Live Wallpapers - How much power?

[Guru82]

Repeating this here, with the question; Do you agree with my formula? Is it accurate?

Live Wallpaper Battery Consumption:
* This assumes a constant power draw, does not consider more power draw that would exist within normal usage. A base read was made with the Cool Tool - system stats on CM7, home screen with only Fancy Widgets Clock.
There is around 40-50mA power draw using CM7 default Live Wallpaper. Under normal condition battery draw may be around 130-140mA without it. Our standard battery is 1450 mAh.
(mAh / mA = hr)
Solid Wallpaper: 1450/135 = 10.741 hours
Live Wallpaper: 1450/180 = 8.056 hours
Solid vs Live: 10.741-8.056 = 2.685 hour, Solid non-live wallpaper wins
That's around 25% more power usage!

If I was to stare at my live wallpaper until it went flat, the wallpaper would have used around one quarter (25%) of my battery. Under normal conditions, when I'm not appreciating the wonders of my Live Wallpaper, it sits in dormant memory and doesn't use CPU cycles, it doesn't consume power. So we could do a little more theoretical theatrics and say; hey, It ain't all that bad... but it eats when it's awake

 

[Elunah]

Did you control for the brightness of the wallpapers? On OLED screens, darker pixels should draw less power than brighter ones, so it's important that you consider the relative brightness of the two wallpapers used.

 

[Guru82]

No, your right I did have brightness set to Auto on that test which could have allowed variance, and the brightness of the actual wallpaper image/render may make a difference.
Desire S is S-LCD, I have read that S-LCD used more power to draw black pixels (sounds wrong doesn't it) because the screen is actually grey it needs to switch and light the pixel where as an OLED just has it switched off cause its black anyway. Now, I don't think its going to make a huge difference as the pixel would still need to be switched with anything other than black black black and the power usage should scale with an OLED to compare, and the static wallpaper should scale also. Scale? Yeah, I mean relative usage comparing S-LCD to OLED and ignoring wallpaper brightness.

I'm not trying to point fingers at the live wallpaper tested. It was just what I had at the time and I cannot say other live wallpapers would use less or more battery.
More testing: http://androidforums.com/htc-desire...ess-widgets-live-wallpaper-battery-usage.html