Hi, Rob Staudinger wrote: > On Wed, 2010-06-23 at 14:06 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: >> Good point - it would be great to know when you're on battery, and do >> even less. > > What would be even more helpful than going back and forth > "apps should know about battery" .. > "no they should not" .. > "but they need to" .. > would be if people who have concerns about their apps would bring actual > use-cases forward.
I agree :) Didn't realise I was going to be starting a ruckus. I agree with Arjen that if your app is going to be in a context where power is important, then you should just make power usage a top priority regardless of "on A/C" or "not on A/C". But with netbooks and mobile phones, we'll clearly be in a situation where some portion of the usage time will be on A/C and in those situations, saving battery is not an issue (general "being a good citizen" still is, of course). > Once the tradeoff between user experience and power consumption is clear > for a certain case it will be much easier to decide whether AC/battery > status information is needed. Here's a few examples that come to mind: * Video player - wants to give best experience possible when on A/C, so goes with HD, high frame rate - but when on battery, reduces video quality & frame rate to use less energy * Email application that checks for & downloads email every minute/5 minutes when you're hooked to A/C, but only every half an hour when on the move * Wifi detection that updates very regularly when on A/C, but only occasionally (or after manual request) when on battery * Screensaver that goes from "nice attractive eye candy" when on A/C to "blank screen" (or suspend) when on the move * Window manager automatically turning off knobs & whistles & 3d effects when on battery etc. etc. There are lots of situations where when you're on A/C you expect instant updates, and when you're on the move they're just not that important. And those are opportunities to adapt your user experience to be less featureful, and thus less power-hungry. Cheers, Dave. -- maemo.org docsmaster Email: [email protected] Jabber: [email protected] _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
