Database Users

Charts showing various Instant Messenger power usage...

Hey everyone... Recently I've been looking for an instant messenger that I can leave on and have the smallest impact on battery possible. I looked around online and couldn't find any definite information... so I tested it out myself.
I tested Agile messenger v84, fring v3.24.3.157, IM+ v4.58, Jive IM v0.9.1.0, Mundu v4.0231, Palringo v08.04.29 and Slick v0.42
I have a Cingular 8525 running Wm6.0. 3g is on, hsdpa is OFF, screen brightness 100%, battery charge 100%, on usb power. Push email is turned off and I have today agenda, gprs monitor, phonealarm and acbtaskman running.
I soft reset the device and logged in to yahoo, aim, msn and google and measured the data usage and averaged the mA drain sitting idle for 10 minutes without having the device go to sleep.
Here is what I got.
Baseline (no im):
test1 10minutes - 0.00 data, 92.9 avg mA, 25.7mb memory used
test1 chart - no chart sorry
Agile:
test1 10minute - 0.07mb data, 179.7 avg mA, 27.4mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen005.png
Fring:
test1 10minute - 0.03mb data, 105.95 avg mA, 28.5mb memory used
test2 10minute - 0.03mb data, 111.19 avg mA, 28.2mb memory used
test3 20minute - 0.12mb data, 106.35 avg mA, 28.7mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen006.png
test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen012.png
test3 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen015.png
IM+:
test1 10minute - 0.06mb data, 231.26 avg mA, 26.7mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen009.png
JiveIM:
test1 10minute - 0.01mb data, 122.63 avg mA, 30.1mb memory used
test2 20minute - 0.04mb data, 157.68 avg mA, 32.3mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen007.png
test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen014.png
Mundu:
test1 10minute - 0.18mb data, 277.31 avg mA, 32.1mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen011.png
Palringo:
test1 10minute - 0.02mb data, 146.16 avg mA, 25.3mb memory used
test2 20minute - 0.02mb data, 138.88 avg mA, 25.5mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen008.png
test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen013.png
Slick:
test1 10minute - 0.25mb data, 226.44 avg mA, 28.4mb memory used
test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen010.png
Conclusions:
Agile messenger - Agile used to be my favorite im client until it went commercial. I haven't used it since then. I always did like the features it offered, but I didn't find it worth the price they were asking per month. Now that I can quantify it's power usage... I find that it is right in the middle of the pack. Overall it would drain the battery less than IM+, Slick and Mundu, but it's still not low enough to leave on all the time.
Fring - what can I say? I was very surprised and impressed by this application. Very low additional drain on the battery. Connections available with twitter, skype, gizmo and any other sip based voip. Not too mention I can use my GrandCentral account with Gizmo to make free Voip phone calls to landlines and cell phones (very very cool!). I have decided that this is going to be my everyday chat program. There are certainly no bells and whistles... you can't set your status like you can with some of the other apps... you can't send files... there is no message history, but it allows you to keep it on all day with minimal impact to your battery performance. That works for me... and hopefully in the future they will make some of these essential additions (hopefully without changing the power consumption).
IM+ - This was an old staple for me for a long time. I used this chat client exclusively when Agile Messenger went to a pay per month model. I never really understood why it sucked my battery down so fast, which turned into the reason that I rarely logged in to chat from my phone. However... now I can visually see what was going on behind the scenes. IM+ likes battery power more than I do obviously... and has no issues with putting me in the inconvenient situation of needing to find a place to charge up. See ya later IM+ ... as a recognized leader in this particular sector of mobile software... you fail.
JiveIM - Jive is currently in beta and seems to be a very promising chat client. I still think it has a bit of a way to go as far as features are concerned, but it's got a good start and though it's not a battery sipper... it is far from the battery glutton that say Mundu is. I will keep my eye on this one as the providers are actively developing it.
Mundu - OMG! That's all I have to say to sum it up. In 10 minutes of sitting idel... this app managed to transfer 1351 packets. Sure some of those packets were used to check my gmail... and I'm sure it has some other nice features, but c'mon - 1351 packets?
I will admit I didn't look into it too much to find out what all the benefits were to Mundu, but ultimately I figured it wouldn't matter because there was no way I would use it. Just sitting idle this app is like being on a connected phone call. This is really a program that is greedy for juice... and given the opportunity, would suck a battery dry before you had a chance to chat with anyone. Mundu - You are the weakest link... goodbye.
Palringo - I think Palringo is great. It's decent on battery - not great, but if I were ranking these apps... Palringo would be 2nd for battery efficiency and 1st in features and usability. I figure I will keep this one installed and use both Palringo and Fring as my chat clients of choice.
Slick - Finally there is Slick. Made by Lonely Cat, the same ones to bring you ProfiMail, there was a lot to like right off the bat with it's simple clean design. Nice features like native file sending and typing notification... there was a lot to like about this program. But after about 30 minutes of using it... I realized while it's on my battery floats like a cannonball (ref. damien rice).
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I know this is not 100% definitive by any means, but it's a good place to start I think. I couldn't find any information so I figured I'd do some investigating myself. Hope it helps someone out there.
** Note... I was going to try Nimbuzz, but it wouldn't start. Also... OctroTalk was a possibility, but I didn't like how it uses transports for Yahoo, Aim and MSN... So I skipped it.
Post some comments... let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Mark

