question about music, cpu and battery life

[bryan.vandyke]

Recently I've moved from my ipod touch to my ov for listening to podcasts and music. Today after listening for several hours I noticed my battery was much lower than it should have been. Some quick investigating with Cpu Spy shows that, regardless of the music player, when playing audio files the cpu runs constantly. Granted it runs at the lowest cpu setting but does run constantly.

My question is, is this normal? Shouldn't the cpu only spin up to fill some kind of audio out buffer then go into a sleep cycle until needed again?

I'm running Bobzhome 1/1/2012. overclocked to 480/768.

Thanks

 

[watskyhotsky]

the CPU is actually decoding the audio as its playing..

thats, uh, how it works.

the ipod does the same thing, but apple doesnt let you see that the cpu is doing any work in their walled garden of an OS

even your PC cpu has to do work to playback encoded audio and video. MP3, MPG, all of that.

listening to audio will use your battery, you think its lower than it was before becuase you werent listening to audio before.

it makes perfect sense, just think about it a little harder

nothings wrong, everythings working as it should. consider a second battery if it doesnt last you all day, I have a few for my triumph that I keep charged and battery life is no longer any concern to me, i just swap batteries.

pretty much any task on the phone thats not completely off uses some cpu power. the cpu is what runs all the code, the phone would be a brick without it.

and by "cpu" i mean the whole msm7627 chipset, since its a combination of 3 or 4 cpus for different tasks. same idea though, one or all of them is going to be doing work for any task at any given time

 

[LeslieAnn]

If you are just listening to music already on the phone, lower your minimum speed to 320 or try 240. Playing installed music takes less power than GPS or streaming music so you might get a gain that way.

Keep in mind that going to low, will cause the CPU to spike and run at max speed the whole time, so watch it. You will know it did because it will get warm as it uses so much power.

480 is a good starting point and you don't want to go higher for your minimum really, but it can go lower in certain instances where people who use their device like you can gain some extra juice. We recommend 480 simply because it covers the most apps most efficiently without spiking to full speed.

 

[bryan.vandyke]

Thanks guys. Feared it was something like that with cpu doing all the audio processing. I was hoping the design was a little closer to some audio players with a separate dedicated chip for audio processing. With the cpu sleeping between responding to user events and keeping the input buffer filled. And this was just a bug or a limit of current implementation of Android.

bryan

 

[watskyhotsky]

Thanks guys. Feared it was something like that with cpu doing all the audio processing. I was hoping the design was a little closer to some audio players with a separate dedicated chip for audio processing. With the cpu sleeping between responding to user events and keeping the input buffer filled. And this was just a bug or a limit of current implementation of Android.

bryan

that "dedicated chip" is also a cpu. albeit a customized single purpose one.

having as few chips as possible do as many tasks as possible is what keeps the cost on a phone like this as low as possible.

maybe that iPod touch is more your style if slight cpu usage while playing mp3s bothers you?

 

[scootincivic]

Take note also on what app you use to play your tunz.
The default player eats more battery than aftermarket audio players.

I've gone 11 straight hours with Player pro & still had 64% left on the battery..
Key thing is I was running in 'airplane' mode runnen 480min/806max on interactive govener..

Understand you have 3 processors in this phone as well as wifi & cell & GPS chips.. Let alone the cell data syncing!
That eats alot of juice..

Try runnen your tunes in 'airplane' mode & report back on your results~

Tapatalk via OV

 

[Eollie]

Try runnen your tunes in 'airplane' mode & report back on your results~

Tapatalk via OV

Doesnt that kinda defeat the purpose of having a smart phone?

OP if your concerned about battery life the best thing to do is get a extra battery or two. Sadly your not using your ipod anymore and although its nice it doesnt needs two radios and several other things going just to play Van Halen's Tattoo. The caveats of using your Oprimus V for phone, internet, and mp3 player is you will not have as good battery.