PowerControl
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Android apps that use power control APIs are often 'battery killers,' oh the irony
If there's one thing Purdue University researchers can't stand, it's an inefficient Android app. They've already revealed how some titles burn huge amounts of energy just by running ads (e.g., Angry Birds uses 63 percent of its resources for flogging stuff rather than flinging stuff), and now they've confirmed something else that has long been suspected: many offerings on Google Play also contain serious "energy bugs." Specifically, these are apps that use Android's power control or wakelock APIs to prevent a phone going into sleep mode. The majority of developers use wakelocks properly, but around a quarter make mistakes in how they juggle different APIs, which can cause a fully-charged phone to drain "in as little as five hours." Out of 187 wakelock-exploiting apps tested, 42 contained errors -- although the academics stopped short of naming and shaming. There's a chance they'll list the culprits when they present their paper next week, which will also propose an automatic method for detecting the glitches. Will that be another app?
There can be only one: "source" claims for iPhone 2.0.2 to not suck, 2.0 must die
Turns out there may have been some legitimacy to those nagging feelings that something just wasn't quite right about iPhone firmware 2.0.2 -- a build many initially hoped would be the holy grail to cure the iPhone 3G's reception woes. Here's where it gets a little weird, though: a "source close to AT&T," so RoughlyDrafted claims, says that 2.0 and 2.0.1 are actually the culprits responsible for holding back 2.0.2 from greatness, not lousiness in 2.0.2 itself. The story goes that the older versions have faulty power control software in their radios, forcing base stations to connect to phones at higher powers than they'd normally have to, which in turn leads to base stations running plumb out of power -- and once that happens, you get dropped calls, bad reception, and lousy data rates, among other UMTS ails. Following that logic, the network should improve on its own over time as more and more owners update to 2.0.2, which explains AT&T's uncharacteristic text message to owners urging them to take the plunge. This all sounds plausible, we guess, but if 2.0 and 2.0.1 were really screwing with base stations that badly, wouldn't owners of other 3G phones be affected equally?[Via mocoNews]
