# Linaro battery life



## msburr87 (Jun 24, 2011)

I've tried several linaro builds for a couple says at a time, while I know they are all young, has anyone experienced poor battery life? Also, i've used the same kernel for all of them. While I enjoy the responsiveness, not really worth sacrificing battery life. Just my opinion, anyone else?

I would think that these optimization's wouldn't make a difference on battery life

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Reno Skyy (May 7, 2012)

Am running the latest skankwich cm9 nightlies an I got 4 hours with only 2 hour screen time on

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


----------



## tbolt81 (Jul 25, 2011)

Reno Skyy said:


> Am running the latest skankwich cm9 nightlies an I got 4 hours with only 2 hour screen time on
> 
> Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


if your referring to euroskank those builds don't implement linaro in them says so on his changelogs

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


----------



## NatemZ (Jun 13, 2011)

Seems the same as non linaro to me


----------



## Da420killa (Jun 1, 2012)

Yeah, i do not notice a difference between linaro or non linaro really either.


----------



## chaaaad (Aug 28, 2011)

My battery drains noticeably faster using the AOKP Linaro hybrid and Gummy Linaro.


----------



## jr313 (Jun 10, 2011)

Yeah I switched from the the linaro build of hybryd back to the non linaro due to battery drain. It was very noticeable I went from at least 8-9 hrs non to about 4-5 hrs with same usage and kernel.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using RootzWiki


----------



## Art Vandelay (Jan 4, 2012)

Running liquid 1.5 beta 3 with popcorn kernel and notice no bad battery. I will tell you battery was bad with the Franco 185 kernel though.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using RootzWiki


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

I've noticed a huge difference using using linaro hybrd I have to charge my phone at least twice a day even with very light usage. Where before on a really heavy use day i would charge twice.Most of the time I can't even get it to 100% but right now I'm at 85% after 5 minutes of use I'm at 85%. I'm not sure if its the hybrd aokp builds, linaro, or lean kernel?


----------



## mdrentz (Oct 25, 2011)

I've noticed the android os under battery has a keep awake time is insanely high
It almost matches the as the time of battery life. I can barely get 8 hours with no usage just idle.
I never remember it being that high on anything else. I'm currently running protosome m1. Had been on stock kernel just switched an hour ago to Franco. Not seeing much better


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

I have a lot of media server usage all's I've been doing is playing cut rope browsing the internet and sending text everything in general seems higher though. On a side note how do you guys upload screenshots mine are about 330kb and the upload limit is 300


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Linaro has about as much to do with your battery life as swallowing a sugar pill has to do with the current state of your health (assuming you're not a diabetic).


----------



## mikeymop (Jun 28, 2011)

The latest linaro cm9 build with a franco r185 built with linaro's toolchain yields me around the same battery life as before. The first day my battery died really quick because of the mediaserver scanning my phone.

The only complaint I have with my current setup, is that haxsync and facebook refuse to sync my contacts. So no contact pictures for me.


----------



## Barf (Sep 26, 2011)

Easy fix: go back to what works. Its pretty evident by posts on here and everywhere that linaros claims are a joke. Revert to your previous setup that didn't drain your battery.


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Linaro is basically some compiler optimizations and tweaks. It turns off some strict checking the compiler normally does so it can use a previously unavailable mode of optimization during the process that converts the programing language into machine readable code (basically what a compiler does for those that didn't know). Any performance increase is in tasks that the CPU does and those are much more limited on Android 4.0 than previously. It's not going to make your games run faster and if it does much of anything, it *might* make a few things that are not already cached (stored) in memory load a little faster, but that's rather subjective as of now.

The Linaro team's demo benchmarks that were eaten up by the Android linkbait blogs and the community as a whole were also misleading. They showed framerates at double what they were normally, but this was only due to their benchmarks doing software rendering (thus using the CPU) and not capped at 30fps because on the non-linaro toolchain, it uses double buffering with gpu rendering combined with vertical sync (vsync). PC gamers might know the term from triple buffering (to avoid the latency [lag] issues caused with using vsync) where you're capped at 60fps while using vsync due to staying in sync with the display refresh rate (60hz). The only performance it might do for graphics is where something is still using software rending on Android 4.0, which isn't too many areas.

