New blog post:

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

New blog post:

iPod vs Smartphone - which lasts longer?
http://82mhz.net/posts/2026/03/ipod-vs-smartphone-which-lasts-longer/

#blogging #blog

[pikario@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@82mhz interesting! I like the setup, but I'm wondering if leaving audacity recording 2 days of audio does not fill all the RAM with a risk of it crashing?

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@pikario
Even on this tiny netbook with 2gb of RAM it didn't, so I'd say Audacity regularly writes to disk, because 49 hours of uncompressed wav audio for sure exceeds 2gb ;)

[irgndsondepp@gts.da-miez.de]

@82mhz your sophisticated measuring setup made me laugh out loud. 🤣

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@82mhz I suspect if it's not a stock Samsung, you used cleaner software (especially the music player itself which was likely exponentially more complex than it has to be) etc etc, that smartphone power usage number goes down a lot. LineageOS, no installation of crappy Samsung/Google/service provider bloatware, and maybe even toss in SuperFreeze or whatever to reduce background stuff, I'll bet you a smartphone can go way down to a whole lot closer. It might still be less efficient, but I'll bet you it's much closer than what you got. Like so much so that I'd bet on something closer to 150-175mW for the smartphone. Still worse if so, but not by much!

Also I miss the EeePC. 😭

[mavica_again@computerfairi.es]

@82mhz just a gentle reminder that my name is lowercase :) excellent write-up!

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@mavica_again
Thanks and sorry, fixed! :)

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@nazokiyoubinbou
I suspect you're right. The Samsung still runs on its stock rom, but I debloated it as much as possible and removed a ton of crapware already. But I'm sure with a rom without any of the google/samsung crap on board, it would be more power efficient.

I bought this phone specifically for apps which need the play store, because I have LineageOS on my day to day phone and some apps (banking for example) don't like this. So this one is my "dirty" device for apps which are necessary, but don't play well with a degoogled phone. So I'm not going to mess with it's OS. For now ;)

And yes, the EeePC is pretty amazing. Way underpowered though... I put Ubuntu 10.04 on this one, and it runs ok. A modern distro ist just painfully slow.

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@irgndsondepp
👍 😁

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@82mhz If you were doing a serious test I'd say buy something lower end (Samsung overdoes it anyway) and setup something more minimal all around just for the sake of testing. But that's unreasonable for this level of thing obviously.

Actually, I wonder if I can rig up a decent setup to test on my own. I use a Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 model which is super low end running LineageOS and no Gapps as my bedside "if I don't look this thing up I'm not going to be able to sleep" device (among other things, lol.) It's probably ideal for testing. But I don't have an iPod. I do have a MP3 player that's quite good, but its battery has not been replaced.

As for the EeePC, yeah, I used to have one. They were super neat at the time, but haven't aged well. I miss tiny netbooks though. 😭

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@nazokiyoubinbou
Yeah this is just a bit of stupid fun, so I'm not going to invest any more time into it. But you know the stats from my devices, so feel free to test with your phone and see which kind of power consumption you get with your device. I'm actually curious how low it can go.

I love netbooks too. I wish there were laptops with the same form factor and decent specs available today... but the closest you can get today is probably a 10'' tablet with a keyboard case.

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@82mhz IF I can setup a test (and I promise nothing because I have several variables like how crappy the worn-out battery is in this thing to eliminate) how loud was it set?

And if you want to see something neat, look up 2-in-1 systems. But when Intel stopped making the Atom they went and got thicker and heavier again. I'm desperately hoping now that AMD kind of has an equivalent they'll come back. Fingers crossed.

[82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@nazokiyoubinbou
With 2 in 1 you mean the convertibles like the Lenovo Yoga, where you could rotate the screen 180° and then put it on the keyboard so that it besically became a tablet? Those were pretty neat, too!

I think the smartphone's volume was about halfway up. The iPod was nearly maxed out because the mic in the EeePC is so crappy that it wouldn't have picked anything up otherwise ;)