Database Users

[Q]Where are kernels posted/whats the best on battery

hello
i just got a mytouch 4g yesterday(traded my vibrant for it)
anyway i read on android central a good way to improve battery life is to,
flash ice glacier and a custom kernel,idk if this is a rumor or what but if not i already have ice glacier un themed 1.1.2
but im having trouble finding a kernel post

Kernels are posted in development section, currently there's only one.
You need to get SetCPU from the market to take advantage of over/underclocking to see any difference as, by default, kernels is acting just like stock.
What's best for the battery? Turn off your phone completely, you can go for couple of years on a single charge
But really, it all depends how hard you push your system. Start out with 245/368 powersave with screen off, 345/768 on demand with screen on and see if you can live with it (i.e. no lag). If that doesn't work - up it by a little bit and see the difference. It's a trial and error game as everybody's chips are different in how they can handle overclocking. My set-up is 245/368 on demand with screen off, 768/1607 on demand with screen on, 368/768 if battery is under 20%. Works for me, I can make my battery last at least 14-16 hours with this set-up, YMMV depending on how you use your system.
Kernel thread.

Best battery? Battery life is all relative. Every single person will experience different battery life. The apps you have installed, the amount of time you spend on it and the time you spend on/in each app, distance from cell towers, distance from Wi-Fi sources, settings you have for every app and things like sync and what not.
There is no single variable that will ever help any of us find out what the best battery life is.
All the settings in the world won't help you achieve the 2 days I'm getting because I use mine differently that you, I have different apps on mine that you, I am at different distances from cell and Wi-Fi towers/antennas than you.
The best battery life is what you get out of yours.

Battery Life Testing - Kernel + Rom Combo's

Iv always considered battery life a very important factor in my purchasing of a phone and was one of the big reasons i moved from my Desire HD to the Nexus S (amongst many others). However having been on the android scene for a while im used to tinkering with kernels and roms etc and due to the new battery graph in gingerbread im now able to make direct comparisons rom by rom and kernel by kernel to see how they all differ. This is all shown + explained below.
First id like to explain my method;
I install the rom and kernel with the same apps I always use and charge the phone fully until i am about to go to sleep. I then unplug the phone and leave it in the exactly the same place on my desk with exactly the same settings (sync intervals etc) and i kill all apps before i leave it just to make sure the test is fair.
In the morning i then take a screen shot of the battery life over the period of usually 8 hours and will upload this for you to see. I then look at the over-night battery drain as a comparison on how good battery life is on specific roms and kernels.
Justification - Many of you may be thinking who cares about standby battery life? I care about the battery when im using it!?
Well although that's valid there are many reasons i have taken this approach;
1. It is completely fair i.e. no individual differences such as 'im a heavy user' but we all have different definitions of a 'heavy user'. This is eliminated by the fact the phone is not used and thus the same every time (no individual differences)
2. If a phone has severe battery drain during sleep general knowledge should dictate that battery drain should increase when the screen is on, cpu is working and your syncing your facebook wall, thus a direct correlation with sleep battery drain and usage drain should be apparent.
Therefore i have decided over the next few days/weeks etc i will upload on a regular basis a screenshot of the battery drain over night, along with the battery use details and screen on time etc etc. In addition to the rom and kernel info and i hope that over time this proves to be a very useful thread.
I have been doing this over the last few days on a less strict system and there have been some VERY interesting results which i will upload over the next few days.
(Just a final note iv never really done anything like this on xda before so if its a stupid idea then please tell me now so i dont waste my time doing it, however if people are really interested please let me know and il make sure i do my best!!)
Thanks for reading my extremely long post!
Bratfink
SCREENSHOT 1: This was using modacos custom rom r10 and the kernel that comes with it, i had quite a short sleep (about 6 hours) but the curve pretty much shows what the point im trying to make is. The battery life is great!!
SCREENSHOT 2: This is CM7 Nightly build 27# with Netarchy's latest 1.2.1 kernel and although i didnt use the screen once of charge for a few minutes as you can see once the screen was off battery life barely decreased and was over a long period of time.
If anyone wants me to test specific combos please let me know.

