Attached is a simple util to monitor the battery power usage on your phone. It displays and charts the power usage in milli-amps (mA) on your phone every 10 seconds (the OS/hardware only updates every 10 secs, sorry). This is not a today screen plugin, and it doesn't even look at remaining percentage. It is simply a tool to help you test your phone settings to see what is draining your battery.

Simple usage: unzip, copy cab to phone, install, and run acbPowerMeter. So far it's only been tested on my XV-6700, so I can't guarantee it will work on other devices. Please try it out and give feedback if you'd like to see it do more or find bugs. I may continue tweaking it if others find it useful.

Updates:
Original (2006.03.14)
Version 0.5 (2006.03.16) - Added weighted moving average to chart, added average mA drawn and total mAh consumed at bottom
Version 0.5.1 (2006.03.16) - Put shortcut in correct location (Programs)
Version 1.0 (2007.03.17) - Repackaged into a single exe and created both OTA and desktop installers
Version 1.1 (2007.03.20) - Fixed bug with charting on most devices. Improved weighted average at chart beginning. Fixed company name in installer.

Note: Files have been moved to http://www.acbPocketSoft.com/



Additional features added to acbTaskMan:

How about a couple of screen shots?

Sounds cool, would be nice to have a simmilar app that logged the running process along with the power use.. The people could stop guessing if MortSaver is a battery drain or if it is important to nuke Active Sync all the time.

Here's one screen shot. Y axis is current drain in milli-amps, X axis is time increasing (no labels yet). Hit Reset to clear data and reset scale.

Just FYI: tall peak is all radios on and CPU at 624 MHz, low point is all radios off and screen disabled with CPU at 104 MHz.

Awesome!
Nice work

That's a great idea. Never seen anything like it.

good way to test whether a prog is a battery hog thanks alot!

I was wrong when I posted:

When I was testing, I was comparing battery drain between phone running at 416 MHz (normal speed) and 104 MHz, both set using Pocket Hack Master. While battery drain was significantly reduced at 104 MHz, I neglected to actually terminate PHM. After terminating, which would also set CPU to 416 MHz, battery drain was much less than when running at 104 MHz under PHM. In short, you cannot extend battery life with PHM. It's still handy for increased performance, but don't run it if you want to extend battery.

A runing average would be a nice addition to the program. Then we can all compair notes and braging rights for who uses the most and least. lol


P.S. WOW I just did the same test with XCPUScalar and I can't beleave the results.. IT TAKES WAY less power if you turn it off and run at stock speed!!!!! No wonder so many of us get crappy battery life!!!! We are talking a differance fo around 200mA when XCPUScalar is running to only 80mA without it!!!!! I am blowen away.

I was planning on adding a weighted average over last so many cycles (maybe configurable). Another feature that I thought would be cool was a notification if your power use spikes (and remains high) and you're not on AC. That way no nasty surprises when you go to get your phone out and find out half your battery life is gone.

I'm also considering adding a line for CPU use and for network use. In my brief testing, network traffic (radio use) seemed to be the #1 drain on battery.

Well I did a a test to compare with the Alpha version of Agile messenger running. And it confirms what many have thought, it's a battery hog. I saw it go as low as 102mA and as high as 460mA while Agile was running. It seems like whenever it connects to the network is when the super high usage spikes would happen, but it appears to constantly be doing that. On the other hand, my push email client doesn't hit battery life at all.

These would be great additions. This program is a great idea and revealed some shocking info about overclocking and underclocking. Wow!! Who woulda thunk it!!

Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

Bob Duckworth

this looks pretty kewl.

on a side note, i didn't need it to confirm that clocking with phm is hard on the battery. i seem to get twice the use when i'm not over or under clocking with phm's scaler.

With just the few enhancements above, I'd be dropping some money into your paypal account!

(Don't make it so big it becomes a big battery drainer itself though =)

I added a weighted moving average to the chart (so if your power is bouncing around, it's easier to see what the average drain is) as well as an overall average (since program start or reset) and the total power consumed (in mAh). Stock battery is 1300 mAh, for reference. I also added the pause/resume feature (since I was tired of trying to get the screen shot at just the right time, and when I plugged into USB, power usage would spike and mess up graph).

Still plugging away. Feel free to post feature requests. As of now, features being explored are:

Additional charts for CPU and network usage
Task bar indicator of remaining lifetime (based on percentage used and recent battery drain)
Configurable notifications if remaining lifetime drops below threshold

Here's a screen shot: