Database Develop

[Q] Overclocking and Battery Life

Hey all,
My phone is rooted. I'm wondering how Overclocking might effect battery life. Better? Worse?
Also, what is a solid speed to OC on the Captivate?

It will be worse, but if you do UV it will last a bit longer...

Battery life will go down, but its by such a small amount, you wont even notice it(depending on how much you OC it)
and stable OC values will be different for every phone since all processors are not made equal. For example, my max stable overclock is at 1.2ghz, but my friend was stable at 1.4 with undervolting by 100.
You really just need to play around with it and find what works for you.
If you really want a solid stable number, im pretty sure every captivate I've seen can go up to atleast 1.2 ghz.
Sent from my Captivate using XDA App

Yuna said:
It will be worse, but if you do UV it will last a bit longer...
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Click to collapse
That is very untrue. I read an article (for the life of me can't find it) that overclocking is actually better for battery life. I have in fact had better results on my LG Optimus V with overclocking at 806mHz (highest stable clock setting) than with 600mHz (standard). LeslieAnn (Harmonia dev) linked to the aforementioned article in one of her posts. If I find the link I will post it.

I've only OC a couple of times but 1200Mhz should be stable for the majority of phones out there. The most I've got out of my phone was 1440Mhz on MIUI with Glitch kernel, while my friend was able to hit 1600Mhz with same rom and kernel. It took me quite a bit to figure out what voltages for what steps etc to get it to work well so if you do not feel like tinkering with it for a long while I wouldn't try to push your OC too high.

Battery life doesn't usually decrease unless you over volt. That being said most Galaxy S will get 1.2ghz-1.3ghz on stock voltage. Usually a good idea to undervolt most "steps" except the high clocks (1ghz+) but this varies on phone, rom, kernel, etc.

prbassplayer said:
Battery life doesn't usually decrease unless you over volt. That being said most Galaxy S will get 1.2ghz-1.3ghz on stock voltage. Usually a good idea to undervolt most "steps" except the high clocks (1ghz+) but this varies on phone, rom, kernel, etc.
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ohh... i thought that said undervolt... but over clocking as well will make it decrease some.
If you ran faster you would burn more energy in the same amount of time. (over clocking)
If you reduced the weight of your legs or gravity you would burn less energy. (under volting).
Most people dont notice battery drain when overclocked because the processor speed doesnt run full speed all the time. it governs to different speeds for what it needs to do.
go stock speed and play a game till it drops to a percentage.
recharge
overclock with NO undervolting and play the game again till the same percentage.
less time. guaranteed.
just sitting at the homescreen and flipping through your app drawer and using face book wont kick your phone into high gear, with stock or overclocking. you will never notice.

TRusselo said:
ohh... i thought that said undervolt... but over clocking as well will make it decrease some.
If you ran faster you would burn more energy in the same amount of time. (over clocking)
If you reduced the weight of your legs or gravity you would burn less energy. (under volting).
Most people dont notice battery drain when overclocked because the processor speed doesnt run full speed all the time. it governs to different speeds for what it needs to do.
go stock speed and play a game till it drops to a percentage.
recharge
overclock with NO undervolting and play the game again till the same percentage.
less time. guaranteed.
just sitting at the homescreen and flipping through your app drawer and using face book wont kick your phone into high gear, with stock or overclocking. you will never notice.
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Click to collapse
I have my phone and nook's clocking speed set at the same for min/max settings. I play a mean game of RUA and AirAttack HD. I've in fact timed my battery life on standard clock settings and my overclocking. While overclocked, my nook lasted 10 minutes longer than at standard speeds (while playing AirAttack HD, which has intense 3D graphics). And you might suggest I undervolted, but I never touch that stuff. My volting stays where it is.

Overclock or not?

A few weeks ago when I still had my HTC Hero it was overclocked to 672Mhz (standard = 528Mhz). It gave me a little boost in performance on Froyo, also the batterylife wasn't decreased too much.
But with our N1 running on 1Ghz, will it give much difference when clocked to 1113/1152Mhz? And what about batterylife?
If SetCPU is used what are your settings then? Mine is currently running on stock speed, no SetCPU.