I'm actually looking forward to reading your results.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Yep, this would actually be pretty useful. Good luck and good work!

i'm a sucker for these types of tests, always love doing them and seeing the results. post soon!

I like others will be keeping an interested eye on your findings.

Uploading pictures of modaco r10 with it's own original kernel today. Its an interesting result!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Uploaded to OP

I'm interested too.

Can u try modaco r10 with Netarchy 1.2.1 kernel.
bratfink said:
Iv always considered battery life a very important factor in my purchasing of a phone and was one of the big reasons i moved from my Desire HD to the Nexus S (amongst many others). However having been on the android scene for a while im used to tinkering with kernels and roms etc and due to the new battery graph in gingerbread im now able to make direct comparisons rom by rom and kernel by kernel to see how they all differ. This is all shown + explained below.
First id like to explain my method;
I install the rom and kernel with the same apps I always use and charge the phone fully until i am about to go to sleep. I then unplug the phone and leave it in the exactly the same place on my desk with exactly the same settings (sync intervals etc) and i kill all apps before i leave it just to make sure the test is fair.
In the morning i then take a screen shot of the battery life over the period of usually 8 hours and will upload this for you to see. I then look at the over-night battery drain as a comparison on how good battery life is on specific roms and kernels.
Justification - Many of you may be thinking who cares about standby battery life? I care about the battery when im using it!?
Well although that's valid there are many reasons i have taken this approach;
1. It is completely fair i.e. no individual differences such as 'im a heavy user' but we all have different definitions of a 'heavy user'. This is eliminated by the fact the phone is not used and thus the same every time (no individual differences)
2. If a phone has severe battery drain during sleep general knowledge should dictate that battery drain should increase when the screen is on, cpu is working and your syncing your facebook wall, thus a direct correlation with sleep battery drain and usage drain should be apparent.
Therefore i have decided over the next few days/weeks etc i will upload on a regular basis a screenshot of the battery drain over night, along with the battery use details and screen on time etc etc. In addition to the rom and kernel info and i hope that over time this proves to be a very useful thread.
I have been doing this over the last few days on a less strict system and there have been some VERY interesting results which i will upload over the next few days.
(Just a final note iv never really done anything like this on xda before so if its a stupid idea then please tell me now so i dont waste my time doing it, however if people are really interested please let me know and il make sure i do my best!!)
Thanks for reading my extremely long post!
Bratfink
SCREENSHOT 1: This was using modacos custom rom r10 and the kernel that comes with it, i had quite a short sleep (about 6 hours) but the curve pretty much shows what the point im trying to make is. The battery life is great!!
If anyone wants me to test specific combos please let me know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

I'd be interested in seeing CM7, just whatever nightly build you manage to catch.

I don't think that result will give you precise result.
I found that statistic is wrong sometimes.
It is better to measure using "play video loop".
So, find a movie, set to the same brightness and play in loop?

gogol said:
I don't think that result will give you precise result.
I found that statistic is wrong sometimes.
It is better to measure using "play video loop".
So, find a movie, set to the same brightness and play in loop?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately that will not give you how well the rom does while it is idle.

I'm really looking forward to your results. My only issue with this phone is the battery life is terrible. I ordered an extended battery off Ebay 3 weeks ago and have yet to receive it. Never ordering anything from Hong Kong again!

Fuse8499 said:
I'm really looking forward to your results. My only issue with this phone is the battery life is terrible. I ordered an extended battery off Ebay 3 weeks ago and have yet to receive it. Never ordering anything from Hong Kong again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What were you using before that you consider this phone to have bad battery life? By far this phone has the best battery life of any Android device I've owned. If you want bad battery life, get an Evo. That is horrific battery life.

bratfink said:
Uploading pictures of modaco r10 with it's own original kernel today. Its an interesting result!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Uploaded to OP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am looking forward to the rest of these, however just a quick question. What was your battery use like in that situation with the stock ROM? Just for reference, because I'm thinking I might switch to modaco soon. Thanks!