Someone is bound to read this though and say, "But yarly, isn't 60fps better than 30fps so we should disable GPU rendering right?" No, lol. GPU handles graphics much more efficiently than the CPU ever could, which means the CPU is way over-tasked when it has to deal with them. That means it spends time doing graphics when it should be reading/writing to files, handling physics and dealing with memory. If software (CPU) rendering were better, then there would be no opengl and no directx. Not to mention the framerates on hardware (GPU) rendering would kick the shit out of the software rendering if it were unthrottled from vsync (which is not a good idea to do either).

In short, linaro is mostly over-hyped and performance increases from it so minimal (and maybe specious) and far between that no one will be able to point and say, "Yes, this part right here when I'm using my phone is running faster due to linaro!" Should developers not use it? If they can, why not, but it's not some holy grail that will make Android trounce every other mobile OS out there on performance.


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

yarly said:


> Linaro is basically some compiler optimizations and tweaks. It turns off some strict checking the compiler normally does so it can use a previously unavailable mode of optimization during the process that converts the programing language into machine readable code (basically what a compiler does for those that didn't know). Any performance increase is in tasks that the CPU does and those are much more limited on Android 4.0 than previously. It's not going to make your games run faster and if it does much of anything, it *might* make a few things that are not already cached (stored) in memory load a little faster, but that's rather subjective as of now.
> 
> The Linaro team's demo benchmarks that were eaten up by the Android linkbait blogs and the community as a whole were also misleading. They showed framerates at double what they were normally, but this was only due to their benchmarks doing software rendering (thus using the CPU) and not capped at 30fps because on the non-linaro toolchain, it uses double buffering with gpu rendering combined with vertical sync (vsync). PC gamers might know the term from triple buffering (to avoid the latency [lag] issues caused with using vsync) where you're capped at 60fps while using vsync due to staying in sync with the display refresh rate (60hz). The only performance it might do for graphics is where something is still using software rending on Android 4.0, which isn't too many areas.
> 
> ...


But if it wasn't an improvement to the OS why is there code being submitted to AOSP?


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

Also there is no way that it has no effect on battery. Maybe not directly due to linaro but the current implementation of it causes issuea


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Kprz24 said:


> But if it wasn't an improvement to the OS why is there code being submitted to AOSP?


I never said it wasn't. Please don't tl;dr my post or cherry pick.

I said it was over-hyped and its impact was minimal on the overall performance of Android, but that shouldn't discount adding it to a ROM if it's not overly complicated to do so (currently it breaks a lot of graphical stuff in Cyanogen 9 so they're probably not going to fully implement the tweaks made by them). Lots of small improvements get added to code, not sure how that's much of an argument to counter what I said. However, it's just not going to be this amazing super improvement that people have made it out to be.

Perhaps the biggest performance hindrance on Android is Java and that will only be improved as the Dalvik (java) virtual machine on Android matures. Android uses their own Java virtual machine (JVM) (which is partially related to why Oracle sued them) instead of using the Sun (now Oracle) virtual machine. Sun's JVM is much more optimized than Google's Dalvik VM. The JVM for those that haven't read much on virtual machines before is it translates the Java code written by the programmer into something the VM can read and interpret and then it passes along what the CPU should do based on what it interprets (so it acts as a middle man instead of directly talking to the CPU so it can run on multiple platforms without [theoretically] needing code changes by the developers).

You can find that out about performance by comparing the tests the Monotouch group did with Mono (Microsoft .net on Linux) for android versus Dalvik android Java. The Mono comparisons were much faster, but if you go and compare Mono to the Sun JVM for the same benchmark, the JVM trounces the performance of Mono (though .net on Windows is faster, but we're not using Windows  ). The virtual machine differences and reasons for those are more complicated that can be summed up in a paragraph here, but the Dalvik VM still has a ways to go before it hits any real maximum performance ceiling.


