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Root Root + OverclockWidget = Insane Battery Life 40+ Hours

Well, I ran it with and without and it seems nearly identical. Granted I could do a truly controlled test by maybe writing a script to execute the same tasks at the same time over multiple days and see if there is a difference. That seems like a huge PITA so for now I think I am disabling. I will keep watching this thread in the hopes that we can reach some kind of consensus. This is the nature of experimentation :)
 
****RESOLVED****

apparently my appbrain needed updating on my evo.

****RESOLVED****

anybody else having issues finding overclock widget (and/or google goggles) in the market place?

i can't even load them through appbrain (they show up as ready to install, but when i click perform installs in appbrain it tells me it cannot find them in the market). any ideas?

running a toast root, stock rom.
thanks!
 
OK. Just uninstalled OCWidget and plugged back in but before I did, I took a screenshot of my day's usage. I need to charge now since I am going out later and probably will use the phone a lot.

nozgd0.png
 
Just got it, I haven't done any testing too much with my evo, but i would be interseted to srsly charge it, unplug it at a certain time and check where the charge it by say 9 or 10 am.

I may try this in a few days.
 
Ok, so used this all day and here are my results, i did not leave it unplugged all night, wanted a real world test since i think most people charge it every night like myself. So right now it is at 9% battery after 8h 13mins.
System panel and Task kill were running all day, been off charger since around 9am and it is 5:08pm right now, so that is pretty good for me. Have not really tried without charging throughout the day every-time i get into my car so don't know how long it lasts with out this, will try that some other day, but it would usually drop by as much as 50% or more after a couple to few hours of use, so 8 is great. My settings are that my Hotmail account refreshes every 5 mins, yahoo every 15mins, guess changing that will improve the results, but I wanted to keep everything the same as i used it before, plus i need to get the hotmail emails as they come in. Also bluetooth and GPS on for most of the day, and the whole day was through 3g. Around a few hours of streaming music from phone to Bluetooth car stereo, including about an hour of Pandora. About 45mins of sprint nav. Also some web browsing, calls, texting and using some apps. While using sprint nav i set it to full brightness, or when i am outside, so thats about half the day, the rest of the time I use the middle setting on that power widget that came with the phone. I will try again with system panel running but no overclockwidget next week and see what i get. The one thing that is different from previous days is that yesterday i took off the live wallpaper which i had been using.

At 7% now and 8hrs 45mins running.
 

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the app for me

I can confirm with screen shot
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/mnsnap20100611191952p

In those 31 hours, I have:
received 47 emails, responded to about 10 of them
have talked on the phone for at least 2 hours
listened to at least 1 hour of pandora with the screen off (not sure if that is included in "awake time"
updated about 5 apps
downloaded the "shootme" app from the app store (needs root)
took screenshot for everyone to see

I was previously getting about 18-20 hours
 
the app for me

I can confirm with screen shot
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/mnsnap20100611191952p

In those 31 hours, I have:
received 47 emails, responded to about 10 of them
have talked on the phone for at least 2 hours
listened to at least 1 hour of pandora with the screen off (not sure if that is included in "awake time"
updated about 5 apps
downloaded the "shootme" app from the app store (needs root)
took screenshot for everyone to see

I was previously getting about 18-20 hours
OK,But your awake time is only 3hours-So no big deal!
 
This is something we can all benefit from and the glass half empty people just deter the newer people from even trying it at all.

very true, this will be my first shot at doing something like this and hope i can get it to work. i still would like to see an "idiots guide" for doing this the correct way.

thanks again for posting and to everyone who has contributed. Great Thread!
 
Question on the rooting, if I root my phone now (obviously I'll lose everything) but can I easily go back to the market / downloads section and re-download all my apps or will I have to re-find all the apps again?


  1. Download Titanium Backup (I got the paid version because it is literally the most valuable app on the market, but the free version will be fine for what you want to do.)
  2. Backup APPs+Data
  3. Connect to PC/Mac via USB
  4. Pull Titanium folder over to desktop
  5. Root phone, install Recovery, ROM, radio, etc. (instructions are everywhere)
  6. Set up accounts (Google)
  7. Go to market and install Titanium
  8. Connect to PC/Mac via USB
  9. Bring Titanium folder back to SD card
  10. Open Titanium and restore.
  11. Thank Titanium Dev, donate, get upgrade.
  12. Done, Golden! :)
 
I believe OverclockWidget does NOTHING to help your battery life.