More soon
Iv got a few more screenies but it seems i may have to end this thread prematurely. Its the SNS or 2.3 but idle battery usage for me is pretty much identical no matter what the kernel or rom (il upload a CM7 + Netarchy 1.2.1 shot top op). This was unexpected on my behalf because with my DHD kernels and roms had a big impact on idle battery consumption. I have noticed however that without a full wipe when changing some kernels such as with M r10 idle battery life can increase drastically. I will continue for the next few days and if i dont see any big changes i may move method to a video loop or something of the sort.

Interesting find
I found out something today that may interest may of you. I was messing around with the sleep profiles on SetCpu with netarchys kernel and i found that its better to leave the range from 100-800 than 100-400 or less. This i believe is because when the phone is asleep and carries out a process it will be forced to clock to the maximum of 400mhz and then stay at that speed for 10 seconds, instead of say going up to 800mhz for 1-2 seconds to complete the same process. So a tip to you would be set your profile to 100-800mhz conservative and see what you get!

bratfink said:
I found out something today that may interest may of you. I was messing around with the sleep profiles on SetCpu with netarchys kernel and i found that its better to leave the range from 100-800 than 100-400 or less. This i believe is because when the phone is asleep and carries out a process it will be forced to clock to the maximum of 400mhz and then stay at that speed for 10 seconds, instead of say going up to 800mhz for 1-2 seconds to complete the same process. So a tip to you would be set your profile to 100-800mhz conservative and see what you get!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This kinda enforces the point that SetCPU is useless for the NS unless you really want to overclock...
Any battery saving tactics used buy lowering screen off profiles are counteracted by the system process;( So i think in the context of battery life you are probably better to not use SetCPU
JD

bratfink said:
Iv got a few more screenies but it seems i may have to end this thread prematurely. Its the SNS or 2.3 but idle battery usage for me is pretty much identical no matter what the kernel or rom (il upload a CM7 + Netarchy 1.2.1 shot top op). This was unexpected on my behalf because with my DHD kernels and roms had a big impact on idle battery consumption. I have noticed however that without a full wipe when changing some kernels such as with M r10 idle battery life can increase drastically. I will continue for the next few days and if i dont see any big changes i may move method to a video loop or something of the sort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would definitely move to a video loop or some other 'heavy use' task because when you think about it, not too much can really be changed when almost no power is being used in the first place.
You could also just mention your general feeling for the battery life of each rom, because quite often that is what I go by as my usage varies depending on a range of things (school day or weekend etc) .
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Could you please test modaco r10 with Netarchy's latest 1.2.1 kernel ?
I would love to see the difference between modaco's default kernel vs netarchy's kernel.

On CM nightly 13, I just went 11 hours and I'm at 90%. That's 1/2% an hour. Not bad. That is with stock kernel.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk

Battery Life

Im looking for a rom with amazing battery life.....
Help Please!!!!!
Thanks!!!!

The rom i've found to be best on battery life is Royal Ginger. I've gone 2 days and a few hours on it with moderate use.

KCS05DC said:
The rom i've found to be best on battery life is Royal Ginger. I've gone 2 days and a few hours on it with moderate use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also get amazing battery life on RoyalGinger 1.5

+3
I was at 36 hours with wifi on for at least 24 of that. And I plugged it in with 10% remaining.
Edit: Make sure to calibrate your battery though. Don't judge the ROM off of the first 1 or 2 days.

