[Nexus 4 General] grkn:
No, 50% OC is not = 50% reduced load time

Let me summarize:

OVERCLOCKING > UNDERCLOCKING FOR THE AVERAGE (POWER) USER

You load a lot of apps, you don't play games or watch videos for hours, productivity is your focus. Depending on use you could save probably 1 - 6 hours a year (see assumptions below). Battery gains won't be significant, but spending less time with the LCD/Wifi etc on could give you some gains as the CPU is one of the lower power drain components.

UNDERCLOCKING > OVERCLOCKING FOR THE 3D GAMER

You spent a lot of time playing CPU intensive games, keeping the CPU cores at max clock speed for extended periods of time. In that case you could get some battery life gains at the cost of responsiveness and app loading times - your call.

IN MORE DETAIL

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UNDERCLOCKING + UNDERVOLTING PROs/CONs

+ Reduces CPU temperature, if that matters to you.

+ IF keeping the CPU at max clock speed for extended periods of time, a lower max voltage could give you enough extra battery life to negate the time lost waiting for apps to load - your call.

- Increased load times - even on the Nexus 4 a lot of apps take > 10 seconds to launch, and don't forget in-app load times, reboots etc.

- No significant battery saving in most cases, potential for loss (if doing a lot of app loading you could even get worse battery life as the screen, wifi etc has to stay on for longer, and the screen is the main battery drain).

- Time spent finding stable voltages.

OVERCLOCKING PROs and CONs

+ Potential small battery life gain, as your device spends less time with the screen/wifi etc ON.

++ SAVES YOU TIME. I'm estimating 1 - 5 hours a year depending on usage.

- Times spent finding stable voltages and clock speeds.

-/- Apps does not RUN smoother.

Why 50% CPU does not = 50% reduced load time and why you test things

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It'd be more like 40-30% depending on relative clock speed. I did a simple test as we did NOT know that app loading was mainly CPU limited, could have been memory. And If load times didn't go down there wouldn't be ANY reason to OC and underclocking would be a good idea.

Assumptions behind an estimated 1 - 6 hours saved a year by overclocking

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Say that you're on average waiting 4 minutes a day waiting for apps to load, rebooting your phone, waiting for web pages to load, waiting for in-app content to load etc.

Overclocking can cut down that wait time up to 10%, that's nearly 1/2 a minute saved every day, 3 1/2 minutes a week, 3 hours a year. This means you can get a good return on the time it took you to overclock your device, assuming you'll keep it for a couple of years. So if that's the case, why not do it? You'll save some time and you'll enjoy using your device a bit more.

Currently I'm OCd at max 1674 Mhz @ 1225mV, otherwise using default Franco voltages and interactive governor. Stable and very snappy :) Might be able to reduce voltage and retain stability but this is fine.