Screen Mode - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Dynamic, Standard, Movie, i usually keep mine on standard, perhaps a silly question but would having it on dynamic use up any unnecessary battery (probably not but would be good to know for sure)
Thanks

Well Dynamic mode enriches the color and contrast, so it will enrich the white color too, so that could drain more battery, maybe I thought too much. Shouldn't drain more battery IMO.
And why there is a crap Movie mode, who will use it ?

So in a nutshell if i have dynamic mode set is it going to cause more battery drainage does anyone know for certain?

Related

[IDEA] [DEV] Display Battery Draw

I'm not sure if this is something we can solve via software but I've noticed some oddities with the power draw of the display on the Nexus One.
In my(very unscientific) testing, I've found that the display of the Nexus One seems to draw about as much power when almost completely black(all black pixels except the notification bar) as it does when displaying the normal range of colors throughout. The way I found this is that after about 1/2 hour with the screen all black except the notification bar(listening to online radio via flash in the browser, zoomed in completely to the bottom which had all black pixels), in the battery usage info it showed 71% of the battery usage was from the display and my battery was a little less than 90%.
When doing the same without zooming into the bottom, so it fully shows the animations and normal color range on the display, I see about the same battery drain and about the same percentage used by the display.
Obviously, there could be some fluctuation here, but given how much drain is from the display(consistently about 70% of the total 10% battery drain), and how consistently I get these or similar results, I'm forced to infer that the display uses about the same amount of power, regardless of whether it's displaying only black or a full normal range of color.
Even accounting for the inconsistencies resulting from my admittedly poor testing methods, I should be seeing a massive difference in battery usage by the display between these two scenarios. So, what I'm wondering is if this could be a problem in the driver for the display, not using adequate power management, a problem with the screen hardware itself, or just a problem with the battery usage reporting in Android? Or the other possibility, that I'm misunderstanding how the tech works and there shouldn't be a significant difference in battery drain depending on how much of the display is being used.
Also, I'd like to see if other people are having similar findings.
Finally, a note: I'm reaching a bit outside of my expertise with this topic, so forgive me if my expectations are completely off base.
Dump the actual current draw of the phone, say, once a second (in ADB), round it a little bit - and you'll see the exact difference between all black display and colored display.
To show the value:
cat sys/class/power_supply/battery/current_now
You need to loop it and save the results (write a small script?).
The display draw indication is not something to base on, since it's too "virtual" and includes lots of things.
Jack_R1 said:
Dump the actual current draw of the phone, say, once a second (in ADB), round it a little bit - and you'll see the exact difference between all black display and colored display.
To show the value:
cat sys/class/power_supply/battery/current_now
You need to loop it and save the results (write a small script?).
The display draw indication is not something to base on, since it's too "virtual" and includes lots of things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, that doesn't seem to update very often, I'm getting the exact same value for like a full minute regardless of what changes occur. At any rate, it's also giving really strange results, with a value fluctuating around 291000(no idea what units are being used) with the screen off entirely and around 157000 when displaying the homescreen(with a live wallpaper running). So, I have no idea what these values mean but I'll post my results anyway:
Full brightness:
displaying full screen black image: about 253000
displaying full screen white image: about -100000
So, obviously there's a huge difference here. Looking at them straight forwardly, it looks like a pitch black screen uses far more current, but then a white image has negative current and I have no idea what that would even mean. Do these values use some kind of inverted units?
You're getting positive current because it is charging (through USB). The negative value means it is drawing more power than the USB cable is supplying. With your values, the white image is drawing far more power than the black one.
persiansown said:
You're getting positive current because it is charging (through USB). The negative value means it is drawing more power than the USB cable is supplying. With your values, the white image is drawing far more power than the black one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, that makes sense(though it's surprising, that'd mean that if I leave it on a white screen and have it charging it'll discharge? I suppose that's probably happening because it's connected to a computer and not an outlet.
At any rate, the implication is that the battery usage stats are horribly inaccurate, since the percentage used by the screen should be MUCH higher when actually drawing things than when not. Time for another test, though, I think. I'll test to see how it performs when displaying just the notification bar, to see how the power draw scales with that.
...And it looks like I'm getting slightly higher usage than the all-black screen, exactly what you'd expect. So... what's going on with the battery usage percentage? It appears to not just be off by a small amount, but rather wildly inaccurate.
Is this turned into an app, id definiately buy it.
[email protected] said:
I'm not sure if this is something we can solve via software but I've noticed some oddities with the power draw of the display on the Nexus One.
In my(very unscientific) testing, I've found that the display of the Nexus One seems to draw about as much power when almost completely black(all black pixels except the notification bar) as it does when displaying the normal range of colors throughout.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not quite the case. Android developer Jeff Sharkey just recently did some testing on the screen on the battery. For all the information, check out his blog post: Android SurfaceFlinger Tricks for Fun and Profit.
There was a definite difference between all black and full color.
There are indeed ways to address this with software (or at least some personal customizations), most all of which are either indicated or alluded to in the post.
[email protected] said:
(no idea what units are being used)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The units are in microAmpers (uA).
Positive current means charging, negative means discharging.
And yes, as noted correctly a couple of posts above, you're testing while connected to USB (slow) charger, and that's the reason for your readings.

