Help Do "Static" Widgets Increase Battery Drain?

[smg65]

I know widgets that update, sync, and access data (such as weather widgets) use some battery and that battery life could be improved by limiting their use, or by adjusting the frequency which they "update". My question is about "static" widgets... widgets that don't update, but merely change the appearance of an icon, and access an application when touched. By adding many of these to the home screen, or other available screens, would battery life be shortened?

Also, what about widgets (static or non-static) that are not selected for use but simply reside in the widget list and are available for use when selected? If there are many non-static widgets available and not ever being used, am I better off, battery wise, by deleting them?

Thanks for your consideration. I obviously don't know very much about how these things work! BTW... I just got my N7. I don't think I have a battery problem... just trying to be "proactive".

Thanks!

 

[Teknologic]

I'll try explain this properly, since there's no dead simple answer to this.
First off it would be more correct to say it's the application that syncs, updates etc that drains the battery. Widgets can be described as an interactive shortcut or status icon for the services that apps are running.
So, widgets only consume cpu cycles when actually changing appearance. You could compare them to live wallpapers; depending on how they are coded, they can consume close to no power at all, or more power. Most of them only do a visual refresh when they're actually on screen.
However all of this will be a very very small chunk of your battery compared to your screen or your wireless/location services.
Things like bluetooth, gps and wifi have quite some impact on your battery life. So the only way for an app to really drain your battery is to make heavy use of these services (or be stuck in a cpu cycle but that's rare).
But the biggest drain will always be your screen. Your battery is a lot bigger then a phones so all those apps do a lot less damage, however the screen scaled up along with the battery. So plain and simple, the more you keep your screen off, the longer you'll last

Oh and it's worth noting that games that make heavy use of your tegra graphical processor will cause a serious dent in your battery life as well, on top of the fact that your screen will be one during that too.

Edit: forgot part of your question: installed widgets that aren't on your home screen won't consume anything, provided of course they're not tied to a service that auto updates etc. Like I said, even widgets on your screens should only do a visual refresh when they're actually visible aka foreground apps.

 

[smg65]

Thank you for the great explanation... it's much appreciated!