Battery Monitor Widget 2.x vs 3.x

With the recent release of Battery Monitor Widget 3.0 beta, question may arise regarding how battery life is affected by the new version. This post tries to answer this question as thoroughly as possible.

The following 3 benchmarks have been made using BMW 3.0 beta 1 and BMW 2.8.9.

First benchmark on a Nexus 5,
running BMW Pro 2.x, BMW 3.x. mA is estimated, recording all the time. BMW 3.x consumes half the CPU time used by BMW 2.x.

Second benchmark on a Nexus 7
running BMW 2.x, BMW Pro 3.x, mA is measured on every battery data update, recording all the time. BMW 3.x consumes one third or less of the CPU time used by BMW 2.x.

Third benchmark on an Transformer TF701
running BMW Pro 2.x, BMW 3.x, mA is measured on every battery data update, recording all. Note that BMW 3.x measures both internal and dock batteries while BMW 2.x only measures the internal battery. BMW 3.x consumes about the same CPU time as BMW 2.x.

Below screenshot shows that version 3.0 does not generate any wakelock, while 2.x does!

These 2 screenshots show the actual battery drain during 4 days, while Android Tuner records all activities, Android Tuner Paid/Free, BMW Pro and BMW Free, all 4 apps are recording battery constantly!