ZeppeMan said:
A few weeks ago when I still had my HTC Hero it was overclocked to 672Mhz (standard = 528Mhz). It gave me a little boost in performance on Froyo, also the batterylife wasn't decreased too much.
But with our N1 running on 1Ghz, will it give much difference when clocked to 1113/1152Mhz? And what about batterylife?
If SetCPU is used what are your settings then? Mine is currently running on stock speed, no SetCPU.
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I have my nexus one rooted and flashed to MIUI Rom and clock @ 690mhz I get way better battery power. Before I would only get 6hr to 8hr if lucky now I get from 9hr to 13hr depending how much I use it.

set to 1.13 ghz
then screen off to minimum 245mhz

josemedina1983 said:
I have my nexus one rooted and flashed to MIUI Rom and clock @ 690mhz I get way better battery power. Before I would only get 6hr to 8hr if lucky now I get from 9hr to 13hr depending how much I use it.
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So you underclocked it, what about the speed? It's not to laggy?

Nexus one can run reasonably smooth @ 600mhz and above. It might not open applications as fast as it will be @ 1GHz though.

i think 1Ghz is enough for n1
why do u want an overclock?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

shreyas1122 said:
i think 1Ghz is enough for n1
why do u want an overclock?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
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I didn't said I want an overclock. It's allready very fast on 1Ghz (compared to my old Hero ), just wanted to know your thoughts about overclocking the N1.

im overclocked at 1152 mhz and profiles set for 245 max with screen off. Overclocking is nice because i like the snappiness but most people cant tell the difference between 998 mhz and 1152. its not needed to overclock but i think profiles help alot. just my two cents

Ok thx, I will try 1150Mhz and see (if it's stable and) what batterylife does. I'm also going to try underclocking.
I have my N1 only for a couple of weeks now and I must say, this phone is awesome. It's VERY fast compared to my old Hero. I remember when I was installing apps on my Hero it became very slow and couldn't do anything untill installing was finished. With the N1 you still can do things while installing apps without lag. The responsiveness and smoothness is also a lot faster. I loved my Hero Because it never let me down, ok it was all a bit slower, but it was getting there. Now with the release of Gingerbread (custom ROM) it became to slow for me and that's why I sold my Hero and bought the N1. It was very difficult to find one, because of the EOL (end of life). But eventually I found one and i'm very happy with it. The N1 is allready more 1 year old, but it still competes with the best phones out there.

I generally run overclocked at 1075MHz, which gives a good balance between battery power usage and processor power. My understanding is that a different voltage scaling method is generally used above 1075MHz, so power consumption will increase above that point.

Didn't knew the voltage would increase above 1075Mhz, will keep that in mind

ZeppeMan said:
Didn't knew the voltage would increase above 1075Mhz, will keep that in mind
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This is, of course, dependent upon how the kernel is constructed, but this is what I have generally found to be true.

Give us some feedback

I overclocked it too 1075Mhz when screen is on (screen off 245Mhz). Will give my thoughts in a day or 2.

Just report that my battery drain is almost the same as on stock settings. I think it drains a tiny bit faster on 1075Mhz, but nothing major. On the other hand, I don't feel it's faster on 1075Mhz then on stock speed. Only benchmarks give me performance increase.
I'm now on CM6.1.1 with stock kernel (cyanogen), I tried other kernels like Wilmonks kernel,.. Although it was more responsive, battery was going down even faster. I get best battery results with stock kernel.
Hard to choose
more speed = more battery drain
less speed = longer battery
I think I stay with the last option (less speed = longer battery), because Wildmonks kernel doesn't give me enough performance increase over the stock kernel on stock speed.

I have mine at 998mhz, but overclocked 1152 while plugged into power.
Either way, its so easy to play with the clock settings, i'd just have a play with a bunch of different settings if i were you.

liam.lah said:
I have mine at 998mhz, but overclocked 1152 while plugged into power.
Click to expand...
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I'd love a how-to fire that..
mind sharing the app?
Sent from my Nexus One

ZeppeMan said:
wanted to know your thoughts about overclocking the N1.
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Click to collapse
well my thoughts: underclock!
so you can watch movies on it all night!
Sent from my Nexus One

shreyas1122 said:
I'd love a how-to fire that..
mind sharing the app?
Sent from my Nexus One
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use SetCPU to create profiles based on different circumstances.
Me, I have mine clocked to a max of 1075 and min of 245 with the screen on, 576 max / 128 min screen off, 998/128 charging (to reduce heat - overclocking while power is applied can make it silly hot), and a failsafe to clock down to 576/128 if the temperature gets over 50*C.
Fabulous app.

Correct me if I am wrong. When you use setcpu to "ondemand", the CPU speed can ramp up to max whenever necessary, otherwise the speed will tune down to min especially in standby mode. In that way, you can enjoy the advantages of overclocking and underclocking the CPU speed i.e. increasing performance when needed and saving power when not in use, right? When I loaded Rod's MIUI and Wildmonk's kernel, I can underclock down to 128Mhz and overclock up to 1.152Ghz. At the end of the day, I still have over 60% of power left after not so heavily use (some web browsing, checking email and listen some music). Overall, setcpu is a great app for me.