WOW
Excellent tests, Will definitely help someone in identifying which IM is better for the battery. Granted the best in battery life might not be the best in bells and whistles, but you can make the choice. There are other places where you can compare these bells and whistles.
Question though, did you have DirectPush enabled (that keeps long running sessions, so only 1 packet needs to be sent about every 5-8 minutes).
Also, did you notice any change in the numbers (data and battery) if the number of accounts change?

coolsva said:
WOW
Excellent tests, Will definitely help someone in identifying which IM is better for the battery. Granted the best in battery life might not be the best in bells and whistles, but you can make the choice. There are other places where you can compare these bells and whistles.
Question though, did you have DirectPush enabled (that keeps long running sessions, so only 1 packet needs to be sent about every 5-8 minutes).
Also, did you notice any change in the numbers (data and battery) if the number of accounts change?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was my hope, to help others. I know it helped me to look at it like this.
As for DirectPush... Originally I had it on, but I found that it skewed the results for finding out what the IM program was doing only. So I turned it off. I left 3g on because I wanted to see what it was like in real world conditions.
I only logged into the standard 4 accounts... Yahoo, Aim, msn and google. I considered only logging into one account, but that wasn't how I was going to be using the program and figure most people would use at least 2 accounts. I figued the best thing to do was to have them all log into the same accounts to get a good idea how they handle it. Whether logging into less accounts effects data and power levels... I cannot say.

Hey guys - Martin from Palringo here. Thanks for the awesome research caswell. You may be interested in a blog entry I've posted on the topic of Palringo and battery life:
http://blogs.palringo.com/martin/?p=474
We've really taken the issue seriously. One thing worth noting is that Palringo's current consumption will go down as it's used more. It actually adapts to the detected usage pattern and optimizes the power saving strategy accordingly.
We're also working on a new release which will have even more dramatic improvements in this area.
BTW, according to your stats the control memory usage is 25.7MB, which falls to 25.3 with Palringo running. We've certainly tried to write tight and efficient code, but I never knew we'd acheive NEGATIVE memory usage

Zone-MR said:
Hey guys - Martin from Palringo here. Thanks for the awesome research caswell. You may be interested in a blog entry I've posted on the topic of Palringo and battery life:
http://blogs.palringo.com/martin/?p=474
We've really taken the issue seriously. One thing worth noting is that Palringo's current consumption will go down as it's used more. It actually adapts to the detected usage pattern and optimizes the power saving strategy accordingly.
We're also working on a new release which will have even more dramatic improvements in this are.
BTW, according to your stats the control memory usage is 25.7MB, which falls to 25.3 with Palringo running. We've certainly tried to write tight and efficient code, but I never knew we'd acheive NEGATIVE memory usage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think Palringo is a great client... and would certainly welcome even better efficiency when it comes to power consumption. I was already impressed considering the extra features you bring to the table such as the picture and voice messages (ala Agile Messenger). Those are certainly handy.
Since I have you in a thread... maybe I can make a couple suggestions that would be very welcome:
1. Ability to set a custom message for status globally rather than individual status.
2. Facebook instant messaging I hear is on the horizon, would be nice to have that as well.
As for the memory usage... I have no idea how that happened... but it did. Obviously with only one result for a control group of data and only a couple trials for the test subject nothing can be definitive, but I find the generalities to be very telling.
Overall... great app and thanks for chiming in. I look forward to the next release. Palringo is already a keeper along with Fring on my device.
Mark

