Battery Usage & correlation with Widgets?

[onthecouchagain]

Does anyone know if there's a correlation between how large widgets are (say between the Beautiful Widget Home Weather and the BW Home Weather Small) and battery life? In other words, if the larger the widget (font sizes, more elaborate fonts, etc), the more drain on the battery?

Ditto for say custom icons and custom docks. What does changes them do to the battery usage? I notice battery drop when customizing to a larger and more stylized font for my BW Home Weather widget, and for changing the background to something more beautiful (though it's still fairly dark - it's of space). I also changed my batt. stat from a small numbers display ("78 percent") to a medium size letter display ("Seventy eight percent"). How do these changes affect the battery, if at all? Anyone know?

Also, in checking the "About phone" to see what's using what, I notice often that Cell Standby and Phone Idle are among the top culprits of draining my battery. What exactly is Cell Standby and Phone Idle? Why would the phone drain so much battery being 'idle'? And how can I customize this - there's no button to any setting like say under "Display" you can go to the 'Sound and Display' settings.

Thanks. Running Android 2.1 on a Vibrant.

 

[terpitude71]

the size of a widget shouldnt have anything to do with how much battery it drains.

cell standby is basically how much battery your cell radio is using (3g being the biggest culprit, of course), and phone idle is the battery being used while the phone is not actively being used by ongoing processes (like widgets updating, etc). there is no way to customize these, though some devices have a data timeout ability (turns off 3g radio after a certain period of time of non-use). im not sure if touchwiz features this or not

 

[EndorphinRush]

I agree with terp. I wouldn't imagine a small change in graphics would change your batt. consumption. The only two reasons I could really see off the top of my head is if that widget used your radio more aka updates more frequently' kind of goes with what terp was talking about and the user staring at the screen more because its pretty

I came from a blackberry, and the android platform has some serious eye candy when your coming from essentially an out dated Java platform lol I know if I've had a slow day at work if I come home and have to plug it up before I go to bed

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[onthecouchagain]

The weather widget I have doesn't update until I unlock the phone (unless it hits 16 hours - which is the interval I set to self update. It was the longest one available).

As far as I know, nothing else "pulls" data except for Gmail. Sometimes after an evening of full charge, I unplug it and leave the phone on overnight, and in the morning, I'll find it went from 100% to 77%. The culprit, once again, phone idle and cell standby. This is very disappointing for not even 'using' the phone. Before I let it be, I make sure to Task Kill anything that isn't necessary (it leaves gmail, battstatt, no lock, kik messenger, android agenda widget - which I've set to only refresh once every 12 hours - and SMS messaging). Everything else is killed off. What could be using so much "phone idle" and "Cell standby". If I turn off 3G over night, will this make the Cell Standby eat up less juice?

 

[MrObvious]

Just turn off the mobile network for overnight.

 

[EndorphinRush]

I've never really paid attention to how much battery I use through out the night. Mainly because its on the charger at that point.

If I'm not mistaken and someone correct me if I'm wrong but cell standby is more of a power state than an actual single process or application per say. Phone idle is the hardware for lack of a better word the physical aspect of the phone. While cell stand by is covers your connection whicb still pings the network to let the network know where you are so calls will still be routed to you.

that being said the percentage you see is based on the usage since it was last plugged in and is calculated based off how much battery still remains. Even in standby your phone will always use some amount of power (obviously). Just because its on standby does not mean its going to stop thinking. Its always going to ping the network, you could turn off all radios (airplane mode) but its always gonna tick.

Like I said could be wrong but I really wouldn't be worried about it. And if you are turn it off for the night, or try to work out a chargging cycle so its plugged in at night.



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