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I have never owned an Android device however recently had some exposure when a colleague asked about battery life. I went through her settings etc to see what

by giarc 13y ago

I have never owned an Android device however recently had some exposure when a colleague asked about battery life. I went through her settings etc to see what was enabled/not enabled and found a battery graph. It gave a breakdown of how much power each app was using and a graph of the battery charge over time. I was quite impressed. There is no native iPhone equivalent and I find most 3rd party apps that claim to track data/battery are not 100% accurate.

gress 13y ago
Users only need that on Android because the OS doesn't manage power consumption of apps adequately.
- untog 13y ago
  An iPhone app is capable of sitting in the background tracking your location with battery draining GPS, too.
  - gress 13y ago
    Only navigation apps are allowed to do that.
  - zimpenfish 13y ago
    Location tracking doesn't drain your GPS. I have at least 4 apps running using location tracking on my iPhone (albeit with the help of the M7) and can go 6+ hours only losing 20% of battery life (implying 30 hours of use.) The key, of course, is that the phone was in my pocket for 95% of those 6 hours. Actually using it drains far more battery than all those location tracking apps combined.
- cheald 13y ago
  It's somewhat disingenuous to say that the OS doesn't manage power consumption adequately; it defers to apps to let them decide what resources they need and when, which permits for a hell of a lot more flexibility than iOS (remember when Pandora wouldn't play music in the background for approximately forever?), at the cost of a misbehaving app chewing up more battery than it should.
  - gress 13y ago
    It's not disingenuous at all. What you describe is the user managing power consumption rather than the OS.
    - cheald 13y ago
      That's incorrect. The OS still does plenty of power consumption management, but it allows apps to tell it when they want the device to stay in a high-power state, because often you need that for legitimate functionality. It also allows the user to be the ultimate arbiter of power management because apps get it wrong sometimes. To conflate "doesn't impose tight restrictions on resource usage" with "doesn't do power consumption management" is silly.
      - gress 13y ago
        Nope. This a straw man - nobody said android "doesn't do power consumption management".
        cheald 13y ago
        The claim was "the OS doesn't manage power consumption of apps adequately". My counterclaim is that it's perfectly adequate (when apps manage their locks well, the OS management of power consumption works just as you'd expect) but that Android simply defers judgement for what is an acceptable lock to the app (and the user) rather than imposing restrictions that save power at the cost of functionality. It uses a cooperative strategy, rather than a restrictive strategy. If what you meant is "Android allows apps to consume power when iOS wouldn't", then yes, you're right. That's quite a far cry from "Android doesn't manage power consumption adequately".
        gress 13y ago
        Sorry, more straw man. You have taken that claim out of context. Android forces the user to do power management where iOS does it for the user. If the user is involved where they don't have to be, that is inadequate. Nothing you have said contradicts that.
nirnira 13y ago
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Android offers: 1) Generally much easier rooting/access to bootloader/custom ROM installation than iOS. 2) Install custom keyboards, home launchers, icon sets 3) Change default web browsers, caller, messaging apps to third-party alternatives 4) Full access to filesystem 5) Fully customisable homescreen widgets 6) Full sharing intents system 6) Generally more "computery" interface - downloads displayed in notifications pane for example. And of course you have the advantage of a choice of a range of devices with much larger screens than an iPhone. It's just a shame that the Android UX experience is so chaotic. A consequence of Google never really seeming to settle on a single UI vision beyond "different enough from iOS to avoid legal action."
- superuser2 13y ago
  1) That's not a feature. The carrier's devs are just worse than Apple at securing their products.
- gress 13y ago
  More work for the user to do is a symptom of a less advanced system.
  - codr 13y ago
    this!
  - nirnira 13y ago
    I could reply that a computer system which fails both to satisfy me with its out-of-the-box experience, and to offer any way for me to tweak that experience to my tastes, is even less advanced.
    - gress 13y ago
      You could, but that would be a spurious argument since it could apply to anything you didn't like. If you don't like iOS, just say so.
mikeash 13y ago
In theory, it's pointless on an iPhone because only the app you're directly using uses any significant power. This guarantee has diminished over the years. Before iOS 4 (which allowed third-party apps certain types of background multitasking) it was pretty much ironclad. Multitasking started to chip away at it, and they've added more and more multitasking modes (which is, overall, a great thing) making for more and more opportunities for apps to eat your battery in the background. My personal experience is that the ideal still mostly holds, with a big fat exception in the form of VoIP apps like Skype which get to use up way too much power if you leave them logged in. It's probably to the point where a battery monitor would be useful now, but it's not a particularly great need, and inertia will probably keep it away.

