Nokia app monitors juice
Watch your battery fade away
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A new application from Forum Nokia allows developers, and anyone else, to see just how much power their phone is using, and compare consumption when running different applications.
The app is free to download from Forum Nokia, the Nokia developer's portal, and runs on S60 3rd-Edition handsets. Our N95 averages out at around half a watt, though we managed to get it up to around three by playing loud music through it. We wanted to see how much would be consumed when playing video, but the N95 didn't have the memory for both applications to be running at the same time.
For anyone developing mobile software, power consumption comes right up there with user's sock colour in their order of priorities. Once you've squeezed your interface onto the tiny screen, worked out how to achieve the impossible using the underpowered processor, and handled all the user interaction though only two soft keys, the last thing you want to be told is that your application is consuming too much power.
Not only does your management not care one jot about how much power your application consumes, but when was the last time an application buyer checked out the juice rating of an app before buying it?
Part of this is down to the lack of tools to enable developers, and users, to work out how much power their applications are consuming, and Nokia's application should address that. Having some idea how much power is consumed by leaving Wi-Fi switched on, or gained by dropping to a 2G connection, is useful to everyone - not to mention handy for filling a long Friday afternoon with what looks like useful analysis. ®
COMMENTS
@Jasmine
Thanks for the clarification.
I still dont understand how AAC playback can only consume 200 mW - it's way lower than I've measured on the 95-1 - or, for that matter, others measured on their 95-3 using the traditional "let it continuously play back some AAC files until the device shuts down" method (that is, no software metering had taken place). After all, consuing 200 mW would result in the impossible 18 hours of playback, which is certainly not achievable, not even with the N95-3.
In addition, many ave reported (see the benchmarks at http://phone-rush.typepad.com/phonerush/2007/11/n95-generations.html ) that the N95-3 has slightly (about by 7%) higher (!) power consumption than the N95-1. (The figures are really worth checking out.) Any comments on this?
My figures
My measurements were time-averaged by the (physical, not software) meter I used to take them. My N95 is an N95-3, and has slightly lower power consumption and a bigger battery than the original N95.
@kevin pownceby
Unfortunately, you just cant expect more of a 120g, snappy (!) all-in-one device - unless you don't use its advanced features, that is. Otherwise, name any 120g 3.5G (HSDPA) device offering so much versatility and having a considerably better battery life.
Nevertheless, the new, v20 firmware has a definitely better power management - power saving can be as high as 45%. You might want to read my above-linked article(make sur eyou follow the links to my earlier ones too), where I've explained this all.
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