----------



## hulk2 (Sep 17, 2011)

I'm running the miui build and battery life is good for me at least 10 wit regular usage but I did run my battery down and started from there

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using RootzWiki


----------



## Barf (Sep 26, 2011)

Yarly never said there was no benefit, just that their claims of its improvements are misleading. End of discussion. And it shouldn't effect battery life. Wow. People need a dose of common sense.


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

yarly said:


> I never said it wasn't. Please don't tl;dr my post or cherry pick.
> 
> I said it was over-hyped and its impact was minimal on the overall performance of Android, but that shouldn't discount adding it to a ROM if it's not overly complicated to do so (currently it breaks a lot of graphical stuff in Cyanogen 9 so they're probably not going to fully implement the tweaks made by them). Lots of small improvements get added to code, not sure how that's much of an argument to counter what I said. However, it's just not going to be this amazing super improvement that people have made it out to be.
> 
> ...


Okay but just in actual experience from hybrd to the linaro version of it the battery takes a serious hit and it can't just be a coincidence that all these people are complaining of of poor battery life on linaro builds


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Kprz24 said:


> Okay but just in actual experience from hybrd to the linaro version of it the battery takes a serious hit and it can't just be a coincidence that all these people are complaining of of poor battery life on linaro builds


Glad to see you're now changing the subject when you reply to me instead of just totally ignoring what I say







.

However, you're pretty much now ignoring what everyone else has said in this thread. I don't see "all these people" saying much that agrees with you. I see a few and mostly everyone else is saying battery is the same. It's also doubtful that any ROM only pushed changes that were related to linaro and only linaro and there are other factors most users probably didn't notice that factored into battery loss and when someone brought up that it might be linaro, they might have decided that seemed like a logical conclusion. I would be more interested in how many would have agreed it was linaro and not some other random factor if it had not been brought up to begin with.

Phones are so abstracted out from users on many levels compared to a PC (though PCs OSs are going that way as well where it's not needed, sadly to us power users) that it's easy to not pay attention to underlying factors when you're not focused intently on the device throughout the day (location, usage of the device, whether it was on wifi/3g/lte and many other things). I generally don't pay attention to all the usage on my phone (which sometimes just comes automatic when you are used to it enough). I presume other people tend to be the same and don't notice everything unless they're just tuned in specifically to watching every single little instance of use.

I guess you just want to be contrary for contrary's sake? Sorry, but I am not interested in debating with you.


----------



## Mustang302LX (Jun 28, 2011)

yarly said:


> I never said it wasn't. Please don't tl;dr my post or cherry pick.
> 
> I said it was over-hyped and its impact was minimal on the overall performance of Android, but that shouldn't discount adding it to a ROM if it's not overly complicated to do so (currently it breaks a lot of graphical stuff in Cyanogen 9 so they're probably not going to fully implement the tweaks made by them). Lots of small improvements get added to code, not sure how that's much of an argument to counter what I said. However, it's just not going to be this amazing super improvement that people have made it out to be.
> 
> ...


tl;dr yarly knows his shit!

p.s. this is my 5000th post...yeah I'm a post whore and need help 

and now back to Linaro


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Yay 5000th post


----------



## SpinningHook (Jun 15, 2011)

I have been using the recent lean kernel 230 experimentals with both linaro and non linaro builds of Gummy and Hybryd and have seen no real change in battery life.


----------



## Soapinmouth (Jun 21, 2011)

on liquid 1.5RC I haven't had any noticeable difference in battery drain


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

yarly said:


> Glad to see you're now changing the subject when you reply to me instead of just totally ignoring what I say
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm not changing the subject the main point of this thread is battery life with linaro. Maybe you would see all these people people if you opened your eyes to other threads .take your doubts and go compare hybrid to protostome while your at it flash them and compare the battery life your self p.s. I was never debating with you


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

> I'm not changing the subject the main point of this thread is battery life with linaro


My mistake, we're getting back on topic after you derailed it by not reading my post (or briefly skimming over it) about the impact (or lack of) of linaro additions so far in Android. I'm also not the only one to say that. Roman (AOKP) has and so has the Cyanogen team.



