Database Info

[Q] Battery life

I am a bit concerned about the battery life of the upcoming htc. The first reviews I have read about it on german blogs speak from 12 to 15 hours battery life under medium to heavy usage. Even though, one needs to remain cautious with these numbers as the software is not finalized, I wouldn't expect these to double when final.
The Incredible S has a quite satisfying battery life according to users experience. But the Sensation has a bigger screen, higher resolution, a full load of 3D effects and almost the same battery. I fear the battery life will be insufficient in that case, even though dual core is supposed to consume a little less.
Samsung has built a slightly bigger battery on his GSII and people seem to experience a very good battery life. But Amoled doesn't drain the battery when black is displayed and the whole UI has been designed in black for this purpose. So the Sensation will probably not be able to achieve such an autonomy.
Hopefully it will still go through the day under heavy usage. Otherwise I might gonna settle for incredible s instead.
Has anyone read other numbers somewhere?

eadred said:
I am a bit concerned about the battery life of the upcoming htc. The first reviews I have read about it on german blogs speak from 12 to 15 battery life under medium to heavy usage. Even though, one needs to remain cautious with these numbers as the software is not finalized, I wouldn't expect these to double when final.
The Incredible S has a quite satisfying battery life according to users experience. But the Sensation has a bigger screen, higher resolution, a full load of 3D effects and almost the same battery. I fear the battery life will be insufficient in that case, even though dual core is supposed to consume a little less.
Samsung has built a slightly bigger battery on his GSII and people seem to experience a very good battery life. But Amoled doesn't drain the battery when black is displayed and the whole UI has been designed in black for this purpose. So the Sensation will probably not be able to achieve such an autonomy.
Hopefully it will still go through the day under heavy usage. Otherwise I might gonna settle for incredible s instead.
Has anyone read other numbers somewhere?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is how I see it. Multi-core cpu's theoretically are more power efficient. You spread work over both cores, if software is optimized, to allow for less "strain" on the cpu. From what I can tell they are "optimizing" their Sense UI to run on both cores which efficiently manages the amount of power is being used. This now gives you less power draw hence power is saved. The battery isn't as big as some devices, but in my honest opinion I believe you will get a little more than 12-15 but probably won't get up to double that. This is all based off of my own conclusions after reading several articles. I may be wrong and if you need to correct me feel free. =) All I will say is you probably won't have to worry about battery issues.

Undervolting

Hello guys
I'm not a new user in kernels or ROMs .
I have a low-decent battery life ,and I'm sure there's a way to get a better battery life with undervolting .
I want to know
what is "undervolting" ?
What is the biggest damage it can cause?
What is PVS?
How do I know ,how much I can UV?
What are the steps to undervolt?
What I gain from UV (despite battery life)?
For your info ,I'm using AOSPAL ROM +FAUX's latest 16u kernel .
Thanks
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2537000
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Hi,
Most of your questions have a reply:
About undervolting: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/nexus-5-undervolting-thread-t2537000.
CPU binning: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/cpu-binning-nexus-5-t2515593.
The "risks" are instability like hard reboot, SOD, etc.... To find a "safe" value you will need to test by yourself to find what undervolting your CPU can handle, not all CPU's are equals.
Undervolt by steps like - 25mV, don't set your new values at boot unless your are sure it's stable (or you could encounter bootloop), test for a few days under different conditions (as your use).
The gain apart battery life (but you will not gain that much as people tend to think) is a little less heat, but again nothing huge..., better is to test by yourself and see what you will gain... or not.
Battery life depends mainly of your use, apps, signal quality and settings like, screen brightness, synchro, CPU governor, etc... In my opinion check first what could be the cause of your low battery life (and what is low battery life for you???) before play with undervolting.

As said above, undervolting will get you very minor battery life increases.
More than likely you have an issue, or its just your setup and usage giving you the battery life you are seeing.
Undervolting will not change any of this.... You'll gain only minutes of battery time.
Try some troubleshooting in the below thread to see if you have an issue, or how to setup for better battery life. Read through it a bit, from the last page and work back a bit. You can post meaningful screenshots there too. From gsam or BBS.... not the stock battery screen, it has no real useful info for finding issues. Good luck!!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2509132
Nexus 5 Battery Results

I've been undervolting many systems for many years, primarily Linux desktops and some servers, and the primary benefit is that you get less heat output which means when running cpu-intensive tasks the temperature climbs slower so the throttling of the clockspeed kicks in later, so your phone will be faster in certain situations. If you take a phone which has been idle for a while and run a benchmark, and then immediately run that benchmark again, the 2nd time gets a lower result as the phone is still hot from the 1st. This makes drawing conclusions about settings really dificult but it illustrate that throttling from heat is affecting speed.
For most users their perception will be the phone runs cooler.
You do undervolt at each step in the processor's frequency, and each step is a trial+error activity, the throttling I mention means finding a stable under-volt at the higher frequency which is labour-intensive,i.e take the max clock, and undervolt it a little, run a benchmark which forces it to run at high clockspeed, and if it passes that test then run it again at the next step down in frequency. Once you've got the most stable top clockspeed, then do it progressively for all the other voltages on the way down.
In some platforms in Linux and Windoze, we wrote scripts which save the stable voltages and then undervolts a little and runs a stress-testing benchmark and if the system hung it wouldn't save the current voltages so the previous higher voltages were safer, stick that script in a startup script area and leave the compute to do many self resets, and you've calculated your device's voltage range. I wonder if someone has that done for Android??? For a laptop the FAN would run slower saving battery time and for laptops that would lead to say 20% better battery life but on a phone it won't make much saving as no fan.
Your phone will run most of its time (like 95%) at its lowest frequency, so for effort/benefit just focusing on dropping its voltage will gain the most in the phone running cooler.
Battery life improvement is marginal, if you look at your battery stats its down to your application settings and screen brightness, i.e. how you use and what you do with your phone. So if your battery life is bad, use your phone less!
I carry a slim USB battery, it is the $/effort/benefit the best thing you can do, $20 doubles your battery life, if you get one with a 1.5A-2A output in just a few minutes when the phone doesn't mind a battery attached, will dwarth every possible tweak and hack anyone can form in benefit.

