Pre 4.x.x ROM - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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.

Related

A couple of questions

First off Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.
Ok so i am wondering a couple things. I have an HD2 with one of Mdeejay's blends on it. I use launcher pro so looks aren't really gonna change too much. currently I am having huge battery drain. I'll charge over night and cant seem to get past 80%
1. Which Rom is the best on battery power?
2. Are there any underlying things in WINMO that maybe I should turn off before starting android?
3. Are there any underlying things in my android build that I can turn off?
4. My task killer seems to always get full even when I don't start certain apps, is there anything I can do about this?
Thanks to all that help.
Droski said:
First off Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.
Ok so i am wondering a couple things. I have an HD2 with one of Mdeejay's blends on it. I use launcher pro so looks aren't really gonna change too much. currently I am having huge battery drain. I'll charge over night and cant seem to get past 80%
1. Which Rom is the best on battery power?
2. Are there any underlying things in WINMO that maybe I should turn off before starting android?
3. Are there any underlying things in my android build that I can turn off?
4. My task killer seems to always get full even when I don't start certain apps, is there anything I can do about this?
Thanks to all that help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Some roms may cause problems, but all compatible ones shouldn't have influence on battery life. It's just hit & miss, try the one MDJ suggests. (probably mentioned in his thread)
2. There are some tweaks available yes, I personally doubt they work though. I get good standby battery life w/o even having looked at those tweaks. Just search for registry tweaks on this forum.
3. You can always turn off mobile data, sync, 3G (and obviously wifi, bluetooth, and low screen brightness). Install setCPU to underclock your processor (again, there's a lot of informative threads on this already)
4. Uninstall your task killer and never think about it again. They only do evil on Android. Having apps in your RAM memory is now actually a good thing, as opposed to windows. (yet again, a lot on this can be found through search.)
About the max of 80%: your battery isn't calibrated well. Either search for batterystats.bin on this forum and you'll find a guide on how to recalibrate, or reinstall your android build with a 100%, completely charged battery. Check the percentage in WinMo, and then leave it turned off for half an hour to make sure it's reaaally fully charged.
Completely agree with the above, with the exception of SetCPU. You're far better off with a recent kernel (I'm having great success with MDJ S6.1) setcpu is pretty much redundant now unless all you're interested in is melting your processor with ridiculous overclocks and pointless benchmark scores. ("Oh look I get three more points in quadrant than you but my phone reboots every 15 seconds")
After I performed my battery calibration I get two days moderate use out of my phone with no problems.
what if I were to charge to the full 80% then re-flash wouldn't that make it so the battery is 100%... also if i can only get 80% I would think that a flash at 80 would tell my phone it was 100 when in actuality it was 80. Maybe I'm confused about the whole battery conditioning issue.
Reno_79 said:
Completely agree with the above, with the exception of SetCPU. You're far better off with a recent kernel (I'm having great success with MDJ S6.1) setcpu is pretty much redundant now unless all you're interested in is melting your processor with ridiculous overclocks and pointless benchmark scores. ("Oh look I get three more points in quadrant than you but my phone reboots every 15 seconds")
After I performed my battery calibration I get two days moderate use out of my phone with no problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might want to read my post again, I suggested to install setCPU to underclock the CPU, to improve battery life. I don't quite see the point in overclocking either.

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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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%

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.

