The ultimate long lasting battery solution

[HowardZ]

Ok, let me start with: I really don't personally care about the poor Rezound battery life. I am OK with the rezound taking 3 hours of heavy use on a charge, or roughly double that with an extended battery. Of course, if one uses it like a phone instead of an internet device one gets even longer use from a battery. We all have phone chargers at home, in the car, and at work, and few people really need to be away from a charger more than a few hours at a time.

I am sick of reading so many people complaining and complaining and complaining - so I got the solution for you. However, I know you like to complain, so I expect it to change to complaining about font sizes, or how long it takes to shutdown and reboot, or other trivial issues.

From my Droid X days, I had to move to using ROMs to get ICS, as Verizon was never going to give the Droid X ICS. The developer 13thangel brought CM9, gummy, and AOKP (all AOSP based ROMs) to the Droid-X. I generally use whichever one of those three is the newest release. All these ROMs have GOVERNOR choices. And the GOVERNOR choice has a huge affect on battery life. I used to experiment with SMARTASSV2 or CONSERVATIVE governors. But, of course I upgraded to an HTC Rezound, and the Droid-X gets little use, and that use is as a Wifi only device similar to how one uses an Apple iTouch.

The stock Rezound ICS uses the "on demand" governor which is not at all nice for the battery, and there seems to be no way of changing this.

A governor controls the Mhz that each CPU is operating at. The CPUs use a great deal of electricity. The Mhz they are operating on is constantly changing depending on application loads. In addition the second CPU is usually OFF unless it is needed. There are various GOVERNORs available which control the speeding up of the CPU's MHZ and slowing it down. The goal is a balance between good performance without delays or lagging, but still to have the battery last a long time on a charge. It is a balancing act and there are many Governors to choose from. The SMARTASSV2 Governor has a very good reputation.

Thus one needs:
1. htcdev unlock
2. rooted
3. S-Off (the kernel can be installed with S-ON, but there are more steps involved - less simple to install)
4. custom recovery - either TWRP or Amon RA (either flashed to the recovery partition, or booted up via fastboot when needed)
5. custom kernel like this one: [KERNEL]Rezound Cubed ICS Kernel 2.0.0[Complete Rebuild 09.18.12] - xda-developers (of course do a nandroid backup before installing).
6. free app called System Tuner

of course make a nandroid backup first.
of course I am not responsible if your phone gets messed up
of course research and read before trying anyting, and learn how to undo anything you are thinking of doing to your phone
One needs to choose the correct kernel version depending on which kind of ROM one is using. I use the global one.

My phone is currently on
htcdev unlocked
rooted
s-off
4.03.605.2 global RUU leak
Nova launcher
all stock - stock hboot, stock recovery (I fastboot boot TWRP recovery img file when I need to use it)
and now, the boot/kernel is the "Rezound Cubed ICS Kernel".

The kernel replaces the boot partition's contents with the new kernel, and also replaces some files in the system partition. So, installing this means your system partition is no longer stock, but it isn't running on a custom ROM.

The kernel's features are controlled by the free app called System Tuner.

Now, System Tuner has loads of features - and these features if not used correctly can really mess up the phone. I personally am not interested in undervolting the CPU - which is one of its features. I am only interested in having the capability to switch among the CPU GOVERNORS.

So, when running System Tuner:
1. Click on the CPU icon which is near the bottom of the screen
2. You will see "Gov. on demand", click on "on demand" to change it to smartassV2
3. To the right of the governor's name is a button called "boot settings", click on "boot settings"
4. Click on "Re-apply CPU settings" and make sure "On boot completed" is selected - this makes sure your govenor choice will still be selected after a reboot.
5. exit the System Tuner app and reboot phone - then check again that the governor you chose is still being used.

System Tuner can do many many changes to your system - don't ask me about them.

I now find that GSAM has more than tripled the estimated time left on battery power.

So, rather than bit**ing and moaning and complaining about your battery life, I suggest you read and cautiously take the steps necessary to use a better GOVERNOR.

Regards,

Howard

 

[mountainbikermark]

Since my screen is by far my biggest user I went another route.
Foxfi on the phone,pdanet on the Nexus7 and Tablet Talk on both. I basically use my Nexus7 as my phone frequently now, making my battery life triple easily with no root or any other modifications.
I started doing it to get more use from the tablet and found a side benefit that it helped my phone battery life.
Support Our Troops! !!!
<><
From my Beano

 

[Taco]

Great write up HowardZ! In addition I would think using setcpu and its screen off or battery % profiles to overclock or underclock would help too. My Droid got a solid 36 hours of use off of one charge with basic use. Moderate use got me 24 hours easily.

Sent from my stock rooted ICS Rezound using Droid Forums!

 

[HowardZ]

Great write up HowardZ! In addition I would think using setcpu and its screen off or battery % profiles to overclock or underclock would help too. My Droid got a solid 36 hours of use off of one charge with basic use. Moderate use got me 24 hours easily.

