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Hi guys,
Please clarify on the following points:
1. Are there any major differences among the CPU governers??? I use Smartass because I see a major group of people using it.
2. What are the optimal values for Min and Max CPU speed? And are there any factors based on which we have to decide the values or we can keep anything we wish?
Thanks in advance
Frequencies and their effect on battery here
^Pretty much what you're looking for. Just analyze the chart and test it for yourself too. Also read, read
For governors:
smartass governor - is based on the concept of the interactive governor.
I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works - by taking over the idle loop - is very attractive. I have never managed to tweak it so it would behave decently in real life. Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the "old" minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies.
Smartass will also cap the max frequency when sleeping to 352Mhz (or if your min frequency is higher than 352 - why?! - it will cap it to your min frequency). Lets take for example the 528/176 kernel, it will sleep at 352/176. No need for sleep profiles any more.
ondemand
Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed. - SetCPU website
conservative
Available in some kernels. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery. - SetCPU website
performance
Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "max" set value at all times. This is a bit more efficient than simply setting "max" and "min" to the same value and using ondemand because the system will not waste resources scanning for the CPU load. This governor is recommended for stable benchmarking. - SetCPU website
powersave
Available in some kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "min" set value at all times. - SetCPU website
userspace
A method for controlling the CPU speed that isn't currently used by SetCPU. For best results, do not use the userspace governor. - SetCPU website
interactive
Advantages:
+ significantly more responsive to ramp cpu up when required (UI interaction)
+ more consistent ramping, existing governors do their cpu load sampling in a workqueue context, the 'interactive' governor does this in a timer context, which gives more consistent cpu load sampling.
+ higher priority for cpu frequency increase, rt_workqueue is used for scaling up, giving the remaining tasks the cpu performance benefit, unlike existing governors which schedule rampup work to occur after your performance starved tasks have completed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope that makes it clearer
Kira.Lawliet said:
Frequencies and their effect on battery here
^Pretty much what you're looking for. Just analyze the chart and test it for yourself too. Also read, read
I hope that makes it clearer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonderful post! Thank you.. even though the post was too technical for a n00b like me, I could grasp info out of it. Sure it helped me.
I bought a new android phone which is the Live with Walkman(WT19i) here in the Philippines, and I'm loving it, except for the battery life
Live with Walkman is known for its poor battery life(which i found here in xda forums), probably because of the crapware software installed in stock ROM and battery which is the EP500 rated at 3.7v 1200mAh. Some users, like me, have a battery capacity of 1160mAh which really suck(probably country/region specific), especially when running with the stock ROM from Sony. So I unlocked my bootloader flashed my kernel to Rage kernel v2.6, wipe all data and cache partitions and installed HYBROM v15 from CWM, so far so good. I installed No frills CPU Control but I'm having a hard time which CPU governor and I/O scheduler to choose. Some people say that I should choose SmartAssv2 and Noop, some say I should choose Conservative and Noop or SIO.
Installed Applications:
Angry Birds(RIO, Seasons, Space)
ASTRO File manager
AdFree
MapDroyd
Facebook(auto sync is OFF)
YouTube
Skype(auto sync is OFF)
oh, and BTW, I integrate these two apps via WinRAR which does not exist in HYBROM v15.
Google Maps
Google Search Widget
-Screen Brightness = 40%(I only set it to max when outdoors)
-Mobile Data network = OFF (using GSM only, I'm using WiFi for browsing, downloading and updating apps)
-AutoSync is off
-I only turn on WiFi when needed
No Frills CPU (My configuration):
Min:122Mhz
Max:1.024Ghz
Governor:SmartAssv2
I/O Scheduler:Noop
Apply on boot: checked
So my question is whats the best CPU Governor and I/O Scheduler combination for the Live with Walkman(assuming your using Rage kernel ang hybrom ROM) providing a balanced cpu performance and battery life for any casual user?
For your CPU config, I suggest increasing the minimum frequency to 320-480ish; because around that frequency it consumes more or less the same voltage. If you set it too low, you may end up using more power because your phone may struggle to process services (caused by low frequency). Reference here -it may be on another device forum but that's applicable on other phones-
IIRC smartassv2 will be defaulting to a low frequency when the phone's screen is off so I think it's good to use it, for your brightness it's ok but I use around 20-30% brightness when outdoors
thanks bro!
sir,
android noob question...
when you installed hybrom on the wt19i,
does the walkman button still work? and does it still have loudspeaker functionality?
im really hesistant in rooting or installing custom rom on mine...
thanks!
use either scary governor or ondemand and about the i/o bfq or sio.
buy a system tuner pro then config your startups and auto kill. mine is -1% / 4 hours deepsleep. min. 122Mhz - max. 1.5Ghz..
melander said:
sir,
android noob question...
when you installed hybrom on the wt19i,
does the walkman button still work? and does it still have loudspeaker functionality?
im really hesistant in rooting or installing custom rom on mine...
thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
walkman, and walkman button still works, and speakers are still loud and in stereo
and the bonus part, you get DSP manager, which enhances your sound and music experience further
xachiel said:
use either scary governor or ondemand and about the i/o bfq or sio.
buy a system tuner pro then config your startups and auto kill. mine is -1% / 4 hours deepsleep. min. 122Mhz - max. 1.5Ghz..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
autokill?? I thought killing apps and processes is bad and since killed apps will restart again and will consume more battery life
kevincaja said:
autokill?? I thought killing apps and processes is bad and since killed apps will restart again and will consume more battery life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its a memory auto killer. not a task killer. and use gemini app to config auto-run your apps so they dont run at the background
kevincaja said:
walkman, and walkman button still works, and speakers are still loud and in stereo
and the bonus part, you get DSP manager, which enhances your sound and music experience further
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the reply sir,
can you please share the steps you did to install the kernel and rom???
im really interested in installing a custom rom on mine...
melander said:
thanks for the reply sir,
can you please share the steps you did to install the kernel and rom???
im really interested in installing a custom rom on mine...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First, download all the necessary files:
this thread contains all the necessary files to unlock your bootloader, at the same time flash a custom kernel that contains ClockWorkMod(CWM) and root.
they also include download for the stock kernel with CMW and root but no overclocking, extra cpu governors and I/O scheduler features:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1560613
if you want to overclock your phone, or improve battery life, download rage kernel:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1398910
then download hybrom v15:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1373435
well that's about it, be careful when flashing as you can easily brick your phone.
follow the instruction in the threads I've given to you.
You install custom ROMs via the ClockWorkMod, the only thing you flash via your computer is the kernel. In case your stuck in bootloop, you can always reflash to the stock ROM of sony ericsson.
Stock ROM for WT19i:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17122099/Sony Tools/WT19i_4.0.2.A.0.62__1254-1889.ftf
then flash it with flashtool or using the sofware on this thread.
NOTE:
-Rage kernel has a different way of entering in ClockWorkMod, turn your phone on. As it boots up, as soon you see the LED indicator turns blue or as soon as the boot logo brightens up, immediately press the home key to enter ClockWorkMod.
-in the stock kernel with CMW and root, the LED indicator is always off. Turn your phone on. Press the on-off key once or twice as soon as the b logo gets brighter, to enter in ClockWorkMod.
kevincaja said:
thanks bro!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I kinda disagree.If i remember correctly your phone has minimum frequency of 245 with stock kernel so why increasing?I use my mini with rage kernel at 122-1024 smartassV2 governor never had any problem.I use profile for screen off settings are 122-368.Battery consumption is 0.4-0.5% over night not in flight mode and cpu spy shows 99% of that time cpu is sitting on 122 MHz.So unless your phone is heavy loaded with apps that constantly require cpu power i recommend trying my settings and test over night, you got nothing to loose after all
kevincaja said:
First, download all the necessary files:
this thread contains all the necessary files to unlock your bootloader, at the same time flash a custom kernel that contains ClockWorkMod(CWM) and root.
they also include download for the stock kernel with CMW and root but no overclocking, extra cpu governors and I/O scheduler features:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1560613
if you want to overclock your phone, or improve battery life, download rage kernel:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1398910
then download hybrom v15:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1373435
well that's about it, be careful when flashing as you can easily brick your phone.
follow the instruction in the threads I've given to you.
You install custom ROMs via the ClockWorkMod, the only thing you flash via your computer is the kernel. In case your stuck in bootloop, you can always reflash to the stock ROM of sony ericsson.
Stock ROM for WT19i:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17122099/Sony Tools/WT19i_4.0.2.A.0.62__1254-1889.ftf
then flash it with flashtool or using the sofware on this thread.
NOTE:
-Rage kernel has a different way of entering in ClockWorkMod, turn your phone on. As it boots up, as soon you see the LED indicator turns blue or as soon as the boot logo brightens up, immediately press the home key to enter ClockWorkMod.
-in the stock kernel with CMW and root, the LED indicator is always off. Turn your phone on. Press the on-off key once or twice as soon as the b logo gets brighter, to enter in ClockWorkMod.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, thanks so much for the very detailed guide!
Will try it out now!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Running Hybrom V15 now with Rage Kernel.
So far so good.
Now, how do I set the CPU frequency?
