Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

How to get some more battery life?

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Chronon:

--- Quote from: popopola on June 20, 2007, 11:35:04 AM ---Does rockbox decrease the battery life?
for example, If I were to take off my rockbox off my ipod, I would have longer battery life..

..right?

--- End quote ---

Taking it off is irrelevant.  It only consumes more battery while the code is running: If you boot into the Apple firmware it will operate normally.  Why not keep both?

popopola:
well yeah, obviously I'm going to keep both, but i was just wondering if Rockbox did drain my battery more than normal.

bluebrother:

--- Quote from: popopola on June 20, 2007, 10:02:16 PM ---well yeah, obviously I'm going to keep both, but i was just wondering if Rockbox did drain my battery more than normal.

--- End quote ---
On PortalPlayer targets (which the Ipod is one of) the battery consumption is worse than when using the OF. It's suspected to be caused by some wrongly or uninitialized hardware (which e.g. was the case for the h300) but as there are about no docs for the PortalPlayer chips available the exact cause is hard to identify. Once it is identified a much better battery life is expected.

madsic:

--- Quote from: bluebrother on June 21, 2007, 02:32:00 AM ---...as there are about no docs for the PortalPlayer chips available the exact cause is hard to identify. Once it is identified a much better battery life is expected.
--- End quote ---

First of all let me just say I really appreciate all the work that's going in to making rockbox work across so many platforms. The thing is, I've been checking up on this topic for the past year or so, always to find the same answer. Obviously it's a tricky one. I'm just curious as to the likelihood of the breakthrough. I take it that it would require one of three things: a) Some sort of Deep Throat solution where the portalplayer guy in the shadows of the parking garage suggests taking a close look at the comfibulator circuitry, you might be surprised, boys..., b) relentless probing or c) dumb luck.

I won't hold my breath for a or c, so I'm just curious - is there any b taking place? Or has it sort of been resigned to the unsolved folder?

Llorean:
Remember that b) also requires very, very specialized knowledge. So, you also have to find the right person for the job.

For example, amiconn managed some "relentless probing" of the iPods he had (which were PP5002 based, and had simpler code to study) and that's why the 1st through 3rd generation iPods now have good battery life.

It's impossible to estimate when it'll happen, because there is no "Rockbox team." Fifty people could be working on it right now that haven't told us about it. Or none. Or anywhere in between. Rockbox is entirely a volunteer effort.

And if someone's working on it, there's no guarantee anything will come of it.

So, that all being said, do you honestly think it's possible to make any sort of estimate?

The key to remember is: There is no "team" in constant communication. There are several people who talk to each other frequently, but that doesn't mean everyone knows what everyone's working on. Nor do we know what anyone else out there could be working on until a patch shows up in flyspray and catches us by surprise.

If you want to know about the twenty or so programmers I have a rough estimate of, then no, I don't think anyone is specifically working on this issue right now. It's been looked at by some of them, and then they reached a dead end, meaning all the work they'd done so far didn't really accomplish anything, and they went on to fix bugs or work on something else.

If you want the "likelihood", I guess I could say that it's highly likely a breakthrough will happen. It's just whether it's before the end of the year, or in a couple years by someone with an old dying iPod Photo who wants to solve the problem so he can get at least a little use out of it.

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