also you need to pause not stop the paper otherwise when you go back to the home screens it will have to reload the images into memory causing lag where a pause never lets it unload from memory which is a big deal because although fast pulling images from storage isn't as fast a I/O procedure as you would think it is.Ī company i do some contract stuff with is working on 4 or 5 live wallpapers as kinda a side thing and the requirements are pretty clear. if they didn't code that piece correctly live wallpaper will chew through battery even when you can't see it. ie you have mail or some other something open so that you can't see the wall paper. also it would have to be coded correctly so that is pauses correctly and stops running when something else is in focus. so the more of those functions it makes use of the more battery it will eat. for example live wallpaper can access everything from GPS to the accelerometer to the clock etc. Based on the battery use I got yesterday, I'd probably cost you 10 minutes of use.Īlot of it depends on how well the live wallpaper was written, how many frames per second it was coded at (ie how many times they paint the canvas) and also how much interaction the wallpaper has. Fun/hilarious to play with, but I'd stay away from it as a day to day wallpaper.ĮDIT: after about an hour of average use (a lot of interneting, and a lot of splashing) on the water wallpaper, and live wallpapers is at 2% of battery usage (and I'm still at 94% of charge). Probably the worst live wallpaper, battery wise, is 'Shake them all'. The input would constantly be changing, requiring CPU time, and I suspect that it would be probing the sensor a lot more than the home screen normally would (if at all in Sense ui). For example, anything that used the accelerometer would probably be a larger drain.

I'd be alot more careful with any that use other sensors that aren't normally on (as much). Certainly it would not help your battery life to play with it constantly, but I'd be surprised it would be that harmful (I'll play with it tomorrow, just to make sure.). I'm not sure that water one would be all that bad. Just because something LOOKS complicated doesn't mean its computationally intensive. And there is a huge distinction between something being visually complex and computationally complex. Since the only dynamic input is screen touchs (there will be no added drain from the touch sensor when it's not being touched).

Nexus one live wallpaper