Kira.Lawliet said:
For your CPU config, I suggest increasing the minimum frequency to 320-480ish; because around that frequency it consumes more or less the same voltage. If you set it too low, you may end up using more power because your phone may struggle to process services (caused by low frequency). Reference here -it may be on another device forum but that's applicable on other phones-
IIRC smartassv2 will be defaulting to a low frequency when the phone's screen is off so I think it's good to use it, for your brightness it's ok but I use around 20-30% brightness when outdoors
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had my minimum CPU frequency on 122 MHz for months, no problem. Phone sets the CPU frequency itself higher, when it needs more power. Putting minimum too low doesn't affect it.
T3sla said:
I kinda disagree.If i remember correctly your phone has minimum frequency of 245 with stock kernel so why increasing?I use my mini with rage kernel at 122-1024 smartassV2 governor never had any problem.I use profile for screen off settings are 122-368.Battery consumption is 0.4-0.5% over night not in flight mode and cpu spy shows 99% of that time cpu is sitting on 122 MHz.So unless your phone is heavy loaded with apps that constantly require cpu power i recommend trying my settings and test over night, you got nothing to loose after all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have exactly same settings.
---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
xachiel said:
its a memory auto killer. not a task killer. and use gemini app to config auto-run your apps so they dont run at the background
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Taskkillers/memoryautokillers etc are useless, even not recommended for Android. These close apps, that need to be running and when they start again, consume more battery.
Android is built self to kill apps, which are no longer needed in memory. It kills some apps, when free RAM amount reaches minfree level, amount of RAM that has to be always free.
If you want to improve RAM, better try out V6 Supercharger, link in my signature. It changes the minfree amounts to higher of lower, which one you want. Either multitasking, lowers minfree amount to allow more apps to work at one time, so you can access these easily, without the need of reopening. Or higher minfree amount, to keep more free RAM.
I personally have chosen Balanced.
Someguyfromhell said:
I have had my minimum CPU frequency on 122 MHz for months, no problem. Phone sets the CPU frequency itself higher, when it needs more power. Putting minimum too low doesn't affect it.
I have exactly same settings.
---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
Taskkillers/memoryautokillers etc are not useless, even not recommended for Android. These close apps, that need to be running and when they start again, consume more battery.
Android is built self to kill apps, which are no longer needed in memory. It kills some apps, when free RAM amount reaches minfree level, amount of RAM that has to be always free.
If you want to improve RAM, better try out V6 Supercharger, link in my signature. It changes the minfree amounts to higher of lower, which one you want. Either multitasking, lowers minfree amount to allow more apps to work at one time, so you can access these easily, without the need of reopening. Or higher minfree amount, to keep more free RAM.
I personally have chosen Balanced.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And i use V6supercharger too among others scriptsNext project undervolting.
Phone sets the CPU frequency itself higher, when it needs more power. Putting minimum too low doesn't affect it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does affect it in a little way; putting it up on low frequency -> phone will scale frequency according to needed -> what does it use to scale? -> uses abit of power to scale according to needed; so it's logical to why not set it to a mid frequency when it consumes the same volt therefore not wasting a bit energy to scale up or down when needed; of course' the number of your apps/running services affects this so it depends; you might hardly notice any change at all. It just that it's optimal but I'll not argue with this since we don't ran out of battery anyway on travelling eh?
-reference #1, #2 read more have fun testing
Kira.Lawliet said:
It does affect it in a little way; putting it up on low frequency -> phone will scale frequency according to needed -> what does it use to scale? -> uses abit of power to scale according to needed; so it's logical to why not set it to a mid frequency when it consumes the same volt therefore not wasting a bit energy to scale up or down when needed; of course' the number of your apps/running services affects this so it depends; you might hardly notice any change at all. It just that it's optimal but I'll not argue with this since we don't ran out of battery anyway on travelling eh?
-reference #1, #2 read more have fun testing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes but cpu power from my poor knowledge depends from frequency, so when you set a 3 times higher minimum frequency even if voltage is the same you'll have 3 times more power consumption when idle.I don't think that scaling cpu consumes more than 3 times powerBTW very interesting threads you provide us, did some reading so far and definitely gonna read the whole thing
melander said:
Wow, thanks so much for the very detailed guide!
Will try it out now!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Running Hybrom V15 now with Rage Kernel.
So far so good.
Now, how do I set the CPU frequency?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can download No Frills CPU Control in the Google Play Store(Market) for beginners, i suggest using SmartAssv2 for the CPU governor and Noop or SIO for the I/O Scheduler. as i remember, Noop or SIO provides the fastest throughput and best suitable for flash storage
here's the list of the advantages and disadvantages of those I/O Schedulers:
Q. "What purposes does an i/o scheduler serve?"
A.
Minimize hard disk seek latency.
Prioritize I/O requests from processes.
Allocate disk bandwidth for running processes.
Guarantee that certain requests will be served before a deadline.
So in the simplest of simplest form: Kernel controls the disk access using I/O Scheduler.
Q. "What goals every I/O scheduler tries to balance?"
A.
Fairness (let every process have its share of the access to disk)
Performance (try to serve requests close to current disk head position first, because seeking there is fastest)
Real-time (guarantee that a request is serviced in a given time)
Q. "Description, advantages, disadvantages of each I/O Scheduler?"
A.
1) Noop
Inserts all the incoming I/O requests to a First In First Out queue and implements request merging. Best used with storage devices that does not depend on mechanical movement to access data (yes, like our flash drives). Advantage here is that flash drives does not require reordering of multiple I/O requests unlike in normal hard drives.
Advantages:
Serves I/O requests with least number of cpu cycles. (Battery friendly?)
Best for flash drives since there is no seeking penalty.
Good throughput on db systems.
Disadvantages:
Reduction in number of cpu cycles used is proportional to drop in performance.
2) Deadline
Goal is to minimize I/O latency or starvation of a request. The same is achieved by round robin policy to be fair among multiple I/O requests. Five queues are aggressively used to reorder incoming requests.
Advantages:
Nearly a real time scheduler.
Excels in reducing latency of any given single I/O.
Best scheduler for database access and queries.
Bandwidth requirement of a process - what percentage of CPU it needs, is easily calculated.
Like noop, a good scheduler for solid state/flash drives.
Disadvantages:
When system is overloaded, set of processes that may miss deadline is largely unpredictable.
3) CFQ
Completely Fair Queuing scheduler maintains a scalable per-process I/O queue and attempts to distribute the available I/O bandwidth equally among all I/O requests. Each per-process queue contains synchronous requests from processes. Time slice allocated for each queue depends on the priority of the 'parent' process. V2 of CFQ has some fixes which solves process' i/o starvation and some small backward seeks in the hope of improving responsiveness.
Advantages:
Considered to deliver a balanced i/o performance.
Easiest to tune.
Excels on multiprocessor systems.
Best database system performance after deadline.
Disadvantages:
Some users report media scanning takes longest to complete using CFQ. This could be because of the property that since the bandwidth is equally distributed to all i/o operations during boot-up, media scanning is not given any special priority.
Jitter (worst-case-delay) exhibited can sometimes be high, because of the number of tasks competing for the disk.
4) BFQ
Instead of time slices allocation by CFQ, BFQ assigns budgets. Disk is granted to an active process until it's budget (number of sectors) expires. BFQ assigns high budgets to non-read tasks. Budget assigned to a process varies over time as a function of it's behavior.
Advantages:
Believed to be very good for usb data transfer rate.
Believed to be the best scheduler for HD video recording and video streaming. (because of less jitter as compared to CFQ and others)
Considered an accurate i/o scheduler.
Achieves about 30% more throughput than CFQ on most workloads.
Disadvantages:
Not the best scheduler for benchmarking.
Higher budget assigned to a process can affect interactivity and increased latency.
5) SIO
Simple I/O scheduler aims to keep minimum overhead to achieve low latency to serve I/O requests. No priority quesues concepts, but only basic merging. Sio is a mix between noop & deadline. No reordering or sorting of requests.
Advantages:
Simple, so reliable.
Minimized starvation of requests.
Disadvantages:
Slow random-read speeds on flash drives, compared to other schedulers.
Sequential-read speeds on flash drives also not so good.
6) V(R)
Unlike other schedulers, synchronous and asynchronous requests are not treated separately, instead a deadline is imposed for fairness. The next request to be served is based on it's distance from last request.
Advantages:
May be best for benchmarking because at the peak of it's 'form' VR performs best.
Disadvantages:
Performance fluctuation results in below-average performance at times.
Least reliable/most unstable.
7) Anticipatory
Based on two facts
i) Disk seeks are really slow.
ii) Write operations can happen whenever, but there is always some process waiting for read operation.
So anticipatory prioritize read operations over write. It anticipates synchronous read operations.
Advantages:
Read requests from processes are never starved.
As good as noop for read-performance on flash drives.
Disadvantages:
'Guess works' might not be always reliable.
Reduced write-performance on high performance disks.
Q. "Best I/O Scheduler?"
A.There is nothing called "best" i/o scheduler. Depending on your usage environment and tasks/apps been run, use different schedulers. That's the best i can suggest.
However, considering the overall performance, battery, reliability and low latency, it is believed that
SIO > Noop > Deadline > VR > BFQ > CFQ, given all schedulers are tweaked and the storage used is a flash device.
Q. "How do i change I/O schedulers?"
Voltage Control or No Frills from market.
And here's the list and explanations for all CPU Governors for a custom android kernel:
These are the 18 governors we're talking about.
