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Root [Verizon] if you root, does it measurably improve battery life?

B

boofer

Member
i am stock, unrooted, and i use Nova to customize enough things to keep me happy. i also have a few dozen apps and processes "disabled" in Manage Applications, such as S Voice, S Memo, kies, media/music hub, verizon tones, yahoo! finance, etc.

my question is: if i root and use Titanium Backup to actually freeze and/or remove the bloat (or flash a ROM that has these bloaty things removed), will that improve my battery life over the course of a day vs. staying stock with a good amount of the bloat "disabled" in settings? or am i pretty much not accomplishing anything by rooting?

if it could be boiled down to me only saving like 30 minutes over the course of a day of standby/sleep time, then i don't think it would be worth it for me to root. however, if disabling all of that Verizon and Samsung garbage brought my standby time to a level closer to my Nexus 7 (which i know is not a phone and therefore doesn't have a cellular radio constantly using battery, but you get my point), i would consider rooting.

i am perfectly fine with sticking with Nova, and stock hotspot works for me, so really the only reason i'm thinking about rooting is to get rid of bloat if it will save me more battery. i rooted my HTC Evo 4G back in the day and certainly enjoyed flashing ROMs left and right, but in the end, i preferred a minimalist approach instead of super flashy and customizable.

thanks in advance.
 
It's actually difficult to answer your question.
Every device is different.
Let's say you root and keep your setup exactly as is. The main thing you can tweak while rooted would be the kernel for battery life. Again, ymmv.
You could start playing with different rom/kernel combos to see how much more battery life you could extract out of your device as I'm sure you have done with your Evo:)

The nice thing about the guide to root is, you will not lose any data with the root method. So, whatever setup you have now, is the setup you will have after root.
 
Generally just having root doesn't affect the battery. But as Mike started, once you have root there are things you can do to improve battery life. Changing roms, kernels, under clocking, and under volting are common amongst people looking to squeeze extra life out of their device.
 
Mikestony said:
It's actually difficult to answer your question.
Every device is different.
Let's say you root and keep your setup exactly as is. The main thing you can tweak while rooted would be the kernel for battery life. Again, ymmv.
You could start playing with different rom/kernel combos to see how much more battery life you could extract out of your device as I'm sure you have done with your Evo:)

The nice thing about the guide to root is, you will not lose any data with the root method. So, whatever setup you have now, is the setup you will have after root.
Click to expand...

yep, i tried at least a dozen ROM/kernel combos with my Evo, and i've tried at least five on my Nexus 7 (slight overclocking, but not undervolting on the Nexus 7 and i still get about 7-7.5 hours of screen-on time with it). how do you like your ROM/kernel combo so far? have you tried others as well?

that's good that you don't lose any data rooting the GS3...i'm pretty sure that you had to wipe everything to initially root the Evo. i took the 4.1.2 update a few weeks ago and i spent an entire evening setting everything back up after i factory wiped (for peace of mind), so i'm not *too* keen on starting over from scratch again.

thanks!
 
Root by itself will have no effect on battery life.



You can use the powers root gives you to drastically impact battery life and/or performance
 
The rooting process itself will not change anything on the device. What it does is, give you access to the parts of the device & it`s core/memory to enable you to install any combination/variety of custom software & frankly, alot of really neat stuff . . . alot of which when used in the correct combination will indeed help battery life, among many other things. Many of us have done this & Would be more than happy to recommend rom/kernel/mod combinations that have worked extremely well !
 
TALONTRAX said:
The rooting process itself will not change anything on the device. What it does is, give you access to the parts of the device & it`s core/memory to enable you to install any combination/variety of custom software & frankly, alot of really neat stuff . . . alot of which when used in the correct combination will indeed help battery life, among many other things. Many of us have done this & Would be more than happy to recommend rom/kernel/mod combinations that have worked extremely well !
Click to expand...

yes, i am aware of what rooting is and a lot of the cool stuff you can do after you have rooted. as i said in a post above, i rooted my HTC Evo 4G and would continually flash different ROM/kernel combos until i settled on something good.

my original question was: would there be any real difference in battery life between (A) right now with two dozen apps "disabled in Settings, or (B) rooting and actually uninstalling all of the bloat...? some of the apps/processes can't be disabled in Settings.
 
boofer said:
yes, i am aware of what rooting is and a lot of the cool stuff you can do after you have rooted. as i said in a post above, i rooted my HTC Evo 4G and would continually flash different ROM/kernel combos until i settled on something good.

my original question was: would there be any real difference in battery life between (A) right now with two dozen apps "disabled in Settings, or (B) rooting and actually uninstalling all of the bloat...? some of the apps/processes can't be disabled in Settings.
Click to expand...

No, performance gains come from custom roms and kernels, not really removing bloat.
 
boofer said:
yes, i am aware of what rooting is and a lot of the cool stuff you can do after you have rooted. as i said in a post above, i rooted my HTC Evo 4G and would continually flash different ROM/kernel combos until i settled on something good.

my original question was: would there be any real difference in battery life between (A) right now with two dozen apps "disabled in Settings, or (B) rooting and actually uninstalling all of the bloat...? some of the apps/processes can't be disabled in Settings.
Click to expand...

