Battery usage Poke() vs AOD

[josekreif]

Does using poke() every 5 seconds consume a significant amount of battery vs AOD?

Since Fitbit has AOD locked away from non-official devs, I am unable to make use of it, so I have built my own AOD friendly screen and use poke() on an interval to ensure the Fitbit never goes to sleep.

I'm guessing there may be an internal background features that are running in awake mode vs sleep mode, which will drain battery. Other than that, I don't see the AMOLED screen using more or less either way.

[Gondwana · Accepted solution]

I think this will use more battery than AOD because AOD mode involves sending less power to the display circuitry. This is apparent in the reduced brightness of the display regardless of the colours used. It can also result in flickering of blocks of colour if the demands placed on the hardware are too great for the power available.

There are other constraints on the use of AOD mode that serve to reduce battery, such as updating the screen no more than once per minute, and turning off all sensors. You could implement these.

[josekreif]

Yeah. I've noticed the screen dims in AOD mode, which I cannot seem to do programmatically. I'm not using any sensors accept for the pedometer, though I cannot be sure what's still running in the background.

I'll just change things so the display is automatically wakened every 60 seconds after shutting off. That way it's on shortly every minute rather than indefinitely. I can only hope Fitbit allows us smaller devs to use AOD someday.

I should add I am developing an app, and not a watchface. It is true you must not update more than once a minute in AOD, but this only pertains to clockfaces. Apps are allowed as much as once per second.