Database Users

So what kernel do you tend to have better battery life with?

I've always had problem with the CM kernel, so I switched to wildmonk's and I have to say I've had some improvement, even though I believe its more voltage.
How is everyone else's battery on which kernel? Just curious on which ones I can squeeze the most out of.

oh geez...

I'm using the kernel that comes with CM, but I've got SetCPU installed and set to lower the CPU speed when the screen is off. Seems to make a world of difference.
If you don't already have SetCPU, I highly recommend purchasing it.

The stock kernel of CM 6.1 is pretty good itself. The Wildmonks ones are excellent though. However, you will need to use applications for root users like:
SetCPU - To configure CPU speed. Set the profiles properly. Otherwise, it's no good
Spare Parts - To determine which application(s) use more power, CPU and Data
DroidWall - To configure which apps are allowed to access the internet and when
Apart from these you may use various rendering effects found in CyanogenMod Settings for reducing the brightness of the screen

Please keep in mind there are a lot of other factors that affect battery life rather than just the kernel. Usage and configuration are two HUGE factors that a lot of people seem to forget about. Battery usage will also vary between ROM builds, software installs, radio firmware versions, network availability (weak vs strong signals), and even minute hardware differences.
Just because something works for one person doesn't mean it will work for everyone. Your mileage WILL vary.
Personally, I've gotten good results with WMs kernels, Kangorama ROMs, the 5.08 radio, and a couple of software tweaks (SetCPU, JuiceDefender + JuicePlotter to view usage trends, and Tasker with Brightness/Wifi/Location profiles).

codesplice said:
Please keep in mind there are a lot of other factors that affect battery life rather than just the kernel. Usage and configuration are two HUGE factors that a lot of people seem to forget about. Battery usage will also vary between ROM builds, software installs, radio firmware versions, network availability (weak vs strong signals), and even minute hardware differences.
Just because something works for one person doesn't mean it will work for everyone. Your mileage WILL vary.
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Click to collapse
That may be true, but that doesn't mean that the kernel can't have a huge impact on the battery life, especially if the kernel lacks optimization. There are only so many things that the kernel itself can do to improve battery life, but there are tons of things it can do to worsen battery life. Personally I have been pretty prudent on managing my phone's battery through various apps and tweaks, and was really disappointed with the stock CM 6.1.1 kernel, as it pretty much seemed like it was ignoring or overpowering all my tweaks.
After only about two hours of sitting idle with the screen off, I could lose as much as 30% of my battery, whereas with older ROMs I could have my phone unplugged for about 10 hours with minimal use, and only lose about 15% battery. I was running the exact same apps and settings as in CM 6.0, and I had been sitting at home in the same room the whole time, without any noticeable changes in network signals. Switching to Wildmonk's kernel immediately brought my battery life back to normal, and I doubt that it was merely coincidence, especially after flashing to a nandroid backup of (mostly) stock CM 6.1.1 made the battery problems come back.
Based on my recent experience, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the kernel can make noticeable improvements. If you can rule out network problems, display settings, and most of your software tweaks, then the kernel is the only thing left to check.

earlyberd said:
Based on my recent experience, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the kernel can make noticeable improvements. If you can rule out network problems, display settings, and most of your software tweaks, then the kernel is the only thing left to check.
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Absolutely, but the kernel is not the ONLY variable that affects battery drain. A lot of people are quick to blame the kernel, and then are shocked to find that they have crappy battery life on all kernels because they haven't changed their ROM/radio/settings/usage/configuration.

wildmonk kernel has been great for me. i tried a bunch of them..but i settled on
2.6.35.4-925mv-cfs-svs-aix-720p-monks-082710
the recent ones tend to drain the battery when wifi is enabled. the android system process seems to be in use. normally it doesnt hit above 10%, but with the latest, it goes to 40%

Unusually high ram usage

Hey guys, what's normal ram usage for you?
Cause to me, what I'm getting seems higher than it should be.
I'm seeing well in excess of a gigabytes used when I'm not doing anything on it, even after I first restart, there's around a gig used. I removed apps I don't use, I'm running the latest release of PACrom, here's a screenshot I just took.
http://imgur.com/w5KGKJF
Also battery usage always seems high, could that be related possibly?
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

1.3Gig is usually normal for touchwiz but for AOSP not try changing the Rom and see as for the battery check what apps are draining it

Yeah, that's normal.Mine is using 1 gib and I don't have any apps running.

