Zello Android app.(pTT over GSM)

[WoollyMammoth]

My name is WoollyMammoth on there, didn't get a chance to stay long but there where a few people in there.
The UK room was interesting to say the least.

[M3HIM]

I've added Transmission1 to my M3HIM user on Zello. I have it installed on my Windows laptop and on my Samsung Galaxy S4 Android device.

[G0TVJ]

I've been using Zello for a while - excellent and very reliable app - but I'd completely missed this thread. Duh. I've added transmission1 to my list of channels now.

[kr0ne]

Anyone find the android app a big of a battery hog?

[M3HIM]

It's hard to separate which apps are the power hogs as I have so / too many installed. I'll let you know if I come up with anything concrete possibly by using a power management app.

[kr0ne]

Yeah its always tough to be certain but I noticed my phone running out of juice significantly faster while I had it installed - even when signed out of Zello, which you would think would leave it with naff all to use power for...

[smoggy07]

Yeah its always tough to be certain but I noticed my phone running out of juice significantly faster while I had it installed - even when signed out of Zello, which you would think would leave it with naff all to use power for...

Even signed out, if the app is running it will still use battery life

It's just the same as leaving handheld radio on with the volume down and squelch right up, no sound will come out so its not getting used but it's still on so will drain the batteries or to put it another way, it's kind of like leaving the cd player in your car turned on (but not playing cds) and then going into the house, it'll still drain the battery even though no cd is playing

[kr0ne]

No, it's nothing like that... Power management in Android is typically very sophisticated and a running app that is not actually doing anything should be using practically no power at all.

It's possible that something else was causing the power drain I saw but if Zello is sucking down juice while it is signed out of the service, especially to the point that you notice your phone going dead, then it raises a big question about what the hell it is actually doing...

[M3HIM]

Agreed. Zello, when signed out, should only be waiting for you to wake it up to sign in! The OS handles that and effectively suspends the process until you ask it to do something. Even when signed in, it should only be checking infrequently for activity on 'the mother ship' and I would expect, if your status is set to 'busy', such activity would be minimal.

[smoggy07]

No, it's nothing like that... Power management in Android is typically very sophisticated and a running app that is not actually doing anything should be using practically no power at all.

It's possible that something else was causing the power drain I saw but if Zello is sucking down juice while it is signed out of the service, especially to the point that you notice your phone going dead, then it raises a big question about what the hell it is actually doing...

Because it is running in the background it still uses system processes, open loads of system heavy programs on a slow PC and minimize all but one and it will lag because the other open programs are still running even though they're minimized and not doing anything

On the wifes old iPhone 3gs if she has loads of apps running in the back ground it killed the battery off, when I was working in a phone shop we always advised people complaining about poor battery life to close all running apps that are not in use and they'd nearly all notice an improvement
Go into settings and find application manager then swipe to the running page and you'll see what is running and how long they've been running and close it in there and see if you notice anything (or I've just seen you can choose exit in the programs menu options lol)

I've only just got a droid in the last few weeks and have installed Zello so I'll have a play and see if I notice any difference

Can you run a wireshark log on a phone over WIFI?

[M3HIM]

Firstly, let's not compare apples with oranges (or PCs running Microsoft Windows with portable devices running Google Android).

Secondly, let's not confuse CPU resource with memory resource. Several idle processes using memory on a personal computer platform (PC, Mac or otherwise) will impact the performance of other processes due to paging or swapping of virtual memory. Memory management on portable devices tends to work very differently.

Finally, let's not confuse minimised processes with ones supposedly hibernating awaiting a wake-up call. Minimising a Window on desktop operating systems does little to the resource requirements of that process other than reduce display I/O.

What we're talking about here are supposedly idle processes which still appear to be using significant amounts of CPU or other hardware resources and hence battery power.

So, are they badly written, and perhaps not interrupt driven as they should be, or are they doing something we'd rather they weren't?

[kr0ne]

I don't know about the iPhone but there is absolutely no reason why a well written Android app should be significantly draining battery while idle. Power management is exceptionally good under Android and a program that is not currently active is placed into a 'sleep' mode where processor use is practically nil.

It is a world away from leaving your radio on with the volume down and the squelch open.

Some mobile phone shops do still perpetuate the myth that apps drain power as long as they are open and advise people to close all apps when they are not in use, but this is a complete cop out driven by business economics. They can't realistically provide user support and really, why should they?

The same improvements to battery life could be achieved by switching the phone off completely - nobody would swallow this for an instant though... You may detect a hint of sarcasm in these words but both solutions do precisely the same to identify and resolve the underlying problem that the user with poor battery life is experiencing.

Killing all apps is simply the nuclear option - of course it stops whatever is draining the battery but it does absolutely nothing to identify what was causing the battery drain in the first place, or to find a solution.

[kr0ne]

Firstly, let's not compare apples with oranges................................

Quite. Well said...

I got distracted while writing the above post and only saw your reply after posting. I tried to cover this a few times while writing the above but it just got too messy trying to include everything in the one post.

Completely agree though.

[M3HIM]

I've had a few oddities recently with my Samsung Galaxy S4 running Google Android 4.3. Something seems to have been ‘burning up’ CPU, causing other apps to appear to hang, necessitating a restart of the phone. This may be since I upgraded to Android 4.3, since my system memory began to get low or because of a rogue app but I use the phrase ‘burning up’ CPU because the phone becomes physically very hot and battery power does diminish much more rapidly than normal.