In the past, Jelly Bean’s Project Butter looked to make Android run a little smoother, while KitKat’s Project Svelte focused on accommodating devices with just 512MB of RAM.
In the upcoming Android L release, Project Volta is concerned with all things battery, and an early experiment with the beta release suggests Android users can look forward to as much as 36% more juice. Prettaaaaaay good.
Credit goes to ArsTechnica, which compared battery life on an old “beat up” Google Nexus 5 with KitKat Android 4.4.4 versus Android L 5.0.
Essentially, what the guys did was have the Nexus 5 automatically refresh a webpage every 15 seconds, and on average, having run the test twice for each version, Android L was way better than KitKat.
Specifically, on KitKit Android 4.4.4, the Nexus 5 lasted 345 minutes (5.75 hours), compared to Android L at 471 minutes (7.85 hours). So that’s a whole two hours more, or – to look at it another way – 36% more battery life.
Project Volta Tricks include waiting for the processor to wake before performing menial tasks, and refusing to wake the device for a network task when no network connection is present - a no-brainer if ever I've heard one.
Again, it’s noted that the Nexus 5 has been through the wars, and of course Android L is far from complete, so the battery savings could be even greater when the latest release comes to light.
, yeah it seems pretty good now.
