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Hi,
I rooted my N1 and installed a flashlight app (N1 Torch) that uses the phone's LED flash. It warns you that continuously using the flash might break it, though.
What has been your experience? Does "continuous use" mean "hours", "minutes" or just "more than the 0.5 seconds the flash is supposed to turn on when you make a photo"?
frandavid100 said:
Hi,
I rooted my N1 and installed a flashlight app (N1 Torch) that uses the phone's LED flash. It warns you that continuously using the flash might break it, though.
What has been your experience? Does "continuous use" mean "hours", "minutes" or just "more than the 0.5 seconds the flash is supposed to turn on when you make a photo"?
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I think that using it for a couple of minutes would be fine, the problem is that if it gets too hot it could damage the the phone especially the camera. I remember that I installed a similar program on my nokia n70 and several times happened that by accident i turned on the led while the phone was in my pocket, I only noticed that when i started to feel something burning in my pocket Now my n70's led and camera doesn't work anymore... so just be carefull not to turn on the led by accident
I had read that the LED flash was designed for quick bursts. If that is true than constantly running it could - at least - burn out the LED bulb. I doubt is it user replacable, so that is not a good thing.
I have hoped to use Torch too, but have decided its just not worth it. I will just use the lit up screen as a flashlight.
Yeah.. I'm thinking about uninstalling torch I get random clicking after I turn the app off
It's an LED.. by default LEDs are low-power, have low-heat emission and super long lifetimes. They also tolerate turning on/off repeatedly for extended periods of time.
I somehow doubt you could do any damage to the phone/LED.
Has anyone even heard of doing damage this way, or is this just speculation and ass-covering in case something goes wrong?
my old sony erricson w810i LED flash lasted for atleast an hour of continuous use with no ill effect.
LEDs don't get that bright either, not the ones you are thinking of. The LED in the nexus one is much brighter than "usual", and it's also much smaller.
High power LEDs (HPLED) can be driven at currents from hundreds of mA to more than an ampere, compared with the tens of mA for other LEDs. They produce up to over a thousand lumens. Since overheating is destructive, the HPLEDs must be mounted on a heat sink to allow for heat dissipation. If the heat from a HPLED is not removed, the device will burn out in seconds.
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(bold for emphasis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led#High_power_LEDs
Obviously the LED in the N1 is designed to deal with its heat under "normal usage" for a camera flash, and it probably can handle longer usages than the stock camera, but I wouldn't push it too far.
Edit:
If anyone wants to use some debug tools to find how many mA the phone pulls when the flash is on vs when its off, they could probably look up the usual heat generation for an LED of that size and see how 'safe' it is to run.
I just contacted the developer on google wave, waiting for his reply now. Please give me your address if you want to be added to the wave.
DarkLord7854 said:
It's an LED.. by default LEDs are low-power, have low-heat emission and super long lifetimes. They also tolerate turning on/off repeatedly for extended periods of time.
I somehow doubt you could do any damage to the phone/LED.
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High power LEDs do get hot (i have an LED flashlight that gets quite hot after prolonged useage. it chews up batteries as well) and, ill bet that continued useage at high output can damage it.. and the camera... theres a reason that its not enabled stock
A way around heat and power is the cycle the LED at 30-60hz. I am unsure if the developer of N1 Torch could make it happen with software alone though.
Not sure if this helps but I have shot several videos and even changed a flat tire with my BB Storm LED. Besides draining battery, the only thing I worried about was space on mr MicoSd because I could only leave it on continuously in video mode.
I used mine this morning for about 5 mins and no problems.
Still works and so does the camera.
Wait, so the Nexus One uses the High Power LED, not a regular LED?
NexusDro said:
Wait, so the Nexus One uses the High Power LED, not a regular LED?
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no he was just using that quote to prove that some leds do produce heat. judging by the brightness i would say its relatively high power, and because htc might not have mounted the led on a heatsink big enough to keep it cool after prolonged use because they designed it for a camera flash, not a flashlight. so better safe than sorry.
britoso said:
my old sony erricson w810i LED flash lasted for atleast an hour of continuous use with no ill effect.
