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I apologize if this is in the wrong section, but this is the best forum I could think to post in. I didn't want to just post it in a device-specific forum.
Basically, I want to know who's to blame for Android's (almost always) poor battery life. It has been several years since android has been out, and it wasn't until a few months ago that phones started having "good" battery life, namely with the Moto Atrix 4G, and the LG Optimus 2X / G2X. and Samsung Galaxy S II
Is the Android OS to blame. Was there something that was going on before 2.2 that was causing this?
My friend's iPhone 4 has a 1420 mAh battery, and it can last nearly two days with medium use, all while receiving push notifications, etc etc..
In comparison, I have to undervolt & underclock my Evo 4G just so it will get through one work day on the 1500mah battery
And it's not just the iPhone. I know people with large-screened Symbian devices that also have great battery life. Even my roommate's HD7 gets much better battery life with similar usage.
I know that usage is a big factor, and the "good" battery life is subjective, but before people drop in and start raving about how android is more "connected", and stuff is always syncing, blah blah blah. I want you to drop your biases, and accept the truth; android battery life has been terrible.
So who's to blame? Google?
I would have to imagine that it's just the nature of the beast in that the iphone and WM7 all have very similar hardware and therefore can optimize there code to suite that specific platform to eek out all the battery that they can.
However the variety in hardware that we all enjoy with android does not enable the same amount of optimizations unfortunately.
That being said, with advances in hardware and software there will inevitably be better battery life around the corner - for all platforms. so i think that the solution would be that manufacturers like samsung, qualcomm, ti and even HTC, Moto to better optimize their products before launch, however out of these i only really see sammy as being able to do this as they are the only one to produce the chips and the phone.
but yeah... just my 2c
Hi, I'm not the op of this thread, but I would like to help out by giving it more attention.
Basically this guy is testing out popular governors for a whole day with similar usage and comparing battery life, screen on time, smoothness, etc..
He's showing a lot of dedication and I think people would be intrigued to see the results.
This experiment is on the htc rezound which usually gets 1.5-2 hours screen on time and 12-16 hours usage (horrible )
Link is here : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169425
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda app-developers app
Appreciate the exposure, Squirrel. Thanks a bunch.
I'm the OP of the thread/experiment he's talking about. Just as a teaser, I'll place the first post from my thread in here so that you all can see what I'm doing.
Purpeltendire said:
Now that I've familiarized myself with much of the Rezound forum, I was wondering how I could begin contributing in my own way. I don't have much skill in the way of development, and with school I doubt I'd have the time. But then another thought came to mind... guinea pig!
A Governor a Day
So basically what I'm planning on doing is testing the effects of the various CPU governors. I was planning on doing this for myself anyways, as I'm very curious what the practical differences are between governors.
I'll be setting several constants (Min/Max frequencies, voltages, ROM/Kernel, etc) and the only variable (at first) will be the governor. I'll probably start off with a one day time period, just because of the simplicity. Overall routine will be to set the governor when I plug my phone in, either at night before I go to bed or just before I run out of juice -- say 10% mark. And then just use it as I always do, because I have the benefit of a fairly regular class schedule there shouldn't be any significant changes to my usage pattern.
I'll be using several apps to help document all this data; if you want to suggest another to add to the accuracy and range of the stats, feel free. So far the list is:
Statistics
GSam Battery Monitor.
SystemPanel [Paid].
CPU Spy.
Settings
Kernel Tuner
BetterBatteryStats (Added 02/29/13)
I'm guessing that for the first week or so I'll be taking community feedback from you all and incorporating it into the OP as constants and such, so the final experiment probably won't start for another few days and I'll have to redo my first few days of statistics. But that really doesn't bother me.
This is sort of my introductory post, I'm almost done with my day on DanceDance. As I told some people in the Infection2.1 thread I'd be making a very detailed post of my battery life and settings, I'll also be copying that post into a new thread and reserving the first few posts for myself. You're all welcome to make suggestions in both this thread and the dedicated thread, but let's try to keep Neo's ROM thread clean for him.