Sent from my stock rooted ICS Rezound using Droid Forums!

From what I have read one can not use both setcpu and system Tuner. Can't even have them both installed at once. Seems the folks at xda prefer system Tuner.

My experience on the Droid X taught me that every rom breaks something, and it is a choice between wanting the rom's features versus what the rom's breaks. In this case it is not a rom but a kernel along with system Tuner app.

Twice today when going from wifi to 4G I had super slow or possibly no 4G data. A reboot fixed it. Sometimes I check my governor with System Tuner and find it went back to using on demand governor.

Twice today my phone started rebooting while I was in the System Tuner app.

Now when I reboot I still get my doctor who boot animation but no doctor who music.

So there seems to be some inconvenient problems with this kernel or System Tuner. Or perhaps I need to learn more about using System Tuner.

If I really hated the rezound battery life I wouldn't mind, but I am thinking about restoring my nandroid backup to go back to stock. Maybe in a day or two I'll go back to stock.

 

[HowardZ]

Turned out I had Jrummy toolbox Lite installed.
I never used it, but it kept trying to force the on-demand governor.
Starting over again - with Jrummy toolbox Lite uninstalled.

 

[HowardZ]

Well, I am sorry to say that most of the time when I try to select a governor the phone crashes and reboots.

I got about 2/3 through the 151 page thread and read about others experiencing the same problem.

It looks like this kernel is not ready for every day use. So I restored my nandroid backup and am back to rooted stock.

Perhaps in a month this kernel might be ready?

 

[HowardZ]

Well, I have given up on my efforts to find a stable kernel which has good governors to use for tripling the life of our batteries.

As mentioned above, the Cubed Kernel results in frequent freeze/reboots especially when changing governors using the System Tuner app. I have tried two different versions with similar results.

It is a shame that the developer releases software that does not do basic functions as well as the stock kernel. I'd think he would at least test his software before releasing it. That's what I did during my software career - even for a maintenance release - there must be at least some testing to assure its basic important functions work. When I pointed this lack of testing I got flamed. I don't expect the author to test his kernel on every firmware and every ROM, but at least he should announce something like "I tested it on firmware xxx and ROM yyy and it works well."

I tried another kernel - Vigor ICS 3.0.16 - this one is built from the HTC released kernel source code. There were two zip file available - one for our official ICS and one that should work on the Global RUU leak. I found that both zip files installed with errors. The problem is that zip files for android must have no compression. Android has no capability to decompress zip files. The 7-Zip program can create zip files where the zip file is just a container file and the files inside it have no compression. So the result is that nobody in the multi page thread ever really succeeded in installing this kernel. The libraries got installed, but not the kernel - people just ignored the error message from the bootloader. So, being the first one to use this kernel, I found it very stable with no freeze/reboots. I could control the governors using either IncrediControl or System Tuner software without any issues. However, the governor choices that come with the HTC source code did not appear to do anything wonderful with making our batteries last alot longer. In addition, my Wifi would not turn on - indicating that the supposed fix to make the OTA ICS kernel work on the Global RUU leak - well this fix doesn't work. I explained to the developer how to make his zip files correctly, and commended him on how stable his kernel is.

The way I learned about zip files is I previously downloaded a Doctor Who animation installer, also from XDA, which would not work. I googled and learned how to make an animation zip file and how to modify the xml file for it. One of the guides I found was written by our own moderator Mr. Smith. Well, after I got it all working, I gave my files to the developer of the theme/animation thread and he supposedly incorporated the changes in over 100 boot animations which people can download from his thread. Once again someone who was offering software that doesn't work. He either never tested it, or perhaps never tested it on a plain stock rooted rezound.

So, no luck yet. I am just amazed how amateurish our developers are for the Rezound. They publish software that they don't even try themselves. The one with zip files that can't install - that's for sure that he never tried to install it himself because if he tried he would see the error message from the bootloader. The other one - I don't think he ever tested it - or else he would quickly say that it works great and specify which firmware and/or ROM he used when testing it.

I am really very disappointed with the Rezound developers. They handout software with major problems or which just plain don't work - which should never be handed out to the public until they at least get it working decently on their own phones. It's OK to say it works great except for a few minor functions, and then specify them.

Then equally surprising is the many people who love running bad software. They somehow feel that letting the developer know that it doesn't work helps him. But, if it doesn't work on the developer's phone, telling him that it doesn't work on other phones doesn't help at all.

I had much much better experiences from the Droid X developers.

Anyway - go back to complaining about the Rezound battery life, as I have no solution for you. Any future solution, I think will be with the governor. In my opinion, we have a great phone, but not very great developers for it.

 

[LoudRam]

Howard, you have a lot more patience that I do. That's the main reason I haven't rooted. Like you said every Rom breaks something. That and I found solutions to my two biggest reasons to root. I think I'll stick with my extended battery. All day with heavy use and over two days with moderate use. That's enough for me. I'm happy with it.