[BATTERY] My battery setup is doing miracles

I've been researching extensively how to improve my battery life on my Android phones and I believe I've found an amazing setup for the Atrix. My phone has been disconnected for 3:15 and I'm at 91% right now with moderate use. It used to burn about 5% an hour before with NO use. Yesterday, it lasted 14 hours and I still had 20% left when I went to bed.
Aura 1.1.3 Debloat #7 ROM
This ROM seems to be the lightest one I've tested. It's only 150 MB and very fast.
SetCPU
I set up a profile to underclock the processor all the way to 216 MHz when the screen is off. The processor is running at 1.1 GHz max. I haven't tested underclocking it to 1 GHz or 900 MHz. I'm sure that would improve the battery life even further and not have a huge impact on performance.
Battery mode (Android settings)
Obviously, it's on maximum battery saver.
General settings
I set the screen timeout to 30 seconds. Maybe 15 seconds is too short for you as it is for me, but that would save some more juice.
Every other battery-killing feature is on, like wifi, GPS and sync. I don't use task killers anymore and found out that my battery life actually improved a lot after I ditched Advanced Task Killer.
I just wanted to share this with the community. I hope it helps you. Any suggestions to improve it even further are very welcome.
Yeah task killers are pretty much useless, watchdog is a wonderful alternative.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
Interesting and thanks for sharing, but...
I can get almost the same results by using any other ROM without SetCPU and just using Max Battery Savings but I'm not interested on that setup because I need to have PUSH email all day.
Maximum Battery Savings makes push emails useless, and for a device that's supposed to be "connected" push mail is a must (at least for me).
Unfortunately, push mail is what kills batteries, specially on 3G/4G.
Cheers!
Rayan
Sent from my Atrix using Tapatalk
My phone was maximum battery savings one time for some reason. I didn't do it. But for some reason, it was seriously draininng my battery bad. I think i was on 2.2/froyo before i unlocked so i don't know if that had anything to do with it. I do know, i haven't had reason to try it intentionally since my battery is great overall. It does help since atnt turned up the juice on the 3g and called it 4g reception has been very satisfactory lately helping power consumption by not having to look for a signal as often.
I voided my warranty.
pukemon said:
My phone was maximum battery savings one time for some reason. I didn't do it. But for some reason, it was seriously draininng my battery bad. I think i was on 2.2/froyo before i unlocked so i don't know if that had anything to do with it. I do know, i haven't had reason to try it intentionally since my battery is great overall. It does help since atnt turned up the juice on the 3g and called it 4g reception has been very satisfactory lately helping power consumption by not having to look for a signal as often.
I voided my warranty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly! When the phone switches back and forth 2G and 3G/4G it drains a lot of power. So it too depends on the zone we are in at the moment and that's one of the reason we see a lot of different results among users. Of course, phone and app/game/internet usage style also counts.
Cheers!
Rayan said:
Exactly! When the phone switches back and forth 2G and 3G/4G it drains a lot of power. So it too depends on the zone we are in at the moment and that's one of the reason we see a lot of different results among users. Of course, phone and app/game/internet usage style also counts.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think a lot of people don't realize that terrible reception can account for terrible battery. Often we don't get that feedback when people are whining about battery. Also, lots of the people whining about battery play lots of games, and some of those games that put the gpu through it paces suck up juice faster, but the user is not realistic about that either and expects battery life of a phone that is used lightly.
I voided my warranty.
Yay for undervolting
not "killing" aka "ending" or possibly more familiar "closing" your running apps.. that's like, like if you log into your windows box and you don't have the "X" buttons on the window caption bar.. you just leave everything that you run running until you shutdown..
before you even try to retort, obviously there are exceptions. in windows explorer.exe runs endlessly until you shutdown. on your android device that's the equivalent of your preferred launcher.
what else.. msn? the equivalent of your favorite sms app. facebook and notifications? similar to that browser you keep open with 5 or 6 tabs swiftly consuming your precious processor.
i'm not sure an argument even exists. "task killers" has "killers" in the name which naturally has negative connotations. call it a task manager. windows has a task manager.
other than that nice tips
I am stock everything.. even launcher
3hrs 14min screen on time
~12ish hours off the charger
still says 50% battery. which means 50%-59% on motoblur
pretty darn good eh?