[q] overclocking noob question

So i have been able to clock my captivate to a stable 1300 using suckerpunch #57. I'm wondering though how often do you think are phones actually use this frequency? i know when i'm running a psx emulator im sure that it probably has the cpu maxed out, which runs tekken 3 beautifully now at no lower then 48 fps, but i hope on not much else (would be nice to find an app that would put the cpu used clock speed on taskbar). Only reason i wonder is because of course phones don't have cooling systems like computers so i worry about cpu life.

Nerz said:
So i have been able to clock my captivate to a stable 1300 using suckerpunch #57. I'm wondering though how often do you think are phones actually use this frequency? i know when i'm running a psx emulator im sure that it probably has the cpu maxed out, which runs tekken 3 beautifully now at no lower then 48 fps, but i hope on not much else (would be nice to find an app that would put the cpu used clock speed on taskbar). Only reason i wonder is because of course phones don't have cooling systems like computers so i worry about cpu life.
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i have never seen the cpu get hot in my phone. it gets unstable before any heat is detected, but my phone is not very overclockable, i can get 1.3 with much care to the uv settings. i wouldnt worry about heat until the 1.4 mark, even then you are probably fine. the newer qualcom chips have been set to run at 1.9ghz and dont burn up they are on the same size architecture as ours. these arm chips run at such low voltages that heat is not really a big problem. i dont think anyone on the board has killed a hummingbird from overclocking it.

I think your speaking pre-emptively about not burning up.
Just because the chip doesn't instantly melt doesn't mean your not risking electro migration.

Nerz said:
So i have been able to clock my captivate to a stable 1300 using suckerpunch #57. I'm wondering though how often do you think are phones actually use this frequency? i know when i'm running a psx emulator im sure that it probably has the cpu maxed out, which runs tekken 3 beautifully now at no lower then 48 fps, but i hope on not much else (would be nice to find an app that would put the cpu used clock speed on taskbar). Only reason i wonder is because of course phones don't have cooling systems like computers so i worry about cpu life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this chip has a built in fail safe and can run as long as it can handle it automatically freezes or reboot your phone above its capable limit. If you want real time monitoring of your cpu clock speed/usage, ram usage and battery temp download Temp+CPU V2 widget from the market pretty good app. enjoy

will OC to 1.4 hurt my phone ?

so, i am using the Fear Rom and with the OC karnel. i played around the max sittings to 1.4 and tried quadarant. amazing score of 4150. nice... but what will happen if i keep it at 1.4 ?
will it over heat the phone / burn the GPU/CPU when playing games for example ?
i understand the battery life will be shorter. but what other disdvantages ?

ll_l_x_l_ll said:
so, i am using the Fear Rom and with the OC karnel. i played around the max sittings to 1.4 and tried quadarant. amazing score of 4150. nice... but what will happen if i keep it at 1.4 ?
will it over heat the phone / burn the GPU/CPU when playing games for example ?
i understand the battery life will be shorter. but what other disdvantages ?
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Click to collapse
You could dmg ur cpu. But Tegra is known to run 1.8Ghz stable. So with 1.4 you should be good.
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

Oh!! Great 1.8Ghz but only 1.4Ghz is very drain my battery to much.

In the long run, your cpu might get affected but its shouldn't happen so soon.
That said, in my honest opinion, don't need to OC the chip.

The same OCing rules apply from the PC World. The same batch of chips have varying maximum OCing capabilities and thus different stabilities. Although you can stably run a chip at a higher clock, it will definitely shorten its life (Sometimes it could kill it in a year, sometimes beyond what we can measure.). Chip makers purposefully OC chips during tests to simulate the stress effects of using the chip over a long period of time (OCing that makes it seem like the chip is being used for months or years.). Nvidia sticks the Tegra at 1 GHz half because it's cheaper to do so (don't need to ensure higher clock rates which would mean a larger percentage of their chips won't last doing it.) and half because of marketing (At the time, no one has 1.2 GHz like we do now. From what I've seen, Tegra 2 can do 1.2 GHz easy.).
So what it comes down to is how long you plan on keeping the phone and how lucky you are. =)
Imo, in the interest of power savings (P = (V^2)/R), the gains of OCing having an exponentially worse effect on battery life.

