Huge battery drain

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I understand that emulation puts a big strain on the battery, but the drain is 
just incredible.. I have a galaxy S2 where the huge screen alone usually takes 
around 60% of the battery in case of normal daily usage. While running 
Mame4Droid, instead, it's Mame taking up to two or three times that amount, 
totalling up to 70%, making the screen percentage shrink to a mere 20%. Battery 
is literally eaten alive.

Is the consumption so heavy on the iPhone version too? Are there any possible 
improvement geared toward a better battery life? At worst, I noticed that in 
the options there are tips on what would cut on performance to gain quality.. 
it would be helpful to have similar descriptions telling what would save 
battery, compromising some quality.

Another thing I was wondering: just before starting a game it's possible to 
adjust the CPU %.. would lowering this (down to a reasonable amount, depending 
on game) actually save battery? Or the way emulation works would just give a 
lower "emulated" cpu, but still consuming roughly the same energy?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by malha...@gmail.com on 7 Oct 2011 at 1:47

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Mame4droid is a threaded app... So it uses s2 two cores... Battery drain 
depends on device and CPU type, android version...etc.. Also   is only CPU app 
but honeycomb , meaning that gpu is only used on android 3.0 or upper..

Common sense gives tips to reduce battery drain as disable threading and  
smoothing options.. Less CPU needed, less battery needed...

It's also a good tip to exit mame4droid app... Don't let in background.  

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 8 Oct 2011 at 1:41

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That's exactly what I was asking, thank you very much :)

But would the CPU % option change that as well (given that I keep it at a 
playable level, of course)?

Anyway, so video and audio can be threaded or not.. but that should have an 
impact only on dual cores, right? On single cores mobiles, there shouldn't be 
much performance or consumption difference. Am I wrong?

Original comment by malha...@gmail.com on 9 Oct 2011 at 6:58