1) Ondemand
2) Ondemandx
3) Conservative
4) Interactive
5) Interactivex
6) Lulzactive
7) Smartass
8) SmartassV2
9) Intellidemand
10) Lazy
11) Lagfree
12) Lionheart
13) LionheartX
14) Brazilianwax
15) SavagedZen
16) Userspacce
17) Powersave
18) Performance
1) Ondemand:
Default governor in almost all stock kernels. One main goal of the ondemand governor is to switch to max frequency as soon as there is a CPU activity detected to ensure the responsiveness of the system. (You can change this behavior using smooth scaling parameters, refer Siyah tweaks at the end of 3rd post.) Effectively, it uses the CPU busy time as the answer to "how critical is performance right now" question. So Ondemand jumps to maximum frequency when CPU is busy and decreases the frequency gradually when CPU is less loaded/apporaching idle. Even though many of us consider this a reliable governor, it falls short on battery saving and performance on default settings. One potential reason for ondemand governor being not very power efficient is that the governor decide the next target frequency by instant requirement during sampling interval. The instant requirement can response quickly to workload change, but it does not usually reflect workload real CPU usage requirement in a small longer time and it possibly causes frequently change between highest and lowest frequency.
2) Ondemandx:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3) Conservative:
A slower Ondemand which scales up slowly to save battery. The conservative governor is based on the ondemand governor. It functions like the Ondemand governor by dynamically adjusting frequencies based on processor utilization. However, the conservative governor increases and decreases CPU speed more gradually. Simply put, this governor increases the frequency step by step on CPU load and jumps to lowest frequency on CPU idle. Conservative governor aims to dynamically adjust the CPU frequency to current utilization, without jumping to max frequency. The sampling_down_factor value acts as a negative multiplier of sampling_rate to reduce the frequency that the scheduler samples the CPU utilization. For example, if sampling_rate equal to 20,000 and sampling_down_factor is 2, the governor samples the CPU utilization every 40,000 microseconds.
4) Interactive:
Can be considered a faster ondemand. So more snappier, less battery. Interactive is designed for latency-sensitive, interactive workloads. Instead of sampling at every interval like ondemand, it determines how to scale up when CPU comes out of idle. The governor has the following advantages: 1) More consistent ramping, because existing governors do their CPU load sampling in a workqueue context, but interactive governor does this in a timer context, which gives more consistent CPU load sampling. 2) Higher priority for CPU frequency increase, thus giving the remaining tasks the CPU performance benefit, unlike existing governors which schedule ramp-up work to occur after your performance starved tasks have completed. Interactive It's an intelligent Ondemand because of stability optimizations. Why??
Sampling the CPU load every X ms (like Ondemand) can lead to under-powering the CPU for X ms, leading to dropped frames, stuttering UI, etc. Instead of sampling the CPU at a specified rate, the interactive governor will check whether to scale the CPU frequency up soon after coming out of idle. When the CPU comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire within 1-2 ticks. If the CPU is very busy between exiting idle and when the timer fires, then we assume the CPU is underpowered and ramp to max frequency.
5) Interactivex:
This is an Interactive governor with a wake profile. More battery friendly than interactive.
6) Lulzactive:
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites.
Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency.
New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down.
When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down.
Example:
Consider
inc_cpu_load=70
pump_up_step=2
pump_down_step=1
If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
7) Smartass:
Result of Erasmux rewriting the complete code of interactive governor. Main goal is to optimize battery life without comprising performance. Still, not as battery friendly as smartassV2 since screen-on minimum frequency is greater than frequencies used during screen-off. Smartass would jump up to highest frequency too often as well.
8) SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
9) Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors )
To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
10) Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
11) Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
12) Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source. Tweaks comes from 1) Knzo 2) Morfic. The original idea comes from Netarchy. See here. The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
To 'experience' Lionheart using conservative, try these tweaks:
sampling_rate:10000 or 20000 or 50000, whichever you feel is safer. (transition latency of the CPU is something below 10ms/10,000uS hence using 10,000 might not be safe).
up_threshold:60
down_threshold:30
freq_step:5
Lionheart goes well with deadline i/o scheduler. When it comes to smoothness (not considering battery drain), a tuned conservative delivers more as compared to a tuned ondemand.
13) LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
14) Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery.
15) SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
16) Userspace:
Instead of automatically determining frequencies, lets user set frequencies.
17) Powersave:
Locks max frequency to min frequency. Can not be used as a screen-on or even screen-off (if scaling min frequency is too low).
18) Performance:
Sets min frequency as max frequency. Use this while benchmarking!
So, Governors can be categorized into 3/4 on a high level:
1.a) Ondemand Based:
Works on "ramp-up on high load" principle. CPU busy-time is taken into consideration for scaling decisions. Members: Ondemand, OndemandX, Intellidemand, Lazy, Lagfree.
1.b) Conservative Based:
Members: Conservative, Lionheart, LionheartX
2) Interactive Based:
Works on "make scaling decision when CPU comes out of idle-loop" principle. Members: Interactive, InteractiveX, Lulzactive, Smartass, SmartassV2, Brazilianwax, SavagedZen.
3) Weird Category:
Members: Userspace, Powersave, Performance.
You can read all of these form this thread.
T3sla said:
I kinda disagree.If i remember correctly your phone has minimum frequency of 245 with stock kernel so why increasing?I use my mini with rage kernel at 122-1024 smartassV2 governor never had any problem.I use profile for screen off settings are 122-368.Battery consumption is 0.4-0.5% over night not in flight mode and cpu spy shows 99% of that time cpu is sitting on 122 MHz.So unless your phone is heavy loaded with apps that constantly require cpu power i recommend trying my settings and test over night, you got nothing to loose after all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
kindly read this thread:
Q. "I'm going to set scaling min freq as 100 mhz because my kernel supports it. Hope there's nothing wrong in doing that."
A. Wait! You may want to stay away from using 100mhz during screen-off or screen-on states for three reasons 1) It seems 100 mhz uses more power than 200 mhz. According to tests, 100 mhz accounted to 1 W / GHz and 200 mhz to 0.7 W / GHz, when both the cores were online. 2) 200 mhz can finish same task faster compared 100 mhz and thus hit deep idle soon. 3) 200 mhz is the 'sweet spot' of frequency in SGS II. ie, the frequency used in the calculations based on the optimal energy to run (Ex: In Milestone it's 550 MHz). So , 'energetically efficient' frequency for our CPU is 200 mhz.
Someguyfromhell said:
I have had my minimum CPU frequency on 122 MHz for months, no problem. Phone sets the CPU frequency itself higher, when it needs more power. Putting minimum too low doesn't affect it.
I have exactly same settings.
---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
Taskkillers/memoryautokillers etc are useless, even not recommended for Android. These close apps, that need to be running and when they start again, consume more battery.
Android is built self to kill apps, which are no longer needed in memory. It kills some apps, when free RAM amount reaches minfree level, amount of RAM that has to be always free.
If you want to improve RAM, better try out V6 Supercharger, link in my signature. It changes the minfree amounts to higher of lower, which one you want. Either multitasking, lowers minfree amount to allow more apps to work at one time, so you can access these easily, without the need of reopening. Or higher minfree amount, to keep more free RAM.
I personally have chosen Balanced.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the link to V6 Supercharger, now my phone is lag free
Thank you again for the very detailed explanation...
Currently trying out your recommendations...
Original post by droidphile about Kernel Governors, Modules, I/O Schedulers, CPU Tweaks, AIO App Configs under Galaxy S II General.I altered & wrote in a way Newbies can read His post
Thanks To................
Sirkay,hansip87,jjdoctor for their work in Xperia ray which inspired me to write(Modified and altered from the original thread )
NEW-Check my 3rd post for QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS(21-08-12)-Click here
1. Kernel Governors
These are the 19 governors we're talking about.
1) Ondemand
2) Conservative
3) Interactivex
4) Smartass
5) SmartassV2
6) Lagfree
7) Brazilianwax
8) SavagedZen
9) Userspacce
10) Powersave
11) Performance
12)Minmax
13)Scary
14)Lulzactive
15)intellidemand
16)badass
17)Lionheart
18)Lionheartx
19)Virtuous
1) Ondemand:
Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed
2) Conservative:
A slower Ondemand which scales up slowly to save battery. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery.
3) Interactivex:
This is an Interactive governor with a wake profile. More battery friendly than interactive.
4) Smartass:
based on the concept of the interactive governor. I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works - by taking over the idle loop - is very attractive.Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the "old" minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies
5) SmartassV2:
SmartassV2 is a governor (controls the frequency of the CPU at each give moment) which like the first smartass is generally based on the implementation of interactive with some major changes and the addition of a built in sleep profile (behaves a bit differently when screen is off vs. on).The smartassV2 improves the very naive scheme which the first smartass had
6) Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
7) Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery.
8) SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
9) Userspace:
Instead of automatically determining frequencies, lets user set frequencies.
10) Powersave:
runs minimum speed all the time (good for low battery/high temp situations)
11) Performance:
Top speed all the time(better for benchmarking/speed test)
12)Minmax
stays at minimum speed until more speed is needed then goes straight to highest speed
13)Scary
based on conservative with some smartass features, it scales accordingly to conservatives laws. So it will start from the bottom, take a load sample, if it's above the upthreshold, ramp up only one speed at a time, and ramp down one at a time. It will automatically cap the off screen speeds to 245Mhz, and if your min freq is higher than 245mhz, it will reset the min to 120mhz while screen is off and restore it upon screen awakening, and still scale accordingly to conservatives laws. So it spends most of its time at lower frequencies. The goal of this is to get the best battery life with decent performance. It will give the same performance as conservative right now, it will get tweaked over time.