Blackwolf10 said:
1.3Gig is usually normal for touchwiz but for AOSP not try changing the Rom and see as for the battery check what apps are draining it
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Click to collapse
My run is AOSP based, and according to the settings, the screen uses most of it.
But I rarely have the brightness up high, and often battery widget says I'm using in excess of 1300mah D:
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

I'm using stock ROM with Deodexed and Zipaligned apps, My RAM is 0.8GB when no apps is opened, and it goes to 1GB when few apps are opened

That is NOT NORMAL AT ALL... Using aosp based Roms like pacman and slim bean I have an average of 400mb used and like 1.4 free... I don't think I've ever passed 800mb running an aosp ROM or any ROM for a matter a fact... Check to male sure it doesn't count cached apps cause that takes up around a gig sometimes...

..... its normal if you have some widget running....
Sent from my GT-I9500 using xda premium

There is no reason to care about ram usage on a Linux system.
In Linux, unused ram is wasted ram.
Using all your ram doesn't mean no more ram is available. It means that the system is storing everything its done recently in ram so its more quickly accessed if you try to use it again. If your ram is full and you need to do something else the system will effectively and efficiently push the lowest priority task out of ram to free up more for the new task.
Using all your ram does NOT slow the system down. It is not like Windows where freeing up ram makes everything run faster.
All this monitoring ram is pointless in a Linux based OS.
Sent from your phone. You should be careful where you leave that thing.

Skipjacks said:
There is no reason to care about ram usage on a Linux system.
In Linux, unused ram is wasted ram.
Using all your ram doesn't mean no more ram is available. It means that the system is storing everything its done recently in ram so its more quickly accessed if you try to use it again. If your ram is full and you need to do something else the system will effectively and efficiently push the lowest priority task out of ram to free up more for the new task.
Using all your ram does NOT slow the system down. It is not like Windows where freeing up ram makes everything run faster.
All this monitoring ram is pointless in a Linux based OS.
Sent from your phone. You should be careful where you leave that thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I fully agree with your clear explanations but in my case when I reach low memory level like 100 Mg the camera doesn't fully start (black window).
I am forced to reboot or clean as well.
I feel something is weird in this phone memory managment. (GT9500 model for me)

Skipjacks said:
There is no reason to care about ram usage on a Linux system.
In Linux, unused ram is wasted ram.
Using all your ram doesn't mean no more ram is available. It means that the system is storing everything its done recently in ram so its more quickly accessed if you try to use it again. If your ram is full and you need to do something else the system will effectively and efficiently push the lowest priority task out of ram to free up more for the new task.
Using all your ram does NOT slow the system down. It is not like Windows where freeing up ram makes everything run faster.
All this monitoring ram is pointless in a Linux based OS.
Sent from your phone. You should be careful where you leave that thing.
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Click to collapse
Best answer ive seen c:
This takes me to my other question of could this be affecting battery life ?
Ive had the battery go from 100% down to 85% in a space of 20 minutes, with brightness on auto, and only using one app (LINE) :c
I remembered seeing other peoples comments on using only a few hundred meg of ram, and also seeing compliments on the battery life of the rom (PACrom) around those same posts, So im trying to figure out how to prolong my battery life as its pretty important to me, I dont really get a chance to charge throughout the day D:

CountParadox said:
Best answer ive seen c:
This takes me to my other question of could this be affecting battery life ?
Ive had the battery go from 100% down to 85% in a space of 20 minutes, with brightness on auto, and only using one app (LINE) :c
I remembered seeing other peoples comments on using only a few hundred meg of ram, and also seeing compliments on the battery life of the rom (PACrom) around those same posts, So im trying to figure out how to prolong my battery life as its pretty important to me, I dont really get a chance to charge throughout the day D:
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Your question has nothing to see about this thread subject, so be kind to REpost direct to q&A. iT will be a better audience able to quickly answer.

lolo9393 said:
Your question has nothing to see about this thread subject, so be kind to REpost direct to q&A. iT will be a better audience able to quickly answer.
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Click to collapse
Will do!

Galaxy note 4 memory

Can anyone of you download advance task killer from the android market/Google Play. Download and could you check how many memory do you have? When I bought my note, I had only 40% of memory available on my phone, which means about 800 MB, and I couldn't take advantage the rest of the 2+GB memory because phone has couple hundred apps preinstalled... Now I started clearing and un installing all these unnecessary apps and now I have about 1.6 GB memory available on my phone, and as a result of that I was able to get two days battery every day. Basically I can't finish my battery in one day regardless of the usage, which is really good....

