"Does "60FPS Mode" have a noticeable effect on battery life?: A Write-Up on Battery Life running the game at 60FPS."

#PokemonGO: 60FPS vs 30FPS Battery Life: A Quick Test to determine if battery life is the real reason Niantic refuses to give players this option.]​Abstract: Since its discovery, ‘60FPS Mode’ has changed the way that people who could utilise it have played the game; navigating the UI becomes buttery smooth, catching Pokémon, battling, and just playing the game in general have become MUCH more enjoyable experience.So: Why doesn’t Niantic let the game run at 60FPS, Providing the individual user’s phone is capable of it?One possible reason could be due to battery life. The game is just over 2 years old at this point, and an incredible amount of features have been added since launch. The game has always been quite bad for chewing through battery life, and although this has got better with time, the game is still quite hungry for power, so it is a reasonable argument that Niantic doesn’t want the game to use too much power by limiting the framerate of the game to only 30fps, cutting the amount of frames rendered in half.Does this argument hold up when tested though? This is what I set out to find out.Hypothesis: I believe that the game WILL use slightly more battery, but not by a large amount. I believe this because all even though the screen does use a lot of battery, the main reason why PoGO uses so much battery is because of the need for constant network traffic to and from the device, as well as a constantly updating pinpoint-accurate GPS location.Method Outline: In my test, I will be measuring how fast the battery life declines from 100% to 95% in a controlled usage state. The device I will be using is a 6 month old LG-V30. For both tests, I will be running PoGo Version 0.123.2. I will be carrying out the test using 4G internet only (no WiFi) as well as using High-Accuracy mode for GPS. I will also keep the screen brightness at 50% without auto-adjust. Pokemon Go will be the only app loaded on the device with no other apps running in the background. IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING GPS: For this test, I will remain stationary and keep the movement of the phone to a minimum. I am doing this to minimise the amount of battery that the GPS uses, as this test is specifically testing the effect of the increased framerate’s GPU and battery usage.What do I classify as “Controlled Usage?”In order eliminate as many variables as I can, I will keep the camera locked facing north when the devices is not being touched. At 1 minute intervals I will slowly rotate the camera 5 times, check Luxio in the Pokédex (as it is quite near the bottom, making me scroll through the entire menu), return to the main screen, encounter a Pokémon from my research rewards (NOT using AR+ or AR) for 10 seconds, leave the encounter and re-lock the camera north, and wait until the next minute to repeat the process. This whole process takes around 45 seconds, so there is only 15 seconds of downtime between each run through these measures. I believe this a good definition of “Controlled Usage” as it covers many areas of what the game is used for: Looking around the environment, scrolling though menus, and encountering wild Pokémon. I cannot actually catch any Pokemon unfortunately as this breaks the 60FPS and limits the game back to 30. I start the tests once the device has reached 100% charge and has been at 100% for 2 minutes.I will restart the game before each test and unplug the phone once the game is fully loaded on the main screen.​Results of the two tests:​FRAMES PER SECONDTIME TAKEN FOR BATTERY TO DECLINE BY 5% (To the nearest minute, under these test conditions)TIME TAKEN FOR BATTERY TO DECLINE BY 100% (Calculated, under these test conditions)3028 Minutes560 Minutes (9.33 Hours)6024 Minutes480 Minutes (8.0 Hours)​These results were collected under these conditions, real-world and heavy usage (such as on community day) would certainly drain the battery much quicker than what these results indicate.​Findings: There was a difference of only 4 minutes in battery life between the 30FPS test and 60FPS test over the time it took the battery to decline by 5%. Using these numbers I calculated (using this calculation: (time recorded*2)*10) the theoretical time it would take to use a full charge (100% to 0% shutdown) when playing the game under these test condition.Running the game at 60FPS, the battery used 16.6% more battery than when the game was ran at the normal 30FPS.Conclusion and thoughts: My Hypothesis was correct; running the game at 60FPS DID use more battery than the normal 30FPS, but did not use as much battery as one would originally think. Personally I believe that the decrease in total battery life that running the game at 60FPS brings is far outweighed by the benefits that it brings. I cannot think of a real reason why Niantic wouldn’t at least give players with capable devices the option to run the game at 60FPS, even then if those players would prefer the 16% more battery life they could turn it off in the settings. Mobile games such as Fortnite for Android have in-game FPS limiters that can be adjusted in the settings, so I believe it is a realistic feature to ask for. As well as this, in times such as Community Day, a lot of people I play with (including myself) always bring a battery bank with them, so in heavy-usage scenarios using real circumstances, battery life still wouldn't be too much of an issue (keeping in mind, 60FPS could be limited to 30FPS for those who want to save battery too).Competitor Jurassic World: Alive runs at 60FPS, so Pokemon, one of the largest franchises in the world, in theory should have it already... But for some reason that Niantic refuses to give us, 60FPS remains a well-loved accidental feature that they refuse to capitalise on.​TLDR; Yes, 60FPS does use slightly more battery than 30FPS, but not so much that it would be the only reason that Niantic won't implement it for real.​This is my first real research on anything to do with this game so sorry if it isn't too useful. Hope you guys can read it okay and it isn't too terrible haha. Thanks for reading!​EDIT: Niantic statement on 60FPS (Screenshot confirmed)Niantic seem to just immediately flat-out refuse anything about 60FPS, even getting an option in the settings to enable it seems unlikely...​​ via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2ADJEGZ