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I'm using current venomxl Rom with elemental kernel (all default other than max 1.5ghz and flu overclock off) and getting what I feel are amazing results on battery life. On phones of the past, aosp style roms pulled better battery life, but I saw here in the forums people were getting better battery life with sense roms? Is that true? I posted a screenshot below of my battery life, sorry couldn't figure out how to get jpg link from dropbox app.
https://photos-1.dropbox.com/t/0/AA...g/d7MN66kx-qjvYssSKvKrYLP2xrN6GZy7R6-COot-8wM
Would be nice to hear what Rom/kernel combos others are using and what kind of battery life you are getting.
Put the picture in your public folder. Right click on the picture and click copy public link, or something to that effect then paste the link in your thread.
In any case, the only things you could do to get even better battery would be to undervolt your processor and maybe underclock as well. Some phones become unstable however and while I noticed the general ui and most apps run fine with a clock speed of about 1.2ghz, some, more CPU intensive apps do lag a bit. You can also disable radios when not in use. I actually use juice defender to do this for me automatically, which is pretty handy though not everyone likes the idea of having an app do that for you.
Last but not least, if your radio signal seems low most of the time, you can try flashing different radios to give you a better signal which will, in turn, increase your battery life.
Hope this helps, maybe others have had different experiences?
I use viper and bulletproof right now ad I wanted a stock kernel with swipetowake
And this holds up damn well in terms of battery life. Never used elemental for long though so not sure if it's better or worse.
*edit* I forgot to add, you can also turn off fastboot. Your phone will take longer to power on but saves some battery life.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
badhabits727 said:
On phones of the past, aosp style roms pulled better battery life, but I saw here in the forums people were getting better battery life with sense roms? Is that true?
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Such reports are often just anecdotal and very subjective. Like you, I've also seen people claim better life on AOSP or certain ROMs on various devices, but never really experienced it in any consistent or meaningful way. Battery life often has more to do with the radio and reception in your specific care, than anything. Sure, various ROMs on various devices may have some subtle difference in battery life. But unless you are very methodical and scientific about comparing them, there are just too many variables involved, and you are often just left with subjective reports and placebo effects.
Can't open your pic. But if you are satisfied with the battery life (enough to call it "amazing"), I'd just go with the ROM that has the features you like the best, and leave well enough alone.
Did you know that Samsung has a system called DVFS that basically does nothing other than cripping your phone's performance with aggressive underclocking? There's a big thread about it here, but other than that, it seems that this issue is not very well known, which is surprising considering the SGS4 is a very mainstream phone. When I discovered about it I was shocked because this system does literally nothing useful, but it makes gaming or other high end smartphone activities (heavy browsing, 3D games, heavy multitasking, etc) lag like crazy.
It shocks me that Samsung has implemented such a thing and that you cannot disable without rooting (and obviously voiding the warranty and your Knox flag), and nobody except a few XDA users noticed.
MarkMRL said:
Did you know that Samsung has a system called DVFS that basically does nothing other than cripping your phone's performance with aggressive underclocking? There's a big thread about it here, but other than that, it seems that this issue is not very well known, which is surprising considering the SGS4 is a very mainstream phone. When I discovered about it I was shocked because this system does literally nothing useful, but it makes gaming or other high end smartphone activities (heavy browsing, 3D games, heavy multitasking, etc) lag like crazy.
It shocks me that Samsung has implemented such a thing and that you cannot disable without rooting (and obviously voiding the warranty and your Knox flag), and nobody except a few XDA users noticed.
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You say it does nothing useful, but what does it do for battery life?
s14sh3r said:
You say it does nothing useful, but what does it do for battery life?
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Nothing? The phone already has extensive battery saving options, and it already has an underclocking option right there. Not to mention, swappable battery. Why is this thing enforced on everyone? If you use your flagship tier phone like it was an old Nokia from the nineties then it might not affect you. Since I use my phone for browsing internet, multimedia, and games, it does affect me a lot. I don't give a flying **** about one hour of additional battery when my phone slows down to a crawl. If I wanted to enable crawl mode I should have the option, the phone shouldn't decide arbitrarily when to slow down.