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Ya! I had a K750 (flashed with the W800i firmware) that had as one of it's features, used the flash as a torch and a SOS beacon.
SonyEricsson's XPERIA X1 (Win Mo device, HTC manufactured) has an app for the flash too. The app has two options.
First (dimmer) is mostly OK (not recommended for hours of use either).
Second (brighter) caused a meltdown of the LED's plastic holder if used for long enough. The holder melted over the vibrator motor, thus shutting it stiff and ruining it.
aad4321 said:
exactly. led's dont get hot.... someone should email the developer of the app. i know he has done some extensive testing. post what you get
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Folks should stick to things they know. There are many VERY high power LEDs, such as those used as a flash. Depending on the application they end design may be to be used in short bursts because they create so much heat. LEDs waste LESS power through heat dispersion than a conventional lamp, but they do indeed create heat. I've seen LEDs that need a heatsink 10x their size to keep them cool. In the interest of size I would be willing to bet there is not enough heatsink on the LED flash to be able to use it for extended periods of time without burning it out.
comparing light sources from different phones as others have done here is silly. Unless you are positive that they are the same LEDs and that they have proper cooling behind them, then don't compare.
Source - Me. almost 20 years in the semiconductor design and test industry
Seconded. It's possible the LED is being driven at peak currents, or beyond too, which is fine for a short burst but not for prolonged use.
I'm the developer of N1 Torch, and was pointed towards this thread. So I can offer some answers and insight...
Standard brightness is supported 'naturally' by the LED kernel driver. I tell it to come on, and it comes on until I give it a command to turn off.
High brightness is only enabled by the kernel for ~0.5 seconds before the kernel turns it off automatically. I simply send the command repeatedly to keep it on.
I had the app tested on a sacrificial N1, and the following were the results:
- On standard brightness mode, the torch ran for over 1/2hr continuously with no problems or heat issues detected.
- On high brightness mode, the torch was noticeably warm after 1/2hr, and there was a bit of a 'heat' smell coming from it. After a further 18 minutes (total 48 minutes) the LED started flickering of its own accord and was hot. After cooling, it resumed working normally (no idea how the lifetime was affected).
You can use your own judgement based on these results (and of course, YMMV due to manufacturing differences). I would be happy to say that standard brightness is fine for extended use (1/2hr at least), but try to limit high brightness to a few minutes at a time.
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/10-minutes-of-flash-player-10-1-on-a-nexus-one-20100222/
Absolutely kills the battery within 4 minutes the Battery was Depleted from Half to red line......I just knew everytime I saw flash 10.1 running on droid or nexus that the battery Icon was always empty, I wasnt too hard on the Reviewers, since I simply thought that they was using the phone all day and forget to charge it, (Benefit of the doubt) , Now this categorically proves my deep suspicions, Even though the gpu is utilised to do the hardware acceleration its still a power hog, Steve Jobs was bang on!!!, and I never owned an Iphone and was planning to get the nexus one!!!! flash 10.1 has huge power envelope problem..PERIOD, thats why they will not release it till later on 3rd quarter it needs alot of work
Half way
Even though it displays what looks like half charge, its in fact lower. Your conclusion is wrong, as the point the indicator turns red is set to just below that half full indicator.
A true test will be to read actual battery levels while playing a video or heavy animation.
I look forward to seeing real power consumption tests, like viewing a youtube video via flash vs a stand alone video player or web browser via Ogg Theora.
Power consumption will vary with the app and video quality as well, so theres a lot more to it than stating Flash his a power hog.
PS: If you believe what you wrote, by an iPhone instead of a Nexus One.
There are also cuts in the video, so the recording session itself could have been quite a bit more than 4 minutes.
rotohammer said:
Even though it displays what looks like half charge, its in fact lower. Your conclusion is wrong, as the point the indicator turns red is set to just below that half full indicator.
A true test will be to read actual battery levels while playing a video or heavy animation.
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Blimblim said:
There are also cuts in the video, so the recording session itself could have been quite a bit more than 4 minutes.