Thanks ill try it.....
And how do i do the thing you was saying about the battery....

thereaper1118 said:
Thanks ill try it.....
And how do i do the thing you was saying about the battery....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search is your friend... there are a few guides in the Dev section
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

I have great battery life on CM7. There are a number of things that affect your battery life that all need to be taken into consideration.
ROM
- Find something by a reputable team like CyanogenMod and Team Royal. Their ROMs don't have HTC's SenseUI overlay and aren't bogegd down by the extra framework and overhead needed for Sense.
Kernel and CPU Clocking
- If the ROM supports changing the CPU clock speed, you can have your device run at lower clock speeds when idle (such as when the screen turns off), theoretically saving battery during those times. There are some great kernels by faux123 in the Development section.
- You can also try an undervolted kernel. Performance is no different than a stock voltage version of the same kernel, it just uses less battery to do the same functions.
The Screen
- This eats up battery like a beast. I don't use automatic brightness as most of the time a low setting is good enough (i.e. indoors).
- Gaming and other graphic-intensive activities will chew up battery
- I also use relatively dark-colored backgrounds because I think (can't prove) that it's requires less effort for the screen to show darker colors. Somewhere I read that it's easier to read light text on dark than dark text on light, so there's that too.
Connections
- GPS takes lots of power to use, so keep it off until you need it.
- Wi-Fi and bluetooth will continuously scan for connections while they are on, so leave those off while you aren't using them.
- In areas with poor network signal strength, your phone uses more energy than in areas with great signal strength.
Apps
- Be selective about which apps you install and run, especially ones designed to run all the time. I like to have something that can monitor CPU usage so that I can see when something is hogging system resources. Kind of like the Task Manager in Windows.
TasKillers - DON'T USE THEM!!!
- TasKillers cause more problems than they solve. Android is better at closing idle/unnecessary tasks than any TasKiller app.
- Killing tasks with TasKillers also adversely affects the stability of your device.
- Many of the things killed by TasKillers end up restarting anyway because they're needed for something, so you're repeatedly killing and starting the same apps over and over again. Guess how much battery that saves (hint: less than zero).
- If anything, use AutoKiller Memory Optimizer. This doesn't kill apps, it changes settings in Android that determine when to start closing apps to free memory.

Thanks you very much!!1

The biggest deal that has to do with battery life is how hard you push the phone. It has nothing to do with ROM or kernels...
If you truely wanted to test a ROM to see how the the battery life stack against each other you'd have to have x amount of devices with the SAME EXACT settings within the given ROM. Each phone running a different ROM. I ran a Sense ROM over the weekend and got HORRIBLE battery life. but other claim Cyanogen is the pits.

Pre 4.x.x ROM

Would it be possible to put older roms on the N4 like Cupcake, or Gingerbread?
Just to see how much of a battery drain Android 4 makes.
Right now I really care about battery, nothing else.

Roastmeat said:
Would it be possible to put older roms on the N4 like Cupcake, or Gingerbread?
Just to see how much of a battery drain Android 4 makes.
Right now I really care about battery, nothing else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. Pre-4.0 Android versions don't have support for on-screen buttons (Honeycomb doesn't count). I don't know if ICS would work, but from what I gather, nobody has tried (and with good reason), or it's simply impossible.
Your best bet would be to try a kernel like HellsCore or Piasek-KK that's tweaked for better battery life. You could also try limiting the max processor clock, or running only on 2 cores rather than 4. However, there are differing opinions on this. While a slower clock or fewer cores uses less energy, it also takes more time to process stuff, thus using more energy. Try it out and see how the results work for you.
Battery is affected mainly by how you use your phone. The screen is the biggest culprit. Dim it as much as you can tolerate. Apps pointlessly running in the background can eat up battery. Use a wakelock detecting app (root required) to find what's running needlessly, and Greenify to hibernate the offending apps. You can also use certain apps to change your data to 2G or 3G-only when the screen is off.

Best kernel solution?

Hey guys! This is my first topic on XDA, so I apologize in advance if I do something wrong.
I love my 6P and since it's a Nexus, there's always some tinkering so I can make it even better and suitable for my needs. I pretty much like stock-ish ROMs with that touch of Pixel phones and I find that original Google kernel serves me well in terms of battery life and overall performance (I'm probably one of the rare dudes to state something like this). But original kernel is very limited in terms of other options custom kernels offer, like gestures, screen color control, audio boost, etc. Regarding custom kernels, I never had any good experience with battery life, even when setting the governors on powersave/noop/cfq or any other I tried.
So, I guess what I'm asking is - can you recommend me a kernel that's exactly like the Google's out-of-the-box, but with those added options I mentioned above? Or is there some way to restore settings on custom kernels to default Google's settings?
Cheers!