Power Users: Post Your Optimal Setup!

This thread is intended to have power users post their best configurations so as to guide the rookies in optimizing their MXPs once they get unlocked and rooted. It's also intended to compare the best setups for battery, performance, gaming, multitasking, etc.
My main interest is in battery life, although lately I've been on the XDA Labs app like crazy and it's hurting my drain.
Constructive criticism welcome on how to improve the below records!
ROM: Stock MM Canadian
Kernel: Ultra Kernel R3
Governor: Smartmax
Frequencies: 200 big, 800 little
Xposed Framework modules: Force Fast Scroll, Lucky Patcher, GravityBox (duh!), Use USB For Marshmallow, Xposed GEL Settings
Best SOT: 8 hours
Best Drain (100% to 0%): 120 hours
Other miscellaneous tweaks: Shake Flashlight as a system app instead of double-chop (works great, just don't let go)
Launcher: Still figuring that out...but Nova and DarkLauncher are worthy contenders right at the moment
Voice Assist/Google Now on long-press Home: Disabled thanks to @pijes. Settings > Apps > Gear icon > Default Apps > Voice and Assist > None
Post below, power users! What's your best setup so far?

Bro, I would like you use Greenify and DS Battery saver
As you have xposed framework installed you can use boost mode in greenify and also
DS Battery saver also has a module so activate them and then choose slumberer and phew see your battery stats
Coming to launcher, right now Arrow launcher is good and smooth and I prefer that
Thank you!

ashwath230 said:
Bro, I would like you use Greenify and DS Battery saver
As you have xposed framework installed you can use boost mode in greenify and also
DS Battery saver also has a module so activate them and then choose slumberer and phew see your battery stats
Coming to launcher, right now Arrow launcher is good and smooth and I prefer that
Thank you!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool man thanks. I'll try the Greenify and DS you recommend. I've seen Greenify a lot around XDA. I'm excited to try it.

Tesla rom(seems faster/smoother then stock/anyother rom) plus Squid kernel. Governor is set to Lionfish and I/O scheduler is set to Row with 512kb readahead. Minimum frequency for the Big cluster is 800mhz and 499mhz for the little cluster. NFC and location disabled. Best battery life I ever got was with stock with the same kernel/settings configuration, had 9 hrs SOT and nearly 24 hrs overall.

xtremeed2705 said:
Tesla rom(seems faster/smoother then stock/anyother rom) plus Squid kernel. Governor is set to Lionfish and I/O scheduler is set to Row with 512kb readahead. Minimum frequency for the Big cluster is 800mhz and 499mhz for the little cluster. NFC and location disabled. Best battery life I ever got was with stock with the same kernel/settings configuration, had 9 hrs SOT and nearly 24 hrs overall.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean nearly 24 hours overall - how long before you had to recharge?
I need to learn more about I/O scheduling. I've changed to Row and 512 as you recommend but where will I see the difference? When I connect to my PC? When apps access internal storage?
I've changed my governor back to lionfish. Smartmax wasn't doing it for me. 200 big 800 little. I'll look into that Tesla ROM too.
I was hoping this thread was gonna be more popular. I hope some people have gotten use out of it so far! Grow little thread, grow!

It would be awesome to see more growth in this thread! It would enable prospective buyers to talk to current owners, and figure out what they might want before they sink money into the device!
*cough*cough*
Which is exactly what I was hoping to do! Does anyone know if sweep to wake/sleep is possible with the Moto X Play? It's honestly one of the most useful features I've ever seen from rooting et al.