14) Lulzactive
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites. Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency. New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down. When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down. Example: Consider inc_cpu_load=70 pump_up_step=2 pump_down_step=1 If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800. If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
15) Intellidemand
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors ) To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
16)badass
Badass removes all of this "fast peaking" to the max frequency. On a typical system the cpu won't go above 918Mhz and therefore stay cool and will use less power. To trigger a frequency increase, the system must run a bit @ 918Mhz with high load, then the frequency is bumped to 1188Mhz. If that is still not enough the governor gives you full throttle. (this transition should not take longer than 2-5 seconds, depending on the load your system is experiencing) Badass will also take the gpu load into consideration. If the gpu is moderately busy it will bypass the above check and clock the cpu with 1188Mhz. If the gpu is crushed under load, badass will lift the restrictions to the cpu.
17)Lionheart
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source. Tweaks comes from 1) Knzo 2) Morfic. The original idea comes from Netarchy. See here. The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
To 'experience' Lionheart using conservative, try these tweaks: sampling_rate:10000 or 20000 or 50000, whichever you feel is safer. (transition latency of the CPU is something below 10ms/10,000uS hence using 10,000 might not be safe). up_threshold:60 down_threshold:30 freq_step:5 Lionheart goes well with deadline i/o scheduler. When it comes to smoothness (not considering battery drain), a tuned conservative delivers more as compared to a tuned ondemand.
18)Lionheartx
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
19)virtuous governor
It set your max cpu for wake and sleep and changes the governor when your device is awake or asleep. It saves battery by lowering cpu frequencys while the device sleeps, when it awakes it automatically speeds it up again. Or alternately you can set the cpu.It is based on smartassV2(It use 2 governors.one for sleep and other for awake)
Governor which is for performance and battery life-smartassV2(To get maximum performance, use ondemand or conservative)
2. I/O SCHEDULERS
Q. "What purposes does an i/o scheduler serve?" A.
Minimize hard disk seek latency.
Prioritize I/O requests from processes.
Allocate disk bandwidth for running processes.
Guarantee that certain requests will be served before a deadline.
So in the simplest of simplest form: Kernel controls the disk access using I/O Scheduler.
Q. "What goals every I/O scheduler tries to balance?" A.
Fairness (let every process have its share of the access to disk)
Performance (try to serve requests close to current disk head position first, because seeking there is fastest)
Real-time (guarantee that a request is serviced in a given time)
Q. "Description, advantages, disadvantages of each I/O Scheduler?" A.
1) Noop
Inserts all the incoming I/O requests to a First In First Out queue and implements request merging. Best used with storage devices that does not depend on mechanical movement to access data (yes, like our flash drives). Advantage here is that flash drives does not require reordering of multiple I/O requests unlike in normal hard drives.
Advantages:
Serves I/O requests with least number of cpu cycles. (Battery friendly?)
Best for flash drives since there is no seeking penalty.
Good throughput on db systems.
Disadvantages:
Reduction in number of cpu cycles used is proportional to drop in performance.
2) Deadline
Goal is to minimize I/O latency or starvation of a request. The same is achieved by round robin policy to be fair among multiple I/O requests. Five queues are aggressively used to reorder incoming requests.
Advantages:
Nearly a real time scheduler.
Excels in reducing latency of any given single I/O.
Best scheduler for database access and queries.
Bandwidth requirement of a process - what percentage of CPU it needs, is easily calculated.
Like noop, a good scheduler for solid state/flash drives.
Disadvantages:
When system is overloaded, set of processes that may miss deadline is largely unpredictable.
3) CFQ
Completely Fair Queuing scheduler maintains a scalable per-process I/O queue and attempts to distribute the available I/O bandwidth equally among all I/O requests. Each per-process queue contains synchronous requests from processes. Time slice allocated for each queue depends on the priority of the 'parent' process. V2 of CFQ has some fixes which solves process' i/o starvation and some small backward seeks in the hope of improving responsiveness.
Advantages:
Considered to deliver a balanced i/o performance.
Easiest to tune.
Excels on multiprocessor systems.
Best database system performance after deadline.
Disadvantages:
Some users report media scanning takes longest to complete using CFQ. This could be because of the property that since the bandwidth is equally distributed to all i/o operations during boot-up, media scanning is not given any special priority.
Jitter (worst-case-delay) exhibited can sometimes be high, because of the number of tasks competing for the disk.
4) BFQ
Instead of time slices allocation by CFQ, BFQ assigns budgets. Disk is granted to an active process until it's budget (number of sectors) expires. BFQ assigns high budgets to non-read tasks. Budget assigned to a process varies over time as a function of it's behavior.
Advantages:
Believed to be very good for usb data transfer rate.
Believed to be the best scheduler for HD video recording and video streaming. (because of less jitter as compared to CFQ and others)
Considered an accurate i/o scheduler.
Achieves about 30% more throughput than CFQ on most workloads.
Disadvantages:
Not the best scheduler for benchmarking.
Higher budget assigned to a process can affect interactivity and increased latency.
5) SIO
Simple I/O scheduler aims to keep minimum overhead to achieve low latency to serve I/O requests. No priority quesues concepts, but only basic merging. Sio is a mix between noop & deadline. No reordering or sorting of requests.
Advantages:
Simple, so reliable.
Minimized starvation of requests.
Disadvantages:
Slow random-read speeds on flash drives, compared to other schedulers.
Sequential-read speeds on flash drives also not so good.
6) V(R)
Unlike other schedulers, synchronous and asynchronous requests are not treated separately, instead a deadline is imposed for fairness. The next request to be served is based on it's distance from last request.
Advantages:
May be best for benchmarking because at the peak of it's 'form' VR performs best.
Disadvantages:
Performance fluctuation results in below-average performance at times.
Least reliable/most unstable.
Q. "Best I/O Scheduler?"
A.There is nothing called "best" i/o scheduler. Depending on your usage environment and tasks/apps been run, use different schedulers. That's the best i can suggest.
However, considering the overall performance, battery, reliability and low latency, it is believed that
SIO > Noop > Deadline > VR > BFQ > CFQ, given all schedulers are tweaked and the storage used is a flash device.
I didn't know my 'essay' could be shortened nicely this way and still convey the real idea
Questions
Question Time
Q.which governor is for performance and which one is for battery life?
A. Tough question! lulzactive and smartassV2 for a balance between performance and battery. For light weight tasks, lulzactive should be better for battery. And for heavy weight tasks, lulzactive should be better for performance also. To get maximum performance, use a tweaked ondemand or conservative, but never complain about battery. NOTE: It's not so easy to tame luzactive. If you don't know how exactly to do it, stay away from it or you will end up complaining about battery drain!
Q. "Hey, almost forgot. How do i change governors?"
A.use Voltage Control/SetCpu/No Frills/Antuntu CPU Master, etc. Nofrills has the interfaces for gpu oc/uc/uv and charge-current change if your kernel supports them. Like we guessed, these apps will tell us the active governor too.
Q. "How do i know which governor is best for me?"
A. It depends on what you need and your daily usage pattern. Performance or battery. Better choose a governor that's balanced for battery/performance. Or tweak a governor to give performance an upper-hand as compared to battery. We can always re-charge the phone:
Q. "Well i have set my favorite governor as screen-on governor and another one as screen-off governor. Why the hell is the phone not waking up after deep sleep. I need to force-restart the phone by pressing power button for about 10 secs. Is it a sleep-of-death?"
A. Yes it is. Do not use two governors as screen-on & screen-off govs, if they both have an upper frequency limit for screen-off state.
Didn't get it?
Examples for right combinations(screen-on:screen-off):-
ondemand:smartassV2, lulzactive:smartassV2
Q. "How to make my device more snappier. I don't care much about batt....err...I do care about battery life, but only in terms of avoiding unwanted power consumption. Device should instantly dance to my tunes."
A. Scale 500 to 1200 during screen-on and 200-500 during screen-off. Use performance tweaked conservative/ondemand(x). Response will be sweet. And don't worry, minimum of 500 during screen-on will not drain too much battery like you think!
Q.Which Rom is more battery friendly?
A.hmmm.....well.JJ's Hybrid.which is smooth in 800mhz
Q.What kernel will you recommend me to use?
A.Sirkays 7.3.431 kernel.Link for that thread
Q.What is the stable value for OC in Xperia Ray?
A. 1400mhz(1,4Ghz) because you'll experience some wild reboots in 1600Mhz(1.6Ghz)
Q.Is it possible to have Dual boot in Ray?
A. No
Q.What exactly is smooth scaling?
A. Ondemand governor jumps straight to max frequency a little too often. We can control this by setting a smooth scaling frequency to which the CPU will scale to first before scaling to maximum frequency. A little power saving is the target here. Note that CPU driver does smooth scaling - not governor. When CPU driver is requested by governor to scale up to max frequency, it first scales to smooth frequency, and only in the next sampling to highest frequency. Smooth scaling atm is active for ondemand
Q.What is OTG?
A. On-The-Go,is a specification that allows Xperia Ray to act as a host allowing a USB flash drive to be attached and also connecting USB peripherals directly for communication purposes among them.
Q.Q.What is BFS?