Also, if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, what makes you think this isn't a marketing ploy by samsung? To force users to get the S5 because the old one has such poor performance in games and stuff like that? The average smartphone user is so dumb he wouldn't realize it's all planned right in the system itself, they'd go " hurr, my phone can't run games well anymore, better go out and buy the S5, that will surely play games better, with it's multiple megapixels and cores and newer stuff I have no clue about".
MarkMRL said:
Nothing? The phone already has extensive battery saving options, and it already has an underclocking option right there. Not to mention, swappable battery. Why is this thing enforced on everyone? If you use your flagship tier phone like it was an old Nokia from the nineties then it might not affect you. Since I use my phone for browsing internet, multimedia, and games, it does affect me a lot. I don't give a flying **** about one hour of additional battery when my phone slows down to a crawl. If I wanted to enable crawl mode I should have the option, the phone shouldn't decide arbitrarily when to slow down.
Also, if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, what makes you think this isn't a marketing ploy by samsung? To force users to get the S5 because the old one has such poor performance in games and stuff like that? The average smartphone user is so dumb he wouldn't realize it's all planned right in the system itself, they'd go " hurr, my phone can't run games well anymore, better go out and buy the S5, that will surely play games better, with it's multiple megapixels and cores and newer stuff I have no clue about".
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Good points. I'm not arguing against you, btw, I'm not even sure how to tell if my phone is using it since I'm using Omega ROM.
s14sh3r said:
Good points. I'm not arguing against you, btw, I'm not even sure how to tell if my phone is using it since I'm using Omega ROM.
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Well, if you play any game or if you browse a lot you'd probably notice because performance drops a lot and lag increases. I don't know what Omega Rom is, this is an issue in stock rom. Of course it doesn't affect me anymore because I have the knowledge to research this stuff and eventually find a solution (even though I obviously have no idea how the solution is made), but for the average user this should be an issue, I mean everyone should know about it, it's too shady to be ignored, this is planned obsolescence at its finest.
Also, if this was introduced to save battery, how come so many people are complaining about battery drain on Kitkat?
It's obviously a marketing strategy, and I will spread the word about it.
There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf
Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk
planetf1 said:
There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf
Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk
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I don't care and I don't have the knowledge to understand anything in that document.
What I care about is:
Galaxy S4 on 4.3 and under: great performance, no issues.
Galaxy S4 on 4.4: awful performance, issues.
Other phones on 4.4: great performance, no issues.
It's no coincidence this happened only a few months before the S5 is released.
Either Samsung did something wrong with this implementation, or they did indeed do it to force users to upgrade because the older model is no longer viable for high end smartphone use.
planetf1 said:
There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf
Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk
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This has nothing to do with the user-space policies which you're complaining about.
Will deleting the twDVFS.apk be sufficient to disable this frequency scaling on my S4? Or is using the Xposed module necessary?
delete
Hi
A friend of mine is endlessly complaining about the bad battery life on his stock nexus 5, the phone is off the charger at 7am and is all but dead at 4pm
Being a nice guy and all, I want to help him out by offering to install a ROM that optimises battery life.
Can anyone suggest a good rom for the task ?
If such a rom exists and battery life can be extended to 15 to 17hrs I might jump ship from my LG G3
None
roms have absolutely nothing to do with battery.
battery is determined by your personal use, your personal setup, apps installed, and very much the quality of your phone/data connection. there are other things that'll influence battery life slightly as well, but these are the main things that determine your battery life.
Turn off auto and set the screen brightness display to 15%!
galaxys said:
Turn off auto and set the screen brightness display to 15%!
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Autobrightness isn't too bad if your ROM allows you to change the values/levels
Also, "Lux Autobrightness" is useless for saving battery on an LCD screen since the backlight is still the same brightness. on AMOLED (aka not the Nexus 5) it would help, however.
simms22 said:
roms have absolutely nothing to do with battery.
battery is determined by your personal use, your personal setup, apps installed, and very much the quality of your phone/data connection. there are other things that'll influence battery life slightly as well, but these are the main things that determine your battery life.
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so we shouldn't expect any battery improvements when Android L is released ?
ipguy said:
so we shouldn't expect any battery improvements when Android L is released ?
