Which is more easy on the battery? Draw vs using a png resource

Hi

Im about to put a logo in a watch face I'm building.

Will I save significant amount of battery utilising drawing vs putting in a PNG image as a resource? because the logo is single color based on one square and two triangles. Drawing this is not something that needs to be done every time the clock changes, it could be done once when the watch face is initially rendered, don't know if the whole face is rerendered every time the clock changes anyway - is it?

Thanks

lcj2 over 9 years ago

depending on what you do, the whole face may be rendered every time. I use png backgrounds for my watch faces and battery life is just fine and I find the png images look much better but that might be me. It is very important to match the color codes or it won't render as nicely.

jim_m_58 over 9 years ago

I've used a picture as the background and the impact on battery is minimal, but colors are are. This one if for the vivoactive (64 colors), and looks much better on a real device (the individual pixels aren't as obvious:

I've done a couple with logos too (80x80), and again minimal.

I'm guessing, but using a bitmap may have less impact than doing individual draws, as the bitmap is only one draw operation. And with a bitmap, easier to edit with a tool on a pc.

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 9 years ago

Lots of drawables (e.g. drawing several polygons to build out the elements of a watch face) can also cause a performance hit, usually appearing as laggy screen transitions and the like.