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Hey now, let's not let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
As any N1 user knows the battery graphic doesn't display battery consumption like you're used to with Windows Mobile where looking at the graphic gave you a quick and accurate representation of how much battery is left.
Although I would be interested is seeing how one would actually drain half of the battery in 4 minutes - that would be quite a feat. (For reference when I tried to kill the battery some time ago it took over 2 hours to drain 60% steaming a 3Gb download on wifi, on an endless call on speakerphone while steaming music and playing full volume via slacker radio).
I love the nexus one and wouldnt buy the iphone, Why show a a battery indicator that doesn't show true usage quantitatively, no logic, I am looking at the concurrent time by the clock, not the cut in the scene, unless they have a a wormhole nearby, If your assumption is correct then my suspicion are put to rest but every single time i see flash 10.1 running hardware accelerated flash, the battery is nearly DEAD!, please convince me otherwise,(please) maybe I am overly paranoid about battery life, They do need to try a Test with full battery power, I agree on that logic.
Also would bad coding of java sites eat code, memory management for example, i am not here to disprove any of you but, I want my phone to last more than ten minutes on a flash site........if you think i am being unfair check every flash 10.1 demo on Youtube or otherwise and look at the battery meter!
I have a feeling we are all in for a big treat when Flash arrives.
Lets talk embedded video. For that, flash is just a container stream for the video payload. The codec on your phone/computer does all the work. If the N1 can play 2hrs of AVI's or Mpegs, then so it will be for YouTube as well. I look forward to being able to watch embedded videos.
Even if it sucks the battery dry, I rather have it when needed than not at all.
I want to make the choice and not let some crack pot CEO make it for me.
ikeabuchi said:
if you think i am being unfair check every flash 10.1 demo on Youtube or otherwise and look at the battery meter!
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I understand your point, but I wouldn't loose sleep until we are all flubbing around with dead batteries
ikeabuchi said:
I love the nexus one and wouldnt buy the iphone, Why show a a battery indicator that doesn't show true usage quantitatively, no logic, I am looking at the concurrent time by the clock, not the cut in the scene, unless they have a a wormhole nearby, If your assumption is correct then my suspicion are put to rest but every single time i see flash 10.1 running hardware accelerated flash, the battery is nearly DEAD!, please convince me otherwise,(please) maybe I am overly paranoid about battery life, They do need to try a Test with full battery power, I agree on that logic.
Also would bad coding of java sites eat code, memory management for example, i am not here to disprove any of you but, I want my phone to last more than ten minutes on a flash site........if you think i am being unfair check every flash 10.1 demo on Youtube or otherwise and look at the battery meter!
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The battery icon is really poor IMO at showing actual usage. Perhaps they designed it that way on purpose, but having used WM for the last 3 years it doesn't appear to give me a useful representation of the battery life remaining or used. A shortcut to battery info is needed to be sure for me.
The clock in the scenes runs from 3:59 until well after it ticks to 4:05 (when the battery turns orange). The vid then runs to 4:07 another 2+ minutes until the video ends where the clock doesn't appear again. So we're looking at around 10 minutes of flash usage and around 6 from when it's the last tick of green it appears until it hits orange. Unfortunately there's no real quantitative values to show how much battery was used.
Poor coding of flash site themselves shouldn't be huge unless they are registering a boat load of events and doing a lot of processing on those - not to the extent that it mauls battery life at least. The N1 has enough memory free - with a highmem kernel - that i can't see these sites really causing a lot of pages to have to be swapped or memory freed as a result of loading the page, although it's possible. But this isn't something that's going to kill a battery in 10 minutes.
I'd say reserve judgement until there's a real 10.1 out there we can test and get some quantitative results. I don't think Adobe would be pushing a product to market that essentially would kill the phone within a 10-20 minute time frame, that would just make them look bad and piss people off.
My guess is Apple's big beef with flash is that they would lose control of content on the phones themselves (games and apps) as a flash portal would then allow anyone to circumvent their approval process and app control rather than power consumption.
Unless Adobe is doing things in a highly inefficient manner then they aren't going to be doing more GPU operations than any other graphically intensive game - there will be some CPU overhead associated with flash and the on the fly translations it has to do, but as long as this is optimized for a mobile device you shouldn't see a massive drain compared to other "heavy" games.