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its possible, a small amount. but that would be from new code that makes something more efficient. but, i personally, dont expect much difference in battery life.
simms22 said:
its possible, a small amount. but that would be from new code that makes something more efficient. but, i personally, dont expect much difference in battery life.
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not sure I agree with you, project volta looks like a concerted effort from Google to do exactly that.
Funny. I always use Auto-brightness and get 4 hours SoT at least twice a week. Other times, I get a little over 3 hours or below.
The best battery life for me is with elementalx 1.05 kernel with a stock rom. 2 days stand by and at least 5 hours sot is the usual verdict.
But i think the problem here is how your friend uses his phone
Different ROMs do have different battery usage. Even with the same kernel. He could stick on stock with elementalx aosp kernel. Then mess around with trickster mod to suck out the most use. Only use the high power goveners when needed. Then switch back to low power for general use. Honestly, had my n5 for a month. Also had a n4 before. The n5 battery isnt much better. Biggest downside. Just doing nothing its fine, but if I play some games on the train it dies in no time.
Some ideas
Vanir
Slim
Purity
Cm11
Vanir with elementalx was good for me battery wise. But after a certain nightly I was getting alot of heat and battery drain. Im now using sabermod carbon with elementalx.
Turn Location off. It has the biggest Impact in Battery life time.
"Best" ROM.
There is no such thing as a best ROM. The question itself is ambiguous. "Best" is obviously a subjective term.
What I want from a ROM may well differ from what you want from a ROM, ergo - what is best for me could be worst for you.
If you are asking what the most popular ROMs are, or which ROMs people are using, you can see which threads stay around on the first few pages (and have the most posts) in the Android Development or Original Android Development forums. You can also see what other people are running by reading the What are you running on your Nexus 5 thread.
If you are asking which is the most stable, being a Nexus device - they're all pretty stable.
If you are asking which is best on Battery, ROMs only affect battery if they have a feature that is badly coded. You will likely be able to read about this in the ROM threads. ROMs do not impact battery life. The only impact to battery life are your apps, your settings, how you use the phone and mostly, environmental issues such as Phone Signal.
For tips about improving battery life, please read [Battery Life Help] Troubleshoot battery issues here!
"Best" Kernel
Also, please note that as above, "best" is still subjective. What we all want from a kernel is different. Again, many people have the misconception that Kernels affect battery life. Let's get this cleared up. Although Kernel devs will build in optimisations and efficiencies that will improve battery life, these are very, VERY tiny...and if 1 kernel has these optimisations, they likely all have.
People will often say "Kernel x is better than kernel y for battery life". This is actually wrong. Kernels respond to user settings. Setting up the governor to favour either battery life or performance is simple enough to do, you just have to do some learning. The reason people think Kernel x is better than y is because developers set their kernels up with their preferred governor settings. This is what we refer to as out-of-the-box settings. The out-of-the-box settings for kernel x may well produce better battery results than the out-of-the-box settings for kernel y, which favour performance. The fact is, you as the user have the ability to tune kernel x or y to perform the same, be that battery or performance - so start learning how to do this yourselves - that way, you can choose the kernel based on the FEATURES you want, and not the fictional performance benefits of one kernel over another.
Hope this helps
rootSU said:
"Best" ROM.
There is no such thing as a best ROM. The question itself is ambiguous. "Best" is obviously a subjective term.
What I want from a ROM may well differ from what you want from a ROM, ergo - what is best for me could be worst for you.
If you are asking what the most popular ROMs are, or which ROMs people are using, you can see which threads stay around on the first few pages (and have the most posts) in the Android Development or Original Android Development forums. You can also see what other people are running by reading the What are you running on your Nexus 5 thread.
If you are asking which is the most stable, being a Nexus device - they're all pretty stable.
If you are asking which is best on Battery, ROMs only affect battery if they have a feature that is badly coded. You will likely be able to read about this in the ROM threads. ROMs do not impact battery life. The only impact to battery life are your apps, your settings, how you use the phone and mostly, environmental issues such as Phone Signal.