The annoying brightness changing issue

I've heard it's a common issue so I won't go into detail but it's the issue where the brightness changes slightly even when you're not in auto brightness mode, something to do with being one of the Tegra 3 power saving features. I have two questions in regards to this issue;
1. Does this occur/frequency it occurs change between balanced and normal modes.
2. If it happens less in normal mode, what is the effect on battery life of setting the tablet to normal mode over balanced mode?
Thanks.
I've really only noticed it dimming when a dark image (black) consumes a majority of the display. Not bad at all and doesn't adversely affect viewing.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
I for one really hate it.
It is very annoying when watching a movie. I rarely notice it while surfing the web but i do see it. It is mostly noticeable if the movie you are watching has very bright scenes. Although it seems to me that most people don't notice it or just don't care.
Magickal
Makes watching "How the Universe Works" in bed somewhat frustrating. Kind of defeats the purpose of shutting off auto.
I know i have seen it multiple times while watching shows at night. I am not sure if it happens in normal mode as i do not often need the extra power.
it is so annoying while watching family guy, i noticed it even changes contrast too. hope it will be fixed soon, since its new technology it has its flaws...

Battery Usage Patterns

I thought I'd start a thread to track battery usage patterns, to see if we can identify some consistent... well... patterns across Primes. This is NOT meant to be a complaint thread, but rather to simply indicate how much battery is used per hour for given use cases. I realize there are bound to be many variations (e.g., how often email syncs, how many accounts are syncing, how much Flash is running, etc.), so I'm looking to just see if people are having the same range of experiences in terms of battery life.
Note: I believe that there's still quite a bit of tweaking to be done on how the Tegra 3 manages processor states. I think it spends too much time at higher states for some things, particularly browsing.
This is what I've found to be fairly consistent. All results are on lowest screen brightness except where noted, Balanced mode, undocked, in good wifi range, and running .15.
1. Standby (with wifi connected and background sync running): .3%-.5%/hour.
2. Light use (ebook reading, email, calendar, task managers, etc.): 7.5%-10%/hour.
3. Video (e.g., HBO Go in the browser, YouTube, Netflix): 10%-15%/hour, with brightness at about 30%.
4. Browsing (with Flash on-demand and moderately used, stock browser): 15%/hour consistently. Includes apps that use the browser, such as Google Reader.
5. Gaming (pretty much any game, from Angry Birds to Shadowgun): 30%/hour consistently.
6. IPS+ Mode and full brightness, light use: 30%/hour. IPS+ mode is a killer, but worth it to me for sunlight visibility when I need it.
For me, battery use is quite acceptable across all use cases except browsing. It makes little sense to me that viewing video (with higher brightness to boot, and including video running in the browser) would use less battery life than browsing--perhaps they've charged up processor speeds when the browser runs to overcome some inherent performance issues with it?
If you've made note of any consistent battery usage patterns like this, please report them in this thread.
These results are consistent with my experience, probably closer to 20% on the browser %. I'm also surprised at how quickly the browser uses up my battery. I've tried using different browsers and have noticed no appreciable difference. I've also set everything to manual sync, except for Gmail. I use the balanced mode with screen brightness set to approx. 30%. I almost never use Flash when browsing.
Nobody else wants to weigh in?
wynand32 said:
I thought I'd start a thread to track battery usage patterns, to see if we can identify some consistent... well... patterns across Primes. This is NOT meant to be a complaint thread, but rather to simply indicate how much battery is used per hour for given use cases. I realize there are bound to be many variations (e.g., how often email syncs, how many accounts are syncing, how much Flash is running, etc.), so I'm looking to just see if people are having the same range of experiences in terms of battery life.
Note: I believe that there's still quite a bit of tweaking to be done on how the Tegra 3 manages processor states. I think it spends too much time at higher states for some things, particularly browsing.
This is what I've found to be fairly consistent. All results are on lowest screen brightness except where noted, Balanced mode, undocked, in good wifi range, and running .15.
1. Standby (with wifi connected and background sync running): .3%-.5%/hour.
2. Light use (ebook reading, email, calendar, task managers, etc.): 7.5%-10%/hour.
3. Video (e.g., HBO Go in the browser, YouTube, Netflix): 10%-15%/hour, with brightness at about 30%.
4. Browsing (with Flash on-demand and moderately used, stock browser): 15%/hour consistently. Includes apps that use the browser, such as Google Reader.
5. Gaming (pretty much any game, from Angry Birds to Shadowgun): 30%/hour consistently.
6. IPS+ Mode and full brightness, light use: 30%/hour. IPS+ mode is a killer, but worth it to me for sunlight visibility when I need it.
For me, battery use is quite acceptable across all use cases except browsing. It makes little sense to me that viewing video (with higher brightness to boot, and including video running in the browser) would use less battery life than browsing--perhaps they've charged up processor speeds when the browser runs to overcome some inherent performance issues with it?
If you've made note of any consistent battery usage patterns like this, please report them in this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Naturally I don't particularly want to screenshot my usage over an entire week or anything, but here are my general figures so far on update .15 with all my apps as I see it.
Again, I don't have anything backing it up and haven't done detailed analysis on battery drain since .13, but I generally get 3 days with varying use including hard gaming for short stints.
1. Standby (with wifi connected and background sync running): .3% (pretty consistent, but some times the Prime won't enter Deep Sleep which unmercifully consumes)
2. Light use (ebook reading, email, calendar, etc.): 5%/hour
3. Video (Netflix): 8%/hour, with brightness at about 10%
4. Browsing (with Flash always-on and moderately used, Opera Mobile): 15%/hour
5. Gaming (set to Performance, OC'd to 1.6 gHZ): 35%/hour
6. IPS+ Mode and full brightness, light use: 40%/hour
My tab wont deep sleep only when docked. Sometimes I lose 4% an hour sleeping while docked.. pathetic. When not docked I can see with battery monitor widget that I lose 1% every 8 hours
d1ez3 said:
My tab wont deep sleep only when docked. Sometimes I lose 4% an hour sleeping while docked.. pathetic. When not docked I can see with battery monitor widget that I lose 1% every 8 hours
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine goes into deep sleep when docked no problem, and standby usage remains about the same.
But, I don't want to derail this thread. It's about usage patterns when undocked, specifically to avoid throwing the dock into the mix as another variable.
Just wanted to resurrect this thread, and ask if anyone is having a problem where reported battery life drops by 2% periodically instead of 1%. Seems like there's a glitch either in how the system is reporting battery life.
See the attached pic... Notice 70% to 68% and 59% to 57%.
wynand32 said:
Just wanted to resurrect this thread, and ask if anyone is having a problem where reported battery life drops by 2% periodically instead of 1%. Seems like there's a glitch either in how the system is reporting battery life.
See the attached pic... Notice 70% to 68% and 59% to 57%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not updating or syncing or something? Do you use a real-time monitoring widget, or multiple diagnostics apps? These things will tax the system here and there for their information won't they?
buxtahuda said:
It's not updating or syncing or something? Do you use a real-time monitoring widget, or multiple diagnostics apps? These things will tax the system here and there for their information won't they?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just use the Battery Drain app, and all it does is poll every minute to see what battery life is at. I suppose the app could be skipping a minute, but then I'd hope it would adjust and not report twice the usage/hour. And, I'm pretty sure I've caught the battery life dropping like that outside of the app.
Thing is that it's not just using more power per hour according to the app, but that it's dropping the 2%. Just a minor mystery...

