Question about multi-tasking...

[pipskicks]

So I really like to run Dolphin in the background and it runs fine (on Fresh 1.1 with Gumbo Kernel + setcpu) and I have 2-3 tabs open and everything else runs fine. I try not to run too much else (if I do ebuddy it gets slow, so I usually don't), but I was wondering how bad this was to do, and if I could check somehow how bad it was.

I don't know a way to tell how draining this is on the battery or how the phone runs, is there any way to check?

 

[Robchaos]

You do have a way to see how the phone is running. If it seems to slow down or the battery life doesn't last as long as when your using the phone lightly, then you are using up more processing power. The phone won't compute itself into a fireball or anything, just use it and if it slows down to the point of being unusable when multitasking, close an app or two.

 

[pipskicks]

You do have a way to see how the phone is running. If it seems to slow down or the battery life doesn't last as long as when your using the phone lightly, then you are using up more processing power. The phone won't compute itself into a fireball or anything, just use it and if it slows down to the point of being unusable when multitasking, close an app or two.

Sorry to clarify this one. I seem to be able to tell if my phone suddenly slows to a crawl, but I usually don't get an in-between. At least I'm bad at noticing it then. The battery I figure could be a lot of things, I've noticed browsing the internet drains more than talking on it, but I usually can't tell unless it drains really fast.

 

[Robchaos]

Browsing through your phones data connection is a definite battery drain. Something you can do is make sure your wifi is enabled and use a wifi connection if at all possible. If you have your phone set up to automatically connect to hotspots it knows, then it will automatically kill the phones data connection and use the wifi connection. I have noticed a significant increase in battery life @ home just from using my wifi compared to phone data connection. Anything that is using your phones processor is going to drain your battery. More processes at once=more battery drain. Android OS seems to be pretty good at managing memory and keeping lag to a minimum. If the phone slows to a crawl just close an app you don't need open any more. Other than that all I can recommend is buy an extra usb charger for your car, and keep a charger available for at work. This can be very cheap to do because the Hero can use a normal microUSB cable to charge from a laptop.

There is one other way to increase your battery life but it involves rooting and installing Setcpu and a custom kernal to help the Hero better allocate memory and throttle back its cpu when its not needed.

Just to give you an idea, with medium use (browsing the web and marketplace, games sometimes. usually on a wifi connection) my battery would be in the red after 12 hours or so.