Thanks for your reply, David.
It would be great if you could keep us updated regarding HTC's response.
In case the HTC-route does not bear results, not all hope is lost:
(This is also a reply to Eric's comment)
There are a number of smartphone battery benchmarks out there, and some of them publicly post their data online.
If we can get the BOINC community to also benchmark their devices, we can get a good idea of the effect of the BOINC app on a device's battery.
As I mentioned in my original post, this can either be achieved by including a battery benchmark (+ instructions) with the BOINC app, or by simply asking members to manually run a battery benchmark and share the results.
For example consider GeekBench, which have been including a battery benchmark with their Android app for some time.
You can see the results here:
It's going to be difficult to get exact results out of this data, as this database is not aware of the time in which the device was (1) manufactured and (2) purchased.
However this database does contain the device kind, which can give us some ballpark estimation of the aforementioned 2 parameters.
(If somebody is aware of a better database, please share).
Regarding the option of benchmarking the devices directly through the BOINC app, is this something that would have the developers' support?
Are the developers even reading this Google Group?
GeekBench mentions on their website that they sometimes make source code available for a price. Perhaps they'd be willing to freely share it due to the nature of BOINC.
Even if not, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a separate battery benchmark with results that we can learn to "translate" into the GeekBench language, allowing us to use their database.
If this proves too difficult, we can consider other ways to get members to manually download and run the GeekBench app, and post links to their results.
I'd be happy to personally see this through, both on the coding side of things and on the coordination side of things, if whoever runs the BOINC app wishes it.
-Atai