imho theres currently no point in oc'ing the Tegra2 in Optimus at all.
Theres no real life benefit, only theoretical benefit when running benchmark apps for show off.
Theres not a single application or game out there today that require more processing power than what the Tegra delivers at 1ghz - and not a single one out there that will run any better or faster by oc'ing because the demand for processing power to run the application or game at its maximum capacity are allready met at 1ghz
Basically there are only negatives in terms of decreased battery and cpu life for nothing but a screenshot of a higher quadrant (or whatever) score
If at some time in the future you should run into a game that would not run smoothly unless the cpu are oc'ed then it would make sence to do so - but for now not.
The games available today either do run perfectly smooth at 1ghz or if they dont, then they dont because of poor programming or other factors and they would still run poorly even if the cpu are oc'ed

Actually there are real life benefits until you find a game which really lags when you run it. Meaning, you should leave it as it is until next year.
It may damage the CPU like what others say but since lower clocks are undervolt it might last as long as a non OC (Stock).
But it will kill the battery faster as you will have to charge more often due to the higher power draws.

Cyanogen8

Cyanogen 8? Is this next? Or is this in the works? Also is 2.3.5 next and would it be numbered a different version when Ice Cream comes out? Also is anything coming from the devs to overclock to 800 yet?

cell2011 said:
Also is anything coming from the devs to overclock to 800 yet?
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It's been done. So very very few phones are even stable at 800, and those that could generally performed worse in benches at 800 than at lower clocks. Many of these devices bootloop above 700.

Cyanogen 8 will not come out yet since will most likely be ice cream sandwich. I am not even sure is 2.3.5 will even come out and no the devs can not overclock this device to 800mhz because is 768 is the limit of the processor. Most people's phones do not even run that smoothly at 768 anyways. If somehow the dev found a way to overclock it to 800 (impossible btw but this is just a what if kind of statement) since the processor can not handle 800 it would just overheat the thing and cause crashes.

Also, on a side note, this should not be in the Development section. This should be in general or Q&A

This belongs in Q&A for future reference.
CM8 will be next, obviously. It will be based on Ice Cream Sandwich, so no, it won't be in development until ICS is released to AOSP so that the CM team can start using that code. 2.3.5 is an update coming out soon for the Nexus S 4G that fixes wifi and network speed, as well as adding more secure NFC for Google Wallet. It won't really affect us when it is merged into CM7. ICS is expected to be Android 4.0, but it could be 3.5 if Google decides.
There is a kernel that goes over 800Mhz, but anything over 768Mhz can be unstable on some phones. I tried it and there were no real performance gains, but battery life was a lot worse. Performance was actually worse at the highest CPU clock, in my experience. Just stick with 768Mhz. It's stable and chances are that you can get even better performance at a lower clock. I get better battery and performance at 633Mhz. It all depends on each unique phone.

rizdog23 said:
Cyanogen 8 will not come out yet since will most likely be ice cream sandwich. I am not even sure is 2.3.5 will even come out and no the devs can not overclock this device to 800mhz because is 768 is the limit of the processor. Most people's phones do not even run that smoothly at 768 anyways. If somehow the dev found a way to overclock it to 800 (impossible btw but this is just a what if kind of statement) since the processor can not handle 800 it would just overheat the thing and cause crashes.
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I lol'd at this statement. Did you not read any of the posts above you?

When i began to post there were no posts yet. They must have got posted while i was typing. So seeing as the only post at the time was the op, then yes i did read the post(s) above mine.....

There is a kernel that goes over 800Mhz, but anything over 768Mhz can be unstable on some phones. I tried it and there were no real performance gains, but battery life was a lot worse. Performance was actually worse at the highest CPU clock, in my experience. Just stick with 768Mhz. It's stable and chances are that you can get even better performance at a lower clock. I get better battery and performance at 633Mhz. It all depends on each unique phone.
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I can confirm that the Godmode kernel was able to push some phones, such as mine, past 800Mhz. Although I had a faster processor speed, my battery would drain incredibly fast as well as overheat. Even though I never hit a bootloop with the kernel, the battery life, overheating, and loss of performance kept me away. Sacrificing too much for having a faster processor speed. Normally I overclock to about 729Mhz and have great battery life, speed and performance in conjunction with a min of 19Mhz and a smartass governor.
Sent from my Hero that never dies! ;D