Haven't used a task killer in a long time. I looked out of curiosity and there is a massive laundry list of extra crap going on.

bishaarcc said:
Can anyone of you download advance task killer from the android market/Google Play. Download and could you check how many memory do you have? When I bought my note, I had only 40% of memory available on my phone, which means about 800 MB, and I couldn't take advantage the rest of the 2+GB memory because phone has couple hundred apps preinstalled... Now I started clearing and un installing all these unnecessary apps and now I have about 1.6 GB memory available on my phone, and as a result of that I was able to get two days battery every day. Basically I can't finish my battery in one day regardless of the usage, which is really good....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. Can you please tell us what apps you were able to remove to cause the excellent battery life? In the order starting with the one that uses the most to least if you can. Appreciate any help you can post from your testing. Thanks

pcmanager said:
Thanks for the info. Can you please tell us what apps you were able to remove to cause the excellent battery life? In the order starting with the one that uses the most to least if you can. Appreciate any help you can post from your testing. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, twospirits made this list of all apps https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...OksNUB7oHFBsI_OoEQHgeGg7_l4/edit#gid=32644709
So what I did is: I categorized my apps in to three categories: 1- Apps that cannot be removed nor disabled, like Bluetooth speaker and etc so kept those as it is.. 2- the second group are necessary apps like Google play, browser sms,dialer and etc.. so I moved those apps to EX Sdcard, the only exception is youtube which gives me FC, so it has to be in the system..
3- the 3rd category is the rest of the apps which I removed from my phone, like S Health knock and other hundreds...
Now I have almost 2gb availabe memory on my phone which I think it's very good, and that's the reason I'm getting one day of very high usage or two days of normal usage....
Please check my screen shosts, almost two days with 5 hours of Screen On time or 7+ hours in one day....

Thanks for the info. I will work on removing apps that I don't use from the list and see what improvement I can get.

Just wanted to explain a few things.
1) moving apps to external SD Card will not free up RAM. It frees up internal memory (/sdcard or /data) but should not affect RAM.
2) unused RAM is wasted RAM. In this case you are saving battery because some of the apps you deleted were using CPU cycles or keeping wake locks for some reason. The amount of energy used to keep an app in RAM may get you a few extra hours of battery life at most. Your biggest 3 battery killers are Screen, Modem, CPU. In that order.
So good job getting better battery life, and I'm going to be using that list to delete some crapware. But your conclusions in why you saved battery life are a bit off.

Ok this is what everyone in this thread should do before they comment on memory usage,
1. N910C or N910F (Snapdragon or Exynos?)
2. Debloat or not, all apps active (stock)?
3. Debloat with root?
4. How much time without reboot, test of memory usage with or without reboot?
5. Screenshots of disabled apps section of your storage
Me,
1. N910C
2. Debloat, disabled quite a bit services/apps
3. No root
4. Fresh reboot, just now, test of memory usage = 1.52Gb only Wi Fi File Explorer in background.
5. Turned off apps,
Please, i know every device is different but try to follow my little Q & A, in order to get a general idea how much memory does you device use.

dazed1 said:
Ok this is what everyone in this thread should do before they comment on memory usage,
1. N910C or N910F (Snapdragon or Exynos?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Youre in a N910P thread, bud.

xxSTARBUCKSxx said:
Youre in a N910P thread, bud.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well still counts i guess lol

dazed1 said:
Well still counts i guess lol
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Click to collapse
Fair enough, its just that people who search by device+problem get brought to threads that detect whats been typed and they get brought to the wrong place looking for help where they cant be helped. . Turn that frown upside down!

xxSTARBUCKSxx said:
Fair enough, its just that people who search by device+problem get brought to threads that detect whats been typed and they get brought to the wrong place looking for help where they cant be helped. . Turn that frown upside down!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you do a test for me bro? just reboot the phone, and tell me how much ram is used, and what apps are running? (turn off anything you can) thanks.

dazed1 said:
Can you do a test for me bro? just reboot the phone, and tell me how much ram is used, and what apps are running? (turn off anything you can) thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hotboot plus screenies. Forgot about Turned Offs.

Not much in the Turned Offs. A lot was deleted of either .bak'd

xxSTARBUCKSxx said:
Hotboot plus screenies. Forgot about Turned Offs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What? 1.1GB? rooted phone with total debloat?

dazed1 said:
What? 1.1GB? rooted phone with total debloat?
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Click to collapse
Pretty much. But coming from the SGSIII. Ive actually kept a lot of Samsung bloat that id usually delete. Mostly because of its features. Ive spared SprintZone even. Just a nice smooth phone overall.

