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Battery Left
- Thread starter shugknight
- Start date
NeutronBomb
Member
If your usage varies it will probably never hit 100% for instance on the weekends when I'm at home with my girl my phone can go two days without a charge easy. But during the week at work I'm always online and playing games and stuff so I'm lucky if I can go 6 hours without a charge.
If the usage varies greatly eventually it will divide the difference but it'll never hit 100% accuracy.
If the usage varies greatly eventually it will divide the difference but it'll never hit 100% accuracy.
Battery Left Widget
Hi all,
Just stumbled across this thread and I've read it with much interest.
I'm the author of the widget and am very encouraged by the feedback here and on the market. Unfortunately on the market it's impossible to reply to people's feedback, so hopefully I can get more feedback in these forums.
I've been a bit out of action for the last month due to Christmas, New Year, family and travelling but I'm getting a todo list together so I can get back on with development of the widget.
Firstly, I just want to clear a few things regarding how Battery Left works:
The widget stores the duration between recorded battery changes - ie it stores the time it takes to go from 100% to 90%, and from 90% to 80% etc etc. To reach the theoretical 100% accuracy, the widget needs to store 5 readings for every level change. If you're seeing low accuracy percentage, it's probably because you rarely let your phone run down lower than 70% or so. Note that the app needs an uninterrupted time between levels - ie if it's on 80%, then you charge it just for a few seconds, it will not log the 80% - 70% duration as the charge time inbetween would make that reading invalid.
The ideal phone usage for accuracy is to charge your phone completely full, then let it run down til it's completely flat. Charge til full again, and repeat. If you don't let your phone run down, or rarely charge it up full, or, connect and disconnect from charger or USB sync constantly throughout the day the widget will struggle to get accurate readings.
I've had quite a few comments regarding excess CPU usage. I have never seen this on my Droid or test G1, but that's not to say it doesn't happen. I suspect there's something odd going on with specific phones or batteries that is causing this problem - maybe the hardware is sending battery change events very regularly. The app doesn't do any comprehensive processing so I'm not too sure where to look to fix this problem but I'll definitely keep it in mind.
Other people have said they've had problems with non-stock batteries such as the Seidio 2600 extended life battery. Theoretically there's no reason for any problem as the algorithms are flexible enough to deal with any readings from the hardware, but there obviously is some problem here. I'll try and find a battery for the G1 to test soon.
I have some great ideas that I'd like to get into the widget such as the ability to report usage to a central server so everyone can compare their readings across different phones, batteries, versions, custom ROMs etc. There's a good deal amount of work involved here but the results will be really interesting.
Anyways, over and out for now. Keep leaving feedback here and I'll take it all in.
Thanks all!
Matt
Hi all,
Just stumbled across this thread and I've read it with much interest.
I'm the author of the widget and am very encouraged by the feedback here and on the market. Unfortunately on the market it's impossible to reply to people's feedback, so hopefully I can get more feedback in these forums.
I've been a bit out of action for the last month due to Christmas, New Year, family and travelling but I'm getting a todo list together so I can get back on with development of the widget.
Firstly, I just want to clear a few things regarding how Battery Left works:
The widget stores the duration between recorded battery changes - ie it stores the time it takes to go from 100% to 90%, and from 90% to 80% etc etc. To reach the theoretical 100% accuracy, the widget needs to store 5 readings for every level change. If you're seeing low accuracy percentage, it's probably because you rarely let your phone run down lower than 70% or so. Note that the app needs an uninterrupted time between levels - ie if it's on 80%, then you charge it just for a few seconds, it will not log the 80% - 70% duration as the charge time inbetween would make that reading invalid.
The ideal phone usage for accuracy is to charge your phone completely full, then let it run down til it's completely flat. Charge til full again, and repeat. If you don't let your phone run down, or rarely charge it up full, or, connect and disconnect from charger or USB sync constantly throughout the day the widget will struggle to get accurate readings.
I've had quite a few comments regarding excess CPU usage. I have never seen this on my Droid or test G1, but that's not to say it doesn't happen. I suspect there's something odd going on with specific phones or batteries that is causing this problem - maybe the hardware is sending battery change events very regularly. The app doesn't do any comprehensive processing so I'm not too sure where to look to fix this problem but I'll definitely keep it in mind.
Other people have said they've had problems with non-stock batteries such as the Seidio 2600 extended life battery. Theoretically there's no reason for any problem as the algorithms are flexible enough to deal with any readings from the hardware, but there obviously is some problem here. I'll try and find a battery for the G1 to test soon.
I have some great ideas that I'd like to get into the widget such as the ability to report usage to a central server so everyone can compare their readings across different phones, batteries, versions, custom ROMs etc. There's a good deal amount of work involved here but the results will be really interesting.
Anyways, over and out for now. Keep leaving feedback here and I'll take it all in.
Thanks all!
Matt
CYBER DROIID
Member
Nice to meet you ...........Thank you for all the hard work and we will keep you updated.
MotorolaDroid
Member
with so many battery gauges, i hope this one works well, i'll give it a shot
Well hey there. I figured i'd give you a warm welcome as a mod. I used the app for a really long time, about 3 weeks, but i was off and on so i tend to put it on the charger every chance i get because i don't know when the next time ill be able to get around to it again lol. But usually it happens it's quite frequent. I got to around 72% accurate and it stayed there for about a week so i just gave up lol. Not to say that your app doesn't work as intended, just the way i use my phone and charge it, it might not have sync well with your app. From your explaining of it, it's true.
It's a well put together app, it's one of the best apps of its kind so far. Adding the features that you were talking about actually would be kinda nice. Though it is advised from everywhere i read to not drain the battery down to cut off all the time. Down to 10-20% is fine but not cut off point. That's just what i've read though.
Hi all,
I just uploaded v1.6 to the market which should fix a lot of the CPU usage issues, if not all!
New2U - I'm rethinking the accuracy % and may remove it altogether. It's confusing and people get the wrong idea. In reality, you can get accurate readings with 40-50% accuracy so I think it just makes the app look worse than it actually is! I've never seen it reach 100%
I'll probably remove the % reading and just leave the text as rough, moderate and accurate.
I just uploaded v1.6 to the market which should fix a lot of the CPU usage issues, if not all!
New2U - I'm rethinking the accuracy % and may remove it altogether. It's confusing and people get the wrong idea. In reality, you can get accurate readings with 40-50% accuracy so I think it just makes the app look worse than it actually is! I've never seen it reach 100%
I'll probably remove the % reading and just leave the text as rough, moderate and accurate.
I searched for battery, and I had to scroll down a bit.
The actual name is battery left widget beta