Does Software drain Battery Life

[AsRock]

How about an 18000mAh phone.

FAIL no headphone socket.

 

[John Naylor]

Well, if we speak literally .... software does not use battery life. It's the hardare that is needed to run the software that uses battery life. But since ya can't use one without the other ... for all intents and purposes, while software wont burn battery life just sitting there, when you run it, the battery life is eaten. I think what you might be wondering is "Does software burn battery life even when I'm not using yet. Any app that "phones home" will be doing tasks without your actively using the software and that burns battery life.

When I had the Treo 650 (best phone I ever had) ... I charged the phone once every week. And I could swap batteries in 2 seconds.

The deficiency in today's phones is that for many, they have ceased being phones and are now simply "entertainment devices". The weekly notification screen that pops up should be simplified with just two categories:

Time spent on productive activities = 09 %
Time spent on mental masturbation = 91%

 

[hat]

My iPhone 7 was last fully charged 24 hours ago, it's at 77% right now. That's the power of not using your phone 24/7. That's also with things like Facebook and other applications that do push notifications still being turned on. So much power is wasted to just to illuminate the display.

I last charged mine... 2 days and 16 hours ago, and I'm at 75%. I usually charge mine about twice a week. Now, my Galaxy s4, on the other hand... something was wrong with it. I'd have to constantly have it plugged into a charger just to get through a single day. It would even completely drain a ~2200mah battery bank. On top of that, it would randomly die while at ~40% battery, and when I tried to restart the phone, it would survive long enough to get to the main screen where I could see 2% battery or something before it died.

 

[Bill_Bright]

So much power is wasted to just to illuminate the display.

Very true. Also if BT and wifi are enabled, but you are not using them, power

 

[hat]

Very true. Also if BT and wifi are enabled, but you are not using them, power

GPS too. And it seems to be always working, to some degree, even if you're not using google maps or something. I once got stuck on the side of the road for a few near a Dollar General, and I got something in my notifications area "how was Dollar General?"...

 

[Bill_Bright]

and I got something in my notifications area "how was Dollar General?"...

LOL - I have used similar examples showing how our privacy is non-existent with our smartphones when people complain about W10 privacy. The sad part about our cell phone carriers is they can tie our locations (and everything else we don on our phones) to our real names, home addresses and billing information.

But to your point, if not completely turned off, our cell phones are just in standby mode and all sorts of stuff is still going on.

 

[Regeneration]

Android does a terrible job with real-time process reporting. Some apps drain the battery. Especially, those that remain active in the background. By rooting, you can disable system apps you don't use, and with Greenify, you can monitor/suspend 3rd party apps.

 

[Aquinus]

GPS too.

Good point, but I actually get surprisingly good battery life when the GPS is going, but when the screen is off. In fact, the battery barely drains when I'm using GPS and Spotify strictly through my Airpods. I think people really underestimate how much battery that the backlighting on a display will consume. I'll roast through the battery if the display is on and lit for any extended period of time.

 

[theFOoL]

What about those Apps that monitor battery life like Accu?

 

[hat]

Good point, but I actually get surprisingly good battery life when the GPS is going, but when the screen is off. In fact, the battery barely drains when I'm using GPS and Spotify strictly through my Airpods. I think people really underestimate how much battery that the backlighting on a display will consume. I'll roast through the battery if the display is on and lit for any extended period of time.

Oh sure, screen is always the worst offender. At least, for anyone who is on their phone a lot.

What about those Apps that monitor battery life like Accu?

That's also going to drain the battery, as it is actively monitoring other apps to see how much battery they drain. On the upside, if your battery dies a lot, such an app would help you find the culprits.

 

[Aquinus]

What about those Apps that monitor battery life like Accu?

Is it an app and is it running? If so, it uses power. There is no magical app that doesn't consume power when it's running. How much power depends on the app and the phone.

 

[natr0n]

Use power save mode perhaps.

Also less crap running uses less power.

 

[theFOoL]

It's an App off the Play-Store and phone is the Samsung S8+ on Verizon

 

[hat]

The phone itself is part of it, largely because of the battery, and to a lesser extent, the SoC. If the phone is more efficient, it will use less power, making the battery last longer. And, of course, the bigger the battery, the longer it will last. A hypothetical 50mAh battery would die very quickly. It's the same reason my Samsung 30Q batteries (3000mAh) last longer than my old Samsung 25R (2500mAh) batteries in my Kanger KBOX Mini. However, the 25R would last longer if I vaped at 20w (less apps running) than if I vaped at 40w (more apps) while using the 30Q, because I am placing less load on the battery, even though it's a smaller capacity.