I`m always a fan of removing carrier bloatware, & maybe it might free up a little power consumption by disabling/removing them, but probably nothing that you will notice.
 
boofer said:
yes, i am aware of what rooting is and a lot of the cool stuff you can do after you have rooted. as i said in a post above, i rooted my HTC Evo 4G and would continually flash different ROM/kernel combos until i settled on something good.

my original question was: would there be any real difference in battery life between (A) right now with two dozen apps "disabled in Settings, or (B) rooting and actually uninstalling all of the bloat...? some of the apps/processes can't be disabled in Settings.
Click to expand...

The screen eats the vast majority of your battery. If you want better battery life, the best thing you can do it eliminate colors in what you do, which is known as "inverting" your phone. The second best way to save battery is making sure when the screen is off your phone is going into deep sleep mode as much as possible. Both of those things will be pretty much the only things that will give you real NOTICEABLE battery gains. Undervolting being a distant third.
 
I would purchase an extended battery. I bought a 3080mah slim battery that fits with the original back. Only draw back is that it doesn't support NFC. Some do. So now I have two batteries just in case. Also, the display is the biggest battery hog. Dimming it to as low as tolerable will give you more time. Set it to shut off at 15 or 30 seconds and never leave the screen on when not using it. If you take it out to look at the time. Make sure to turn off the screen before putting it back in your pocket. No sense wasting juice.
 
nice, thank you for your responses. if i turn off google location services, i can generally get only one or two wakelocks over an 8 hour period when i'm sleeping, which i think is huge. my battery life is generally good, though the phone is about dead after ~3.5 hours of screen-on time. if i'm using the phone at night, the screen is obviously dimmer and i can get closer to 4.5 hours of screen-on time.

i use the Lux app and i think it works marvelously. i undercut the stock brightness at just about every level of ambient brightness, and it does seem to save a good amount of battery.

this sounds ridiculous, but i do rather like the blue notification bar font, and i would like to just dump the Verizon bloatware, but those are about the only two things i really want out of rooting. even though it's these two things, i find myself staring at the root instructions day after day, thinking i should just do it. i am, however, paranoid that i'm going to lose my IMEI or that something else is going to go wrong, and that's probably the #1 reason why i haven't rooted. i know you can generally get things back to the way they were, but i obviously wouldn't want to have to deal with it.

the other question i have is if i'm traveling to Europe this summer, will rooting have any effect on things? i'm probably just going to enable international data while i'm over there and not deal with buying a European SIM card, etc.
 
I've always gotten worse battery life with custom roms than stock (Incredible and S3)
 
I had great results with extended batteries.. if you don't mind the extra bulk.

Rooting doesn't improve battery life but what you can do with root access can and might. As others have stated, underclocking, undervolting can help but probably marginal. The biggest battery hog on any device is display. Adjust your brightness to lowest you are comfortable with.

I have also had different results with roms. Some just have better battery life than others.

And also.. any Android device since Froyo will not benefit from an auto task killer. Ditch those if you have them. Android manages memory very effectively and an autokiller only cause more CPU activity by starting and restarting apps repeatedly :D

Freezing "bloatware" has helped in my own experience but marginally.

Great help and answers here guys! Just thought I'd throw my thoughts in as well ;)
 
well, i rooted, and i froze/remove a bunch of bloatware (S-Voice and other garbage), and i disabled other things as well. now, my overnight deep sleep is rarely interrupted by wakelocks - i usually have none, and sometimes only one from 11pm - 7am. see the screenshot below with the blank space in Screen On Time and Awake. the awake time near the end while the screen was off is there because i was restoring a Nandroid backup and doing other things in recovery.

as some have stated, the biggest drain is the big display, so keeping the brightness down using customized levels in the Lux app has helped that cause as well.

aside from this, i have been able to tinker with setCPU and set up some profiles, flash a couple other ROMs, as well as use the wifi tether (treve mod) to successfully hotspot without having my data connection cut off left and right by Verizon. for some reason, using the stock hotspotting app, Verizon cuts my data connection constantly (3G and LTE), so that alone made rooting worth it. and nandroid backups are awesome...

BYBfHFwl.png
 
I am rooted and unlocked, running Liquid Smooth JB 4.2.2 ROM with Nova Launcher, man what a difference it makes from that lag fest that is called TouchWhiz, once you run a non
TouchWhiz ROM you will notice that your device feels like it is running like it is out of a thick fog, no more of that Touch Whiz stuttering, also it gets rid of almost 140 bloat loaded Samsung and Verizon apps, system is just lighter and faster. I chose Liquid Smooth as it is a rock solid ROM. I also use Titanium Backup PRO "worth every penny". https://play.google.com/store/apps/...wMiwiY29tLmtlcmFtaWRhcy5UaXRhbml1bUJhY2t1cCJd
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2148261
 
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