Does under-clocking and under-volting really save battery?

[kevdliu]

Hi,

I just underclocked and undervolted my droid 2 global with droid overclock. The battery seems to run down faster now :S I checked the battery manager and it said its using 8% and system panel said its average cpu consumption is 4%. Kind of high for non-system apps. Does the two cancel out or does the app use more battery than it saves?

Thanks in advance!

 

[PetRiLJoe]

I used to stay underclocked while experimenting with everything. I found that it did improve battery life depending on my usage. Nothing seems to kill the battery faster than having the screen ON. So I would always have the screen on the dimest possible setting. Bigger the touch scree, the bigger the battery drain I think! So anyway if you are an occasional user that doesn't do a lot of browsing and YouTube watching, you WILL see a difference. I do everything on my phone and the screen seems to kill the battery too fast to make a great difference, especially when you factor that I had to wait a tad longer for a few things which keeps the screen on even longer.

There are no facts to that, it is my personal opinion based entirely on my own observations. That being said, I keep it over 800 mhz most of the time and use my phone all day long. I've just learned to live with having a charger for a third arm to keep the battery juiced up.

 

[kmcgill88]

I used to stay underclocked while experimenting with everything. I found that it did improve battery life depending on my usage. Nothing seems to kill the battery faster than having the screen ON. So I would always have the screen on the dimest possible setting. Bigger the touch scree, the bigger the battery drain I think! So anyway if you are an occasional user that doesn't do a lot of browsing and YouTube watching, you WILL see a difference. I do everything on my phone and the screen seems to kill the battery too fast to make a great difference, especially when you factor that I had to wait a tad longer for a few things which keeps the screen on even longer.

There are no facts to that, it is my personal opinion based entirely on my own observations. That being said, I keep it over 800 mhz most of the time and use my phone all day long. I've just learned to live with having a charger for a third arm to keep the battery juiced up.

I second this. Nothing drains my battery like having the screen on. I figured overclocking, at all, would kill my battery however my experience has been its all about the screen usage.

Sent from my Droid using DroidForums

 

[sonicfreak360]

Underclocking and undervolting are only good if they are STABLE. low underclocking may strain the system by attempting to do more procedures with less power. Unstable voltage may cause sleeping issues with your phone, like staying on while the screen is off.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[PetRiLJoe]

Underclocking and undervolting are only good if they are STABLE. low underclocking may strain the system by attempting to do more procedures with less power. Unstable voltage may cause sleeping issues with your phone, like staying on while the screen is off.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

I agree with Sonicfreak360. There usually isn't a cookie-cutter kernal that works for everybody. That makes it a little hard to judge who's kernals are best But I have had a *LOT* of good luck with Chevy01s kernals, in all forms. Ultra low volt , low, medium. They are perfect for me no matter what ROM I'm on. But I'm sure others on this forum prefer to avoid his kernals.



Don't stick with the first kernal you use just because it works. I've crippled my phone both ways (underclocking and overclocking). I can't go into great detail on how or why, but in short, if you don't provide the minimum power to your phone then it may never fully function correctly and cause a lot of errors (that you DON'T see) which criple your phones speed; and the same goes for overvolting it.

Keep playing around with overclock/underclock until you are comfortable. You will find a sweet spot, or maybe you will just give up.

 

[kevdliu]

i have tried ultra-low voltage in droid overclock for a few days now. My battery life seems to be worse :S. Is it because droid overclock has a four slot system for the D2G CPU of five slot? I also tried advanced custom settings with the voltages at the lowest possible but when I check them again they return to stock settings. Anyone knows if DO even works on D2G at all?

BTW droid overclock uses alot of battery itself.

 

[Goatastic]

In my opinion the real savings comes from profiles. I am on a D2 and have it set to 1.3ghz Ulv and if I didn't have it knock it down to 400Mhz and hold it there when my screen is off my battery life is terrible. Undervolting is only half the story. Play with it and try stuff out. As has been said your screen will most likely be your biggest drain so if you are on it all the time you won't see much of a savings.

Liberated Goat V 0.8

 

[kevdliu]

can you tell me the voltage of each clock speeds of the cpu? Pull the tab thing out from the right side of the screen and there should be slots with speed info and voltage. Thanks

 

[PetRiLJoe]

In my opinion the real savings comes from profiles. I am on a D2 and have it set to 1.3ghz Ulv and if I didn't have it knock it down to 400Mhz and hold it there when my screen is off my battery life is terrible. Undervolting is only half the story. Play with it and try stuff out. As has been said your screen will most likely be your biggest drain so if you are on it all the time you won't see much of a savings.

Liberated Goat V 0.8

Do you use a program to do that such as SetCPU or are you referring to the governor such as Interactive?

I don't know how to check my CPU clock speed while my screen is off, but I think since I'm not using as many apps while my screen is off that the Interactive governor I use should go down a bit, unless some background process is changing that. But that's all speculation, my screen is off. I stopped using SetCPU a long time ago since CM, BB, and SS custom ROMs all made it easier to change stuff within the terminal, and now with a graphical interface in the settings menu.

 

[Droid44]

I have a related question regarding overclocking....I have SetCPU app on my rooted Motorola Droid, but can not set my Droid to anything higher than 800MHz max/ 250MHz min for "In Call" profile. Any suggestions on how to raise to 900-1000MHz?

 

[cupfulloflol]

I have a related question regarding overclocking....I have SetCPU app on my rooted Motorola Droid, but can not set my Droid to anything higher than 800MHz max/ 250MHz min for "In Call" profile. Any suggestions on how to raise to 900-1000MHz?

Silly question maybe, but does the kernel you are using max out at 800MHz?

 

[Petey]

Somewhat off topic but it somewhat ties into the thread.

I've been using Setcpu for a while but I recently noticed an odd occurrence. In the "Advanced" tab, every option will often display a "-1". After I put in the numbers that should be there, I'll exit out of the app. Then when I go back into Setcpu, I'll see the "-1" for everything under the "Advanced" tab. Sometimes it will show "normal" settings, but often not the ones I've put in myself. I'm using GPA 15 2.33 from Bugless Beast/Peter Alfonso, and I've noticed the issue on both Pete's .2 and .3 kernels. I have the "Set on Boot" option checked.

It's really weird and I was wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.