Don't understand the point you were trying to make. Are you saying killers/manager is worthwhile or were you trying make a worthless point about the names?
Anyways task managers are worthless. A good comparison to make are mid/high end laptops and their ram. On a forum I frequent, users were comparing their battery runtime with similar setups. Some were getting extra ~hour or so than others who couldn't figure out why they were getting shafted on battery. Some people don't realize that 4 dimms of ram consume twice the power of 2 dimms of ram no matter the gb of x amount of ram. Thus its better to have 2 dimms of 4gb each than it is 4 dimms of 2gb. The ram consumes power whether you use it or not if it is connected. The 1gb of ram in the atrix consumes the same amount of juice whether its holding 300 mb of data or 800 mb of data. Whether the cpu is computing with something active or not in the ram is what's relevant. Task managers only help when you have a rogue app. Id rather uninstall it then deal with a poorly written app.
I voided my warranty.
aaron.a said:
not "killing" aka "ending" or possibly more familiar "closing" your running apps.. that's like, like if you log into your windows box and you don't have the "X" buttons on the window caption bar.. you just leave everything that you run running until you shutdown..
before you even try to retort, obviously there are exceptions. in windows explorer.exe runs endlessly until you shutdown. on your android device that's the equivalent of your preferred launcher.
what else.. msn? the equivalent of your favorite sms app. facebook and notifications? similar to that browser you keep open with 5 or 6 tabs swiftly consuming your precious processor.
i'm not sure an argument even exists. "task killers" has "killers" in the name which naturally has negative connotations. call it a task manager. windows has a task manager.
other than that nice tips
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although that may be true for windows computers it its not with Linux which Android is based on. I know that there are virtual machines and all that jazz for the apps but the core system is all Linux and it's even optimized for battery life so when you press the home button yeah that is still running in the background but if you ever need to use that ram it either clears that app from the ram or (based on the app) kills its altogether. And like someone else said ram uses the same amount of power weather it's being used or not.
Also if you're using well written apps then they shouldn't be using any CPU in the background.
If there is some app that's hogging CPU in the background then you need to just uninstall it. Task killers especially auto task killers are actually using a lot of your CPU constantly checking for apps that are using too much ram but Android already does that automatically.
tl;dr
Linux can manage its own ram without you and for the love of God, stop using task killers they're making everything worse.
i was defending their usefulness in general not so much their effectiveness in battery preservation. probably the wrong thread. if any its minimal.
i'm talking about active task management tho. when i'm done browsing the web and want to fire up pewpew for some old school polygonal destruction i kill the browser entirely. i guess its really based on the type of user you are whether or not benefit is to be had. some people are active while others are standby
Rayan said:
Exactly! When the phone switches back and forth 2G and 3G/4G it drains a lot of power. So it too depends on the zone we are in at the moment and that's one of the reason we see a lot of different results among users. Of course, phone and app/game/internet usage style also counts.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, it depends on how you use the phone and the strength of the signal you're getting in your area. Would you guys just turn data off in bad signal areas to save battery? How would you handle that?
This is what happened. My battery is doing amazing. I changed the battery mode to Performance during the day and I still have 65% after 12 hours. Not bad. It's about 2.9% an hour. The display was used for a total of 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Battery life posts are useless unless we have some kind of standards during testing.
Like setup your system and then a 15min phone call, 1 hour of video/ ect.. same call.. same video same ect .. ran on each battery setup will give a truer idea on what saves battery the best.
This whole .. it was off charger for 5.33 hours and I used it alot and its at xx% doesn't hardly mean anything.. how much use is alot? How much is little?
Need some kind of same standard test that can be run..
nice to know
Why do custom roms get worse life on the ATRIX? Im new to this phone. (Used to be a HTC only guy)
Sent from my Atrix 4G
andrewxu said:
Why do custom roms get worse life on the ATRIX? Im new to this phone. (Used to be a HTC only guy)
Sent from my Atrix 4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mostly its not about the ROMs you use, but the Kernel or Baseband (Radio) firmware.
At least for me it's been much better than with the original ROM.
Also you must take into consideration other factors like type of use, voice/data signal quality on your area, and many other factors.
Cheers!
Rayan

