# Battery Comparison for CM9 and WebOS



## Xentar712 (Jan 22, 2012)

I posted in the CM9 forum that I would test the battery discharge rate in different scenarios if I got the chance. I ended up getting around to it this weekend. Not the most groundbreaking stuff here, but thought I would share. The goal was to see just how bad the Gtalk app and Wifi drained the battery. Keep in mind, I tried to control everything as best as possible but we're still comparing apples to oranges between CM9 and WebOS:

-Unless in standby, testing was done at the home screen with a plain background
-Each 2 hour test was done right after a fresh boot
-Brightness was turned up all the way and no tiles/apps were opened.
-Bluetooth was off for all tests
-Since I don't have fractions of a percent, I timed how long it took to tick down that extra percent after taking it out of standby.
-Google Talk IM was on for WebOS
-charging was done via stock cable and wall charger

*CM9 results:*
-With Wifi off, battery went from 83% to 82% in exactly 2 hours while in standby, with an additional 1 minute and 31 seconds at homescreen with full brightness until it hit 81%

-With Wifi off, it takes an average of 3 minutes and 20 seconds to charge 1% with screen at full brightness

-With Wifi on and GTalk off, 80% to 77% in exactly 2 hours while in standby, with an additional 4 minutes at homescreen with full brightness until 76%(it actually ticked to 77% as I turned it on from standby)

-With Wifi on and GTalk off, it takes an average of 3 minutes and 22 seconds to charge 1% with screen at full brightness

-With Wifi on and GTalk on, 80% to 76% in exactly 2 hours while in standby, with an additional 2 minute and 51 seconds at homescreen with full brightness until 75%

-With Wifi on and GTalk on, it takes an average of 3 minutes and 17 seconds to charge 1% with screen at full brightness

*WebOS results:*
-With Wifi off, 84% to 84% in exactly 2 hours while in standby, with an additional 3 minutes and 7 seconds at homescreen with full brightness until 83%

-With Wifi off, it takes an average of 3 minutes and 10 seconds to charge 1% with screen at full brightness

-With Wifi on, 82% to 81% in exactly 2 hours while in standby, with an additional 4 minutes and 57 seconds at homescreen with full brightness until 80%

-With Wifi on, it takes an average of 3 minutes and 20 seconds to charge 1% with screen at full brightness

*In a nutshell:*
-CM9 uses the battery a lot more than WebOS does(as everyone could obviously tell).

-Also as we figured before, GTalk does have a significant effect on the battery drainage. Turning it off helps.

-Wifi also seems to be a big battery drainer, but there is definitely room for improvement for future builds. It barely made a difference in battery drainage for WebOS, whether it was on or off.

-Charging rate is not affected by Wifi or OS while the TP is in standby mode. (I've tested earlier that the charge rate is slowed if you use a live wallpaper with the native clock.apk on the touchstone.)

-There's still one more test I can do: testing the drain on power when wifi sees multiple networks but cannot connect(bad channels). Doubt it's much different but who knows.

Of course, this means nothing to most of us because we like to keep our Wifi on. If you're in a pinch for a power cord though, or in an area with no wifi for a while, it's best to flick it off to save battery.


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## derausgewanderte (Oct 22, 2011)

great, thank you for the detailed study!


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## Gradular (Feb 1, 2012)

My next free day I need to study my charging because it seems on my TP it charges faster in WebOS then ICS.


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## Xentar712 (Jan 22, 2012)

Gradular said:


> My next free day I need to study my charging because it seems on my TP it charges faster in WebOS then ICS.


From what I've seen, as long as the screen is off, they charge about the same. It was taking up to 50% longer when I still had the stock clock.apk running while on the toushstone dock(not to mention how warm it got)


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## nickmv (Aug 26, 2011)

So how are you turning off GTalk?

I have gone into Titanium Backup and frozen the app. I just did it so I cannot comment as to how it affects batt life right now, but I'm curious as to whether folks froze it or uninstalled it altogether.


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## derausgewanderte (Oct 22, 2011)

nickmv said:


> So how are you turning off GTalk?
> 
> I have gone into Titanium Backup and frozen the app. I just did it so I cannot comment as to how it affects batt life right now, but I'm curious as to whether folks froze it or uninstalled it altogether.


people reported that you only have to start it and log out and it should be fine. Apparently it's logged in by default after a fresh install. I uninstalled it via settings/apps because I am not using it.


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## justintime3500 (Jan 19, 2012)

derausgewanderte said:


> people reported that you only have to start it and log out and it should be fine. Apparently it's logged in by default after a fresh install. I uninstalled it via settings/apps because I am not using it.


I tried both. Didn't get any results until I uninstalled it... which I don't really understand.

There are a lot of things about this that confuse me actually... while my battery life has gotten to what I deem acceptable, it doesn't seem to burn any faster even with the heaviest apps ( i.e. slingbox, splashtop or youtube ). I get about the same life whether I leave it streaming slingbox all day, or if its idle. Always shakes out to about 2 full days.


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## Devedander (Nov 16, 2011)

could you post your ma drain during tests? battery monitor free will give you an eadsy histiory to test with.


