[Galaxy Note 4 Original Android Development] gekkehenkie11:
Many people complain about Touchwiz too, how awful it is how they cant even get 3 hours of battery life with it. And then they have all syncing on, network always available and/or some apps that are just always waking up their phone or their home network is horribly configured so that it keeps their phone awake. There's even an whole thread full of people complaining there's a wifi hardware bug that keeps their phone awake: http://xdaforums.com/note-4/general/explanation-horrible-note-4-battery-t3004274 while it's NOT the case and it's people themselves who have their network misconfigured so that it keeps their phones awake, like I explained in that thread: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=58987722&postcount=99

And then people install stuff like Xposed, custom kernels, Viper4Android and then come complaining here about battery life. Really, if you complain here at least make sure you use NONE of that stuff. I'm not saying you should never use things like that at all, but they can be a major factor of battery drainage. So if you want to debug your batterylife, then first flash everything back to stock CM12 (but WITH my kernel including intellithermal that I posted, using the instructions: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=61491156&postcount=2693 ) ! Then if you have figured it all out and battery is good, only then start playing and testing with other kernels, Xposed and stuff like that.

Look it's really simple. When you go to bed tonight and you have your wifi off and your mobile internet off, as well as all other hardware features like bluetooth, gps, nfc etc, your battery will be 0-2% lower the next morning, after 8 hours of sleep. That's better than touchwiz, where it will be 1-3% range. If you have your mobile internet on, it will be about 2-4% on CM12, where it will be 3-6% on Touchwiz. Again, better.

Then compare battery life while you actually do stuff. Go web browsing on both systems. But on CM12, make sure you'll have the kernel flashed that I post earlier, together with my app, like I explained. If you don't change intellithermal settings, your battery will drain about the same as Touchwiz in 10 minutes of web browsing. But if you use for example faux clock to change the throttle settings in CM12, for example change the Thermal Frequency throttle temperature from the default 80 to 62, which works quite well for me, then you will see that you will still have really nice performance while you will now easily beat Touchwiz on 10 minutes of web browsing !

In the past yeah CM12 had slightly worse battery life than Touchwiz, not while standby, that has always been been better, but while actively doing things. Why ? Cause the CPU wouldnt get throttled so people would compare a 1.1 ghz speed on Touchwiz to 2.4 ghz speed on CM12, which consumes more than twice as much power. Now with intellithermal installed, it will just throttle like Touchwiz and battery life is now easily better than touchwiz, especially if you lower the throttle threshold.

And when comparing things, keep in mind that:

1) screen brightness matters, so keep that the same

2) screen whiteness matters, so actually visit the same web page (the whiter it is, the more battery it consumes).

3) At least make sure you have the same hardware features enabled

3) Make sure you use the same settings for the important features (syncing, wifi always available etc)