What's your battery life like?

And can anybody compare it to the Galaxy Nexus, or an iPhone 4/4S (a 4S WITHOUT the battery issue that was going around)?
I'm really interested in switching from 4 to either a 4S or the a Note or Nexus... Battery life is an important thing to me though.
Also, just how much does having blacks on the screen help? How much does that help? If you just wanna answer my first question "How's your battery?" then that's fine. That's what's more important here.
Compared to the iPhone 4, I am getting almost twice the battery run time. I have not changed my habits during my normal day, and use the same apps that are available for both platforms by the same authors. The black home screen does help if you are starring at it all the time, but how often are we doing that?
I am also rooted and using FM kernel. Love the Open Source community.
Yumunum said:
And can anybody compare it to the Galaxy Nexus, or an iPhone 4/4S (a 4S WITHOUT the battery issue that was going around)?
I'm really interested in switching from 4 to either a 4S or the a Note or Nexus... Battery life is an important thing to me though.
Also, just how much does having blacks on the screen help? How much does that help? If you just wanna answer my first question "How's your battery?" then that's fine. That's what's more important here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some site did a comparison of 3g talk time with a Note and an I****.
The Note got a whopping 14 HOURS of 3g talktime.
The i**** 4s got 8 hours.
So phone vs phone, thr Note wins.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
cadavar said:
Compared to the iPhone 4, I am getting almost twice the battery run time. I have not changed my habits during my normal day, and use the same apps that are available for both platforms by the same authors. The black home screen does help if you are starring at it all the time, but how often are we doing that?
I am also rooted and using FM kernel. Love the Open Source community.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy cow! What's your screen-on time? Are you underclocking or anything? I'm guessing your good battery life was because of the kernel?
even @ stock ROM and Kernel, the NOTE is impressive in terms of batt life except if you're browsing a lot (since we all know that AMOLED consumes more juice in showing white shades compared to other display technology) ... Some ROMs and Kernels have battery saving scripts embedded and you can also find a lot of tips on how to improve batt life on our Note...
In my case, my Note can last 22hours+ of moderate to heavy usage; im using Rocket v6 ROM and FM Kernel (undervolted and underclock to 1200mhz)... I set my Wallpapers to the darker ones, customize goSMS with pure black background and themes, disable fast dormancy, turn off GPS and wifi when not in use, use minimal widget as possible, set the brightness to lower level that suit you, set to GSM mode mostly, disable background data when not needed, delete some unimportant processes in the system, manage startup application, disable task manager, and etc...
Yumunum said:
Holy cow! What's your screen-on time? Are you underclocking or anything? I'm guessing your good battery life was because of the kernel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, the FM kernel did help significantly. The reasoning being that the author disabled the heavy logging Android does for debugging purposes. Other than that, everything in the kernel is stock. No undervolting or underclocking. I also keep away from any app that overclocks the CPU, they usually mess with the phones ability to go into deep sleep.
Screen on time: 4:29m
regarding deepsleep and unwanted processes in background; you can install CpuSpy, Watchdog or Wakeclock monitor app if you're having an abnormal battery drain...
jaytana said:
regarding deepsleep and unwanted processes in background; you can install CpuSpy, Watchdog or Wakeclock monitor app if you're having an abnormal battery drain...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CPUSpy is a wonderful lil app. That is how I determined that SetCPU broke the phones ability to go into deep sleep, even after uninstalling it. I had to flash the ROM all over again.
Compared to iphone 4 gnote battery is less... the reason is bigger battery.
However even with heavy usage my battery last till night every day.
battery life has got better with time.
cadavar said:
CPUSpy is a wonderful lil app. That is how I determined that SetCPU broke the phones ability to go into deep sleep, even after uninstalling it. I had to flash the ROM all over again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
true... the apps i posted are all essential IMO... wakeclock monitoring is also very helpful in finding faulty apps running...
I'm getting glorious battery compared to my GSII.
Granted it's relatively light usage for now because of work and such, but I'm impressed. Almost always have the brightness at 25%, never need any more.
The sudden drop was from a restart.
My battery life was fine until Google started selling apps for 10p, I downloaded Jelly Defence and I became addicted to playing it...

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