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+-- Forum: PinePhone (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=120)
+--- Forum: PinePhone Hardware (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=122)
+--- Thread: Battery Life- hardware abstraction layer-GPU VS optomizing app for GPU-openGL (/showthread.php?tid=19425)
Battery Life- hardware abstraction layer-GPU VS optomizing app for GPU-openGL - biketool - 09-20-2024
The biggest block to daily driving both the Pinephone and Pinephone pro is battery life. I am not an expert but it appears to me that except for Clapper video app few if any parts of the UI or web browser take proper advantage of the GPU and therefore have to force the graphics through the CPU which is a large part of the total unusual electricity budget of the pinephone family devices.
On the Nokia N900, which was sold loaded with Maemo5 Linux, the GPU was accessed via a hardware abstraction layer(HAL) every time openGL was called, individual apps did not have to be optimized, the major exception were graphic intensive games including the rich(for the time) library imported from Palm/WebOS which was possible because the last gen of Palm devices used the same kernel and GPU as the N900/Maemo5 so were very specifically targeted directly to the GPU silicon for best performance.
The N900 was average battery life for an early(2009) smartphone we could do several hours of GPS guided navigation, web surfing, or playing graphic intensive games like tuxcart, N64 games via muppen64, or X-Plane imported from WebOS games. I do not remember watching the battery % drop at least 5% for every unluck and 1-2% per minute of unlocked screen eve though the N900 had a 1200mA/H vs the PP/PPP with a 3000mA/H battery.
RE: Battery Life- hardware abstraction layer-GPU VS optomizing app for GPU-openGL - Kevin Kofler - 09-20-2024
The N900 was an experiment by a large company (Nokia) with (at the time) lots of resources for custom software development. A small company like Pine64 does not have this amount of resources.
And when Nokia killed off the experiment (focusing instead on the total dead end Windows Mobile), mobile GNU/Linux went mostly dead for several years until Pine64 and Purism finally revived it with new products.