A.Brain F**k Scheduler (BFS) is a task scheduler .The objective of BFS, compared to other schedulers, was to provide a scheduler with a simpler algorithm, that did not require adjustment of heuristics or tuning parameters to tailor performance to a specific type of computation workload. The BFS author asserted that these tunable parameters were difficult for the average user to understand, especially in terms of interactions of multiple parameters with each other, and claimed that the use of such tuning parameters could often result in improved performance in a specific targeted type of computation, at the cost of worse performance in the general case. BFS has been reported to improve responsiveness.It's better for Multi Tasking
Q.What is task sheduler?
A.scheduling is the method by which threads, processes or data flows are given access to system resources (e.g. processor time, communications bandwidth). This is usually done to load balance a system effectively or achieve a target quality of service. The need for a scheduling algorithm arises from the requirement for most modern systems to perform multitasking (execute more than one process at a time) and multiplexing (transmit multiple flows simultaneously).For more info
Q.What is ZRAM?[/B]
A.It increases performance by avoiding paging on disk and instead uses a compressed block device in RAM in which paging takes place until it is necessary to use the swap space on the hard disk drive. Since using RAM is faster than using disks, zRam allows to make more use of RAM when swapping/paging is required.
Q.How to make a Zram script?
A.1. Using Root Explorer, got to /sytem/etc/init.d/
2. press Menu then create new file
3. paste these in it
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
sysctl -w vm.swappiness=60
echo '1' > /sys/block/zram0/reset
echo $((60*1024*1024)) > /sys/block/zram0/disksize
mkswap /dev/block/zram0
swapon /dev/block/zram0
4. close and save it as 99zram
5. set permission to 777 or "rwxrwxrwx" (tick all)
6. take note: 60*1024*1024 = 60MB zram disksize. if you want to set 30MB, change 60 to 30.
Source-Sirkays thread
Q.Is there is any way to run Tegra,PowerVR android games on Ray?
A.Yea,you can use Chainfire3D(you have to install Tegra,PowerVR plugins too
Q.My device is not stable at 1.6 Ghz. But i still wanna overclock the device to possible maximum and show off to friends?
A.Try 1516Mhz
Q.I sometimes get unexpected reboots. What could be wrong?
A. Number of reasons.
- Problem from ROM side -wrong build.prop tweaks, etc.
- Too much UV on CPU
- Too much CPU OC
- CPU/Battery heated up too much because of weather/benchmarking/faulty charger, etc
Q.I want to help dev debug an issue providing a Log-cat. How to?
A. After the problem (random reboot/freeze/lockup), do not pull out battery to recover. Just long press power button so that device can reboot. Then connect device to PC,
Then do the following steps from this guids
Q.How to flash kernel in Xperia ray other than "fastboot flash boot <file name>.img"?
A.Use Flash-tool or this QuickIMG tool
Knight47 said:
I think you missed scary and minmax in your post.. ...Anyway your post is better than mine ...
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice post well, actually I'm stuck with ondemand. Because the smartassv2 is too active in high freq imho and buggy with setXperia app. could you give me another recommendation?
sent from my white ray using XDA App
hansip87 said:
Nice post well, actually I'm stuck with ondemand. Because the smartassv2 is too active in high freq imho and buggy with setXperia app. could you give me another recommendation?
sent from my white ray using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah bro. I have a problem with setxperia. My ray becomes so lazy when receives a call. Dont use setxperia. Use incredicontrol.
Sent from my ST18i using Tapatalk
Great post,very informative
Sent from my Desire using XDA Premium App
hansip87 said:
Nice post well, actually I'm stuck with ondemand. Because the smartassv2 is too active in high freq imho and buggy with setXperia app. could you give me another recommendation?
sent from my white ray using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use InteractiveX............ Because I don't have any problem with that governor in set Xperia. .
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
Srkineo said:
Great post,very informative
Sent from my Desire using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't forget to hit thanks
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
can explain about io?
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
blaze012345 said:
can explain about io?
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I updated the post with io
Other Governors....
I updated these govenors
16)Lionheart
17)Lionheartx
Sent from my ST18i using XDA
I have two questions : first, someone can tell me where I can download Aire Kernel V2 ?
Then I think that's an easy question but i was wondering : when I download a kernel, when do i choose the I/O scheduler ? (like noop...)
IIMatII said:
I have two questions : first, someone can tell me where I can download Aire Kernel V2 ?
Then I think that's an easy question but i was wondering : when I download a kernel, when do i choose the I/O scheduler ? (like noop...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In RayOniumICS topic. And use No-frills CPU to choose I/O (can download on gg play)
Sent from my ST18i using Forum Runner
@Knight try looking for badass gov. heard that it is a good gov too. wana get it work to kernel
Sent from my ST18i using xda premium
sirkay said:
@Knight try looking for badass gov. heard that it is a good gov too. wana get it work to kernel
Sent from my ST18i using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My name is knight47 not knight
BTW I updated governors with badass(Stay cool and use less power)
Knight47 said:
My name is knight47 not knight
BTW I updated governors with badass(Stay cool and use less power)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lazy to mentioned fullname
Sent from my ST18i using xda premium
sirkay said:
lazy to mentioned fullname
Sent from my ST18i using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hahaha
Sent from my Xperia Ray using xda premium
@knight47 how does virtuous governor in sirkays new kernel work?
Sent from my Xperia ray using XDA
gauravcd said:
@knight47 how does virtuous governor in sirkays new kernel work?
Sent from my Xperia ray using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
virtuous governor
It set your max cpu for wake and sleep and changes the governor when your device is awake or asleep. It saves battery by lowering cpu frequencys while the device sleeps, when it awakes it automatically speeds it up again. Or alternately you can set the cpu
I updated my 1st post
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Ultimate battery guide
Battery, one of the most important thing on todays phones. Even if we have awesome battery life we always want more and it is never enough.
This is the small guide to tips, trick and tweaks to improve battery life.
This topic is to share tips and tricks and basically just small talk about battery and sharing screenshots.
Use Gsam or Android battery history to show your battery life.
Our goal is to make most of the screen on time with average use of 24 hours. So lets start.
Post 1: Tips
Post 2: ROMS, kernels, undervolting, underclocking
Tips to improve battery life
Location services
One of the first thing that your device will ask when you are setting up your phone. Most of the users let them ON and just forgot about them. Location services are battery hungry and the will drain your battery like you drinking juice.
Thing is that you do not need them always, just sometimes. Turn it OFF then. I have them turned off always and when I need it I just simple turn it ON.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi scanning is thing that will drain your battery always. When you are out and you are not expecting to use wi-fi any time soon turn it off. You do not need to run scanning all the time.
You could also edit build.prop to reduce.
Edit wifi.supplicant_scan_interval. Default value is 180. You can set it higher to reduce the scanning intervals.
Signal strength / Network mode
Signal strength is always trouble for battery. Weak signal will drain more battery. Also, constant changing between 4G/3G and 2G will drain battery faster.
Tweak to this is to set your phone to only use 2G, 3G or 4G.
Example: when I am not using my phone, or it is connected to wifi my network is on 2G. I dont need 3G or 4G then and changing network state is disabled then because it will stay always on 2G. I found it has positive effect on battery.
When I need, I just simple toggle 3G or 4G.
Screen brightness
Screen is the thing that drains most of our battery. There is not much philosophy here. Higher brightness will drain more battery.
My personal setup is that I do not use auto brightness. I always change brightness manually. Right now during winter my brightness does not go more then 25% outside, and inside it is lower. At night it is under 10%.
I found that not using auto brightness has also slight positive effect on battery.
Syncing / Airplane mode / Vibration / Animations / Task Killers
Lets start in order.
Syncing: more syncing your device does it drains more battery. On your phone probably you do not to sync all accounts and apps you have every few minutes or hours. Set those apps you do not need on manual sync.
Airplane mode: I am using airplane mode during night because I do not want to be disturbed during sleep. With airplane mode battery consumption during night is 0%. Yes, zero percent.
Vibration: more your device vibrates, more battery it drains. You can reduce vibrations on keyboard settings and similar. I found that is not much effect on battery but it has slight.
Animations: animations drains your battery also and who really needs them. Personally, I am annoyed with them and I always switch them to 0 or .5. You can do that in Settings-Developers options
Task Killers: task killers, clean maters and similar software is a big NO. You dont need it. It does more damage then good.
Bloatware
Yes, bloatware. There is huge amount of bloatware on our phones and we really do not need it. So, what to do? Freeze that bloatware.
You can find list of apps HERE.
ROMS and kernels
Custom ROMs and kernels will give you in most cases better battery life then stock firmware. Plus there is huge amount of options to play with. You can read more in posts bellow.
Summary:
If you change some of those thing you will see the effect.
You can always use apps like Greenify or Tasker and play with their options.
How to follow your battery life
GSam Battery Monitor
This one of the most useful apps to track your battery. On Lollipop (even on Kitkat) it will not give you much useful info without root.
If you are using it without root everytime you reboot the phone statistic would be reset also. If you have root it will give you access to wakelocks and some other stuff, plus stats would not get reseted.
Play store link
Wakelock detector
Wakelocks, one of the painful things on phone. If you see your battery is draining faster in idle then you got problem with wakelocks. This is useful app because it shows wakelocks on very simple setup and you can discover which app is causing which wakelock.
Play Store link
Disable service
If you are using Wakelock detector you need this app also. With this app you can freeze every single process that app can launch. It will provide detail look on all processes from apps. With this app I have reduced wakelocks to 1%.