Hello :),

I would like the OP and everyone that claims better battery life through this method to do one simple test. This post is not to discourage people from trying out this technique, but personally I do not believe this method works like the OP claims. But, like atheists, if you show them ANY scientific proof that god exists, they will become believers as well. That's what I want you believers to do.

  1. Disable OverclockWidget (uninstall it temporarily)
  2. Run LinPack and record results (should be around 6.8 MFLOPS)
  3. Install OverclockWidget and set "Screen On Freq Setting" Min to 24576 and Max to 24576
  4. Uncheck Differ Freq Screen Off
  5. SAVE at the bottom
  6. Right now, if OverclockWidget DOES work, then the CPU should be LOCKED at 24576. Why is that? Because you specifically limited both the MIN and MAX to 24576
  7. Run LinPack again, record results (should still be 6.8 MFLOPS)
  8. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget has NOT affected Linpack, then it has NOT affected the cpu speed at all when the device is awake. (No Linpack is not "broken", it is merely trying to do as many calculations as it can)
  9. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget does NOT affect the cpu speed when the phone is awake, then it CANNOT affect the cpu speed when the screen is asleep.
  10. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget CANNOT affect the cpu speed at all, then the battery life increase everyone claims is just a placebo

If any of those steps is not rigorous enough or might produce ambiguous results, please let me know. PLEASE TEST THIS, you people who claim better battery life. I'm sure a lot of us would LOVE to be proven wrong. Who doesn't want a longer battery life?
 
I'm not sure if its improving my battery life any, but Android System is now down to only 8% battery use, while as before it was like 30-40%.
 
I believe OverclockWidget does NOTHING to help your battery life.

Hello :),

I would like the OP and everyone that claims better battery life through this method to do one simple test. This post is not to discourage people from trying out this technique, but personally I do not believe this method works like the OP claims. But, like atheists, if you show them ANY scientific proof that god exists, they will become believers as well. That's what I want you believers to do.

  1. Disable OverclockWidget (uninstall it temporarily)
  2. Run LinPack and record results (should be around 6.8 MFLOPS)
  3. Install OverclockWidget and set "Screen On Freq Setting" Min to 24576 and Max to 24576
  4. Uncheck Differ Freq Screen Off
  5. SAVE at the bottom
  6. Right now, if OverclockWidget DOES work, then the CPU should be LOCKED at 24576. Why is that? Because you specifically limited both the MIN and MAX to 24576
  7. Run LinPack again, record results (should still be 6.8 MFLOPS)
  8. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget has NOT affected Linpack, then it has NOT affected the cpu speed at all when the device is awake. (No Linpack is not "broken", it is merely trying to do as many calculations as it can)
  9. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget does NOT affect the cpu speed when the phone is awake, then it CANNOT affect the cpu speed when the screen is asleep.
  10. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget CANNOT affect the cpu speed at all, then the battery life increase everyone claims is just a placebo

If any of those steps is not rigorous enough or might produce ambiguous results, please let me know. PLEASE TEST THIS, you people who claim better battery life. I'm sure a lot of us would LOVE to be proven wrong. Who doesn't want a longer battery life?
i never thought it worked in the beginning. i think it's just the apps people install that are draining battery life
 
I believe OverclockWidget does NOTHING to help your battery life.


No offense to the OP or anyone, but I tend to agree. I just got 40 hours on a single charge with 13 hours of "awake time" and lots of features like gps/wifi/bluetooth all still on. I didn't need to downstep my CPU or run any fancy widget to achieve this.
 
i never thought it worked in the beginning. i think it's just the apps people install that are draining battery life

I'm not arguing for either side at the moment. But what has changed for those people that have seen improved battery life (the drastic ones)? My friend has had his evo since launch and has never seen better than 9 hours battery life even when idling most of the day. And that is out of the box without any other apps installed. After running this widget he's already seen 18 hrs with almost 50% left. Of course this needs to keep up to show it wasnt a fluke but he hasn't changed anything so what is actually going on? It's hard to determine what's going on with everyone using their devices in different ways. But it's especially difficult if people are comparing day to day use rather than idling (only thing this app should improve).

No offense to the OP or anyone, but I tend to agree. I just got 40 hours on a single charge with 13 hours of "awake time" and lots of features like gps/wifi/bluetooth all still on. I didn't need to downstep my CPU or run any fancy widget to achieve this.

There's probably thousands of people who would love to see what your getting. The problem is if it comes out of the box with bad battery life, you gotta do something to fix it.
 
I've reverted to not using it based on pretty objective claims I've found. Will see how it works next time I have the phone out for a day.
 
