Hey, welcome to the forum. That said... please, realize that this is a forum. Read the other threads, your post is just redundant.

 

Sorry for not being clear.
The 'Battery quirks' thread is filled with stats randomly scattered throughout. And the eventual conclusion was that the stats were pointless anyways, because the battery meter in the moment doesn't measure accurately. And the various 3rd party battery meters draw from the moment's faulty measurements.

 

YW, but in the end it's pointless to compile stats that are inherently faulty.

 

Just thought you should know, when I installed Battery Left widget it doesn't let the phone go to sleep, so it drains the battery faster than normal. The best battery meter data I ever got was from Battery Graph, and its been posted in the Quirk thread.


But hey, you keep on looking for more stats that don't help, and being hostile to others in the forum who try to help.

 

I'll second the part about battery left causing the phone not to sleep.

 

Is there a deeper sleep than having the screen go black and lock (if enabled)? My phone seems to sleep just fine with this widget installed.

Also, I'd say that Battery Left seems to be reliable after it's had a few days to collect data... it may use the built-in meter for reference but it seems to do well enough compiling the real world data it gathers.

 

I don't know if I'd call it a "deeper" sleep, but it's possible for the CPU to be active even if the screen is off. The way to tell is to look at "other usage" under battery history in the "spare parts" app. Ideally your running time and your "screen on" time will be close to each other and fairly low (i.e. under 15%.) With the widget, I was running something like 20% awake with the screen on 8%.

 

In spare parts, under battery history, you can see the 'running time' %, 'screen on' %, and 'phone on' %.

If you truly put the phone to sleep, then your 'running' and 'screen on' will be within about 5% of each other. If your running time is more than that, there's an app on your phone that is killing your battery.

Also, 'running' != holding apps in memory. It means the program is actually using processor time... so using task killer doesn't necessarily mean you're helping anything except clearing up memory to reduce lag.

Battery Left seems like a great idea, I just don't think its worth knowing what my actual %charge is if it means its going to cripple the phone's charge longevity. Now that we've established that the built-in meter sucks, it's enough for me to know that I can get 36hours out of it on a single charge, regardless of what the battery indicator is telling me

 

Battery Left Info
Accuracy 75%
Full battery life: 22:0
Current status: 10:37
Battery Percent: 30%
Accurate Percent: 47%

 

When I first installed Battery Left, I discharged the phone until it shut off, then charged it completely and let it go from there. The first few days the total battery life was ~18 hours. Over the next two weeks or so, the total life has dwindled to 10 hours. I don't use the phone too much, a few calls and texts and some surfing each day, and lately the phone can't make it past 5pm.

My Battery Life accuracy is at 85% and total life is 10 hours. The phone used to last more than 10 hours before I installed this widget, even if the meter was way off. I think I'm going to uninstall it and see if I get some life back. I like the info, but if its draining the battery faster, its pointless.

 

I think I noticed this as well. I found that if you don't use the widget then it seems to be much better; It still manages to collect the information, but somehow using the widget kills battery I think.

Try not putting the widget out on a home screen to see if that fixes the problem.

 

Hi all,

Just stumbled across this thread and I've read it with much interest.

I'm the author of the widget and am very encouraged by the feedback here and on the market. Unfortunately on the market it's impossible to reply to people's feedback, so hopefully I can get more feedback in these forums.

I've been a bit out of action for the last month due to Christmas, New Year, family and travelling but I'm getting a todo list together so I can get back on with development of the widget.

Firstly, I just want to clear a few things regarding how Battery Left works:

The widget stores the duration between recorded battery changes - ie it stores the time it takes to go from 100% to 90%, and from 90% to 80% etc etc. To reach the theoretical 100% accuracy, the widget needs to store 5 readings for every level change. If you're seeing low accuracy percentage, it's probably because you rarely let your phone run down lower than 70% or so. Note that the app needs an uninterrupted time between levels - ie if it's on 80%, then you charge it just for a few seconds, it will not log the 80% - 70% duration as the charge time inbetween would make that reading invalid.

The ideal phone usage for accuracy is to charge your phone completely full, then let it run down til it's completely flat. Charge til full again, and repeat. If you don't let your phone run down, or rarely charge it up full, or, connect and disconnect from charger or USB sync constantly throughout the day the widget will struggle to get accurate readings.

I've had quite a few comments regarding excess CPU usage. I have never seen this on my Droid or test G1, but that's not to say it doesn't happen. I suspect there's something odd going on with specific phones or batteries that is causing this problem - maybe the hardware is sending battery change events very regularly. The app doesn't do any comprehensive processing so I'm not too sure where to look to fix this problem but I'll definitely keep it in mind.

Other people have said they've had problems with non-stock batteries such as the Seidio 2600 extended life battery. Theoretically there's no reason for any problem as the algorithms are flexible enough to deal with any readings from the hardware, but there obviously is some problem here. I'll try and find a battery for the G1 to test soon.

I have some great ideas that I'd like to get into the widget such as the ability to report usage to a central server so everyone can compare their readings across different phones, batteries, versions, custom ROMs etc. There's a good deal amount of work involved here but the results will be really interesting.

Anyways, over and out for now. Keep leaving feedback here and I'll take it all in.

Thanks all!

Matt

(PS I copied this post from my post on droidforums.net!)

 

Hey Matt, thanks for taking the time to stop by and address us with such a well-written response! As a follow-up, I do have to report that I observed much larger times for the phone to be awake with the screen off with your app installed than I got without it, but I know how environments can differ, it's possible that your app may have not been the culprit. With the recent fixes released for our phone, it's not the issue it was when this thread was first posted, still, I'd love to see your app come to it's true potential. As I've already paid for your app, I'd be happy to install it again and help you test any changes you may want to make, as well as be a guinea-pig for testing on the supposed processor killing issue that's been reported. Feel free to PM me and/or respond in this thread!

 

I would love to use the battery left widget if you could find a way to make it not keep the phone from entering sleep mode for the Moment, which imo kind of defeats the purpose

 

My phone had 40% battery left after 17 hours, with multiple phone calls, several texting, and a bit of web browsing and email checking.

I'm updated to CL14, but the phone lasts from 6am to 10pm every day unless I watch Sprint TV or play some video games.

 

Hi all,

I've just uploaded v1.6 to the market which hopefully fixes the CPU drain issue. let me kniow...

agent0014 - the app is free, I hope you didn't pay for it else I'm being ripped off

Zumaki - I'm not sure why/how it could stop the phone from going to sleep. Try version 1.6 though, I made a lot of changes to the processing code which should reduce memory and processor usage.

 

LOL yeah somehow I had it confused with another app I paid for but don't use... I'll check it out again soon!

 

When I click on the usage button in Battery Left, a force quit pop up message is displayed.

 

same here

 

I just look at outputted adc values

 

Frustratingly I've just figured out why this may be happening. I've just released 1.8.1 so will include a fix in 1.9, hopefully out towards the end of the week.