Thanks for the feedback. I'm pleased to day that both your suggestions are in the pipeline

Zone-MR said:
Thanks for the feedback. I'm pleased to day that both your suggestions are in the pipeline
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sweet... Good to hear. If there is anyway I can help let me know.
Have a good weekend.

Cannot accept call, Slider wont work when the phone is busy.

This has happened to me numerous times and i'm wondering if its a common issue:
You receive a call and you cant slide the slide the slider to accept the call for the life of you. A sew seconds later you get a dialog saying that the Dialer app is not responding; Force close /Wait.
This usually happens when you're trying to load a web page or playing a game. (anything processor intensive)
Is there a fix for this? Maybe set the priority of the dialer process higher if you have root ?

britoso said:
This has happened to me numerous times and i'm wondering if its a common issue:
You receive a call and you cant slide the slide the slider to accept the call for the life of you. A sew seconds later you get a dialog saying that the Dialer app is not responding; Force close /Wait.
This usually happens when you're trying to load a web page or playing a game. (anything processor intensive)
Is there a fix for this? Maybe set the priority of the dialer process higher if you have root ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this happened a lot with G1... but never with Nexus One. I even watched movies or listened to music etc., and still the call will come through immediately.
I wonder how many apps you have installed, and how much memory you have left?
Cleaning up all unnecessary apps you never use + checking all automated services (such as feed readers, news/weather updaters, Email probers, etc. should be set to decent times (e.g. my news feed reader never loads news automatically, only on app start, weather updates every 4 hours, etc.)

I have a LOT of apps installed (around 180). Only about 20MB internal disk space left.
In fact I frequently need to uninstall apps to install new ones
I don t have a lot of apps running. Usually about 40-50MB RAM free.

britoso said:
I have a LOT of apps installed (around 180). Only about 20MB internal disk space left.
In fact I frequently need to uninstall apps to install new ones
I don t have a lot of apps running. Usually about 40-50MB RAM free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW WOW WO
180 apps? How can you possibly make use of them all? I have 120 right now, and already feel it's too much (like... do we really ever use Google Goggles, or Finance?, or Wikitude, or... or...)
I have about 90MB internal disk space left, and I don't want to go much lower than that
But I guess what's killing you is that a lot of these apps, although maybe not running permanently, will wake up from time to time, to check your location, to update this or that, to do this or that....
I would try to reduce the number a lot and see whether the problem goes away, maybe say at 50MB internal space.
I always tell myself, even if it's cool to show off an app to a friend, if I don't really use it a lot or at all, I can delete it and always install it again if I want to - that's the beauty of the market (also paid apps remain paid, and can be redownloaded for free, unless you have refunded them).
hope it helps

another thing that could give you another 40MB, + using the second memory bank which is currently not in use on stock is to root the phone and flash cyanogen's CM 5.0 beta5 (or wait until it's out of beta).
That's maybe why I have 90 MB left at 120 apps, and you have only 20 MB left at 180 apps.
This would also provide more RAM, and you could run smoother with the number of apps open.
but just do the rooting if you really want to, as it voids warranty

shmigao said:
another thing that could give you another 40MB, + using the second memory bank which is currently not in use on stock is to root the phone and flash cyanogen's CM 5.0 beta5 (or wait until it's out of beta).
That's maybe why I have 90 MB left at 120 apps, and you have only 20 MB left at 180 apps.
This would also provide more RAM, and you could run smoother with the number of apps open.
but just do the rooting if you really want to, as it voids warranty
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice. cyanogen's ROMs are very tempting, but looking at the changes it looks like it gets better every week. I think I'll wait for a bit before rooting and jump in at 5.0 FINAL.