It seems to me that the phone is automatically scaling the processor depending on the load. I have not rooted my phone or installed any apps that claim to control the processor speed. I have installed the SystemPanel app, which allows you to view the CPU clock at the top of its main screen.

When I have the app open and idle, the CPU clock is hovering in the 200s-300s range. This seems to indicate that the phone is already scaling down the processor speed when the CPU is mostly idle.

To further back this up, I can rapidly drag to scroll up and down on this screen and see that the CPU clock jumps up to the high 900s.

The only thing I'm not sure about here is where this app is getting its numbers. But if it is truly polling the CPU clock speed, then it is obvious that the phone already scales the processor down when idle, meaning that rooting and trying to do it with the overclock app is useless.
 
I'm not arguing for either side at the moment. But what has changed for those people that have seen improved battery life (the drastic ones)? My friend has had his evo since launch and has never seen better than 9 hours battery life even when idling most of the day. And that is out of the box without any other apps installed. After running this widget he's already seen 18 hrs with almost 50% left. Of course this needs to keep up to show it wasnt a fluke but he hasn't changed anything so what is actually going on? It's hard to determine what's going on with everyone using their devices in different ways. But it's especially difficult if people are comparing day to day use rather than idling (only thing this app should improve).



There's probably thousands of people who would love to see what your getting. The problem is if it comes out of the box with bad battery life, you gotta do something to fix it.

Correlation does not imply causation. I think we should all keep this in mind when discussing these things. How did his battery life suddenly go up? No one knows. It could've been any number of things. Maybe he had the phone on his desk the whole day, instead of in his pocket, so the phone didn't work as hard to keep a good signal. I had to pee a lot more after I setup OverclockWidget, but that doesn't mean OverclockWidget caused it (that was a lie :D). Plus, how would you explain the people who's battery life DIDN'T go up? If they've claimed they've done nothing different other than OverclockWidget.

Until someone proves otherwise, I'll have to say that a stronger battery life has nothing to do with OverclockWidget.

btw this post wasn't directed at you in particular
 
I believe OverclockWidget does NOTHING to help your battery life.

Hello :),

I would like the OP and everyone that claims better battery life through this method to do one simple test. This post is not to discourage people from trying out this technique, but personally I do not believe this method works like the OP claims. But, like atheists, if you show them ANY scientific proof that god exists, they will become believers as well. That's what I want you believers to do.

  1. Disable OverclockWidget (uninstall it temporarily)
  2. Run LinPack and record results (should be around 6.8 MFLOPS)
  3. Install OverclockWidget and set "Screen On Freq Setting" Min to 24576 and Max to 24576
  4. Uncheck Differ Freq Screen Off
  5. SAVE at the bottom
  6. Right now, if OverclockWidget DOES work, then the CPU should be LOCKED at 24576. Why is that? Because you specifically limited both the MIN and MAX to 24576
  7. Run LinPack again, record results (should still be 6.8 MFLOPS)
  8. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget has NOT affected Linpack, then it has NOT affected the cpu speed at all when the device is awake. (No Linpack is not "broken", it is merely trying to do as many calculations as it can)
  9. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget does NOT affect the cpu speed when the phone is awake, then it CANNOT affect the cpu speed when the screen is asleep.
  10. Now I will argue that if OverclockWidget CANNOT affect the cpu speed at all, then the battery life increase everyone claims is just a placebo
If any of those steps is not rigorous enough or might produce ambiguous results, please let me know. PLEASE TEST THIS, you people who claim better battery life. I'm sure a lot of us would LOVE to be proven wrong. Who doesn't want a longer battery life?


So over at android central here is what is posted. This was a conversation with a member and the developer. Where it says bills info he is the developer of this app and his statement. So it appears it does help.

Obviously it can't overclock, we all know that because of perflock BUT here's the deal, the EVO CPU is set to scale back when its sleeping by default although it doesn't always do this because it may misinterpret information.

(bills info)
What this widget does is force it to underclock so you may see a slight increase in battery.



So if you guys know more than the devo of this app, so be it. But he clearly says it can increase battery life. Still dont believe it, then don't use it. But this is straight from the horses mouth.
 
It sounds from that like there may be some benefit from that app then. But it's not as drastic as if the CPU was always at max clock speed when idle (which some of the posts here seemed to imply). The benefit only comes when an application needs some CPU time while the phone is idle; instead of getting bumped up to 1Ghz, the app just runs at 200 Mhz (or whatever you set it at).
 
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