by giarc 13y ago

gress 13y ago

Users only need that on Android because the OS doesn't manage power consumption of apps adequately.

untog 13y ago
An iPhone app is capable of sitting in the background tracking your location with battery draining GPS, too.
- gress 13y ago
  Only navigation apps are allowed to do that.
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  Location tracking doesn't drain your GPS. I have at least 4 apps running using location tracking on my iPhone (albeit with the help of the M7) and can go 6+ hours only losing 20% of battery life (implying 30 hours of use.) The key, of course, is that the phone was in my pocket for 95% of those 6 hours. Actually using it drains far more battery than all those location tracking apps combined.
cheald 13y ago
It's somewhat disingenuous to say that the OS doesn't manage power consumption adequately; it defers to apps to let them decide what resources they need and when, which permits for a hell of a lot more flexibility than iOS (remember when Pandora wouldn't play music in the background for approximately forever?), at the cost of a misbehaving app chewing up more battery than it should.
- gress 13y ago
  It's not disingenuous at all. What you describe is the user managing power consumption rather than the OS.
  - cheald 13y ago
    That's incorrect. The OS still does plenty of power consumption management, but it allows apps to tell it when they want the device to stay in a high-power state, because often you need that for legitimate functionality. It also allows the user to be the ultimate arbiter of power management because apps get it wrong sometimes. To conflate "doesn't impose tight restrictions on resource usage" with "doesn't do power consumption management" is silly.
    - gress 13y ago
      Nope. This a straw man - nobody said android "doesn't do power consumption management".
      - cheald 13y ago
        The claim was "the OS doesn't manage power consumption of apps adequately". My counterclaim is that it's perfectly adequate (when apps manage their locks well, the OS management of power consumption works just as you'd expect) but that Android simply defers judgement for what is an acceptable lock to the app (and the user) rather than imposing restrictions that save power at the cost of functionality. It uses a cooperative strategy, rather than a restrictive strategy. If what you meant is "Android allows apps to consume power when iOS wouldn't", then yes, you're right. That's quite a far cry from "Android doesn't manage power consumption adequately".
        gress 13y ago
        Sorry, more straw man. You have taken that claim out of context. Android forces the user to do power management where iOS does it for the user. If the user is involved where they don't have to be, that is inadequate. Nothing you have said contradicts that.

nirnira 13y ago

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Android offers: 1) Generally much easier rooting/access to bootloader/custom ROM installation than iOS. 2) Install custom keyboards, home launchers, icon sets 3) Change default web browsers, caller, messaging apps to third-party alternatives 4) Full access to filesystem 5) Fully customisable homescreen widgets 6) Full sharing intents system 6) Generally more "computery" interface - downloads displayed in notifications pane for example. And of course you have the advantage of a choice of a range of devices with much larger screens than an iPhone. It's just a shame that the Android UX experience is so chaotic. A consequence of Google never really seeming to settle on a single UI vision beyond "different enough from iOS to avoid legal action."

superuser2 13y ago
1) That's not a feature. The carrier's devs are just worse than Apple at securing their products.
gress 13y ago
More work for the user to do is a symptom of a less advanced system.
- codr 13y ago
  this!
- nirnira 13y ago
  I could reply that a computer system which fails both to satisfy me with its out-of-the-box experience, and to offer any way for me to tweak that experience to my tastes, is even less advanced.
  - gress 13y ago
    You could, but that would be a spurious argument since it could apply to anything you didn't like. If you don't like iOS, just say so.

mikeash 13y ago

In theory, it's pointless on an iPhone because only the app you're directly using uses any significant power. This guarantee has diminished over the years. Before iOS 4 (which allowed third-party apps certain types of background multitasking) it was pretty much ironclad. Multitasking started to chip away at it, and they've added more and more multitasking modes (which is, overall, a great thing) making for more and more opportunities for apps to eat your battery in the background. My personal experience is that the ideal still mostly holds, with a big fat exception in the form of VoIP apps like Skype which get to use up way too much power if you leave them logged in. It's probably to the point where a battery monitor would be useful now, but it's not a particularly great need, and inertia will probably keep it away.