I'll post my setup. Been using it this way for like 2 weeks so I feel it's stable.
I'm currently running this:
Unlocked BL obviously
Stock Canada firmware (MPD24.65-18)
Rooted
Xposed Framework installed
Squid Kernel r14b
I have gravity box installed and that's really it as far as tweaks and stuff.
Averaging 5 or 6 hours SOT down to about 25% or 30%. Really depends on what I do and what network I use. Performance is great too.
I'm gonna mess around with some of this stuff tonight and see what I can do with it.
Sent from my XT1563 using Tapatalk

I'm trying the interactive governor in Squids kernel, some of the stuttering issues have disappeared. Like when I clear all recents in the task switcher screen or scrolling big web pages.
Sent from my XT1563 using Tapatalk

Marshmalux. Rooted. Xposed. Greenify. Powernap. Amplify.
Getting sot around 5.5 hours for my usage. Happy with that squid kernel latest r15. Lionfish on both cores
Sent from my XT1563 using Tapatalk

JohnHorus said:
It would be awesome to see more growth in this thread! It would enable prospective buyers to talk to current owners, and figure out what they might want before they sink money into the device!
*cough*cough*
Which is exactly what I was hoping to do! Does anyone know if sweep to wake/sleep is possible with the Moto X Play? It's honestly one of the most useful features I've ever seen from rooting et al.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey hey. Thanks for posting!
I'm sure sweep to wake is possible on the phone in some way, likely through a combination of rooting and Xposed modules. I know that GravityBox has a double tap on status bar to sleep feature.
One of the nicest features of the X Play is the Moto Display. It's nice to have the phone screen come.on showing notifications without fully waking the phone. Check out the Moto Display app on the Play Store. It's a totally sexy feature.
I'd say this phone is absolutely worth it for the battery alone. I personally feel the camera to be laggy especially with focus, so consider that if you're a shutterbug. I am very hopeful that software updates will being out the power of the camera but it doesn't have optical image stabilization so blir happens more frequently, at least for me. That could be my shake fingers though.
Feel free to ask any further questions!

brian10161 said:
I'm trying the interactive governor in Squids kernel, some of the stuttering issues have disappeared. Like when I clear all recents in the task switcher screen or scrolling big web pages.
Sent from my XT1563 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good stuff. Interactive does appear to handle web pages better. I did a Wikipedia search for The Simpsons and got a huge page. I flicked down to scroll it all at once and then Chrome froze. Hahahaba. Same with Lionfish though. Maybe I'm getting greedy thinking this phone is as powerful as my PC.
Lionfish was giving me great SOT results. Like I mentored in the OP: 8 HOURS! Was so happy to see that. Blew the socks off my Nrxus 4. I average between 6.5 and 8 usually, but WhatsApp and XDA Labs are hurting those scores now.
I haven't had to Greenify any apps yet - I only hsvr geeky ones installed anyway so they never keep the phone awake.

Gopinath15 said:
Marshmalux. Rooted. Xposed. Greenify. Powernap. Amplify.
Getting sot around 5.5 hours for my usage. Happy with that squid kernel latest r15. Lionfish on both cores
Sent from my XT1563 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think @squid2 deserves a lot of credit for extending the X Play even further. His kernel and work on TWRP make the X Play even more attractive than it is out of the box.
I prefer Ultra kernel personally because I believe the dev for that (@technoander) takes the latest releases of squid's and adds features to them. I may be mistaken but that's my impression. I'll try to clarify and report back. I should do a direct comparison of Ultra and squid's latest to be as objective as is possible with a subjective test. Hahaha.

I guess I should specify a bit further - sweep/tap2wake is really only effectively useful when the phone supports some kind of low-power state for the touchscreen, otherwise the screen has to remain on in order to use it.
I'm sure sweep2sleep would be possible, but if there's no low-power state for the screen, it wouldn't really matter for me in the end. Moto display sounds like exactly what I'm talking about, though I don't know if it includes any low power mode for the touch features, as well as the display.
I'm gonna look into this a bit more, and see if I can dig up any info. It would be a hardware feature, designed-in, so it definitely should be discoverable. I figure if I can find out all the information for one of the people who have written kernels for the phone, they shouldn't have a problem emulating the feature. It's popular enough, and with the low-power state, shouldn't be too complex to implement.

JohnHorus said:
I guess I should specify a bit further - sweep/tap2wake is really only effectively useful when the phone supports some kind of low-power state for the touchscreen, otherwise the screen has to remain on in order to use it.
I'm sure sweep2sleep would be possible, but if there's no low-power state for the screen, it wouldn't really matter for me in the end. Moto display sounds like exactly what I'm talking about, though I don't know if it includes any low power mode for the touch features, as well as the display.
I'm gonna look into this a bit more, and see if I can dig up any info. It would be a hardware feature, designed-in, so it definitely should be discoverable. I figure if I can find out all the information for one of the people who have written kernels for the phone, they shouldn't have a problem emulating the feature. It's popular enough, and with the low-power state, shouldn't be too complex to implement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool - definitely report back - it would be nice to know if this is embedded in the hardware somewhere. I hope it is, unlike optical.image stabilization. Damn!

XxMikeMasterxX said:
What do you mean nearly 24 hours overall - how long before you had to recharge?
I need to learn more about I/O scheduling. I've changed to Row and 512 as you recommend but where will I see the difference? When I connect to my PC? When apps access internal storage?
I've changed my governor back to lionfish. Smartmax wasn't doing it for me. 200 big 800 little. I'll look into that Tesla ROM too.
I was hoping this thread was gonna be more popular. I hope some people have gotten use out of it so far! Grow little thread, grow!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes nearly 24 hrs before I had to recharge. As for Row you should notice it with both situations. I use it because of other phones I had before people were saying it was one of the better I/O schedulers.
Actually I have a picture of when I got it. Was nearly 23 hrs not 24 but still.

Hey developer,the banking apps I have does run after flashing a custom rom.Is there any workaround for this?.have to reflash stock after trying any custom rom.Its a pain in the as*.

xtremeed2705 said:
Yes nearly 24 hrs before I had to recharge. As for Row you should notice it with both situations. I use it because of other phones I had before people were saying it was one of the better I/O schedulers.
Actually I have a picture of when I got it. Was nearly 23 hrs not 24 but still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Row is essentially the best scheduler. Benchmarking is weird, because by design it's an optimized test case and not a use case. Use cases will always be variable, but generally with a smartphone writes aren't too latency-sensitive. That's why Read Over Write generally works the best once your phone is settled, because reading is most of what it does. Doesn't write too often.
There are lots of custom governors, not so many custom schedulers, and lots of suggestions, but generally stock *IS* best, and if you don't understand it, you should not change it. Governors are fun to play with but even they can cause issues if poorly coded. Changing governors will give you a huge impact on battery, but also a relative impact on performance. It all depends on the use context. You'll rarely get much battery life without a performance hit unless you custom-tune settings for your own use context.
As for read-ahead, that value is iconic of exactly what I'm talking about. It is the "chunks" of data that your OS reads in one go. So if it needs 2k, or 2m, it reads a different number of chunks, but each chunk will be the size set by I/O read-ahead. Google likes 512 best. I've been told by the dev for the EX Kernel that internal Motorola devs like 128 best. Benchmarks like the biggest value possible, because they present the OS a massive pile of data and ask it to read it all as fast as possible. In that context, a large chunk size saves time. In most contexts, you read more than you need half the time. So a low value like 128 saves battery and memory.
---------- Post added at 09:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:08 AM ----------
kiran91 said:
Hey developer,the banking apps I have does run after flashing a custom rom.Is there any workaround for this?.have to reflash stock after trying any custom rom.Its a pain in the as*.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android pay does this too, it's a "security" feature built-in by the devs to stop hacking. Not really necessary, but then neither are smartphones, so you take what you can get I guess. No ROM developer can work around this for you. The app is detecting any modification whatsoever. Even root may cause it.

xtremeed2705 said:
Yes nearly 24 hrs before I had to recharge. As for Row you should notice it with both situations. I use it because of other phones I had before people were saying it was one of the better I/O schedulers.
Actually I have a picture of when I got it. Was nearly 23 hrs not 24 but still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Badass dude. 9 hours SOT is wicked.
I'm finding the phone app drains the battery like crazy. Is this to be expected?

Hey @JohnHorus - thanks for your informative post. I'm currently trying Row 128 and will report back but I doubt I'll see any real-world difference in use. Memory and battery are two soft spots for me so I'm hopeful 128 will maintain solid performance.
Looking forward to reading about others' setups!

XxMikeMasterxX said:
Badass dude. 9 hours SOT is wicked.
I'm finding the phone app drains the battery like crazy. Is this to be expected?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah in my experience it drains the battery more then doing other things for some reason. As you can see in my 9 hrs picture I only used the phone for like 2 minutes lol.

Kernel Comparison

Hi XDA community!
I was doing research in to the current custom kernels available for our phone. Pretty much every kernel developer advertises their kernel as having improved performance and battery. One of the problems I found is that it is quite difficult to compare the performance and battery of kernels without trying it out for a week or so. I thought for the benefit of not only myself (who doesn't have time to test every kernel), but for the community that it would be helpful to have a thread that compares kernels.
Each post being a short comparison of at least 2 kernels should be sufficient. Performance, battery life, conditions (e.g. ROM, heavy user? non-gamer? etc. ) and special features (that set it apart)of a kernel would be good ways to compare them. Perhaps a quick rundown of your current kernel and why it suits your needs best could be good as well.
This is not a thread to tell me what you think the best kernel is. I believe that all custom kernels have their merit being somewhere on the balance between battery life and performance + a few features and suiting different people based on their needs.

Gonna reply to this thread I made a while ago after a bit of testing. I think it would be a good starting point for anyone who is indecisive with kernels.
Today I thought I'd compare 2 kernels that I've been using a fair bit recently. Both are based on S7 edge firmware, but have counterparts for S8 ROMs. The disclaimer is that I didn't have time to try every version of the kernels, nor will I promise that my experience will be the same as yours.
Tkkg1994's Superstock vs Farovitus' Notorious kernel
The competitors
Superstock kernel
Created by the famous developer of Superman, Superstock, Batman and Ironman ROMs.
Recommended by the developer himself over his other more modded kernel (Superkernel)
Stock Samsung values for CPU and GPU speed
Safety net green
Other performance/battery enhancements as laid out on his page https://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/development/kernel-superstock-v1-3-5-t3453462 and below in the special features section.
Notorious kernel
Most popular custom kernel (by thread activity and likes)
Under clocked cores
Safety net green
Comes underclocked: Big: 312-1872 small: 234-1586
stock value for CPU speed
Plenty of performance and battery tweaks outlined in his page https://forum.xda-developers.com/s7...orious-kernel-tw-dqd1-g93xx-g93xxd-3-t3600711 and below in the special features section.
They both sound pretty good, but it's the real life performance that matters right?
Versions used
I've used super stock 2.7.1 and 2.9 (the versions that came with superman ROM 2.6 and 2.7 respectively). 2.9 will be the one discussed today. I have found the performance quite similar between the 2 versions however.
I've used Notorious 1.9.1
Kernel Mods (that I used)
Both were kept very close to how the developers intended
I changed the to IO scheduler on Superstock to Zen
And I changed the internal IO scheduler on Notorious to Row, external to maple
Both I used Westwood TCP congestion control.
Both I kept with the stock governor (interactive)
no undervolt for notorious kernel
Conditions - my ROM and usage pattern
Superman ROM 2.7 with Magisk root
Debloated
Black theme, wallpaper and ui etc.
clock widget xperia running
Force doze with significant motion detector disabled
Greenify privileged mode (pretty much all social messaging apps greenified)
Magisk module to doze google play services
I turned off pretty much all the advanced features: smart alert, smart stay, don't turn on when dark etc.
Auto brightness on.
BT always on (connecting to car and smartwatch)
Location always on
4g, volte and viLTE on
WiFi off (I got plenty of data)
Charged to ~75% at night every day
Use was moderate. Involved BT audio on 15 minute drive to and from work. Variable tasks being done on phone: calls, texting, messaging (whatsapp, messenger lite), looking up internet, occasional remote desktop. 8-9hr day at work. Some messaging, calls, texting at home but less than at work.
No games on phone - I have a busy job and I have a PC, PS4 and WiiU.
Performance
Superstock has very good performance. Absolutely no lags. UI feels smooth and fluid. I don't game however.
Notorious feels smooth and snappy despite being quite underclocked. Developer sped up the boot animation fps. Maybe it's in my head (and therefore insignificant if any), but possibly a bit slower to start apps. No lags however. Again, I don't game on the phone.
Battery
Superstock
Very good battery. A fair bit better than stock. I could lose between 1-4% overnight (6-9hr sleep). Never bothered measuring SOT but the phone lost on average ~20-25% per day moderate use as outlined above.
Notorious
Excellent battery. On my off days, I found that notorious enters deep sleep faster than superstock leading to less idle drain. It also seems to drain battery slower when screen on. Would lose 1-3% over a 6-9hr sleep. Average day would use up about 12-17% battery moderate use as outlined above.
Special features
Superstock is a plain kernel that just works out of the box. Not many modding opportunities - can adjust clock speed within the stock range. No voltage change. Can use the 3 basic governors. conservative, interactive (stock), on demand. Can change IO scheduler and TCP congestion algorithm. Only notable feature is the safety net green. A few services disabled according to the developer, but that is about it.
Notorious is very customisable with mtweaks many governors to choose from (I only bother using interactive). Under/overvolt and under/overclock avaliable for CPUs. Under/overvolt and under/overclock available for GPU. Boeffla kernel wake lock blockers. IO scheduler change, TCP algorithm change. I changed very few settings, but it is also commonly undervolted. On the thread, people liked to use bluactive, impulse and relaxed governors rather than interactive. With Notorious, I found that undervolting didnt really increase battery life much and gave me the increased paranoia of silent corruption/ instability. I change the TCP and IO so that it theoretically optimises my user experience. Realistically, I found no difference compared to stock and it was more for my obssesive compulsive side.
Verdict
For a non-gamer like me who uses the phone for calling, messaging, internet, video, music notorious provides more than adequate performance with greater battery savings than superstock.
Superstock I'd imagine to have much greater performance under a big load. It was subjectively more responsive and faster when doing my low power tasks.
At the end if the day both were much better than stock for me in terms of battery. I'd say that Superstock would be more for performance and Notorious would be more for battery saving. Any questions or comments, ask away!

Eggleston11 said:
Gonna reply to this thread I made a while ago after a bit of testing. I think it would be a good starting point for anyone who is indecisive with kernels.
Today I thought I'd compare 2 kernels that I've been using a fair bit recently. Both are based on S7 edge firmware, but have counterparts for S8 ROMs. The disclaimer is that I didn't have time to try every version of the kernels, nor will I promise that my experience will be the same as yours.
Tkkg1994's Superstock vs Farovitus' Notorious kernel
The competitors
Superstock kernel
Created by the famous developer of Superman, Superstock, Batman and Ironman ROMs.
Recommended by the developer himself over his other more modded kernel (Superkernel)
Stock Samsung values for CPU and GPU speed
Safety net green
Other performance/battery enhancements as laid out on his page https://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/development/kernel-superstock-v1-3-5-t3453462 and below in the special features section.
Notorious kernel
Most popular custom kernel (by thread activity and likes)
Under clocked cores
Safety net green
Comes underclocked: Big: 312-1872 small: 234-1586
stock value for CPU speed
Plenty of performance and battery tweaks outlined in his page https://forum.xda-developers.com/s7...orious-kernel-tw-dqd1-g93xx-g93xxd-3-t3600711 and below in the special features section.
They both sound pretty good, but it's the real life performance that matters right?
Versions used
I've used super stock 2.7.1 and 2.9 (the versions that came with superman ROM 2.6 and 2.7 respectively). 2.9 will be the one discussed today. I have found the performance quite similar between the 2 versions however.
I've used Notorious 1.9.1
Kernel Mods (that I used)
Both were kept very close to how the developers intended
I changed the to IO scheduler on Superstock to Zen
And I changed the internal IO scheduler on Notorious to Row, external to maple
Both I used Westwood TCP congestion control.
Both I kept with the stock governor (interactive)
no undervolt for notorious kernel
Conditions - my ROM and usage pattern
Superman ROM 2.7 with Magisk root
Debloated
Black theme, wallpaper and ui etc.
clock widget xperia running
Force doze with significant motion detector disabled
Greenify privileged mode (pretty much all social messaging apps greenified)
Magisk module to doze google play services
I turned off pretty much all the advanced features: smart alert, smart stay, don't turn on when dark etc.
Auto brightness on.
BT always on (connecting to car and smartwatch)
Location always on
4g, volte and viLTE on
WiFi off (I got plenty of data)
Charged to ~75% at night every day
Use was moderate. Involved BT audio on 15 minute drive to and from work. Variable tasks being done on phone: calls, texting, messaging (whatsapp, messenger lite), looking up internet, occasional remote desktop. 8-9hr day at work. Some messaging, calls, texting at home but less than at work.
No games on phone - I have a busy job and I have a PC, PS4 and WiiU.
Performance
Superstock has very good performance. Absolutely no lags. UI feels smooth and fluid. I don't game however.
Notorious feels smooth and snappy despite being quite underclocked. Developer sped up the boot animation fps. Maybe it's in my head (and therefore insignificant if any), but possibly a bit slower to start apps. No lags however. Again, I don't game on the phone.
Battery
Superstock
Very good battery. A fair bit better than stock. I could lose between 1-4% overnight (6-9hr sleep). Never bothered measuring SOT but the phone lost on average ~20-25% per day moderate use as outlined above.
Notorious
Excellent battery. On my off days, I found that notorious enters deep sleep faster than superstock leading to less idle drain. It also seems to drain battery slower when screen on. Would lose 1-3% over a 6-9hr sleep. Average day would use up about 12-17% battery moderate use as outlined above.
Special features
Superstock is a plain kernel that just works out of the box. Not many modding opportunities - can adjust clock speed within the stock range. No voltage change. Can use the 3 basic governors. conservative, interactive (stock), on demand. Can change IO scheduler and TCP congestion algorithm. Only notable feature is the safety net green. A few services disabled according to the developer, but that is about it.
Notorious is very customisable with mtweaks many governors to choose from (I only bother using interactive). Under/overvolt and under/overclock avaliable for CPUs. Under/overvolt and under/overclock available for GPU. Boeffla kernel wake lock blockers. IO scheduler change, TCP algorithm change. I changed very few settings, but it is also commonly undervolted. On the thread, people liked to use bluactive, impulse and relaxed governors rather than interactive. With Notorious, I found that undervolting didnt really increase battery life much and gave me the increased paranoia of silent corruption/ instability. I change the TCP and IO so that it theoretically optimises my user experience. Realistically, I found no difference compared to stock and it was more for my obssesive compulsive side.
Verdict
For a non-gamer like me who uses the phone for calling, messaging, internet, video, music notorious provides more than adequate performance with greater battery savings than superstock.
Superstock I'd imagine to have much greater performance under a big load. It was subjectively more responsive and faster when doing my low power tasks.
At the end if the day both were much better than stock for me in terms of battery. I'd say that Superstock would be more for performance and Notorious would be more for battery saving. Any questions or comments, ask away!
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Hello,
Thank you for the very detailed review. :good:
May I ask how did you flash the notorius kernel ?
Did you installed the Superman ROM and then reflash the kernel over it ?
Thank you. :fingers-crossed:

Tqhao94 said:
Hello,
Thank you for the very detailed review. :good:
May I ask how did you flash the notorius kernel ?
Did you installed the Superman ROM and then reflash the kernel over it ?
Thank you. :fingers-crossed:
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Glad I'ts helping someone choose, cos I was very on and off abuot which one i wanted until i actually did the tests.
This is not the right forum to post this lol. This is meant to be about kernel reviews. The notorious kernel forum itself however isnt very clear.
It's just simply installing via twrp. dont forget to clear davlik/art cache after installation. Also, you need to flash root afterwards. I recommend you dont flash the root that the kernel comes with and to flash the root separately as there have been some bugs regarding that and also so that you can get the most up to date root.

Eggleston11 said:
Glad I'ts helping someone choose, cos I was very on and off abuot which one i wanted until i actually did the tests.
This is not the right forum to post this lol. This is meant to be about kernel reviews. The notorious kernel forum itself however isnt very clear.
It's just simply installing via twrp. dont forget to clear davlik/art cache after installation. Also, you need to flash root afterwards. I recommend you dont flash the root that the kernel comes with and to flash the root separately as there have been some bugs regarding that and also so that you can get the most up to date root.
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That discussion was very helping but the question the i have is that i am a heavy gamer and most of my battery drain is caused due to games... which one would u suggest for better gaming battery life from the above mentioned?

Xial Xahab said:
That discussion was very helping but the question the i have is that i am a heavy gamer and most of my battery drain is caused due to games... which one would u suggest for better gaming battery life from the above mentioned?
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Generally speaking this depends on the performance you need. If you can get your games to run sufficiently fast underclocked like on notorious, it will improve your battery life more just like it does in general. If it's too slow that way you'll have to see if super helps over stock. You could also try notorious and up the clock to more stock values but test out undervolting on it (as mentioned that does pose some risk) and see if your particular chip can be stable at a nice undervolt. Undervolting at high clocks can potentially save you a lot of battery life, but it depends on whether your chip is a "good" one or not.

Flandry said:
Generally speaking this depends on the performance you need. If you can get your games to run sufficiently fast underclocked like on notorious, it will improve your battery life more just like it does in general. If it's too slow that way you'll have to see if super helps over stock. You could also try notorious and up the clock to more stock values but test out undervolting on it (as mentioned that does pose some risk) and see if your particular chip can be stable at a nice undervolt. Undervolting at high clocks can potentially save you a lot of battery life, but it depends on whether your chip is a "good" one or not.
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Yep agreed => try games out on notorious. if they can work well on low clock speed, then keep it. Trying speeds between stock and notorious can work if the games are too laggy. Stock values may be necessary depending on what games you are using.
Undervolt may also help to improve performance while at lower clock speeds a less heat generated. Less voltage does also theoretically mean less power used. I have found the difference in battery life and heat with underclock to be quite insignificant. People calculate it to be 2-5% less power used. Given notorious already uses less than 1% per hour on average use for me. It means i'll be saving at best 5% of 1% so 0.02% per hour. Not much power saved and not worth in my opinion given the side effects.

Eggleston11 said:
Undervolt may also help to improve performance while at lower clock speeds a less heat generated. Less voltage does also theoretically mean less power used. I have found the difference in battery life and heat with underclock to be quite insignificant. People calculate it to be 2-5% less power used. Given notorious already uses less than 1% per hour on average use for me. It means i'll be saving at best 5% of 1% so 0.02% per hour. Not much power saved and not worth in my opinion given the side effects.
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The key is to undervolt during gaming, not idle. Undervolt can give exponentially more power savings at high clock speed. I agree it's not going to help for low clock speed and isn't usually worth the risk to corruption. With my Nokia N900 (back when you actually had to milk out all the MHz you could just to get 3D games on a phone, or in my case MAMEing arcades i could greatly increase gaming time when i dropped the volts for the highest CPU frequencies.
I appreciate your careful review of the two kernels. I'm still trying to figure out the ROM jungle for my new S7 Edge. Are these kernel and ROMs you are talking about snapdragon compatible or it this thread purely in exynos territory?

Flandry said:
The key is to undervolt during gaming, not idle. Undervolt can give exponentially more power savings at high clock speed. I agree it's not going to help for low clock speed and isn't usually worth the risk to corruption. With my Nokia N900 (back when you actually had to milk out all the MHz you could just to get 3D games on a phone, or in my case MAMEing arcades i could greatly increase gaming time when i dropped the volts for the highest CPU frequencies.
I appreciate your careful review of the two kernels. I'm still trying to figure out the ROM jungle for my new S7 Edge. Are these kernel and ROMs you are talking about snapdragon compatible or it this thread purely in exynos territory?
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Agreed that the ~5% savings would translate to a greater amount of power saved during gaming in theory. I dont personally game on my phone, so your experience on this is better than mine haha.
I have the G935F. As far as I understand these kernels are for Exynos only. Good luck if you are searching for a good development scene with the snapdragon version. There are a few ROMs and Kernels i think. I have no idea about quality.

Moto X Pure Battery Performance and Replacement

So my Moto X Pure only gets around 5 hours SOT and around 2-3 hours playing games. I seen a 3200 mAh battery replacement on Amazon and I'm wondering if anyone has tried it? I'm using the Resurrection Remix OS with my CPU set to power save in the battery options. Please post your battery stats and ROM information so I can see if my phone would benefit from a battery change.

Hybrid Theory said:
So my Moto X Pure only gets around 5 hours SOT and around 2-3 hours playing games. I seen a 3200 mAh battery replacement on Amazon and I'm wondering if anyone has tried it? I'm using the Resurrection Remix OS with my CPU set to power save in the battery options. Please post your battery stats and ROM information so I can see if my phone would benefit from a battery change.
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LoL... With your SOT and game times, your battery is holding up pretty well. I would not expect much of an increase from any battery replacement you may get.
Regarding batteries from Amazon, be wary-especially of those claiming more mAh. Typically higher mAh means a larger battery so be skeptical. Based on what I have read in forums and reviews, it seems many of the batteries for this phone from Amazon, regardless of advertised mAh, have been hit or miss. Some manage to do well for 3 to 6 months then problems start.

aybarrap1 said:
LoL... With your SOT and game times, your battery is holding up pretty well. I would not expect much of an increase from any battery replacement you may get.
Regarding batteries from Amazon, be wary-especially of those claiming more mAh. Typically higher mAh means a larger battery so be skeptical. Based on what I have read in forums and reviews, it seems many of the batteries for this phone from Amazon, regardless of advertised mAh, have been hit or miss. Some manage to do well for 3 to 6 months then problems start.
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I lowered my GPU frequency to 300 MHz that seemed to help a lot especially when playing games my battery doesn't drain as fast. I even lowered my screen resolution to 720p and set my GPU frequency to 180 MHz. The OS is smooth but when I start playing some 3D games you can definitely notice FPS drop so I put it back at 300 MHz. I couldn't increase my battery by lowering my CPU frequency for some reason my battery life seems worse when I try to mess with the CPU. The only thing I managed to do was disable my big cores in kernel auditor when they aren't needed and setting my low memory killer to aggressive in kernel auditor seemed to help my battery as well. That's just my personal experience hopefully someone will get something out of it.

Hybrid Theory said:
I lowered my GPU frequency to 300 MHz that seemed to help a lot especially when playing games my battery doesn't drain as fast. I even lowered my screen resolution to 720p and set my GPU frequency to 180 MHz. The OS is smooth but when I start playing some 3D games you can definitely notice FPS drop so I put it back at 300 MHz. I couldn't increase my battery by lowering my CPU frequency for some reason my battery life seems worse when I try to mess with the CPU. The only thing I managed to do was disable my big cores in kernel auditor when they aren't needed and setting my low memory killer to aggressive in kernel auditor seemed to help my battery as well. That's just my personal experience hopefully someone will get something out of it.
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The CPU for the most part does pretty well scaling up and down based off processing needs. You probably just don't have CPU intensive apps so didn't notice much. You notice the GPU while playing games though. I think for the most part setting to a lower resolution might help with games at lower frequencies on the GPU in terms of maintaining higher fps at lower frequencies, but a 5.5 2K screen with simulated 720p probably doesn't net much battery life in other usage areas.

aybarrap1 said:
The CPU for the most part does pretty well scaling up and down based off processing needs. You probably just don't have CPU intensive apps so didn't notice much. You notice the GPU while playing games though. I think for the most part setting to a lower resolution might help with games at lower frequencies on the GPU in terms of maintaining higher fps at lower frequencies, but a 5.5 2K screen with simulated 720p probably doesn't net much battery life in other usage areas.
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Right I am able to keep my GPU on power save and it'll sit on 180 MHz and the OS is still smooth on 720p if I bump it up to 1080p I'll have to put the frequency at 300 MHz or else it'll lag. I noticed when I move through the OS the GPU will jump to unnecessary frequencies like 300 MHz or even 450 MHz. Keeping it locked to 180 MHz while using Firefox or watching YouTube helped a little bit. The main problem for me is the lack of kernels to choose from. I used this tutorial https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/general/guide-advanced-interactive-governor-t3269557 to tune my CPU governor since the Nexus 5X has the same SOC but my rom Remix OS has a feature called CPU boost that I can't turn off unless I flash another kernel. The problem with the Moto X Pure is that it doesn't have many custom kernels. I managed to find one that works with my rom but the camera doesn't work. I could simply go to another rom but they lack the customization Remix has and some of them have SeLinux set to permissive and I don't really feel like dealing with escalation attacks and having my bank information stolen.

Hybrid Theory said:
Right I am able to keep my GPU on power save and it'll sit on 180 MHz and the OS is still smooth on 720p if I bump it up to 1080p I'll have to put the frequency at 300 MHz or else it'll lag. I noticed when I move through the OS the GPU will jump to unnecessary frequencies like 300 MHz or even 450 MHz. Keeping it locked to 180 MHz while using Firefox or watching YouTube helped a little bit. The main problem for me is the lack of kernels to choose from. I used this tutorial https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/general/guide-advanced-interactive-governor-t3269557 to tune my CPU governor since the Nexus 5X has the same SOC but my rom Remix OS has a feature called CPU boost that I can't turn off unless I flash another kernel. The problem with the Moto X Pure is that it doesn't have many custom kernels. I managed to find one that works with my rom but the camera doesn't work. I could simply go to another rom but they lack the customization Remix has and some of them have SeLinux set to permissive and I don't really feel like dealing with escalation attacks and having my bank information stolen.
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Wow. Since I first got the phone 3 years ago, i personally just have had very little time to delve much into doing custom ROMs and kernels for this device due to work scheduling I'm moving to a new job this month and should have more time on my hands. I'm probably going to get back into things.

aybarrap1 said:
Wow. Since I first got the phone 3 years ago, i personally just have had very little time to delve much into doing custom ROMs and kernels for this device due to work scheduling I'm moving to a new job this month and should have more time on my hands. I'm probably going to get back into things.
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I'd compile a kernel for lineage based roms with the nougat modem but I'm not that smart I don't even have a computer to do it with lol.

So I went ahead and installed the EX Kernel Manager app and I downloaded the Hawktail governor profile. After doing that my battery went from 2-3 hours SOT to 4-6 SOT from 100%. When I play slither.io on the default CPU setup my battery would drop 10% every 10-15 minutes. With the Hawktail profile it drops 10% every 30-40 minutes. I thought this was incredible because NFC and Bluetooth was still on. I also found that the Alucard CPU governor gave me similar results during my observations. I really hope somebody else can benefit from this thread.
Here is the download link https://androidfilehost.com/?fid=24686679545610694
Remove the .txt extension and put it on your micro SD card or in the ElementalX folder. From the Ex Kernel Manager app go to CPU>Governor Options>Load then load the HawkTail file then click apply on boot.