Oh wow....
Flash 10.1 looks SO much better then I thought it would... simply amazing...
Craving for the update...
(oh, and about the TC's silly battery comment - the battery only went down a single 'step' in the video, for all we know, it could have gone down from 31% to 30% during all that time).
first, i would rather have the opportunity to use flash than NOT have it. even if it drained my battery. and second, we are talking about a product that is not coming for quite some time so maybe we should withold our opinions till then. that nexus three really sux by the way.....
Even if OP wasnt clueless and this was true.
I dont think people are getting the point. Once flash is widely available on Android it ownt be about viewing current content. Itll be about how great Flash will be when optimized for mobile platform. Just like many websites immediately started having PSP/Ipod freindly videos so will sites start offering mobile freindly Flash.
The games and videos will be much more fluid on it than anything you can pluck now.
Man that looks awesome....
Wow, surprisingly smooth! specially the video, as it's from a site obviously not optimized for mobile phones.
Doesn't the desire have this version of flash? I thought modaco had a desire rom for the nexus in the xda dev section...
DMaverick50 said:
Doesn't the desire have this version of flash? I thought modaco had a desire rom for the nexus in the xda dev section...
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nah, they have flash lite , it is an early built. flash 10.1 is not yet on our hands
yea this looks SICK cant wait
I'm sorry but there is no possible way without making your phone a frying pan to drain the nexus battery in 4 minutes even from half drain...
I mean anyone with basic electrical knowledge knows the by product of power comsumption is heat no matter what we do. If Flash was to drain a battery in 4 minutes, you wouldn't barely be able to touch the phone from the amount of heat produced.
That being said I still think flash is a power hog, but that's why they keep refining it for mobile devices.
-Charlie
dahui9 said:
I'm sorry but there is no possible way without making your phone a frying pan to drain the nexus battery in 4 minutes even from half drain...
I mean anyone with basic electrical knowledge knows the by product of power comsumption is heat no matter what we do. If Flash was to drain a battery in 4 minutes, you wouldn't barely be able to touch the phone from the amount of heat produced.
That being said I still think flash is a power hog, but that's why they keep refining it for mobile devices.
-Charlie
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agreed, you would have to be sucking down 10,800MAH's to drain half of the N1's battery in 4 minutes.
and at that kind of discharge rate would just about instantly destroy the battery.
wow, that´s a nice vid...very promising!..just this and FM radio and my Nex1 is perfect
I hope people realize, that the Flash is just a container for the .mp4 or whatever file that happens to be uploaded, into the Flash container...
So the battery life you get out of watching videos on a nexus one, or iphone, or etc. is the same battery life you would get out of watching videos. However it just so happens that to watch a youtube video you would also be chewing through 3G data and that would kill battery a bit quicker.
But not in 4 minutes.
I have no prior experience with live wallpapers before getting my Vibrant. Do any nexus one users or other 2.1 early adopters have experience with battery life and using a live wallpaper for everyday use?
My battery info shows that the live wallpaper only uses about 2% of the battery but my screen takes up like 40%, isn't there some sort of connection?
What is your question?
-bZj
I'm using the "Ocean Waves" live wallpaper and haven't had any problems with short battery life or low system resources because of it. It's fun to play with and great for showing off to people and has made one iPhone 4 user actually hang his head in shame after talking about how great it was that he can have a background on his phone now.
I use nexus works fine battery life is good
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
I don't know exactly how you find that info buy under battery usage, "magic smoke" set to red and it says my display has only used 9% of the battery... but I think that's not even close to the values you are giving...
EDIT: Yeah, that's the wrong stats... where do you get that info?
I have had good battery life with this thing so far (as much as I play with it), but that is only in comparison of a g1 I got just after they first came out that has been hacked to hell and back...
i like the ocean waves one...
Thanks for the feedback guys. I plan on keeping my live wallpaper. After using them, its hard to go back to static wallpapers.
