CODI battery life

[Radovan Garabík]

Since I have read a lot of negative views on CODI and its unusability, and since I am considering using Cosmo as my main phone, I decided to measure (unscientifically) the impact of several settings on battery life.

The software is already somewhat customized: the Cosmo is rooted, however I am booting a non-root partition. I installed KISS launcher, Opera, termux, F-Droid, set up airmail (without automatic synchronization), Greenify (in non root mode without ADB permissions). Ledison is disabled (does not seem to be working, anyway).

In Settings→Cosmo Settings I turned on “Switch OFF cover display on power down”, though the description is a bit confusing (does the “Power down” refer to powering off the Cosmo, or just putting it to sleep mode?).

In Setting→System Developer options→Background check I turned off F-Droid.
In Play Store, I turned off Autoupdate and everything begining with auto-*

I also disabled Wifi control for all the applications  in Settings→Apps & notifications→Special app access.

Standby Intelligent Power Saving has been on, bluetooth, NFC has been turned off. Greenify was used to kill all the background processes just before closing the lid.

Codi ON means the CODI has been turned on from the notification area; the display has been kept off (probably) all the time, there were no incoming calls nor SMS.

Cosmo has been fully charged and after 12 hours of rest (closed lid), I looked at the remaining battery pecentage.

• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi off, everything else off: 95%
• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi off, wifi ON, everything else off: 93%
• wifi ON, mobile network 4G ON, codi off: 94%
• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi  ON, wifi off, everything else off: 78%

When the airplane mode is ON, a red LED on the CODI lights on, and I haven’t found a way to turn it off - I have a bad feeling it drains the battery a bit, though the numbers are close enough to the measuring error to be conclusive (compare 2 & 3 above).

The results when CODI is on frankly suck (I actually repeated it twice, to be sure) - instead of about 5%, it drained 22% of the battery in the same timespan. This suggests either some serious power saving issues, or the CODI CPU&chipset is more power hungry than expected or incapable of deep sleep. At this point, Planet would have done better if they connected the cover display as a secondary screen of the mail CPU, not a separate CPU & OS - but then again, it is probably not possible with the Mediatek (or other common) chipset. Perhaps a (scaled down with some circuitry?) copy of the main screen would have been doable - or perhaps not.

Anyway, this isprobably moot with the Astroslide.

[vldmr]

Since I decided that battery life is more important to me than quick access to cosmo in closed state, beside watch provide most of this access anyway, I also started to turn codi off.

And then when I turned it back on on few occasions, I noted that the time it takes to bring it up is actually quite short - several seconds. So it does not seem to be in complete power off state.

That brought me to idea that if the silver button instead of turning codi screen off would do the same function as turning codi itself off/on through the settings/quick access, that would allow to use codi without much sacrifice on function and with good power savings.

I am not sure how to pitch this idea to PC, and not sure if they would really care. I might try to create such service for android myself, but it might take a while before I get some free time for that. If someone here will get inspired by this idea and proceed with implementation that would be great

[Radovan Garabík]

Actually, I tried (I am still trying) to figure out of it is possible to turn CODI on/off when the lid is closed (under Android). So far, nothing seems to work - I am trying various "automating" applications, so far the most promising one is MacroDroid, but the silver button does not produce any event (even with the lid open), and fingerprint gestures do not work. I can bind an action to a volume up/down (i.e. the rocker switch) button, or a flip-over trigger, or a shake trigger, but all of them work only with the lid open - as soon as I close the lid, MacroDroid stops noticing them (even with the "work with screen off" option on). I suspect there is some dark wizzardry going on when the lid is closed.

[Radovan Garabík]

[...] MacroDroid, but the silver button does not produce any event (even with the lid open), and fingerprint gestures do not work. I can bind an action to a volume up/down (i.e. the rocker switch) button, or a flip-over trigger, or a shake trigger, but all of them work only with the lid open

Update: I found out filpping the device works, and it is about the only kind of reliable trigger. I woud prefer the silver button, failing that, the volume button, but if nothing else, flipping the device two or three times as the trigger might be usable. I am testing it with the flashlight toggle and speaking out the battery level and current time (and it is so convenient that I will likely keep the speek-out anyway).
What mislead me was that the phone seems not to wake up, until you press a volume button  - so the correct sequence of events is flip the cosmo (twice, I configured waiting for the second flip) and press a volume button, and it will perform the action.
For the record, shaking the device seems much less reliable.

Now, if only there were a way to toggle CODI without delving into the settings or statusbar...

[Daniel W]

That the CoDi starts up in a few seconds doesn't have to mean it never shuts down completely. Simple things, that loads a small firmware, rather than booting a complex operating system, can start in a few seconds. Even the 1982 0.001GHz Commodore 64 would be ready for use in about 3.5 seconds afters being powered on. The same probably holds true for the microcontroller in the CoDi.

Nevertheless, the CoDi sure seems to use a significant amount of power when on, even when dark and idle. My somewhat aging battery has had a hard time lasting all day lately, until I forgot to turn the CoDi on one morning (I keep the phone in flight mode with the CoDi off at night, since I value my sleep more than nocturnal notifications). That morning (ok, almost noon) was on Wednesday. It is now a bit over sixty hours later, slightly after midnight on Saturday, and while the battery is falling fast now, I'm still at 25%, so it's quite concievable that I would have been able to get three days (of very light use) out of a device that struggles to reach one day with the CoDi on. Sure, it is a bit inconvenient not to see who's calling or texting, but if the impact on battery life I have noticed so far, turns out not to be a fluke, I guess this is how I'll roll while wating for Godot... em, I mean Astro.

[Radovan Garabík]

• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi off, everything else off: 95%
• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi off, wifi ON, everything else off: 93%
• wifi ON, mobile network 4G ON, codi off: 94%
• airplane mode (i.e. the red LED is on), codi  ON, wifi off, everything else off: 78%

When the airplane mode is ON, a red LED on the CODI lights on, and I haven’t found a way to turn it off - I have a bad feeling it drains the battery a bit, though the numbers are close enough to the measuring error to be conclusive (compare 2 & 3 above).

And have an uppdate to that - for the record, you can turn the red LED off with

# echo 610 > /proc/aw9524_led_proc

You need root, and  this number turn off all the LEDs on the cover (including the rocker ones). Taken from https://github.com/gemian/gemian/wiki/LEDs .

Unfortunately, you cannot issue that command when the Cosmo is closed, so I configured a Macrodroid action (Shell script, rooted) and  bound it to the action Flip Device (the only one that seems to work relilably).

And I got, after 12 hours of discharging:

• airplane mode, the red LED is off, codi off, everything else off: 96%

This is not quite comparable to the previous numbers, since the battey is older by a month or so, and I made additional tweaks and installations (not power related, though), but it still suggests the LED consumes about 1% per half day (± 1% uncertainty). This is not very significant, but I am going to keep my Macrodroid action on.