Play Store link
ROMS
Discussion about ROMs never looked nice. It always gets to what you personally like. Some ROMs will be easier on battery, some will be rough. You will never know before you try them.
Kernels
Kernels are similar to ROMS but you can play with them. Currently there is not much kernels available but you can play even with stock one.
I recommend to use Trickster MOD Kernel Settings app to play with kernel settings.
Undervoting
Undervolting is the thing when you control how much power each CPU frequency can have. Trickster MOD app gives really nice view on them. You can undervolt every frequency by itself or all in one.
My personal recommendation is to undervolt them at once. I always use -50 value. Found it stable.
Of course, you can always play with different values but remember: when you play with this do not click on option "Set on Boot" or you will end in bootloop if you click it. Click that option when you find out that values are safe for using and stable.
Underclocking
Underclocking is changing your CPU frequency. Rough truth is that we dont need our CPU to run on 2,7 GHz in normal use. Only gamers will need that probably but since this is not thread were we are aiming gamers we dont need that high frequency.
Me personally, I use always 1,7 GHz or 1,9 GHz. To my daily usage (most common like everyone else but without games) this is more then enough. Everything is still smooth and runs fast.
Governors
A CPU governor in Android controls how the CPU raises and lowers its frequency in response to the demands the user is placing on their device. Governors are especially important in smartphones and tablets because they have a large impact on the apparent fluidity of the interface and the battery life of the device over a charge.
You can find explanation hidden here.
Many users have wrote about governors and they are practically the same on most of the phones so I will copy list from droidphile.
On his topic you have more details about governors.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
I) MANUAL:
These are the 19 governors we're talking about.
1) Ondemand
2) Ondemandx
3) Conservative
4) Interactive
5) Interactivex
6) Lulzactive
7) Lulzactiveq
8) Smartass
9) SmartassV2
10) Intellidemand
11) Lazy
12) Lagfree
13) Lionheart
14) LionheartX
15) Brazilianwax
16) SavagedZen
17) Userspacce
18) Powersave
19) Performance
1) Ondemand:
Default governor in almost all stock kernels. One main goal of the ondemand governor is to switch to max frequency as soon as there is a CPU activity detected to ensure the responsiveness of the system. (You can change this behavior using smooth scaling parameters, refer Siyah tweaks at the end of 3rd post.) Effectively, it uses the CPU busy time as the answer to "how critical is performance right now" question. So Ondemand jumps to maximum frequency when CPU is busy and decreases the frequency gradually when CPU is less loaded/apporaching idle. Even though many of us consider this a reliable governor, it falls short on battery saving and performance on default settings. One potential reason for ondemand governor being not very power efficient is that the governor decide the next target frequency by instant requirement during sampling interval. The instant requirement can response quickly to workload change, but it does not usually reflect workload real CPU usage requirement in a small longer time and it possibly causes frequently change between highest and lowest frequency.
2) Ondemandx:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3) Conservative:
A slower Ondemand which scales up slowly to save battery. The conservative governor is based on the ondemand governor. It functions like the Ondemand governor by dynamically adjusting frequencies based on processor utilization. However, the conservative governor increases and decreases CPU speed more gradually. Simply put, this governor increases the frequency step by step on CPU load and jumps to lowest frequency on CPU idle. Conservative governor aims to dynamically adjust the CPU frequency to current utilization, without jumping to max frequency. The sampling_down_factor value acts as a negative multiplier of sampling_rate to reduce the frequency that the scheduler samples the CPU utilization. For example, if sampling_rate equal to 20,000 and sampling_down_factor is 2, the governor samples the CPU utilization every 40,000 microseconds.
4) Interactive:
Can be considered a faster ondemand. So more snappier, less battery. Interactive is designed for latency-sensitive, interactive workloads. Instead of sampling at every interval like ondemand, it determines how to scale up when CPU comes out of idle. The governor has the following advantages: 1) More consistent ramping, because existing governors do their CPU load sampling in a workqueue context, but interactive governor does this in a timer context, which gives more consistent CPU load sampling. 2) Higher priority for CPU frequency increase, thus giving the remaining tasks the CPU performance benefit, unlike existing governors which schedule ramp-up work to occur after your performance starved tasks have completed. Interactive It's an intelligent Ondemand because of stability optimizations. Why??
Sampling the CPU load every X ms (like Ondemand) can lead to under-powering the CPU for X ms, leading to dropped frames, stuttering UI, etc. Instead of sampling the CPU at a specified rate, the interactive governor will check whether to scale the CPU frequency up soon after coming out of idle. When the CPU comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire within 1-2 ticks. If the CPU is very busy between exiting idle and when the timer fires, then we assume the CPU is underpowered and ramp to max frequency.
5) Interactivex:
This is an Interactive governor with a wake profile. More battery friendly than interactive.
6) Lulzactive:
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites.
Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency.
New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down.
When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down.
Example:
Consider
inc_cpu_load=70
pump_up_step=2
pump_down_step=1
If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
7) Lulzactiveq:
Lulzactiveq is a modified lulzactive governor authored by XDA member robertobsc and is adapted in Siyah kernel for GS2 and GS3. Lulzactiveq aims to optimize the second version of luzactive from Tegrak by a) providing an extra parameter (dec_cpu_load) to make scaling down more sensible, and b) incorporating hotplug logic to the governor. Luzactiveq is the first ever interactive based governor with hotplugging logic inbuilt (atleast the first of its kind for the exynos platform). When CPU comes out of idle loop and it's time to make a scaling decision, if load >= inc_cpu_load CPU is scaled up (like original luzactiveq) and if load <dec_cpu_load, CPU is scaled down. This possibly eliminates the strict single cut-off frequency for luzactiveq to make CPU scaling decisions. Also, stand hotplug logic runs as a separate thread with the governor so that external hotplugging logic is not required to control hotplug in and out (turn On and Off) CPU cores in multi core devices like GS2 or GS3. Only a multi core aware governor makes real sense on muti-core devices. Lulzactiveq and pegasusq aims to do that.
8) Smartass:
Result of Erasmux rewriting the complete code of interactive governor. Main goal is to optimize battery life without comprising performance. Still, not as battery friendly as smartassV2 since screen-on minimum frequency is greater than frequencies used during screen-off. Smartass would jump up to highest frequency too often as well.
9) SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
10) Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors )
To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
11) Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
12) Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
13) Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source. Tweaks comes from 1) Knzo 2) Morfic. The original idea comes from Netarchy. See here. The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
To 'experience' Lionheart using conservative, try these tweaks:
sampling_rate:10000 or 20000 or 50000, whichever you feel is safer. (transition latency of the CPU is something below 10ms/10,000uS hence using 10,000 might not be safe).
up_threshold:60
down_threshold:30
freq_step:5
Lionheart goes well with deadline i/o scheduler. When it comes to smoothness (not considering battery drain), a tuned conservative delivers more as compared to a tuned ondemand.
14) LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
15) Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery.
16) SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17) Userspace:
Instead of automatically determining frequencies, lets user set frequencies.
18) Powersave:
Locks max frequency to min frequency. Can not be used as a screen-on or even screen-off (if scaling min frequency is too low).
19) Performance:
Sets min frequency as max frequency. Use this while benchmarking!
Schedulers
Everything has been said about them so I will use droidphile explanations.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
Q. "What purposes does an i/o scheduler serve?"
A.
Minimize hard disk seek latency.
Prioritize I/O requests from processes.
Allocate disk bandwidth for running processes.
Guarantee that certain requests will be served before a deadline.
So in the simplest of simplest form: Kernel controls the disk access using I/O Scheduler.
Q. "What goals every I/O scheduler tries to balance?"
A.
Fairness (let every process have its share of the access to disk)
Performance (try to serve requests close to current disk head position first, because seeking there is fastest)
Real-time (guarantee that a request is serviced in a given time)
Q. "Description, advantages, disadvantages of each I/O Scheduler?"
A.
1) Noop
Inserts all the incoming I/O requests to a First In First Out queue and implements request merging. Best used with storage devices that does not depend on mechanical movement to access data (yes, like our flash drives). Advantage here is that flash drives does not require reordering of multiple I/O requests unlike in normal hard drives.
Advantages:
Serves I/O requests with least number of cpu cycles. (Battery friendly?)
Best for flash drives since there is no seeking penalty.
Good throughput on db systems.
Disadvantages:
Reduction in number of cpu cycles used is proportional to drop in performance.
2) Deadline
Goal is to minimize I/O latency or starvation of a request. The same is achieved by round robin policy to be fair among multiple I/O requests. Five queues are aggressively used to reorder incoming requests.
Advantages:
Nearly a real time scheduler.
Excels in reducing latency of any given single I/O.
Best scheduler for database access and queries.
Bandwidth requirement of a process - what percentage of CPU it needs, is easily calculated.
Like noop, a good scheduler for solid state/flash drives.
Disadvantages:
When system is overloaded, set of processes that may miss deadline is largely unpredictable.
3) CFQ
Completely Fair Queuing scheduler maintains a scalable per-process I/O queue and attempts to distribute the available I/O bandwidth equally among all I/O requests. Each per-process queue contains synchronous requests from processes. Time slice allocated for each queue depends on the priority of the 'parent' process. V2 of CFQ has some fixes which solves process' i/o starvation and some small backward seeks in the hope of improving responsiveness.