If you want maximum battery saving from your wallpaper... true black doesnt use any battery. Google true black in your phone browser, save, set as wallpaper. I havent had any problems with battery from live wallpapers though..
degeneration said:
I don't know exactly how you find that info buy under battery usage, "magic smoke" set to red and it says my display has only used 9% of the battery... but I think that's not even close to the values you are giving...
EDIT: Yeah, that's the wrong stats... where do you get that info?
I have had good battery life with this thing so far (as much as I play with it), but that is only in comparison of a g1 I got just after they first came out that has been hacked to hell and back...
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Settings --> About phone --> Battery use
Morbo66 said:
Settings --> About phone --> Battery use
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That's what I was looking at but it doesn't have information on my love wallpaper usage, just display in general...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
what about new ones? or only stock ones available ? New live ones would be cool that use less power etc.
Originally posted this in viperrom thread, but now I'm putting it here too. If anybody has any knowledge of this, I'd love to see this come to fruition. I think this would do well to serve a lot of users, as it extremely cut down on my battery usage, more so than any other mod.
Pasted and edited:
I don't know if this is rom or kernel related, but there is an old eclair mod I miss that I would LOVE to see enabled in roms.
it was on baked snack, I may be incorrectly referring to it but I think it was the 11% mod...basically, when you moved the brightness slider to a point slightly ABOVE the minimum it set the screen to an even lower minimum brightness (not quite desk clock ultra dim low lol)
It was perfect for viewing in the evening, or at home while at night (so under house lighting) and saved an INCREDIBLE amount of battery, I would only lose about 1% of battery for every ten minutes of screen on time
/end paste
This doesn't neccessarily need to be a baked in mod. If it is possible to do it within rom (eg, by hand), or if its simple enough, then does anybody know how? If its something that needs devved and baked in, well then this a request lol.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Just use the app called Screen Filter. It allows you to 'dim' the screen all the way to black, if you so desire. I use it and its easy and awesome. Enjoy.
Since there is many threads about user experience with new phone, its hard to read all of them.
Lets try to ask in this thread, and users who own it to share experience and other informations.
Thread got permission from Diamondback, thank you
Its simply the best Android smartphone I ever had :laugh:
Great screen, great premium design.
Does it suffer from something?
Sent from my LT26i
This is the best Android device I've ever used - and my first
The one irk I have with it is the headphone flap which I use frequently is a bit annoying to use, and the omnibalance design means that whenever I wake up in the morning from the alarm I always spend at least 10 seconds looking at the back thinking it's the front. But the design is useful in the heavy rain we've had in England lately.
electrash said:
Does it suffer from something?
Sent from my LT26i
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Battery life is the only negative in my opinion.
What is your opinion on it (how much up time you get with onr charge)
Sent from my LT26i
electrash said:
What is your opinion on it (how much up time you get with onr charge)
Sent from my LT26i
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8-12 hours of very intensive use
24 hours of intenvise use
48 hours of average use
48-72 hours of "just phone" use
Maximum screen time i got was 5h43m with auto brightness - no matter if playing or watching videos. Talk time is great, more than 15 hours. Idle state drains 1% overnight.
In general fantastic phone, great features. Supporting software great, having the ability to backup whatever you want of the internal and external memory, syncing calendar and contacts to your PC.
Phone software is a little buggy, some very strange behaviours. WIFI can be hit and miss, intitial setup had some quirky defects making the initial setup take a while.
Love the multi coloured LED, have missed this. Screen is amazing and everyone I have showed the phone to, this has been there first comment.
Can connect my Canon DSLR to this phone and control most features of the camera using a USB host adaptor. YEAH Baby, couldn't do this with HTC.
Custom EQ in Walkman app, that sound is superb. My previous beats HTC phone has nothing on this. No decoding artifacts, no hissing, lots of bass with my beats headset.
Nice and fast, any lag I have experienced is the kernel and Linux OS, bring on 3.6, JB4.2.
Screen really sucks that battery fast, reduced the default brightness and obviously it is a little better. Standby is fantastic, way better than any of my HTC phones, as mentioned here over night almost no battery drain, and it is still doing autosync. And I have stamina mode dissabled