Evo acid test - work day, hard use, battery life, issues, etc

Today, I went to work with both the Evo and the TP2, and it involved over 100 miles of travel, and a large amount of videos shot with the Evo's camcorder and emailed.
There are a lot of observations I made about the Evo, both good and bad, so here goes, in no particular order:
I started with both phones charged fully, and I ran the Evo down to 1% battery in 8 hours. The TP2 was at 45% by that time. HOWEVER, how I used the Evo was rather punishing. I took 10 videos with the Evo, totaling just shy of 50 MB's, and emailed them to customers, etc. I only took 1 little video with the TP2, and it was only 1.5 MB. I used the Evo phone for 4 minutes, the TP2 for 10 minutes.
On the 50 MB's of videos I took, after sending them, I then forwarded them to myself, so 100 MB total upload. To forward them, I had to go to the Sent box, and instead of just forwarding, I first had to upload the video from Gmail. That never happened with the TP2, but I was using Yahoo for all sending on the TP2. The attachment would always still be there. Not so on Gmail, or I presume that is the issue (Gmail), and not the Evo's issue per se. So I had to download all 50 MB's, one email at a time, just to forward it, and then when it came to my mailbox, another 50 MB's, so 100 MB's download as well as upload. However, I only got to about 80 MB on the downloading before I hit the 1% on the battery level. I also forwarded the 1 little video I took on the TP2 to myself, so 3MB total upload on the TP2, and 100MB on the Evo. On the download side, all 50MB also came to the TP2's Inbox, and downloaded without intervention by me (unlike the Evo).
On the TP2, there was 2 outgoing texts, and one incoming, and on the Evo, 1 outgoing only. I don't think the texting was a factor at all. I didn't have Bluetooth or any other radio other than the phone on at all, on either phone, all day.
As far as incoming mail, the Evo falls short in the attachments area. I have it set to download all attachments, with no size limit, just like on the TP2 (and both on Gmail). Yet, I always had to click on attachments, and then hit the download arrow (then a little spinning clock replaces the down arrow). The TP2 downloaded all 50 MB's automatically. But what is worse on the Evo, if you don't stay in that mail while the downloading is taking place, it aborts the download (not just suspends it). You have to start all over. You can't hit the back arrow, open another email, and start the downloading on that attachment. Leaving the 1st page at all aborts the download totally, even going to the homepage, or switching tasks. On some emails, the videos were about 10 MB, so that meant quite a wait without being able to do anything else. Disappointing, for something that should have happened automatically, without even having to push a download arrow. The TP2 wins hands down on this one.
Going through one familiar road that always turns the screen on with the TP2, it never happened with the Evo, but happened 7 times with the TP2. Switching to Roaming, or whatever else triggers the TP2 (and Mogul, maybe all the Windows phones) to turn the screen on and sometimes get buttons pressed in the pocket or holster, simply doesn't happen with the Evo. Evo wins this one.
The main difference in battery life obviously was all the video and emailing. I don't think the TP2 would have lasted that long with that load. Consider that it's battery was at 45% when the Evo hit 1%, and the TP2 had to deal with only 1/4th of the data load (200MB's up/down for the Evo, 50MB's for the TP2), plus all the time spent shooting the video, addressing the email and writing the messages that went with each one, etc.
Also, on the Evo, you can't specify where on the SD Card that you save attachments. On the TP2, Mogul, etc., you can specify a directory. For instance, when I get a PDF file, I put it in a directory called, PDF, same for videos, photos, cab files, etc. The way the Evo saves, say for instance, a video you took called VIDEO0007.3gp that is saved after you shoot it as "SDCARD/DCIM/100MEDIA/VIDEO0007.3gp", is saved when you download it as an attachment, in the Download directory. You have no choice, and have to use a file explorer to move it where you want it to be. True, there may be a hack to change directories, but is there a hack to let you choose with each and every attachment you want to download? TP2 wins on this issue, so far.

