Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
Plans for working on battery life
crescentfresh:
I completely respect the fact that battery life takes a seat on the back burner while the software itself is fleshed out. I just brought up the idea here (and it was moved to the general board), and was surprised to see that people seemed to think it was a dumb idea, especially when there are a number of complaints about battery life, especially on a number of the ipod models.
Would shutting the screen down during music play be the best way to optimize battery life??? Absolutely not. Could it help a bit though??? Certainly. That's why I was surprised that it was kind of shut down as a suggestion.
Drkepilogue:
I understand that shutting down the screen will help conserve battery life but i belive the developers are busy with other stuff. If you know how to do it, i think you should, since it is a good idea. But if you cant, all you can do is wait for someone to do it.
Llorean:
While shutting down the screen will help a _little_ bit, it would have to be an option (meaning overall size increase for the rockbox binary, slightly harming the battery life of everyone who DOESN'T use it), as well as the fact that the screen would still have to be calculater, just not sent to the LCD, so it really wouldn't increase the battery life significantly more than simply shutting off the backlight. At least, if my understanding is correct.
So while shutting it off is not a bad idea, you have to consider how many people will use it. Because having it as an option means that it will affect all users in some way, whether enabled or not. Feature bloat is a danger, simply because saying "Well it's small" is fine until the small things add up.
SilleeString:
--- Quote from: Llorean on June 01, 2006, 11:30:49 PM ---While shutting down the screen will help a _little_ bit, it would have to be an option (meaning overall size increase for the rockbox binary, slightly harming the battery life of everyone who DOESN'T use it), as well as the fact that the screen would still have to be calculater, just not sent to the LCD, so it really wouldn't increase the battery life significantly more than simply shutting off the backlight. At least, if my understanding is correct.
So while shutting it off is not a bad idea, you have to consider how many people will use it. Because having it as an option means that it will affect all users in some way, whether enabled or not. Feature bloat is a danger, simply because saying "Well it's small" is fine until the small things add up.
--- End quote ---
Old philosophical argument. How many grains of sand do you place together before it makes a pile? Is one grain a pile? Is two? Decidedly not, but eventually it'll be one when nobody notices.
Sorry for that but I had to analogize it lol
Llorean:
The problem is that when everyone has their own grain of sand to add to the pile that's already there, how do you pick which ones get to go on it? There's already a pile. We know that pile will get bigger. The question is "Is this grain of sand worth making the pile bigger?" Of course, the suggestor will feel it is, but it's definitely a matter to be debated.
I'm not the one who gets to decide whether this one does or doesn't, but in this case the question must be "Who does it benefit? Who does it harm? Which is worth more?"
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