I keep falling back on ElementalX, it offers enough customization, and still has decent battery depending on your settings. There's a million and 1 ways to configure it. I tried other very popular, more feature rich (they have everything, plus the kitchen sink, and sometimes cupboards too), but the battery drain is just too high for my liking. Not even using the phone, and every time I wake it with one of those kernels, it's dropped another 8-10%, without being used.
I haven't tried them all though. Many of the slimmer kernels don't offer a way to disable touchboost, so I rule those out as soon as I see that.

HikingMoose said:
I keep falling back on ElementalX, it offers enough customization, and still has decent battery depending on your settings. There's a million and 1 ways to configure it. I tried other very popular, more feature rich (they have everything, plus the kitchen sink, and sometimes cupboards too), but the battery drain is just too high for my liking. Not even using the phone, and every time I wake it with one of those kernels, it's dropped another 8-10%, without being used.
I haven't tried them all though. Many of the slimmer kernels don't offer a way to disable touchboost, so I rule those out as soon as I see that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, ElementalX was my first choice too, but suddenly that too started to drain my battery quickly after a while. At first I thought it happened because of some app, but when I flashed default kernel everything got back to normal. That's why I wonder is there a way to copy those default settings and apply them to some custom kernel.
You think disabling touchboost is a big deal? Cause of battery life or something else?

inspire4gfreak said:
Oh, ElementalX was my first choice too, but suddenly that too started to drain my battery quickly after a while. At first I thought it happened because of some app, but when I flashed default kernel everything got back to normal. That's why I wonder is there a way to copy those default settings and apply them to some custom kernel.
You think disabling touchboost is a big deal? Cause of battery life or something else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may check this thread regarding kernel governor profile customisation:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/ne...dvanced-interactive-governor-t3290605/page471
A lot of options to choose from. EX Kernel, Flash Kernel, (I guess other kernels) support this mod using a kernel manager app.
I'm currently using EX Kernel + EX Kernel Manager + Ghost Pepper profile.
Fast enough for me. Plus it helped me saving some juice.
Depending on your usage, it takes trials and errors until you find the good kernel/config that suits your needs.
Happy reading...

5.1 said:
You may check this thread regarding kernel governor profile customisation:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/ne...dvanced-interactive-governor-t3290605/page471
A lot of options to choose from. EX Kernel, Flash Kernel, (I guess other kernels) support this mod using a kernel manager app.
I'm currently using EX Kernel + EX Kernel Manager + Ghost Pepper profile.
Fast enough for me. Plus it helped me saving some juice.
Depending on your usage, it takes trials and errors until you find the good kernel/config that suits your needs.
Happy reading...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, I stumbled upon some other loooooong post about governors, but this one is amazing! I didn't know touchboost has that much influence on battery. I will try this out, thanks mate!

I get better battery life on ElementalEx over stock kernel without a doubt. I am running interactive with Ghost Pepper profile and touch boost disabled. If battery life is your main consideration you could try Franco's Kernel but you are sacrificing some phone performance to get the better battery life. I found the drop off in performance very noticeable but his kernel has its fans. I think ElementalEx has a better balance between performance and battery life.

inspire4gfreak said:
Oh, ElementalX was my first choice too, but suddenly that too started to drain my battery quickly after a while. At first I thought it happened because of some app, but when I flashed default kernel everything got back to normal. That's why I wonder is there a way to copy those default settings and apply them to some custom kernel.
You think disabling touchboost is a big deal? Cause of battery life or something else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touchboost wastes battery because it boosts you to 1248000 every single time you touch the screen, and it holds it for like a second or two. It does make your phone faster, and responsive though.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk