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[Q] Battery usage on custom roms

Hi there,
I am currently running on HTC stock rom with 2.3.4 but currently considering applying a custom ROM to get better battery mileage (i.e. more hours).
I see that all custom roms mention that one should get better battery usage because they have applied some optimizations. But is this real?
What I have understand so far is that battery life varies for every user because everybody uses the phone different with different applications (probably there aren't 2 phones with the same configuration) so any benchmarks are meaningless...
But... If you have used the stock rom and moved to a custom rom , what is your experience did battery life improve? I am assuming that you continued to use the phone in a similar way...
Currently I get between 12-16h hours on my stock rom, what should I expect if I move to custom ROM?
Currently considering moving to Android Revolution HD 3.6.3 XE.
Before being flamed, I looked and searched for the answer to this question but could not get any answer...
Thanks

for me the experience has been reverse... when on stock rom, i get better battery life but when i use custom roms I get worst battery...
Currently running Sense 3.5 and it has something really annoying with battery.. sometimes it would stick at 100% for one hour and then when i start using it for 10 mins it would come down by 20% in no time...
With ARHD 3.6.3 my battery would take too long to charge but with sense 3.5 it takes half the time to charge...
So using custom Roms you will never figure out how ur battery works..

jjdoctor said:
for me the experience has been reverse... when on stock rom, i get better battery life but when i use custom roms I get worst battery...
Currently running Sense 3.5 and it has something really annoying with battery.. sometimes it would stick at 100% for one hour and then when i start using it for 10 mins it would come down by 20% in no time...
With ARHD 3.6.3 my battery would take too long to charge but with sense 3.5 it takes half the time to charge...
So using custom Roms you will never figure out how ur battery works..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is misleading as this might be your experience but not everyone's.
I get excellent battery life with Sense 3.5 and I don't get any bad battery readings either.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

My battery life improved noticeably with a custom rom. However, when you get a custom rom, you usually also pair it with an overclocked kernel which ups the speed but also reduces battery life a bit.
I'm running ARHD 4.1.3 with faux's kernel running at 1.5ghz and am still getting better battery life then stock. I can use my phone for a full day, not charge it at night, and then still be able to last to about just after lunch time the next day. With the stock kernel, battery life was even better but the phone was also slower.
There are a lot of settings that you can tweak to try and conserve battery life. I keep bluetooth and gps off, and I think that using the GSM antenna only instead of both GSM/CDMA helps, stuff like that.

pms said:
Hi there,
Currently I get between 12-16h hours on my stock rom, what should I expect if I move to custom ROM?
Currently considering moving to Android Revolution HD 3.6.3 XE.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really? I never got anywhere near close to that. Best was about 6 hours if I used the phone for anything other than talking.
I am currently on the revolution 3.6.3 XE rom and I can't stop smiling. I get a bout a good 8 hours of usuable (xm streaming, surfing, gaming and some slingbox as I have a hour commute each way every day) and about 10 hours with little to no activity. Light years from where I was. I have tried quite a few roms, but this one is a keeper. Try it

moshe22 said:
This is misleading as this might be your experience but not everyone's.
I get excellent battery life with Sense 3.5 and I don't get any bad battery readings either.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
misleading in what? this is exactly how I feel...
ricanbandit said:
really? I never got anywhere near close to that. Best was about 6 hours if I used the phone for anything other than talking.
I am currently on the revolution 3.6.3 XE rom and I can't stop smiling. I get a bout a good 8 hours of usuable (xm streaming, surfing, gaming and some slingbox as I have a hour commute each way every day) and about 10 hours with little to no activity. Light years from where I was. I have tried quite a few roms, but this one is a keeper. Try it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get 5-7 hrs with heavy usage.. with non stop video streaming and wifi, i get 3 hours...

jjdoctor said:
for me the experience has been reverse... when on stock rom, i get better battery life but when i use custom roms I get worst battery...
Currently running Sense 3.5 and it has something really annoying with battery.. sometimes it would stick at 100% for one hour and then when i start using it for 10 mins it would come down by 20% in no time...
With ARHD 3.6.3 my battery would take too long to charge but with sense 3.5 it takes half the time to charge...
So using custom Roms you will never figure out how ur battery works..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on that. My battery life was horrible on CM7. I tried everything to fix from other kernels, radios and every battery calibration tip, tool and app. I just went back to stock. I was dropping 6-7% battery life while my phone was in standby. If the phone was in airplane mode it was fine. I also tried turning off wi-fi but that didn't help.

I get better battery life using the latest IC Rom. Not a heavy user, a few calls, few texts, 10 +/- emails, decent amount of web and twitter use though, little gaming. Take it off charger at 7am, and when I put it back at 11pm, I usually have 30%-40% of my battery still left.

I am using CM7 alpha9, which is very far from being release-quality. I had thought it was doing very well - 6 hours and still at 80%. But then I had a phone call drop using WiFi Calling, and I had to reboot to regain the use of the dialer. I was at 20% after reboot...

I noticed a huge difference with Revolution HD (no-sense script) compared to the stock ROM.
Very happy with the switch.

Best I got with ARHD and a stock 1.2 Ghz kernel was 1 day, 5 hours, and the best Ive had with ARHD and Faux kernel was about 12 hours.
Typically I was seeing about 8-10 hours with ARHD and Faux kernels. I just decided to try bricked last night so I cant really report too much, although today looks really good so far. I'm already at 10 hours 20 mins as I type this with 30% left. Typically I would be plugging my phone in after work getting in the car on the way home with the Faux kernel. I just flashed this kernel last night so it hasnt even "settled in" yet. Both non-stock kernels are running OC at 1.5 Ghz.
~T.J.

A lot of times people forget when flashing roms and such is to clear the battery stats, this will increase battery by a surprising amount.
When people flash New roms they don't wipe battery stats and that's why there battery life sucks. And yeah sometimes it is the Rom and or the way they use there phone.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA App

I have ARHD latest realise with 3.5 sence
Battery life is not bad, but i had better with stock rom.
I get 14-15hr on one charge, but I noticed a lot activity when screen is off.
Can someone please tell me how can I clear battery stats?

bakili said:
I have ARHD latest realise with 3.5 sence
Battery life is not bad, but i had better with stock rom.
I get 14-15hr on one charge, but I noticed a lot activity when screen is off.
Can someone please tell me how can I clear battery stats?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So... what led you to use ARHD? if you are not getting better battery life, what led you to ARHD? Better performance? Is that really noticeable? If yes, can you please give some examples?
Thanks!

pms said:
So... what led you to use ARHD? if you are not getting better battery life, what led you to ARHD? Better performance? Is that really noticeable? If yes, can you please give some examples?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perfomance is better, but the main reason is Sense 3.5. I cant say it effected battery life badly.

CM7 has excellent battery savings.

[Q] Whats the problem???

I am running ARHD 6.5.5 with faux kernel at stock cpu freq. I also have the ICS AOSP aroma theme, with mostly AOSP apps.
You can see from my screen shots that my battery life is terrible, and that is with juice defender on too!
Can someone tell me if theres anything i can change to get better battery, or if there are any ics ROMs out there that will give better battery?
I have wiped battery stats off a full charge but that made no difference. One thing I thought it could be is that I may not have had full battery when flashing the ICS firmware update - but this would have been fixed by battery stats wipe right??
Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this!

Could be a few things....
First thing is to make sure you give it time to get a good battery profile. Let it charge all night, then clear the battery stats in the morning. Then let it go all the way down to 0 and shut off without interruption. (Meaning don't restart it if you can avoid it)
The first day will be pretty bad. The second day should be much better. The 3rd day should be really good.
If you've done that properly and you're still getting 10 hours of battery life, something's wrong.
You could have a wakelock, something that's keeping the phone running all the time even with the screen off. An app could cause this, but it doesn't look like the case based on your screen shot.
The battery could be bad. This can be tested with another ROM to see if the problem replicates itself.
The ROM install could have gone screwy somehow. (Though for the life of me I can't think of how.) But wiping clean and starting over might help.
You can also underclock the CPU. Make it run at like 350 mhz when idling. That'll help a lot.

Skipjacks said:
Could be a few things....
First thing is to make sure you give it time to get a good battery profile. Let it charge all night, then clear the battery stats in the morning. Then let it go all the way down to 0 and shut off without interruption. (Meaning don't restart it if you can avoid it)
The first day will be pretty bad. The second day should be much better. The 3rd day should be really good.
If you've done that properly and you're still getting 10 hours of battery life, something's wrong.
You could have a wakelock, something that's keeping the phone running all the time even with the screen off. An app could cause this, but it doesn't look like the case based on your screen shot.
The battery could be bad. This can be tested with another ROM to see if the problem replicates itself.
The ROM install could have gone screwy somehow. (Though for the life of me I can't think of how.) But wiping clean and starting over might help.
You can also underclock the CPU. Make it run at like 350 mhz when idling. That'll help a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the reply, you seem to know what your talking about... What about the firmware bit I mentioned, could that have anything to do with it?
I will re-try the battery calibration procedure you suggested - if it does not help what rom do you think I should flash to rule out a bad battery?
Sent from my HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio using XDA

You didn't mention anything about firmware. But that should be a factor either.
Also, now that I think about it I think ARHD 6.5.5 might have had battery issues. I know one of the 6.5.x versions had poor battery life.
I run 6.5.3 myself and it's super ultra ridiculously battery efficient. I mean like 2 days between charges efficient. And I plug it in at the end of the 2nd day with like 20% left still.
Try starting over with 6.5.3. Or bump up to 6.6.2 that's out now.
I also never had luck with those juice defender things. But that's me. Some people swear by them. I found them to just be in the way.

I have the same issue with battery and I don't understand why the battery is so crap

I'm also using ARHD 6.5.5 with faux kernel. The first two three days were not spectacular but after that stabilized. I first ran it at the faux stock Cpu freq of 1.5 ghz and when I plugged for charging at night was usually at 40-55% depending on use. I'm running it now at 1.2 ghz (is a sensation 4g after all) and is usually 65-85% when I'm back home, depending on use.
I might add that I ran Rom Cleaner 3.5 to slim down the rom and also shnizlon AOSP them with the option of removing HTC apps and widgets
Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

The problem was ARDH 6.5.5, updated to 6.6.2 and now got awesome battery life! Also re flashed the firmware off a full charge, that could have helped but I'm not sure cos I did it all at once.
Thanks guys
Sent from my HTC Sensation using XDA

Improving Battery Life?

I'm using the Virtuous Inquisition 4.0.2 ROM and my battery life, while better than what it was pre rooting, is still not that great. When I'm outside my house and using 3G, my battery drops by about 8-10% per hour. This is quite poor compared to some of the battery usage I see on this forum with various people posting their screenshots. What exactly can I do to improve battery life?

They're are many little tricks you can do to preserve battery but one thing that actually helped me the most was switching out my stock battery for a long lasting battery. Most of us have done this this is why your seeing the different results. I personally use Anker battery. It's given me a lot more battery time than stock ever had! This is really the best way to go.As for the tricks you can check your settings and turn down or off some of the things that are draining battery like led, turn down back light , keyboard feed back, check your sync and only sync what's necessary, make sure no logging is taking place , ect. Just look for what you might think is draining battery and adjust the settings accordingly. I hope this helps you out. It had helped me. Best wishes.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using xda premium

Well I am using the Anker battery for a pretty long time now and I still don't anywhere close to the battery performance that most others here seem to get. What 3.32 based kernel would you suggest which would best help save battery?

I like bricked ,but try a few out and see what you think. Bricked has proven to give me the best battery life personally. Best wishes.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using xda premium

wr8_utd said:
I'm using the Virtuous Inquisition 4.0.2 ROM and my battery life, while better than what it was pre rooting, is still not that great. When I'm outside my house and using 3G, my battery drops by about 8-10% per hour. This is quite poor compared to some of the battery usage I see on this forum with various people posting their screenshots. What exactly can I do to improve battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What battery u using

Kernels doesn't seem to help if i put brightness to 50% on virtuous rom i can get up to 4 hour screen on time whit anker battery ..
Sent From My Sexy Sensation.

you can try using juice defender, changing cell type to 2G or GSM (PRL) in 4636 menu, switch off synchro, set conservative governor or make own cpu seting (disable second core for ex.) Hypernonsense is good batterry saving aosp rom. im using it with stock kernel

CM9 - Poor battery life

Hi, i'm on 9.1 Stable for a week now, coming from the Stock 3.33 Firmware. I'm experiencing very bad battery life (up to 10% per hour) although I don't use my phone very often.
Here two pics of my battery stats:
Pic 1
Pic 2
BetterBatteryStats says that I the phone is 6:24h of 7:38h in deep sleep. As you can see on the picture something keeps the phone awake from time to time even when the screen is off.
Screen Brightness is Auto, CPU Govenor on ondemand and max 1026MHZ. Mobile Data is off most of the time.
I've already read that many people have bad battery life but only 30min display time with that settings isn't acceptable!
Has anybody similar problems?
Does anyone know what I can do? I read that changing the kernel would help. Any idea if there is any that saves battery?
Greetings and thanks!

Check your sync settings, make sure they're not too oftenly synced.
Also, a lot of people have been having battery issues with google maps. Perhaps that may be the problem?
You should also check out Bricked Kernel for CM
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=17696447#post17696447
It's really good, go ahead and set the governor to badass.
Hope this helps

Calibrating the battery worked for me. Fully charge, ten wipe battery stats, then fully drain your battery.
Sent from my HTC Sensation using xda app-developers app

Deathsongx3 said:
Check your sync settings, make sure they're not too oftenly synced.
Also, a lot of people have been having battery issues with google maps. Perhaps that may be the problem?
You should also check out Bricked Kernel for CM
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=17696447#post17696447
It's really good, go ahead and set the governor to badass.
Hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bricked is at least part of the answer. When I was using CM9 Bricked kernel provided the fewest amount of wakelocks.
Though I felt Tamcore was a bit smoother.

Thanks for your answers. I will try the bricked kernel.
Do I have to wipe or reinstall something or can I just flash the kernel over CM9.1stable and it will work?

guitargod said:
Thanks for your answers. I will try the bricked kernel.
Do I have to wipe or reinstall something or can I just flash the kernel over CM9.1stable and it will work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wipe dalvik cache and flash

Hi have you thought of trying a different extended battery ? Anker and mugen make really great batteries . I was having serious battery issues and I tried everything, different Kernels, settings, battery saving applications, still I was having a issue until I switched My battery. Now I don't have any problems and can get about two days with really heavy use out of my battery. I went with mugenbattery 3800mah battery. It did make my phone thicker but for the battery life it was worth it for me. Most don't want a thicker phone and if that's there case try Anker battery. It also will provide extended battery life. Anker is a very good battery. I just needed more juice because I'm a really heavy user. You can get Anker online for about 10 dollars, where as mugen costs around 95 dollars. It just depends on your needs. But I do suggest a extended battery. It will make a big difference in your battery life. If you don't want to spend a lot then definitely go with Anker. It won't disappoint. Both are really good extended batteries and will make a big difference in your device. I know it solved my issues . I do wish you the best. If After changing and tweaking the kernel you are still having issues, do try a extended battery. I think it will help a lot. You can find Anker on Amazon. Com. Good luck to you and do consider the new battery. I think it will make a big difference. Also with better battery stats application you can see exactly which application is causing the most battery drain. Look in alarms and it should be in there. Hope this helps. Best wishes.
sent from HTC sensation, soff, 3.33 firmware, viper Rom, sense 4.1, kernel version PYD-X stable 3.1, mugen battery 3800mah. Please press thanks if I helped in anyway.

Deathsongx3 said:
Wipe dalvik cache and flash
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't necessarily need to wipe dalvik cache. He could just flash straight
Sent from my Sensation using Tapatalk 2

had only bad experience with Cyanogenmod Roms. now using Brians CM10 and this rom is something else. good battery and overall better Rom.
Beamed from my Senny..

I recently went from CM9 stable to the latest nightly ROM as I was suffering from poor battery too. Going to try out this ROM for a week or so before I give CM10 a shot.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app

[Analysis] ROM-Battery results?

Hi,
Since all development thread are full of question related to battery. Can we try this?
1. Keep your screen on for 1 hr (or more?)
2. Keep wifi on
3. Keep radio/data on
4. Keep GPS off (or on?)
Report battery remaining, your ROM and version. Your battery stock/anker/other.
Then we average it out and see how it compares .
I know there is a thread already for posting battery results but it will be easier if everyone submit comparable battery results.
And me (or someone) analyze that to get some useful data.
Let me know what you guys think.

Screen on with Wi-Fi on, radio data on, gps. On. One hour with fully charged battery and I'm at 100% reading still. My rom is paranoid Android by Dragun Korr. My battery is a 3800mah, by Mugen. I have found having the big battery to really make a difference for Me. Hope this is helpful. Best wishes
Sent from my HTC Sensation using xda premium

realsis said:
Screen on with Wi-Fi on, radio data on, gps. On. One hour with fully charged battery and I'm at 100% reading still. My rom is paranoid Android by Dragun Korr. My battery is a 3800mah, by Mugen. I have found having the big battery to really make a difference for Me. Hope this is helpful. Best wishes
Sent from my HTC Sensation using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then maybe we need data for longer duration .

Hey, this is a great thing to want to try. A lot of variables come into play though such as apps installed. Consider: GPS on and not in use does not affect battery life. If an app is constantly polling for your location in the background then suddenly that's not the case anymore. This might be bets done from a fresh install perhaps with no GAPPS where applicable.

i don't know why but aosp-based (non-sense) roms always eat my battery faster than sense-based roms, even sense 4 roms work better.

Totally satisfied by Viper 1.4.1 battery life