Possible to change display refresh rate?

So ive noticed a marginal increase of battery life on my shield tablet by switching the power mode to 30 FPS and I was wondering if there was a way to change the G3's display refresh also? I just like experimienting with stupid settings like that. I dont use my G3 for games, mainly GPS and youtube, so refresh isnt that big of a deal to me. I would just like to find more ways to squeeze battery life and performance, as if my ZeroLemon isnt enough...haha.
Any help/Ideas would be AWESOME! Btw, running Eclipse!

Question Light profile under battery profiles

Hello all, has anyone used this profile? If so, is it any good?
amirage said:
Hello all, has anyone used this profile? If so, is it any good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very good indeed save allot of battery life without any noticeable loss in performance and no reduction in screen's refresh rate
Many people praise this light mode but I don't really get it, if it's so much better and literally same performance as the standard mode; what would be the reason or higher performance of the standard mode? Doesn't make sense at all.
Mozie said:
Many people praise this light mode but I don't really get it, if it's so much better and literally same performance as the standard mode; what would be the reason or higher performance of the standard mode? Doesn't make sense at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not the same performance. The peak clock of the X3 core is reduced in this mode. The thing is, it's not going to be noticeable in the day to day because the SoC is so beastly anyway. If you're doing heavier duty tasks like gaming or video encoding, you're more likely to notice.
ETA: I just found out that Light performance mode is disabled when Samsung's gaming tool detects a game so there would actually be no negative effect on gaming when using Light mode. Really there probably isn't going to be much of an impact other than on benchmarks that's noticeable to anyone as performance stability should be improved as well providing a smoother overall experience.

Categories

Resources