Advantages:
Considered to deliver a balanced i/o performance.
Easiest to tune.
Excels on multiprocessor systems.
Best database system performance after deadline.
Disadvantages:
Some users report media scanning takes longest to complete using CFQ. This could be because of the property that since the bandwidth is equally distributed to all i/o operations during boot-up, media scanning is not given any special priority.
Jitter (worst-case-delay) exhibited can sometimes be high, because of the number of tasks competing for the disk.
4) BFQ
Instead of time slices allocation by CFQ, BFQ assigns budgets. Disk is granted to an active process until it's budget (number of sectors) expires. BFQ assigns high budgets to non-read tasks. Budget assigned to a process varies over time as a function of it's behavior.
Advantages:
Believed to be very good for usb data transfer rate.
Believed to be the best scheduler for HD video recording and video streaming. (because of less jitter as compared to CFQ and others)
Considered an accurate i/o scheduler.
Achieves about 30% more throughput than CFQ on most workloads.
Disadvantages:
Not the best scheduler for benchmarking.
Higher budget assigned to a process can affect interactivity and increased latency.
5) SIO
Simple I/O scheduler aims to keep minimum overhead to achieve low latency to serve I/O requests. No priority quesues concepts, but only basic merging. Sio is a mix between noop & deadline. No reordering or sorting of requests.
Advantages:
Simple, so reliable.
Minimized starvation of requests.
Disadvantages:
Slow random-read speeds on flash drives, compared to other schedulers.
Sequential-read speeds on flash drives also not so good.
6) V(R)
Unlike other schedulers, synchronous and asynchronous requests are not treated separately, instead a deadline is imposed for fairness. The next request to be served is based on it's distance from last request.
Advantages:
May be best for benchmarking because at the peak of it's 'form' VR performs best.
I/O Schedulers
Disadvantages:
Performance fluctuation results in below-average performance at times.
Least reliable/most unstable.
7) Anticipatory
Based on two facts
i) Disk seeks are really slow.
ii) Write operations can happen whenever, but there is always some process waiting for read operation.
So anticipatory prioritize read operations over write. It anticipates synchronous read operations.
Advantages:
Read requests from processes are never starved.
As good as noop for read-performance on flash drives.
Disadvantages:
'Guess works' might not be always reliable.
Reduced write-performance on high performance disks.
reserved
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Ultimate battery guide
Battery, one of the most important thing on todays phones. Even if we have awesome battery life we always want more and it is never enough.
This is the small guide to tips, trick and tweaks to improve battery life.
This topic is to share tips and tricks and basically just small talk about battery and sharing screenshots.
Use Gsam or Android battery history to show your battery life.
Our goal is to make most of the screen on time with average use of 24 hours. So lets start.
Post 1: Tips
Post 2: ROMS, kernels, undervolting, underclocking
Tips to improve battery life
Location services
One of the first thing that your device will ask when you are setting up your phone. Most of the users let them ON and just forgot about them. Location services are battery hungry and the will drain your battery like you drinking juice.
Thing is that you do not need them always, just sometimes. Turn it OFF then. I have them turned off always and when I need it I just simple turn it ON.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi scanning is thing that will drain your battery always. When you are out and you are not expecting to use wi-fi any time soon turn it off. You do not need to run scanning all the time.
You could also edit build.prop to reduce.
Edit wifi.supplicant_scan_interval. Default value is 180. You can set it higher to reduce the scanning intervals.
Signal strength / Network mode
Signal strength is always trouble for battery. Weak signal will drain more battery. Also, constant changing between 4G/3G and 2G will drain battery faster.
Tweak to this is to set your phone to only use 2G, 3G or 4G.
Example: when I am not using my phone, or it is connected to wifi my network is on 2G. I dont need 3G or 4G then and changing network state is disabled then because it will stay always on 2G. I found it has positive effect on battery.
When I need, I just simple toggle 3G or 4G.
Screen brightness
Screen is the thing that drains most of our battery. There is not much philosophy here. Higher brightness will drain more battery.
My personal setup is that I do not use auto brightness. I always change brightness manually. Right now during winter my brightness does not go more then 25% outside, and inside it is lower. At night it is under 10%.
I found that not using auto brightness has also slight positive effect on battery.
Syncing / Airplane mode / Vibration / Animations / Task Killers
Lets start in order.
Syncing: more syncing your device does it drains more battery. On your phone probably you do not to sync all accounts and apps you have every few minutes or hours. Set those apps you do not need on manual sync.
Airplane mode: I am using airplane mode during night because I do not want to be disturbed during sleep. With airplane mode battery consumption during night is 0%. Yes, zero percent.
Vibration: more your device vibrates, more battery it drains. You can reduce vibrations on keyboard settings and similar. I found that is not much effect on battery but it has slight.
Animations: animations drains your battery also and who really needs them. Personally, I am annoyed with them and I always switch them to 0 or .5. You can do that in Settings-Developers options
Task Killers: task killers, clean maters and similar software is a big NO. You dont need it. It does more damage then good.
Bloatware
Yes, bloatware. There is huge amount of bloatware on our phones and we really do not need it. So, what to do? Freeze that bloatware.
You can find list of apps HERE.
ROMS and kernels
Custom ROMs and kernels will give you in most cases better battery life then stock firmware. Plus there is huge amount of options to play with. You can read more in posts bellow.
Summary:
If you change some of those thing you will see the effect.
You can always use apps like Greenify or Tasker and play with their options.
How to follow your battery life
GSam Battery Monitor
This one of the most useful apps to track your battery. On Lollipop (even on Kitkat) it will not give you much useful info without root.
If you are using it without root everytime you reboot the phone statistic would be reset also. If you have root it will give you access to wakelocks and some other stuff, plus stats would not get reseted.
Play store link
Wakelock detector
Wakelocks, one of the painful things on phone. If you see your battery is draining faster in idle then you got problem with wakelocks. This is useful app because it shows wakelocks on very simple setup and you can discover which app is causing which wakelock.
Play Store link
Disable service
If you are using Wakelock detector you need this app also. With this app you can freeze every single process that app can launch. It will provide detail look on all processes from apps. With this app I have reduced wakelocks to 1%.
Play Store link
ROMS
Discussion about ROMs never looked nice. It always gets to what you personally like. Some ROMs will be easier on battery, some will be rough. You will never know before you try them.
Kernels
Kernels are similar to ROMS but you can play with them. Currently there is not much kernels available but you can play even with stock one.
I recommend to use Trickster MOD Kernel Settings app to play with kernel settings.
Undervoting
Undervolting is the thing when you control how much power each CPU frequency can have. Trickster MOD app gives really nice view on them. You can undervolt every frequency by itself or all in one.
My personal recommendation is to undervolt them at once. I always use -50 value. Found it stable.
Of course, you can always play with different values but remember: when you play with this do not click on option "Set on Boot" or you will end in bootloop if you click it. Click that option when you find out that values are safe for using and stable.
Underclocking
Underclocking is changing your CPU frequency. Rough truth is that we dont need our CPU to run on 2,7 GHz in normal use. Only gamers will need that probably but since this is not thread were we are aiming gamers we dont need that high frequency.
Me personally, I use always 1,7 GHz or 1,9 GHz. To my daily usage (most common like everyone else but without games) this is more then enough. Everything is still smooth and runs fast.
Governors
A CPU governor in Android controls how the CPU raises and lowers its frequency in response to the demands the user is placing on their device. Governors are especially important in smartphones and tablets because they have a large impact on the apparent fluidity of the interface and the battery life of the device over a charge.
You can find explanation hidden here.
Many users have wrote about governors and they are practically the same on most of the phones so I will copy list from droidphile.
On his topic you have more details about governors.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
I) MANUAL:
These are the 19 governors we're talking about.
1) Ondemand
2) Ondemandx
3) Conservative
4) Interactive
5) Interactivex
6) Lulzactive
7) Lulzactiveq
8) Smartass
9) SmartassV2
10) Intellidemand
11) Lazy
12) Lagfree
13) Lionheart
14) LionheartX
15) Brazilianwax
16) SavagedZen
17) Userspacce
18) Powersave
19) Performance
1) Ondemand:
Default governor in almost all stock kernels. One main goal of the ondemand governor is to switch to max frequency as soon as there is a CPU activity detected to ensure the responsiveness of the system. (You can change this behavior using smooth scaling parameters, refer Siyah tweaks at the end of 3rd post.) Effectively, it uses the CPU busy time as the answer to "how critical is performance right now" question. So Ondemand jumps to maximum frequency when CPU is busy and decreases the frequency gradually when CPU is less loaded/apporaching idle. Even though many of us consider this a reliable governor, it falls short on battery saving and performance on default settings. One potential reason for ondemand governor being not very power efficient is that the governor decide the next target frequency by instant requirement during sampling interval. The instant requirement can response quickly to workload change, but it does not usually reflect workload real CPU usage requirement in a small longer time and it possibly causes frequently change between highest and lowest frequency.
2) Ondemandx:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3) Conservative:
A slower Ondemand which scales up slowly to save battery. The conservative governor is based on the ondemand governor. It functions like the Ondemand governor by dynamically adjusting frequencies based on processor utilization. However, the conservative governor increases and decreases CPU speed more gradually. Simply put, this governor increases the frequency step by step on CPU load and jumps to lowest frequency on CPU idle. Conservative governor aims to dynamically adjust the CPU frequency to current utilization, without jumping to max frequency. The sampling_down_factor value acts as a negative multiplier of sampling_rate to reduce the frequency that the scheduler samples the CPU utilization. For example, if sampling_rate equal to 20,000 and sampling_down_factor is 2, the governor samples the CPU utilization every 40,000 microseconds.