Keep in mind, the differences are between windows mobile and android, not necessarily the phones themselves.

mrono said:
Keep in mind, the differences are between windows mobile and android, not necessarily the phones themselves.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I can live with the attachment issue for now, as well as the lack of true multi-tasking in the case of downloading attachments. I know so little about Android, I'm not even sure if it is considered a multi-tasking OS. Any explanation would be appreciated.

Anyone Tried the TI-86 Emulator On Your MT4G ?

Just search the market for either TI-83 , TI-85 , or TI-86 .
AppBrain made all 3.
Pretty cool app IMHO.
Little harder to see than the stock calculator and it wont landscape
but still not bad.
Whatta you guys think ?

since im still in college....this app is amazing lol
thanks for this

:O I am impressed let me finish downloading this massive 8.1gb apk.lib archive and ill be sure to download this also and save it in mSD. Can't waste bandwidth anymore downloading same apps 3000x times as I flash my ROM almost everyday now.
Total voice use: 3,389 minutes
Total voice charges: $3.58
Total message use: 638
Total message charges: $1.40
Total data use: 2,452.4890 MB
Total data charges: $0.00
^ Current usage, thats alot for web browsing and light video streaming with no tethering. Hell even on HD2 I haven't passed 2GB so ATM I am downloading all apps to SD and done with Freeware(Adware) apps as getting paid versions. Can't stand the useless App Market lol who wants to download/install 90apps every night gets annoying after a week.

STHNS said:
:O I am impressed let me finish downloading this massive 8.1gb apk.lib archive and ill be sure to download this also and save it in mSD. Can't waste bandwidth anymore downloading same apps 3000x times as I flash my ROM almost everyday now.
Total voice use: 3,389 minutes
Total voice charges: $3.58
Total message use: 638
Total message charges: $1.40
Total data use: 2,452.4890 MB
Total data charges: $0.00
^ Current usage, thats alot for web browsing and light video streaming with no tethering. Hell even on HD2 I haven't passed 2GB so ATM I am downloading all apps to SD and done with Freeware(Adware) apps as getting paid versions. Can't stand the useless App Market lol who wants to download/install 90apps every night gets annoying after a week.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
downloading either Titanium Backup or MyBackup Root (both have free and paid versions) would completely eliminate having to hit the Market every night to re-install apps. personally I prefer MyBackup as it is basically a "one click" to restore all apps+app data and "one click" to restore all your SMS/MMS, bookmarks, call log and such. I bounce back and forth between a few different ROMs (GorillaSens is my daily driver) and don't have to re-download my apps after initial install.
edit: I also do light web browsing, very little video but I tether my netbook everyday (for those times like now when typing on the touchscreen would suck) and have yet to go over 2GB, hell I usually barely crack 1GB for the month.

Tried Titanium Backup didn't like it much. Mostly I like to have the packages physically thats why I am downloading them ATM. Hell we don't even need any app's to do this as you can manually mv the data cache. But as me being neat freak I have to install it manually to satisfy myself lol I hope we fully migrate to *nix world and totally use ext4 for main fs. Will me so much easyer to do post install for ports and upgrading the base without losing /usr data.

My magazine and then flipboard data intensive?

Has anybody noticed that my magazine and flip board use a lot of data? Well it's mostly the Flipboard app. I can read the news for maybe 20 minutes and goes through a few articles and it can rack up almost 50 megabytes of data whereas if I use my browser (Opera) I use maybe 10 megabytes of data for the same amount of reading. It looks great but not easy on the monthly data allowance.

Agreed - they are data and processor and battery hogs.
If you need your news updates I'd rather suggest MyBoard (added by Samsung to S5 in Germany, don't know about other markets) or very similar Taptu app - they work great with minimum data usage. If you configure them to open stuff with internal browser it'll be even lighter on the data usage.
Anyhow - in most cases the articles load without pictures - and I'm happy with that - and if you want to access those just tap on the bottom to open in browser (internal to the app or external - in your case and mine Opera).
Hope this helps

Thanks good to know I'm not the only one. I don't really need it that much but just pass time while I'm waiting for something. Looks like I will stick with my browser instead of using flipboard.