This is a very bad idea. Measuring it constantly can have an impact on battery life. Why do you think Sony went with 3 bars instead of percentages ? Come to think of it, everything that measures the battery in percentages is wrong for portable devices. Especially if it does this continuously and in the background ! Because every time you look at it, it won't tell you the exact remaining time, but an abstract approximation.
And that approximation is sometimes WAY off course, depending very much on the battery's estimated lifespan, based on the materials used and sometimes the place it was built (China vs Japan for instance).
Devices try to take it into account but it's not an exact science. For instance if the battery was charged 200 times, the battery's microchip tells the PSP to take into account the erosion principle (which states that every battery has a minimum lifespan, after which it will hold less and less charge), except batteries made in Japan are usually of a better quality. But the chip tells it to take it into account anyway. Which can seriously mess up reading "attempts" in percentages.
Think about it. If Sony thought it was a good idea they would've added it a long, long time ago. Plugins like this I consider to be useless. Same for that DayViewer-whatchamacallit that "tells" the battery percentage. It's complete bull.
(This post was last modified: 20/03/2011 12:43 PM by DSpider.)
or there about, i don't know how sony programmed it.
Monitoring battery percentage does NOT waste battery, otherwise why would EVERY device do it? All it does is return a number from the battery's flash, one small method call. Some people prefer the numbers to the logo because it is more accurate, the time remaining does fluctuate due to current draw from CPU and graphics while playing a game or doing different tasks. The point of this application is to monitor that while you play a game. Before you had to exit a game to view your remaning time, which meant all the power draw from the game is gone, and the number it reported was always longer than you actually got when you resumed playing a game. Now you can view it while playing a game, you don't need to exit it AND it will report a time based on the utilisation of the console WHILE you're playing the game. Therefore is more accurate.
tl;dr you're wrong
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(This post was last modified: 20/03/2011 01:31 PM by ProperBritish.)
20/03/2011 01:29 PM
Grey Ghost
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kinda usless anyway. There has been many other plugins that do this kinda thing anyway. For example psp HUD which is much better.
psp hud displays all you need down in a corner out of the way. Judging by the screen shot in the top post this plugin isn't something you want on the screen all the time, it looks like it takes up a bit of space.
(This post was last modified: 20/03/2011 02:56 PM by Grey Ghost.)
No, actually, there's a barrier toggle that the chip inside the battery sends to the PSP. The syscall is only activated when you hit the Battery Information entry from System Settings. So when it reaches a certain (apparent) percentage, it tells the PSP to replace the 3 bar battery icon with a 2 bar battery icon.
Constantly monitoring the battery (like staying at the Battery Information screen or using plugins that constantly update an on-screen status) is kinda like using the Task Manager on your computer. It's going to draw resources. And like I said, using battery percentages is extremely inaccurate. That's why most devices use bars instead of percentages. And I actually prefer it that way.
For example, I will never set my iPod touch to display percentages instead of the graphic indicator. It would seriously piss me off. At times it'll read 54%, use it for a while, drops to 27%, leave it alone for a few minutes and it's back to 48%... Use it some more, drops to 26% and soon tells me it has 20% battery left. Then leave it alone for five minutes and use it sparingly and I GUARANTEE you it will complain at least 2 more times when it reaches the 20% battery limit.
It's the same with the PSP and pretty much anything that runs on storage cells.