Sunday, June 5, 2011

HTC Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) built-in battery reading graph

There are several 3rd party battery metering apps which can draw graph based on battery reading, but if you have recently updated your HTC smartphone to Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread), your phone actually has a pretty nice built-in battery reading graph within the system. This feature is found in Gingerbread version of HTC Incredible S, HTC Desire HD, etc.

Go to Settings > About phone >Battery > Battery use and you'll see the screen similar to as below.


Note that on top of the screen is a slanting slope with information telling you how much time your phone is on battery since last charged. In fact, that slanting slope is your phone's battery reading graph. Right below the graph you will be able to see some blue marks. Don't worry, they are not screen display problem, but are actually indicators when battery is used by phone activities. If you charged your phone, you will also see green bar plotting the battery charging period.

Tap on it and you will get a clearer graph. The blue battery usage marks are further break down to the respective activity.


If you turn your phone to landscape orientation, this screen will also adjust itself to landscape view.


I think, with this nice battery plotting feature, you don't need to use any 3rd party battery metering apps anymore.

6 comments:

  1. Could you please clarify what the graph is actually showing? I've seen references that suggest that it is showing the "(estimated) time remaining", i.e. before batter is depleted at the current usage rate.
    Could you confirm? Could you point to some authoritative documentation that talks about this? Is the graph configurable in terms of what it will show, i.e. "time left" vs "actual charge level"? Thanks 1000%....

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  2. @johndporter

    It shows the battery capacity remaining. There is a scale on the left, which the top line is 100% charged, and the bottom line is 0% charged.

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  3. Hi,

    I have an HTC Wildfire S, and rely heavily on the built-in graph app. I even have an icon to it on the home screen. The graph shows almost all i need to know. What i don't understand are the bar-graphs underneath. The ones labelled Phone Signal, wifi, awake, etc.
    I know that they show the times when the phone was using wifi, and i can see the sudden drop in the graph on the corresponding vertical, but my question is:
    - What's the difference between awake and screen on?
    - Phone signal has many colors, green, grey and sometimes red. What do they signify?

    Can't even figure out how to ask this on google :(

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  4. @Bhatti

    Awake is your phone doing some activity and not sleeping. It can be a background activity like doing backup or sync data with Internet. Screen not necessary on when awake.

    Screen on is when the screen is switched on.

    On top of the screen, there are 4 bars showing how strong is the signal. In the graph, the strength of signal is represented by colors.

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  5. @Voyager8
    Wow, thanks, It really makes sense now. So, correct me if I'm wrong, if the phone signal is weak, like in grey or red, the phone uses more juice from the battery...

    I'm saying this because a couple of days ago, I was out in the country side over the weekend, and the signals were less than perfect. The battery depleted way quickly than usual.

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