Battery Life - Dalvik vs Optimized Dalvik vs ART

[radeon962]

Have been running ART on mine and the wife's N5's for the past several weeks. I ran Davlik when I originally purchased my N5 on initial release and for my use it seems I get about 1/2 hour more screen on time with ART. It does vary though depending on what you are doing. Watching a movie seems to use less battery for me than extended Web browsing. Speed wise I really can't tell a difference as the N5 is just silly fast on either.

 

[p3ntyne]

Okay, I understand that people are seeing better battery life with ART but no one has mentioned anything about the Qualcomm optimized dalvik... Am I the only one using it?

I guess the only reason I am using it is because I really love Xposed Framework which disables ART.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[anon(8256055)]

Okay, I understand that people are seeing better battery life with ART but no one has mentioned anything about the Qualcomm optimized dalvik... Am I the only one using it?

I guess the only reason I am using it is because I really love Xposed Framework which disables ART.

Posted via Android Central App

Tease us with a little more info come on.... We can handle it!

 

[p3ntyne]

Tease us with a little more info come on.... We can handle it!

A little more info...

 

[anon(8256055)]

A little more info...

LOL. OK, did some reading. I'll give it consideration

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[JohnnyBroccoli]

I switched to ART after having the phone for a week or two. Really tough to quantify how much (if any) it has improved the battery life. Anecdotal evidence is very unreliable but I'd say it probably gave me a very slight boost in battery life. Let's say maybe another 30 minutes of screen on time. Would be nice to see some scientific comparisons.

 

[xskywalker007]

When phone shows low power,you should charge it asap,it would help to improve the battery life

 

[ottscay]

I just switched to ART late last week, and I'm definitely seeing better battery life and screen on time, but I've changed my habits. I'll have a better idea next week when I get back to work. I do notice a speed increase in launching larger apps and switching between those same apps, but for anything else (swiping between screens, launching smaller apps, web browsing) all I can say is if there is a difference I can't detect it.

 

[JohnnyBroccoli]

When phone shows low power,you should charge it asap,it would help to improve the battery life

Doesn't plugging in a phone always help improve the battery life? Or are you saying that one should never let it get below 15% or something?

 

[p3ntyne]

Doesn't plugging in a phone always help improve the battery life? Or are you saying that one should never let it get below 15% or something?

I think he means it will help improve battery longevity (as in it will bettery retain its capacity.)

 

[p3ntyne]

I'm sure most of you know this, but I thought I'd share a little developer option trick to make dalvik as 'snappy' as ART. Simply enable developer options and go down the animation speeds - from there change them to your desired speed and that's it. I personallly use x0.25 for all of them and find it faster than ART.

Just a quick tip...

 

[QWIKSTRIKE]

Two weeks ago, I changed to ART. I reverted back to Dalvik. I saw perhaps very minor speed improvements in app usage. The downside was the overnight standby battery. On Dalvik, phone loses 5% or less with phone on (wifi on, cell on, no background apps). On ART, the phone lost 20-25% overnight. This was over 3 night period, so I switched back to Dalvik. During the day, didn't see any battery improvement.

I had the same discovery, Dalvik used less battery for me, but art used much more juice so I switched back. The thread on XDA said the same, and I think maybe from personal experience people may be anecdotal inspired to think that battery is better just because. I think that there needs to be a controlled analysis to discover the truth. As far as I am concerned Dalvik did far better in the battery department.

 

[lucverhoeven]

I never let any of my devices go below lets say 30%. Ever. Its bad for the batt to do a full cycle

 

[lets_go_android]

I had the same discovery, Dalvik used less battery for me, but art used much more juice so I switched back. The thread on XDA said the same, and I think maybe from personal experience people may be anecdotal inspired to think that battery is better just because. I think that there needs to be a controlled analysis to discover the truth. As far as I am concerned Dalvik did far better in the battery department.

I noticed similar behavior. Now, I should mention that I'm one of the people suffering from overnight battery drains (OBD), so my results may differ from people who don't suffer from OBD.

With Dalvik, I would start losing 30-50% battery after about 2 days after a reboot. (Rebooting temporarily fixes the draining for a couple of days.) With ART, I would lose 30-50% overnight every night. So, if your battery is prone to draining, using ART will make it worse. I didn't find ART was all that much faster when I used it either. But it may just be that the apps I use don't benefit from ART that much. My guess would be that larger and/or more graphics intensive apps would generally gain the most from ART.

 

[lets_go_android]

I'm sure most of you know this, but I thought I'd share a little developer option trick to make dalvik as 'snappy' as ART. Simply enable developer options and go down the animation speeds - from there change them to your desired speed and that's it. I personallly use x0.25 for all of them and find it faster than ART.

Just a quick tip...

Thanks for the tip, will give it a try. I'm only seeing x0.5 (not x0.25) as the smallest value available though. I'm at Settings -> Developer Options -> Window animation scale/Transition animation scale/Animator duration scale.

 

[dancing-bass]

0.5 is a stock setting. 0.25 may not be available on all phones or ROMs, but some do have it

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using AC Forums mobile app

 

[gidgiddonihah]

I had the same discovery, Dalvik used less battery for me, but art used much more juice so I switched back. The thread on XDA said the same, and I think maybe from personal experience people may be anecdotal inspired to think that battery is better just because. I think that there needs to be a controlled analysis to discover the truth. As far as I am concerned Dalvik did far better in the battery department.

I actually noticed no to very little battery life difference. The big thing for me was speed. Even UI things like the task manager button takes a split second to respond in Dalvik. In ART there is absolutely no delay. About a month or two back I installed Xposed, not knowing that it booted me back to Dalvik. I noticed the device wasn't acting quite as responsive as it usually did. I had it underclocked and undervolted so I pushed back to stock and even overclocked a bit but nothing worked. I was about to consult Google Search when I had a creeping suspicion that I got shoved back to Dalvik. True enough I had been and when I switched to ART things went back to being buttery smooth. It was enough of a difference I won't be running Xposed unless they move to ART.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[crxssi]

I never let any of my devices go below lets say 30%. Ever. Its bad for the batt to do a full cycle

Actually, it is good for the battery when it is new- to work up to a full capacity. But after that, I agree, to prolong the life of the battery, it is better to not let it get to low states. Unlike old tech, it is better to "top off" LiIon batteries regularly.

Since switching to ART, I don't notice much of anything different. Battery seems about the same to me. Speed- well, it was so fast before, if it is any faster, I just don't really notice it all that much

 

[Bront]

Just from reading in general, ART helps with battery life when your phone isn't in use, as it takes less resources for background processes to kick in. If you're constantly using the phone, optimized dalvik might possibly be better, but it's probably personal preference.

I can usually get 2 full days on a charge, occasionally 3, using ART. I wouldn't consider myself a power user though, and I have a lot of stuff setup to focus on battery life (very little syncing going on, set to 3G unless I need the speed, actively turn off BT/WIFI when they're not ready, auto-brightness, dark background, etc)