_Dennis_ said:
Just wanted to explain a few things.
1) moving apps to external SD Card will not free up RAM. It frees up internal memory (/sdcard or /data) but should not affect RAM.
2) unused RAM is wasted RAM. In this case you are saving battery because some of the apps you deleted were using CPU cycles or keeping wake locks for some reason. The amount of energy used to keep an app in RAM may get you a few extra hours of battery life at most. Your biggest 3 battery killers are Screen, Modem, CPU. In that order.
So good job getting better battery life, and I'm going to be using that list to delete some crapware. But your conclusions in why you saved battery life are a bit off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sir, First of all I'm not a dev, and probably you know more than me about these things but let me ask you this:
Even though I've already deleted unnecessary apps from my phone, but still I was using 70-80% of my phone's memory all the time, and my battery life was one day or less than that .....
I decided to move all my apps to ex-Sdcard which made me using only 30-50%, of my phone's memory and the battery life from one day to two days!
So since you said moving apps to EX-sdcard won't make difference, could you explain to me this situation?
Please go ahead and check my screenshot, I'm watching MKBHD'S full hd video and I'm only using 37% of my phone's memory.
Thanks again.

bishaarcc said:
Sir, First of all I'm not a dev, and probably you know more than me about these things but let me ask you this:
Even though I've already deleted unnecessary apps from my phone, but still I was using 70-80% of my phone's memory all the time, and my battery life was one day or less than that .....
I decided to move all my apps to ex-Sdcard which made me using only 30-50%, of my phone's memory and the battery life from one day to two days!
So since you said moving apps to EX-sdcard won't make difference, could you explain to me this situation?
Please go ahead and check my screenshot, I'm watching MKBHD'S full hd video and I'm only using 37% of my phone's memory.
Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Were you perhaps plugged into a computer? You lose the ability to use SD Card apps when plugged in.
I'm definitely not a dev, I just know electronics and a bit of basic computing theory.
Using less RAM shouldn't save that much battery. What may have happened is one (or more) of the apps were auto-starting and using CPU cycles to do something not important to you. I'm not sure if SD Card apps can auto start or restart.
Like I said the information you provided is good, just the comclusion of less RAM means better battery is off. Well programed apps should sit in RAM for quick access but not waste CPU cyles on things.

_Dennis_ said:
Were you perhaps plugged into a computer? You lose the ability to use SD Card apps when plugged in.
I'm definitely not a dev, I just know electronics and a bit of basic computing theory.
Using less RAM shouldn't save that much battery. What may have happened is one (or more) of the apps were auto-starting and using CPU cycles to do something not important to you. I'm not sure if SD Card apps can auto start or restart.
Like I said the information you provided is good, just the comclusion of less RAM means better battery is off. Well programed apps should sit in RAM for quick access but not waste CPU cyles on things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You right, I think maybe EXsdcard apps won't auto start and that's what saves my battery. When I check my running apps I cannot see any user apps in there, no facebook, what's up, Browser or any other user apps, so maybe that's is the case.... The only down side of my situation is that I have to manually open Facebook to see latest notifications which honestly I don't mind it because I don't need facebook and twitter running 24/7?

bishaarcc said:
Can anyone of you download advance task killer from the android market/Google Play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should NOT be using task killers on Android! Advanced Task Killer, or any task killer, will shorten your battery life instead of extending it. Android actually knows how to handle itself quite well, and will keep certain things around for a reason. Google created Android and just might know Android a little bit better than those 3rd party app developers.
Also, I see in your other posts you keep calling a micro-sd card an ExSdCard. If you think about it, "Ex"SdCard would actually mean "Previous"SdCard. It's called ExtSdCard, meaning Extended SD card. And FYI, there is no Android Market anymore, it was replaced by Play Store years ago.

Memory usage?

Before i start, let me say that i'm aware how Android use the available memory to cache and safe battery life/cpu cycles for future stuff, but....
I had LG G2 with Cyanogen mod, which was using only like 700 megs of memory! leaving like 1GB free and made the device fly. Now, on Windows generally things start to get junky when you have only 15% free of total system memory, what is the general conclusion with Android, at what point does you device become slower, how much ram (%) should you have free in order to work as fast as with 50% it should?
Because few mins ago, i saw 2.5GB memory usage, and the device get a bit slower then usually, it was noticeable even though i had only like 6 apps turned on. Is there a way to lower the memory usage and leave more free for multitasking purpose, and general device performance, i know this might be counter productive but with root - debloat devices get much faster, memory consumption is much lower, so i think there is a connection, and it should be beneficial.

Heavy RAM usage by system

So I have the 8gb RAM variant unlocked version and looking in developer settings I've noticed a jump in the actual (not average) amount of RAM being used at any point in the day. It seems that a majority of it is system stuff. This stuff is not affiliated with any app as far as I can tell and it's using up a decent amount of RAM even after wiping cache in recovery which I'm worried about seeing down the device in the future. If anything, would the solution be to disable some apps and if so which ones? I've already turned off most gestures and other always on stuff. Is this happening for anyone else? And if so is this normal?

Mine is doing the same. According to the ram stats, System is averaging 3.9gb of usage...

"unused RAM is wasted RAM"...

That's Smart Boost, y'all.