4) Interactive:
Can be considered a faster ondemand. So more snappier, less battery. Interactive is designed for latency-sensitive, interactive workloads. Instead of sampling at every interval like ondemand, it determines how to scale up when CPU comes out of idle. The governor has the following advantages: 1) More consistent ramping, because existing governors do their CPU load sampling in a workqueue context, but interactive governor does this in a timer context, which gives more consistent CPU load sampling. 2) Higher priority for CPU frequency increase, thus giving the remaining tasks the CPU performance benefit, unlike existing governors which schedule ramp-up work to occur after your performance starved tasks have completed. Interactive It's an intelligent Ondemand because of stability optimizations. Why??
Sampling the CPU load every X ms (like Ondemand) can lead to under-powering the CPU for X ms, leading to dropped frames, stuttering UI, etc. Instead of sampling the CPU at a specified rate, the interactive governor will check whether to scale the CPU frequency up soon after coming out of idle. When the CPU comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire within 1-2 ticks. If the CPU is very busy between exiting idle and when the timer fires, then we assume the CPU is underpowered and ramp to max frequency.
5) Interactivex:
This is an Interactive governor with a wake profile. More battery friendly than interactive.
6) Lulzactive:
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites.
Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency.
New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down.
When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down.
Example:
Consider
inc_cpu_load=70
pump_up_step=2
pump_down_step=1
If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
7) Lulzactiveq:
Lulzactiveq is a modified lulzactive governor authored by XDA member robertobsc and is adapted in Siyah kernel for GS2 and GS3. Lulzactiveq aims to optimize the second version of luzactive from Tegrak by a) providing an extra parameter (dec_cpu_load) to make scaling down more sensible, and b) incorporating hotplug logic to the governor. Luzactiveq is the first ever interactive based governor with hotplugging logic inbuilt (atleast the first of its kind for the exynos platform). When CPU comes out of idle loop and it's time to make a scaling decision, if load >= inc_cpu_load CPU is scaled up (like original luzactiveq) and if load <dec_cpu_load, CPU is scaled down. This possibly eliminates the strict single cut-off frequency for luzactiveq to make CPU scaling decisions. Also, stand hotplug logic runs as a separate thread with the governor so that external hotplugging logic is not required to control hotplug in and out (turn On and Off) CPU cores in multi core devices like GS2 or GS3. Only a multi core aware governor makes real sense on muti-core devices. Lulzactiveq and pegasusq aims to do that.
8) Smartass:
Result of Erasmux rewriting the complete code of interactive governor. Main goal is to optimize battery life without comprising performance. Still, not as battery friendly as smartassV2 since screen-on minimum frequency is greater than frequencies used during screen-off. Smartass would jump up to highest frequency too often as well.
9) SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
10) Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors )
To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
11) Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
12) Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
13) Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source. Tweaks comes from 1) Knzo 2) Morfic. The original idea comes from Netarchy. See here. The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
To 'experience' Lionheart using conservative, try these tweaks:
sampling_rate:10000 or 20000 or 50000, whichever you feel is safer. (transition latency of the CPU is something below 10ms/10,000uS hence using 10,000 might not be safe).
up_threshold:60
down_threshold:30
freq_step:5
Lionheart goes well with deadline i/o scheduler. When it comes to smoothness (not considering battery drain), a tuned conservative delivers more as compared to a tuned ondemand.
14) LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
15) Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery.
16) SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17) Userspace:
Instead of automatically determining frequencies, lets user set frequencies.
18) Powersave:
Locks max frequency to min frequency. Can not be used as a screen-on or even screen-off (if scaling min frequency is too low).
19) Performance:
Sets min frequency as max frequency. Use this while benchmarking!
Schedulers
Everything has been said about them so I will use droidphile explanations.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
Q. "What purposes does an i/o scheduler serve?"
A.
Minimize hard disk seek latency.
Prioritize I/O requests from processes.
Allocate disk bandwidth for running processes.
Guarantee that certain requests will be served before a deadline.
So in the simplest of simplest form: Kernel controls the disk access using I/O Scheduler.
Q. "What goals every I/O scheduler tries to balance?"
A.
Fairness (let every process have its share of the access to disk)
Performance (try to serve requests close to current disk head position first, because seeking there is fastest)
Real-time (guarantee that a request is serviced in a given time)
Q. "Description, advantages, disadvantages of each I/O Scheduler?"
A.
1) Noop
Inserts all the incoming I/O requests to a First In First Out queue and implements request merging. Best used with storage devices that does not depend on mechanical movement to access data (yes, like our flash drives). Advantage here is that flash drives does not require reordering of multiple I/O requests unlike in normal hard drives.
Advantages:
Serves I/O requests with least number of cpu cycles. (Battery friendly?)
Best for flash drives since there is no seeking penalty.
Good throughput on db systems.
Disadvantages:
Reduction in number of cpu cycles used is proportional to drop in performance.
2) Deadline
Goal is to minimize I/O latency or starvation of a request. The same is achieved by round robin policy to be fair among multiple I/O requests. Five queues are aggressively used to reorder incoming requests.
Advantages:
Nearly a real time scheduler.
Excels in reducing latency of any given single I/O.
Best scheduler for database access and queries.
Bandwidth requirement of a process - what percentage of CPU it needs, is easily calculated.
Like noop, a good scheduler for solid state/flash drives.
Disadvantages:
When system is overloaded, set of processes that may miss deadline is largely unpredictable.
3) CFQ
Completely Fair Queuing scheduler maintains a scalable per-process I/O queue and attempts to distribute the available I/O bandwidth equally among all I/O requests. Each per-process queue contains synchronous requests from processes. Time slice allocated for each queue depends on the priority of the 'parent' process. V2 of CFQ has some fixes which solves process' i/o starvation and some small backward seeks in the hope of improving responsiveness.
Advantages:
Considered to deliver a balanced i/o performance.
Easiest to tune.
Excels on multiprocessor systems.
Best database system performance after deadline.
Disadvantages:
Some users report media scanning takes longest to complete using CFQ. This could be because of the property that since the bandwidth is equally distributed to all i/o operations during boot-up, media scanning is not given any special priority.
Jitter (worst-case-delay) exhibited can sometimes be high, because of the number of tasks competing for the disk.
4) BFQ
Instead of time slices allocation by CFQ, BFQ assigns budgets. Disk is granted to an active process until it's budget (number of sectors) expires. BFQ assigns high budgets to non-read tasks. Budget assigned to a process varies over time as a function of it's behavior.
Advantages:
Believed to be very good for usb data transfer rate.
Believed to be the best scheduler for HD video recording and video streaming. (because of less jitter as compared to CFQ and others)
Considered an accurate i/o scheduler.
Achieves about 30% more throughput than CFQ on most workloads.
Disadvantages:
Not the best scheduler for benchmarking.
Higher budget assigned to a process can affect interactivity and increased latency.
5) SIO
Simple I/O scheduler aims to keep minimum overhead to achieve low latency to serve I/O requests. No priority quesues concepts, but only basic merging. Sio is a mix between noop & deadline. No reordering or sorting of requests.
Advantages:
Simple, so reliable.
Minimized starvation of requests.
Disadvantages:
Slow random-read speeds on flash drives, compared to other schedulers.
Sequential-read speeds on flash drives also not so good.
6) V(R)
Unlike other schedulers, synchronous and asynchronous requests are not treated separately, instead a deadline is imposed for fairness. The next request to be served is based on it's distance from last request.
Advantages:
May be best for benchmarking because at the peak of it's 'form' VR performs best.
I/O Schedulers
Disadvantages:
Performance fluctuation results in below-average performance at times.
Least reliable/most unstable.
7) Anticipatory
Based on two facts
i) Disk seeks are really slow.
ii) Write operations can happen whenever, but there is always some process waiting for read operation.
So anticipatory prioritize read operations over write. It anticipates synchronous read operations.
Advantages:
Read requests from processes are never starved.
As good as noop for read-performance on flash drives.
Disadvantages:
'Guess works' might not be always reliable.
Reduced write-performance on high performance disks.
reserved
Great to see this Guide I was planning to create one as there is no guide for Sprint Version.
You may also add Amplify Battery Save module in order to configure the wakelocks timer its a wonderful app.
aukhan said:
Great to see this Guide I was planning to create one as there is no guide for Sprint Version.
You may also add Amplify Battery Save module in order to configure the wakelocks timer its a wonderful app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks.
Amplify, is this that?
DelBoy said:
Thanks.
Amplify, is this that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes this lets you delay the wakelocks specially for Google Services which very often wakes up your device, Also Converting the playservice.apk to user app and this can also be greenified which is the most battery hungry apk on the device.
aukhan said:
Yes this lets you delay the wakelocks specially for Google Services which very often wakes up your device, Also Converting the playservice.apk to user app and this can also be greenified which is the most battery hungry apk on the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are there no issues with converting playservice.apk to a user app?
TravisH997 said:
Are there no issues with converting playservice.apk to a user app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No Issues I was using it on my G3.
It's sad that we have to resort to this just to get good battery life.
Why don't they just give you good battery life out of the box? Or at minimum at 4500mah battery