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## poontab (Jun 7, 2011)

Moved to general. Please use development sections for releases only.


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## tusman (Sep 2, 2011)

thank you.


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## ScottZirra (Sep 14, 2011)

I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this was. Of course the device gets longer life with a disabled wifi radio. Of course the ALPHA CM9 gets worse life than the WebOS designed with knowledge of the hardware. What exactly are you trying to prove?


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## Xentar712 (Jan 22, 2012)

ScottZirra said:


> I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this was. Of course the device gets longer life with a disabled wifi radio. Of course the ALPHA CM9 gets worse life than the WebOS designed with knowledge of the hardware. What exactly are you trying to prove?


Not trying to prove anything. Not sure how I implied that... I was only following up on a post I made earlier when people were wondering what some causes of the heavier battery drain were. If you read my post, you'll see that wifi and google talk have a heavy effect on the battery life. If you want to preserve some life, those are two options. That's all.


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## oswade (Oct 19, 2011)

I got almost 5 days battery life light use (this is very estimated since we dont have proper batt stats).

Wifi was on for about 12hrs, screen was on for about 2-3hrs, played an hour or so of music (screen mostly off), surfed the net for about an hour, watched a 1hr video.

My rom is quite optimised for battery though (deleted all unneccessary apps, underclocked the cpu etc).

edit: oh and brightness was generally low or medium (depending on time of day).


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Android will always use more battery thanks to Google's love affair with Java. Java just sucks the life out of a CPU due to needing a virtual machine to run it (yes even dalvik, is still more or less a virtual machine even if it's not the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)).


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## ScottZirra (Sep 14, 2011)

Xentar712 said:


> Not trying to prove anything. Not sure how I implied that... I was only following up on a post I made earlier when people were wondering what some causes of the heavier battery drain were. If you read my post, you'll see that wifi and google talk have a heavy effect on the battery life. If you want to preserve some life, those are two options. That's all.


Understood. There are also a whole host of other things you can do that people may not think about as well. Especially if the thought "wifi-off = better battery" did not occur. Set screen off time lower, lower brightness, disable wifi-on during sleep, disable haptic, etc, etc. If I am reading your above test correctly, this looks like you used the % battery in the notification window and observed it? What I suggest you do is run the Battery Monitor Widget App over longer charge periods with multiple condition sets. I will even go so far as to post my own findings in this thread to help you build this information if you are interested. Obviously Battery Monitor Widget is only for Android, but we are all aware that WebOS battery life is going to be better than CM9 so what is the point? I personally have managed over 17 days on 1 webOS charge on very minimal use, but we all installed android for functionality anyway, not battery life.

Since updating to newest release and installing battery monitor, below is a screenshot of my current drain. I will update the next several days drain with wifi on, no changes to Talk, and wake-lock on and post my results, if you would like to build a cohesive data set.

What concerns me is that the battery tab under settings shows "Battery usage data not available", which suggests that power requirements for individual components is not properly known,or at least not included in the kernel's estimation of battery usage.

Here are 2 screencaps. the first one being my battery usage with battery monitor widget. Ignore everything before the big spike, as I just forced a full discharge and then flashed newest alpha.

http://postimage.org/image/63d2hkicz/

The 2nd one is the message in settings under battery tab.

http://postimage.org/image/feuzk5mhx/

As I stated previously, If you want to build a data set, I will continue posting my personal drains with wake-lock on. To keep my tab awake I am using WakeLock from the market in full wake lock mode. I also suspect that part of the drain with wifi on is due to the actual connection being open, as in app update checks, google voice, gmail checks, anything that can pop a notification. My assumption would be that these types of alerts check on various time intervals, thereby bringing the touchpad into a semi wake state that allows reception of this "critical" data. So i would suggest several drain cycles with WakeLock on, wifi on, but not connected as another data set.

Edit: Looking further into Battery Monitor Widget, I notice that if you select Estimates, and then statistics you can get what appears to be a list of apps/services and estimated battery usage for each one:

http://postimage.org/image/7acpxnawt/

Full Drain under WakeLock full lock, wifi on. Charged while off.

http://postimage.org/image/4z8n62r65/

I am going to assume by your lack of response, that you are not interested in building this data set. I will discontinue keeping track.


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## Xentar712 (Jan 22, 2012)

ScottZirra said:


> I am going to assume by your lack of response, that you are not interested in building this data set. I will discontinue keeping track.


Hey, sorry for not responding sooner - I've been pretty busy with stuff from work this week and there's no end in sight. If I get time to start this after my trip this week, I'll PM you. Thanks!


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## ScottZirra (Sep 14, 2011)

Xentar712 said:


> Hey, sorry for not responding sooner - I've been pretty busy with stuff from work this week and there's no end in sight. If I get time to start this after my trip this week, I'll PM you. Thanks!


K. I still have several days drain, I'll get around posting it in the next few days under various conditions.


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## davidtlong (Jan 14, 2012)

Well,

I have tried alot and still maybe 5 is good hours of use. WEBos has little drain. If I charge in webos to 100% and then boot to Android, I am all ready down to 96 or 97%.


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