All apps, when active, consume battery power. This includes actively using them, or if they're in the background somewhere (like my weather app). That's what apps that monitor battery life do. They monitor even apps in the background to see how much battery power they're consuming.

 

[Bill_Bright]

In fact, the battery barely drains when I'm using GPS

That actually makes sense because GPS uses radio "receiving" technologies. And receivers use just a tiny amount (a few µ watts or less) of power compared to cell phone transmitters which can use up to a full watt.

 

[Aquinus]

That actually makes sense because GPS uses radio "receiving" technologies. And receivers use just a tiny amount (a few µ watts or less) of power compared to cell phone transmitters which can use up to a full watt.

Sure, and in context the backlighting on the display could easily be up to a half a watt depending on the screen size and brightness. The radio isn't necessarily going 100% of the time, but the backlighting is if you're looking at your phone... unless you're just admiring the design of your phone and not using it.

 

[R-T-B]

FAIL no headphone socket.

Meh, I gave up on it when I realized how shitty all phone DACs are.

 

[AsRock]

Meh, I gave up on it when I realized how shitty all phone DACs are.

That's bound to be, average joe don't care about DAC quality.. It's sad that some company made a phone that would be considered pretty dam large and fail not even putting a headphone socket on it.

Personally i dislike all these smartphones it's making people dumber. But people keep falling for the stupid shit like sheep. Kinda like how people say they care about privicy and still use google.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Applications loaded into the memory but not executing anything will not use any extra power (DRAM uses a more or less constant rate of power). Execution (making transistors flip) is what fundamentally causes wattage to rise. Loading an application is an example of execution (invokes NAND and minor CPU activity).

Think of transistors like grains of sand. The more grains of sand that are moved in a given second, the more power it requires to do so. Power is also translatable into heat so if you're doing something on your phone and it's making it hot...that's directly proportional to how much your battery is draining (literally the power source for the heat).

 

[R-T-B]

Personally i dislike all these smartphones it's making people dumber.

It's not the phones doing that.

They are only a window into what people actually consume via them. You can't blame them anymore than you can blame video games for gun violence. They are tools that do what they are told. People look up dumb shit, they reap what they sow.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Think of transistors like grains of sand. The more grains of sand that are moved in a given second, the more power it requires to do so.

Or you could use the more applicable analogy and think of transistors as "gates" since that is the accepted terminology. When the gate is "closed" current can flow along the fence line (circuit) and right through the gate to the other side. This represents the binary "1" (also called a "high").

When the gate is "open", no current can flow so you have a "0" or "low". The state or position of that gate equals 1 "bit" of data. 8 gates equal 1 "byte" of data.

In electronics circles (and classrooms) when the gate is opened and closed, it is called a "flip flop".

It takes power to "flip" open and then more power to "flop" close the gates. Unless told to change, the gate just sits in the state it was last set. That is, it does not have to be "refreshed" and if the data (bits and bytes) don't change (1 to 0 or 0 to 1) there is no extra drain on the battery needed to hold that gate open or closed.

 

[John Naylor]

1. I suggest going into settings and turning off 24/7 location services for all apps and using the "Use location services only when using this application". I wonder how many criminals get nailed each day when law enforcement looks at their phones ..."I see you were at 7-elevem at 3:07 when the store was robbed".

2. It's more, than whether an app is on or off. For example, if your GPS is functional say when you look at compass and it shows longtitude and lattiture, that's a low power usage. Buyt when using your GPS to provide driving direction with screen constantly on and moving as you drive as well as spitting out verbal directions and beeps for red light cameras etc, yeah you are probably using more powert han any other app on your phone. Also don't forget to turn your map directions app off after you get to your destination ... BTDT and didn't have enough juice to drive home/

3. Also must remember that maybe you could drive 2 hours with that new phone and your directions app when the phone is new, might be 1 hour whgen phone is 2 years old. Hope someone brings back a phone with detachable batteries.

4. Finally ... make sure to calibrate your better about every 30 dischrage cycles .... if you charge you battery 3 nites in a from from 70% 60% and 70% (30-40-30 = 1 charging cycle), you will find yaself in a position where ya look at phone and it says 35% and 2 minutes later it's dead. If ya google "how to calibrate iPhone battery" or "how to calibrate iSamsung Phone battery" you will get shorter versions of this

https://batterycare.net/en/guide.html