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how much does live wallpaper hurt battery life?

S

shark974

Well-Known Member
just that. been using live wallpapers since day one but wondering how much might a static one improve battery life. and yeah i guess i could just try one but i cant find a good one lol.
 
Hard to say, every phone is an individual. Common sense would say that a live wallpaper would "use" more battery, but I've not seen a big difference with using a static wallpaper. Going to Settings>About Phone>Battery Use at this moment tells me that cell standby is using 56% while display is only at 36%. YMMV depending a great deal on WHICH live wallpaper you are using. I like live wallpapers enough to continue using them, it's easy enough to throw the phone on a charger if necessay, although I don't usually run out of juice until late at night.

You'll just have to play with live wallpapers on your phone and find out what works best for you.
 
Great question.

Even though I've owned my Captivates for a long time, it's an answer I don't have. Since battery life is very important to me, I've always just used a "dead" wallpaper in place of a live one. :)

That said, after doing a variety of little things to optimize the performance of my Captivate, I'm now getting very good battery life. I could not be happier.

Cheers...
 
it uses a lot...cant give u an accurate percentage even by seeing battery use from settings...but if u use live wallpaper ur battery will be go down wit fast speed and if u dont use any app or anything at all........it will say more then 80%
 
viny2cool said:
it uses a lot...cant give u an accurate percentage even by seeing battery use from settings...but if u use live wallpaper ur battery will be go down wit fast speed and if u dont use any app or anything at all........it will say more then 80%
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You can't make a blanket statement; I've tried both types of wp. The only difference I've noticed is that it depends on WHICH live wallpaper you are using. Some are more battery intensive than others. Battery usage also depends on more than wallpaper.

The OP has to try it for himself.
 
La Luna said:
You can't make a blanket statement; I've tried both types of wp. The only difference I've noticed is that it depends on WHICH live wallpaper you are using. Some are more battery intensive than others. Battery usage also depends on more than wallpaper.

The OP has to try it for himself.
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i tried on mine and thats what u found out...but i agree op should test it himself instead of asking us
 
shark974 said:
just that. been using live wallpapers since day one but wondering how much might a static one improve battery life. and yeah i guess i could just try one but i cant find a good one lol.
Click to expand...


I have about 50 live wallpapers. And only a few ive noticed have drained the crap out of my device. 3D tunnel does like insanely. Beautiful live wallpaper always has with me for some reason, i think its the GPS i use with beautiful widgets. Light grid Pro kind of but its amazing.
I think a live wallpaper only uses like 2-6% more.
That could be complete BS because i cant rememer where i read it from but it seems to make sense. Ill use a dead wallpaper and it wont make that much of a difference. The live wallpapers that use a GPS like maps or beautiful live weather are gonna use more battery, as its taking your GPS all the time (or at least on a regular basis)
 
I'm pretty sure live wallpaper only drains your battery when you are showing the home screens. If you are in an application, call, text, etc...then it doesnt use battery. When I used live wallpaper, it was 1% or less. How long is anyone really sitting on their homescreens anyway?
 
Some live wallpapers, once they're used for a home screen, are shown as a running service in the application manager.

I avoid those.
 
Totally depends on the Live Wallpaper. They run as an app in the background, so like any other app some are more-efficient than others, and some demand more CPU time than others.

I've seen some beautiful and amazing Live Wallpapers that unfortunately just kept maxing out the CPU and killing the battery. Too steep of a price to pay for eye candy.
 
I gotta disagree.
I've been back and forth between regular wallpaper and live wallpaper, testing them out for about a month now. I've gotta say the price to pay for a live one is not much at all.
When you look at it, after a days worth of use, your Display, Cell Standby, Phone Idle, Android System, and Voice Calls take up 85 percent of the battery life together. The difference between live and not live wallpaper is like 2 or 3 percent average.
In other words, turning down the brightness on your screen has way more affect on your battery life than switching to a non-live wallpaper. Thus, I go for the eye candy.
 
Android26 said:
I gotta disagree.
I've been back and forth between regular wallpaper and live wallpaper, testing them out for about a month now. I've gotta say the price to pay for a live one is not much at all.
When you look at it, after a days worth of use, your Display, Cell Standby, Phone Idle, Android System, and Voice Calls take up 85 percent of the battery life together. The difference between live and not live wallpaper is like 2 or 3 percent average.
In other words, turning down the brightness on your screen has way more affect on your battery life than switching to a non-live wallpaper. Thus, I go for the eye candy.
Click to expand...

Not all live wallpapers are equal. Some barely sip CPU, others can easily use over 50%.
 
I'm with Sremick, I have been going back and forth from live to static since I got my phone. It really depends on the wallpaper. Ex: The Clouds live wallpaper (with balloons) is a battery killer. With some task killers, it will kill the wallpaper because it is using so much battery and CPU
 
I started to wonder how much a live wallpaper would drain battery so I decided to put one since last week. I really thought it would have drained more. So far I've seen about a 5% more use (which I can live with). Of course it depends on how you use your phone. If you are going to be staring at the live wallpaper all day im sure it'll use up all the battery. Like someone said, it also depends on the wallpaper. Ive only tried with the ones that came with captivate. I am liking how it looks and my suggestion is try it out for yourself one day and see how much difference it makes with your usage. As for me, I think I'll keep it for now.
 
It all depends on how it was developed. Just like any app, if the programmer did not take performance into account, and the code does excess processing, then it will use more battery life. Live wallpaper does run as a service. This is the nature of the beast, and is normal. So do lots of other apps.

If the programmer followed proper Android Lifecycle management, then the wallpaper background process will effectively go to sleep when not in use, (if another app is in the foreground running on the phone, or if the screen is off).

I have seen some apps, (including live wallpapers), that obviously do not follow the rules, and thus hog the CPU, and kill the battery. You just have to try them and see for yourself.
 
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