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Help Power efficiency mode increases brightness?

jj14x

jj14x

Android Expert
I usually set the display brightness to about 20% or so (for longer battery life).

If I enable the power efficiency now (menu/settings/power/Enable Power efficiency), the display brightness increases to about 40-45% (can't tell exactly because it is a slider).

Given that I'm enabling power efficiency to save battery life, increasing display brightness seems counter productive

Does anyone else have this problem?
 
i would not call it a "problem". that is what the system wants to do.

auto brightness can use more energy (rising up to it near max then lowering then raising.. etc etc...) that can cost you more energy than a constant setting. less cpu cycles devoted to monitoring the photo eye..

is akin to cruising on a set speed in your vehicle vs. going 80mph then 50 then 45 then 70.. that costs you reduced fuel vs. going a set constant speed.

so i do not see this as a "problem". its more a decision the system deems is best to manage battery cost for different handset functions....
 
I see it as the power management system trying to balance energy savings with usability. Obviously the most power savings will come when brightness is set at its lowest setting. So why isn't the power management system doing so? Because that brightness setting is only practical at night when there's little to no ambient light. 40-45% is still usable in a lot of lighting conditions except very bright light or full sun.

As with any automatic control system, human intervention is often more efficient (like your manual setting of 20%). So you have to decide whether you want to take over manual control and get more efficiency, or let the phone do its job understanding that it might not choose the ideal settings for any given situation.
 
I guess my original post wasn't clear (or I missed your point) :)
Usually, I set my brightness slider to about 20% (not auto) - and honestly, unless I am out and about in bright sunlight, I can see the screen perfectly well.

I can understand why the phone would want to set the brightness to 40% or so when I ask it to enable power efficiency - but only if the brightness is already set to higher than 40%.

IMO, the better option (when "enable power efficiency" was checked) would have been to check what the current brightness setting is set to - and if it was greater than 40%, then set it to 40%. But if it was already set to less than 40%, then, don't increase it to 40% (because that will cause the display to use more power than what the user is ok with)

(or am I missing your point?)
 

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nope. two different points. and yours is perfectly valid. the power efficiency system on the phone was not programmed to take into account the user's settings, so it behaves purely in the way it was written to behave, and apparently, screen brightness was hard coded to be 40-45%.

And you are entirely correct that a smarter control system should compare its default value with the user's value and stick with the one that is more energy efficient.
 
I got it! So, the power efficiency option will help the folks who are new to the OS and are using the max brightness (or auto). For folks who already use low brightness, the power efficiency mode may not help as much (at least for display usage).

I sent in an Email to HTC with this recommendation (to check user's setting first) - just wanted to make sure that this wasn't a defect on my phone (or an app doing unexpected things - aka undocumented 'feature') :)

Thanks :)
 
not necessarily,

the feature is set to get the maximum about of power use as efficient as possible for the handset. it is for anyone who chooses to use it. from a novice to a pro. makes no difference.
 
marctronixx said:
not necessarily,

the feature is set to get the maximum about of power use as efficient as possible for the handset. it is for anyone who chooses to use it. from a novice to a pro. makes no difference.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't the phone get more battery life by retaining my screen brightness setting (20% - not auto) rather than overriding it with 40-45% (no auto) when I
enable power efficiency? :confused:
 
jj14x said:
I usually set the display brightness to about 20% or so (for longer battery life).

If I enable the power efficiency now (menu/settings/power/Enable Power efficiency), the display brightness increases to about 40-45% (can't tell exactly because it is a slider).

Given that I'm enabling power efficiency to save battery life, increasing display brightness seems counter productive

Does anyone else have this problem?
Click to expand...

android is probably assuming the brightness is at 100%.

therefor changing it to 45%, instead of decreasing brightness by a percentage.
 
if you had no back-light on you would save even MORE battery life.

the engineers just put a happy medium for this feature. they have to Assume on the average person. most people perhaps the majority want the back-light a little higher than the other half.. so they make compromises.


jj14x said:
Wouldn't the phone get more battery life by retaining my screen brightness setting (20% - not auto) rather than overriding it with 40-45% (no auto) when I
enable power efficiency? :confused:
Click to expand...
 
marctronixx said:
if you had no back-light on you would save even MORE battery life.

the engineers just put a happy medium for this feature. they have to Assume on the average person. most people perhaps the majority want the back-light a little higher than the other half.. so they make compromises.
Click to expand...

lol! true...
 
From what I've seen, power efficiency adjust brightness, turns off auto sync and background data. Which are the bigger power draining features of the phone. Just goes to show that if you experiment with your phone, you can do more with it than the programmed "easy" buttons do.

That is why mine will remain unchecked. If I need to conserve power, I know how to do it.
 
IMO the best way to save battery is manually.
turn off Bluetooth, mobile, wifi, gps when not using (unless u need constant check for email) facebook notifications i think can wait IMO, I wouldnt leave on 4g all day to see what my friends have to write on Facebook or twitter but thats me, and thats why i delete Facebook, twitter, flckr, etc, all that social crap.

also auto brightness is only good on either
1) AOSP
2) framework-res.apk and edit the arrays auto brightness levels to a lower state
3) have a sense ROM build tweaks to adjust the brightness at the levels thru tweaks app instead of manually decompiling framework-res.apk
 
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