Root Can we discuss battery life/kernel settings?

[thisISjoel]

Maybe this doesn't warrant its own thread, but I'm trying to suss out how to get the max battery (screen on) time out of my rooted N5 running DU and Franco Kernel (I'm open to trying other kernels if necessary).

For a while I was doing the under clock under volt thing, but I was skeptical as to how much actually benefit (if any) I was getting out of it. I'd average around 2.5-3 hours screen on time per full charge and anywhere up to 24-30 hours total (if I had long periods of inactivity) so standby time has never been an issue, I'd just like to drag that screen on time out a bit more if I can.

Recently I decided to just run everything on stock settings (no under volting or under clocking) to see if it made much difference and to be honest it hasn't.

As you can see from the picture I haven't really experienced any reduction in battery time, despite not under volting or clocking anything. Weird, right?



What I wanna hear from you folks is what kernel you're using and what settings you're using and what kind of results that combination yields. Thanks

 

[jlede]

Its too bad there isn't many users of the n5 on AF but I've found that elementalx has been a good kernel to via aroma installer with resurrection remix (for resurrection you have to use the CAF version of elementalx) but stopped using it since I switch to PAC 3 days back

 

[Hook]

What is your screen brightness setting? I actually think that has more to do with on-screen time than any kernel setting. I keep mine turned very low. It means if I want to do anything in the sun, I have to deliberately pull down my quick settings tiles and change the brightness, but it really conserves battery. Obviously, auto-brightness is more convenient because there is no need to adjust when you are out in the sun.

I'm probably not much help to you as I'm not a heavy screen-time user. I use my phone more for quickly looking up information than sustained screen-on activities like gaming, watching videos, reading or creating documents. Screen is off when I'm listening to music. It would take me a week to rack up 2.5-3 hours screen time.

 

[jhawkkw]

I'm still using the old Cataclysm stable build from December with the the latest FauxKernel and FauxClock app to access unique optimizations that he builds into the kernel. I can usually get 4.5-5 hours of screen on a real busy day, or up to 5-7 days in stand by time if I barely touch it. One issue that always seems to creep up is that something seems to get cached poorly and it causes battery life to tank until I wipe cache and dalvik. But once I do that, it's back to awesome battery life.

 

[Rxpert83]

Underclocking is only going to be beneficial when the phone tries to use a higher CPU frequency.

IE if your CPU max is 1728 MHz but with your "normal use" the cpu would only go above that 0.1% of the time, you're not going to see any tangible difference in battery life.

So without seeing how long your CPU stayed in each frequency its hard to tell if underclocking is going to be beneficial to you.

You can check the times in any number of apps

Here's fku:


In that example, my phone never went above 1.5 in the last ~11 hours (I am not underclocked). Therefore Underclocking to 1.7 wouldnt have any effect, but going below 1.5 would slow my clock speeds down 2% of the time, which still may not be noticeable on battery life.

Note those numbers include 9 hours or so of me sleeping (and also the device). Don't take these numbers too far, they're just used as an example. If you pull out the deep sleep time, 1.5 is a much larger percent (11%). Your use patterns will determine what works

 

[Rxpert83]

One more thing to note is your device was held awake for 3 hours. I would look further into that. If you were listening to music or something than thats no big deal, but if an app held your device awake for that time when it didn't need to you're going to take a hit on battery life

 

[thisISjoel]

Its too bad there isn't many users of the n5 on AF but I've found that elementalx has been a good kernel to via aroma installer with resurrection remix (for resurrection you have to use the CAF version of elementalx) but stopped using it since I switch to PAC 3 days back

Cool, thanks for the recommendation, I might check it out.

What is your screen brightness setting? I actually think that has more to do with on-screen time than any kernel setting. I keep mine turned very low. It means if I want to do anything in the sun, I have to deliberately pull down my quick settings tiles and change the brightness, but it really conserves battery. Obviously, auto-brightness is more convenient because there is no need to adjust when you are out in the sun.

I'm probably not much help to you as I'm not a heavy screen-time user. I use my phone more for quickly looking up information than sustained screen-on activities like gaming, watching videos, reading or creating documents. Screen is off when I'm listening to music. It would take me a week to rack up 2.5-3 hours screen time.

That's a good point, I do use auto brightness for the convenience, maybe I'll try a couple of charge cycles controlling it manually and see how much of a difference it makes.

I'm still using the old Cataclysm stable build from December with the the latest FauxKernel and FauxClock app to access unique optimizations that he builds into the kernel. I can usually get 4.5-5 hours of screen on a real busy day, or up to 5-7 days in stand by time if I barely touch it. One issue that always seems to creep up is that something seems to get cached poorly and it causes battery life to tank until I wipe cache and dalvik. But once I do that, it's back to awesome battery life.

Cool, thanks

Underclocking is only going to be beneficial when the phone tries to use a higher CPU frequency.

IE if your CPU max is 1728 MHz but with your "normal use" the cpu would only go above that 0.1% of the time, you're not going to see any tangible difference in battery life.

So without seeing how long your CPU stayed in each frequency its hard to tell if underclocking is going to be beneficial to you.

You can check the times in any number of apps

Here's fku:
View attachment 70815

In that example, my phone never went above 1.5 in the last ~11 hours (I am not underclocked). Therefore Underclocking to 1.7 wouldnt have any effect, but going below 1.5 would slow my clock speeds down 2% of the time, which still may not be noticeable on battery life.

Note those numbers include 9 hours or so of me sleeping (and also the device). Don't take these numbers too far, they're just used as an example. If you pull out the deep sleep time, 1.5 is a much larger percent (11%). Your use patterns will determine what works

Good points, is that when under volting could potentially improve battery life? I'll have a look at my time in each state at the end of this charge cycle, see how it looks

One more thing to note is your device was held awake for 3 hours. I would look further into that. If you were listening to music or something than thats no big deal, but if an app held your device awake for that time when it didn't need to you're going to take a hit on battery life

I do listen to a fair bit of music and also podcasts so it could have been that but I'll look into it further.

Thanks everyone for the help so far

 

[Rxpert83]

Undervolting simply supplies "X" less power for each step of the CPU frequencies.

I tend to go -50 across the board and on the 300 step go as low as I can before instability happens.

Some people do each step individually, but I have neither the time nor use for that, my phones mostly at the CPU min when its awake

 

[thisISjoel]

Ok, so manually adjusting brightness is too much hassle.

 

[Rxpert83]

Ok, so manually adjusting brightness is too much hassle.

I keep it set pretty low -maybe 7-10% of the max brightness. It seems "good enough" for most use indoors.

Then when I walk outside I know in order to turn it to auto brightness its 1 swipe down from the right (to activate quicksetting shade), tap top left (for autobrightness tile), and then tap middle left to activate autobrightness

Works well enough, and then I just disable autobrightness when I go back inside.

Battery savings + quick access to brightness when you need it

 

[thisISjoel]

I keep it set pretty low -maybe 7-10% of the max brightness. It seems "good enough" for most use indoors.

Then when I walk outside I know in order to turn it to auto brightness its 1 swipe down from the right (to activate quicksetting shade), tap top left (for autobrightness tile), and then tap middle left to activate autobrightness

Works well enough, and then I just disable autobrightness when I go back inside.

Battery savings + quick access to brightness when you need it

That's a smart way of doing it maybe I'll give that a whirl