I can still see the screen and use WiFi. How much time before the 15% warning starts popping up over and over? Maybe another half hour.

So now the night is young, nerds like me want to use our handheld computers and if we haven't charged them during the day (mine is charging now, it's 3:20 PM) and if we don't have our external battery handy (I do), we are out of luck.

I love my Android phone, but there is no sense pretending that you can really get through a whole day and evening, where you actually use it, without charging it constantly. Also I don't think that any phones with similarly large screens and cool apps are any different, including those that start with "i".


SW

 

I agree with you and I will take it further and say any true SmartPhone, except for Blackberrys are in the same boat.

 

Hm, I keep my phone pretty lean in terms of Apps and such, and I can get at least 36 hours out of my phone (even after over clocking). This is with moderate use (~3hours of browsing scattered periodically through out the day and may 10-15 GV messages) and minimal voice calling. But granted I'm mostly connected thru WiFi when browsing (which is usually during my lunch break or at home) but not at any other time...

Right now I'm at 70%; I unpluged at 7am to go to work and current time is 5:35pm. So I've used about 30% in 10 hours....

 

So you're saying you get 6 hours of use, over two days and a night, before recharging? I'm not doubting you, just noting that that's around what Motorola claims for the Droid (385 min). Typically, published reviews and anecdotal experience do not match the manufacturer's specs, but the Droid could be different. The Droid has a 1400 mAh Li Ion battery, as compared to the G1's 1150 mAh. Also, I seem to remember that CDMA 3G is a bit easier on battery life than GSM 3G, so that could also have something to do with our different experiences.

My report of 3-4 hours of use, is from using the G1 on T-Mobile and talking to lots of iPhone users on AT&T. My only experience on Verizon was with the Blackberry (traditional form factor), which typically has better battery life than Android or the iPhone and did not have the big 3.x inch diagonal screen.

Needless to say, the G1 never lasts this long, and to bring the discussion back to the topic, I do monitor what apps are running and I use Power Manager.


SW

 

On Android, at least since OS 1.6, one can go into Settings>About Phone> Battery Use, and see a nice little graph of how much power various apps have been using. Since I just got off the phone with my sister , my phone's graph currently shows,

1 h, 44 min since unplugged
Voice calls ..........55%
WiFi .....................16%
Display ................13%
K-9 Mail .................4%
Cell standby..........4%
Android system....3%
Android OS ...........3%
Phone Idle ............2%
Browser ................2%


SW

 

I'm also conservative when it comes to battery management. I think over time, my batter has gotten better. I remember when i first got the Droid, my battery barely lasted a day, about a week of conditioning the battery got me thru most of the day with maybe 30% to spare. The first OS update to 2.0.1improved things vastly and allowed me to get thru a day (~12 hours, I generally charge the phone when at home) with at least 50-60%. The update to 2.1, however, didn't make nearly as much as an impact as the first (2.1 was definitely a downer). I generally prefer things clean and simple and don't download to many apps.

I think the rated usage time of 385min may actually only refer to using the voice services to make calls, which i think is very possible; I was once on the phone with my parents for almost 3 hours trying to figure out the wedding budget and was surprised that i still had about 50-60% of the battery left.

This is all anecdotal of course...

I'm not sure if we would ever know if the coding is "the best".

I think in the end, free market dictates everything. If an app kills battery, everyone would leave an appropriate comment and ratings would drop. The graph is good because it lets you identify how much battery a given app is using and you can compare that with other apps that does similar things; but this would be a very indirect and non-scientific way if evaluating code efficiency at best. I have removed apps and/or adjusted the frequency of which apps fetch data based on the battery usage report from the os...

 

I actually read that you're not really conditioning the battery - you're actually conditioning your OS to understand how you use your phone & therefore it runs more efficiently.

 

I've herd as such as well. I also found that root users can delete the config file that tells the phone about the battery to help maintain battery life; but I've since lost the link.... I'll keep looking.