During its work Plugin gathers and aggregates the battery discharge statistics. Then it calculates the remaining work time with the current battery charge and current time of the day. The more days you use it the more accurate Plugin will tell you the remaining time. Two or three usual days will be enough to see it really works! Please note if it has no statistics (stat file name is invalid, for example) time is evaluated as most battery plugins do: linear approximation based on the current discharge and the passed time.
File with the statistic data usually grows with the speed of approximately 90 bytes per day or 31 kB per year (in a worst conditions - 432 bytes and 154 kB respectively). This doesn’t seem a terrible amount even for a portable device; therefore the current version does not cut off the “tail”. Let it grow.
Compatibility
The Plugin should run on smartphones running Windows Mobile 2003 (SE) and later with any screen orientation (no matter portrait or landscape) and resolution (from old 176×220 to current QVGA or even higher). It was successfully checked on T-Mobile SDA (running WM2003 SE) and I-Mate sp5m (running WM5).
There’re no serious problems to run Plugin on Windows Mobile 2002 (Motorola mpx200, for example), but the color info could be missed since WM2002 API does not provide the required functionality.
User interface
First page output description
Standby mode: “28%, hrs: 15.2 (0.4)”
Here are the remaining charge percentage, the remaining hours to reach TargetDischargePercent and the hours since a statistics flushed into the file last time.
During charging: “89%, hrs: 45.2/0.5 ch, 0.3 rem, 22°C”
Here are the current charge percentage and the remaining time (as in the standby mode), the time passed since charging started, the remaining time to reach 100% followed by current battery temperature.
Charging finished: “100%, hrs: 62.2/Charged 73% in 1.7 hrs”
As in the previous mode you may see percentage and hours, followed by percentage gained during this charge session and time it took to reach full charge.
Second page contains average power consumption graph.
Plugin control
Press Action key (joystick) to get “About…” window containing detailed infomation about the battery (temperature, voltage, the discharge current, etc.).Press left or right (turn joystick left-right) to switch between Plugin pages (two at the moment).
Settings
Plugin setting can only be seen in the home screen xml-file directly in the plugin tag (not under).
There is the test home screen (BatteryLifePlugin.home.xml) in installation package, some of the following parameters are already set.
StatFilename - name of file with the statistics. Default value is “\Storage\My Documents\BLifePlugin.dat”.
I do not recommend you to move this file to the Storage Card especially if you use sp5m or similar device because of the problem: just after the phone startup plugin often has no access to Storage Card. Probably, the flash card driver does not start prior to the plugin start, probably something else. I don’t know.
RefreshTimeout - period (in milliseconds) of the forced plugin window refresh. Default is “600000″ (10 minutes). There is no reason to change to the smaller value: the information which you see on the screen with the very great probability is actual since (besides the forced refreshes) it occurs every time plugin is drawn on the screen.
MaxHistoryDays - how many days if gathered statistics will be used to get remaining time. Default is “30″.
FlushTimeoutHours - period (in hours) of the forced statistics data flush to the file. Defaulted to “8760″ (1 year). Besides the forced, the flushing occurs at every start of battery charging, when plugin is finishing its work (for example, at the corrent (!) device shutdown, when home screen or just a color scheme is changed) and in some other situations. Therefore there is no reason to set a lower value.
MinPercent - minimum battery charge needed to gather and save statistics. Default value is “20″. This percentage was used since the accuracy of the determination of charge falls with the smaller values. Moreover, if situation is suitable I usually discharge battery until it switches off at low charge percentage (lower than 10%). It will keep your battery’s fitness and gives longer lifespan.
TargetDischargePercent - percentage of the charge, to which is calculated the remaining operating time. With further reduction plugin will always show 0 hour. Default is “0″.
height - standard plugin parameter. The minimum height of plugin (in pixels). Can be automatically increased, if long text is to show. Default is “20″. For QVGA-devices running WM5 it is good idea to increase height to “25″.
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