dastin1015 said:
I can confirm that the Godmode kernel was able to push some phones, such as mine, past 800Mhz. Although I had a faster processor speed, my battery would drain incredibly fast as well as overheat. Even though I never hit a bootloop with the kernel, the battery life, overheating, and loss of performance kept me away. Sacrificing too much for having a faster processor speed. Normally I overclock to about 729Mhz and have great battery life, speed and performance in conjunction with a min of 19Mhz and a smartass governor.
Sent from my Hero that never dies! ;D
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Thanks. I am glad someone at least confirmed it. I never knew about the godmode kernel as ive only been here for a little bit. Sorry for misinformed post about their not being an 800mhz kernel. As I can see, i was wrong, but also I was correct in saying that the processor can not handle it....sometimes

rizdog23 said:
Thanks. I am glad someone at least confirmed it. I never knew about the godmode kernel as ive only been here for a little bit. Sorry for misinformed post about their not being an 800mhz kernel. As I can see, i was wrong, but also I was correct in saying that the processor can not handle it....sometimes
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Yup, I'm at 806 - 19 ondemand while posting this and I can already feel it slowing down a little. 729 - 19 on demand is my best setup. I've tested a lot with trying higher setups than that but so far 729 seems to be the best for battery life and performance on every rom I've ever tried
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA Premium App

rubyknight said:
Yup, I'm at 806 - 19 ondemand while posting this and I can already feel it slowing down a little. 729 - 19 on demand is my best setup. I've tested a lot with trying higher setups than that but so far 729 seems to be the best for battery life and performance on every rom I've ever tried
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA Premium App
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For some reason my phone never works well with higher clock speeds no matter what rom or kernel i use. I get my best results at 710-352 performance.

In before bierce gives birth over ANOTHER question being in the dev section
Sent from my Android using Tapatalk

rizdog23 said:
For some reason my phone never works well with higher clock speeds no matter what rom or kernel i use. I get my best results at 710-352 performance.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've noticed is that newer Hero's that were sold with Eclair as opposed to the original Donut, when I bought mine, are not able to reach those higher processor speeds past 691Mhz.
Sent from my Hero that never dies! ;D

i bought mine at radio shack back in september and it was still on 1.5 and ive never been able to get over 768mhz without it freezing and bootlooping its different with every hero.
i stay at 352-691 ondemand and thats plenty fast for me

Mine was running 1.5 also and it will run fine at 768 but battery life suffers so I usually run at 352/710 and battery and performance are good (depends on rom kernel)
Where can I get the godmode kernel ....
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

I actually got mine two weeks after it came out.....so i mean it could just be that this phone is dead now. I never had a refurb or anything. I got it wet once but it got repaired. I've only had this one the whole time. Do you think that is the issue?

rubyknight said:
Yup, I'm at 806 - 19 ondemand while posting this and I can already feel it slowing down a little. 729 - 19 on demand is my best setup. I've tested a lot with trying higher setups than that but so far 729 seems to be the best for battery life and performance on every rom I've ever tried
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA Premium App
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Hey rubyknight,
just wondering why 19? Ive seen people do that but can the processor really ever do anything at 19? if so, doesnt it affect stuff like wake. Im trying it now just to see for myself. Ive been playing with a really high min value between 480 and 576 with the high at 748 and it actually doesnt only seems to affect battery life a little, both on the .29 and .35 kernels on jaybobs roms and on OMFGB.
Thanks

chalan30 said:
Hey rubyknight,
just wondering why 19? Ive seen people do that but can the processor really ever do anything at 19? if so, doesnt it affect stuff like wake. Im trying it now just to see for myself. Ive been playing with a really high min value between 480 and 576 with the high at 748 and it actually doesnt only seems to affect battery life a little, both on the .29 and .35 kernels on jaybobs roms and on OMFGB.
Thanks
Click to expand...
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It depends on the cpu governor that you use.
nandroids are for
sissies

ch1naski said:
It depends on the cpu governor that you use.
nandroids are for
sissies
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so update, ive run it at 19/768 on demand all day and after 11hrs 13 min its at 60% thats not bad for my phone! and there was almost no performance difference. Just the slightest UI lag... this is on jaybobs 7/8 with the .29 kernel, with background data off. And my regular usage which is not a lot. but for me its good. i wish I had tried it ages ago.

chalan30 said:
so update, ive run it at 19/768 on demand all day and after 11hrs 13 min its at 60% thats not bad for my phone! and there was almost no performance difference. Just the slightest UI lag... this is on jaybobs 7/8 with the .29 kernel, with background data off. And my regular usage which is not a lot. but for me its good. i wish I had tried it ages ago.
Click to expand...
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I believe that you can set the ramp up frequency and that may help with the lag. Setcpu, advanced settings, I think?
nandroids are for
sissies