> Maybe you would see all these people people if you opened your eyes to other threads


Not my obligation to go find and read other threads about issues that don't exist to me. You are the one calling me into doubt, not the other way around



> Take your doubts and go compare hybrid to protostome while your at it flash them and compare the battery life your self


Not interested in wasting my time flashing random ROMs I don't use. Also not on me to prove anything, it's on you. I would also start looking through their source trees for before and after changes and finding out of they can make a difference or not if you want to prove me wrong. If anything, someone probably made a mistake merging something somewhere and if there is a reason you have crap battery, it's due to that mistake(s) and not linaro. Since linaro is lower level C/C++ changes in the parts changed in the source, that's a likely cause if someone wasn't paying close enough attention when they edited a file.



> I was never debating with you


You're right. Your comments were too vague, side-stepping and lacking details to debate me.


----------



## Mustang302LX (Jun 28, 2011)

Can't we all just get along?


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Mustang302LX said:


> Can't we all just get along?


No, lol.


----------



## Kprz24 (Sep 22, 2011)

yarly said:


> My mistake, we're getting back on topic after you derailed it by not reading my post (or briefly skimming over it) about the impact (or lack of) of linaro additions so far in Android. I'm also not the only one to say that. Roman (AOKP) has and so has the Cyanogen team.
> 
> Not my obligation to go find and read other threads about issues that don't exist to me. You are the one calling me into doubt, not the other way around
> 
> ...


Oh your right I was off track why don't you do yourself a favor and read anyone of your posts. I read all of your posts in their entirety and I chose to disregard maturity of it to avoid taking the thread even more off topic than you did. I never said anything about the amount of linaro additions that were made as you should know one bad piece of code is enough to make the system behave improperly. This is were I be the bigger man and let you think what you want. You can take the horse to water but you can't make it drink.


----------



## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

> Oh your right I was off track why don't you do yourself a favor and read anyone of your posts.


As I recall, you called me out and started this tirade of 1-2 pages of back and forth posting. I was merely educating people with the information I find on things such as Linaro and how much it really affected the Android OS so far. I'm a professional developer in real life so I read code all day and look into things like that. Some users like to hear about something interesting I might find while looking through code or conversing with other developers on topics. Users don't have to agree with me (and doesn't matter if everyone always does), but I do generally know what I am talking about most of the time and I try to do my best to bring knowledge to the community. When I'm proven wrong I fess up and correct myself though. However, that as the case here.



> I read all of your posts in their entirety and I chose to disregard maturity of it to avoid taking the thread even more off topic than you did.


I don't exactly follow what you're saying here. The mature thing to do (from your standpoint) would have been not to call me out as being wrong at all if that were the case as it became off topic as soon as you did that. It's a little late to go and say that now.



> I never said anything about the amount of linaro additions that were made as you should know one bad piece of code is enough to make the system behave improperly.


Which may have nothing to do with Linaro at all (though all you have said is that it did have to do with Linaro before I pointed out that it may not). Feel free to go find that bad piece code for me as you wish to prove me wrong. Though it's kind of moot either way, because it's a mistake on the developer of the ROM you use and not due to Linaro. If you find it the issue, perhaps suggest to the developer of your ROM test better before releasing and ignore those that want him to push it out sooner.



> This is were I be the bigger man and let you think what you want.


I'm pretty sure the "bigger man award" waved goodbye a few pages back. We're just onto fighting while the ship sinks.

Honestly. I don't get the least bit worked up over this and you're welcome to think what you like about your ROM, but it comes down to either there is no issue with the ROM you are using and Linaro or the developer of your ROM made a mistake(s) when trying to merge Linaro into it. I'll leave it be and let everyone else form their own view based on the conversations we had.


----------



## Mustang302LX (Jun 28, 2011)

Thread has exceeded its shelf life.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Nexus running AOKP via the RootzWiki app.


----------