For tips about improving battery life, please read [Battery Life Help] Troubleshoot battery issues here!
"Best" Kernel
Also, please note that as above, "best" is still subjective. What we all want from a kernel is different. Again, many people have the misconception that Kernels affect battery life. Let's get this cleared up. Although Kernel devs will build in optimisations and efficiencies that will improve battery life, these are very, VERY tiny...and if 1 kernel has these optimisations, they likely all have.
People will often say "Kernel x is better than kernel y for battery life". This is actually wrong. Kernels respond to user settings. Setting up the governor to favour either battery life or performance is simple enough to do, you just have to do some learning. The reason people think Kernel x is better than y is because developers set their kernels up with their preferred governor settings. This is what we refer to as out-of-the-box settings. The out-of-the-box settings for kernel x may well produce better battery results than the out-of-the-box settings for kernel y, which favour performance. The fact is, you as the user have the ability to tune kernel x or y to perform the same, be that battery or performance - so start learning how to do this yourselves - that way, you can choose the kernel based on the FEATURES you want, and not the fictional performance benefits of one kernel over another.
Hope this helps
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Click to collapse
with this guy
I used about every rom and kernel.... And my battery life for me, with my lean setup and usage was always 24 hoursish total and usually over 6 hours screen time on all of them.
So no one will ever convince me that different kernels and especially different roms affect battery life any more than in the smallest ways. Definitely not enough difference to base a choice on solely.
?
rootSU said:
"Best" ROM.
There is no such thing as a best ROM. The question itself is ambiguous. "Best" is obviously a subjective term.
What I want from a ROM may well differ from what you want from a ROM, ergo - what is best for me could be worst for you.
If you are asking what the most popular ROMs are, or which ROMs people are using, you can see which threads stay around on the first few pages (and have the most posts) in the Android Development or Original Android Development forums. You can also see what other people are running by reading the What are you running on your Nexus 5 thread.
If you are asking which is the most stable, being a Nexus device - they're all pretty stable.
If you are asking which is best on Battery, ROMs only affect battery if they have a feature that is badly coded. You will likely be able to read about this in the ROM threads. ROMs do not impact battery life. The only impact to battery life are your apps, your settings, how you use the phone and mostly, environmental issues such as Phone Signal.
For tips about improving battery life, please read [Battery Life Help] Troubleshoot battery issues here!
"Best" Kernel
Also, please note that as above, "best" is still subjective. What we all want from a kernel is different. Again, many people have the misconception that Kernels affect battery life. Let's get this cleared up. Although Kernel devs will build in optimisations and efficiencies that will improve battery life, these are very, VERY tiny...and if 1 kernel has these optimisations, they likely all have.
People will often say "Kernel x is better than kernel y for battery life". This is actually wrong. Kernels respond to user settings. Setting up the governor to favour either battery life or performance is simple enough to do, you just have to do some learning. The reason people think Kernel x is better than y is because developers set their kernels up with their preferred governor settings. This is what we refer to as out-of-the-box settings. The out-of-the-box settings for kernel x may well produce better battery results than the out-of-the-box settings for kernel y, which favour performance. The fact is, you as the user have the ability to tune kernel x or y to perform the same, be that battery or performance - so start learning how to do this yourselves - that way, you can choose the kernel based on the FEATURES you want, and not the fictional performance benefits of one kernel over another.
Hope this helps
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Click to collapse
Well said. I hope you don't mind but I've linked your well written response in a Reddit post. Users there argue daily over which ROM or kernel is best for battery life despite my best efforts.
bblzd said:
Well said. I hope you don't mind but I've linked your well written response in a Reddit post. Users there argue daily over which ROM or kernel is best for battery life despite my best efforts.
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You can lead a horse to water.... Etc... Etc. ?
bblzd said:
Well said. I hope you don't mind but I've linked your well written response in a Reddit post. Users there argue daily over which ROM or kernel is best for battery life despite my best efforts.
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Not at all. I'm just copying and pasting it wherever needed now.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
ipguy said:
not sure I agree with you, project volta looks like a concerted effort from Google to do exactly that.
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we will see.