[G 2014 General] Duck86:
Basic ROM Settings​

The biggest battery drain on devices are screen on time/brightness, WiFi/Data & GPS. Therefore, it makes most sense to get those basic settings right before you do anything else.

Screen/Display:

Screen brightness is the big killer of batteries. The more light that you send to the screen, the more power you need to use. Simple. On a similar principle, dark themes will use less power than light themes, that is why all the old android themes were black with white writing, to save on battery consumption. It is true that AMOLED screens have the most to gain in savings from using dark themes, but regular screens will also benefit.

There is an xposed module called 'Minimum Brightness' which will allow you to reduce the brightness on your phone to levels below that normally allowed by your ROM. This is very handy, especially if you, like I do, use your phone at night in bed (and don't want to wake your sleeping partner). It has the added bonus of saving battery power by sending less power to the screen. The module can be installed directly from the Xposed Installer. Don't forget to activate the module and reboot. Once you have it installed there won't be any additional app in the drawer, the module just uses the standard brightness slider and alters the applied values.

Believe it or not, but the phone’s auto rotate function can potentially use quite a lot of battery power. Having auto rotate enabled uses about 3-5% CPU power constantly. Contrary to popular belief (mostly bandied about by task killer app devs), high RAM usage has very little impact on battery life, rather it is CPU usage that is the real killer. Do your battery a favour and turn off the auto rotate unless you need it. I have a tasker profile set to only auto rotate my screen when maps is launched.

Turn off Auto Brightness. More often than not, auto brightness overcompensates for the amount of light that is in a room, turning up the brightness more than you actually need, plus it is another sensor that is always running and using up CPU. Set your screen to the lowest setting you feel comfortable with and only turn it up when you go outside.

Alteratively, if you can't live without auto brightness, use gravitybox to change the auto brightness settings to levels that suit you.

I am firmly in the habit of pressing the power button to turn off the screen when I put the phone down, but for those of you who are not, that is why we have screen timeouts. Set it to 2mins, or less if you are comfortable with that.

WiFi/Data/Sync:

By default, even when your WiFi is switched off, your phone scans for WiFi networks in the background. This understandably uses battery power that could be better used elsewhere. To switch off this feature, go to:

Settings > WiFi > Menu (3 dots in upper right corner) > Advanced > Scanning always available > Off

There is another option in this menu also: ‘Keep WiFi on during sleep’. This option doesn’t matter if you are following the Tasker part of this tutorial because later we will be creating a profile which will automatically override this option. If you are not following the Tasker Section however, you could check this box for extra battery savings.

Notifications are something we all take for granted as users of smartphones. But we don’t really need as many of them as we get. Have a think of all the notifications you get and see if you can live without any of them. Every app that is sending you notifications is another background process using up your battery power.

You can also turn off autosync and use tasker to control the phone sync settings instead (see tasker section below)

Settings > Accounts > Menu (3 dots in top right) > Auto Sync: Off

Background data uses up battery life and if you are on a limited data plan, turning off background data for unnecessary apps can help here too. Go to Settings > Mobile Data and select the apps you wish to restrict.

Location:

This is probably the simplest one. Turn it off. You don’t need it on all the time. Turn it on when needed, or create a Tasker profile that will turn it on for you when you launch certain apps.

Bluetooth:

While bluetooth is not quite the battery hog it was a few years ago, it still does use up battery life that could otherwise be saved. Turn it off or set up a tasker profile to intelligently handle the service.

Other Settings:

OK Google/Google Now - The always on microphone and the constant background data sync is a big battery drainer. If you are a user you should decide what is more important to you, better battery life or the convenience of the app.

Motorola Apps - They are also big battery drainers. If they are on your device and you don't use them, freeze them with an app like titanium backup.

Native Phone Battery Saver App - If you are following the rest of this tutorial, turn it off. You’ll no longer need it as you’ll be replacing everything it does with stuff that Tasker can do and it will just be yet another app running in the background that you don’t need.

Smart Unlock/Face Unlock - Yes its cool, but unnecessary. Front camera on to save your poor finger the trouble? What do you think that is doing to your battery life? Switch it off.

Window animations will also drain the battery, you can turn those off by going to Settings > Developer Options and turning off 'Window Animation Scale', 'Transition Animation Scale' and 'Animator Duration Scale'. I tend to leave them on because I like the look of them :)

Live Wallpaper - Possibly the most pointless thing I have seen on a smartphone. If you are reading this and have a live wallpaper, you should know better. Shame on you.

Vibrations - Turn them off too, every shake uses battery life.

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Advanced ROM Settings​

CPU Governor:

Another setting that will effect your battery life is the cpu governor that your ROM uses. You can check out what governor your ROM uses by downloading an app like Kernel Adiutor. Depending on the ROM and Kernel you are using, you will have different options for different governors. Take a look at this guide to help you choose the right governor for you.

CPU Frequency:

The speed that your cpu runs at also has a huge effect on the battery life of your device. I have left my maximum frequency at 1.19ghz, but reduced my minimum frequency from 787mhz down to 300mhz. This was, again, using Kernel Adiutor.

Multi core Power Saving: Enabled

*Notes: You must have root in order to change CPU settings and the Stock kernel has only very limited options to change CPU settings.

Hotplugging:

Intelli_plug is a total replacement for Qualcomm's proprietary mpdecsion.

it hotplugs/unplugs cpu cores based on load demand of the system.

mpdecision is a closed source proprietary solution from Qualcomm and it's not very efficient at hotplugging/unpluggng cpu cores leading to hotter cpu and poorer battery. Intelliplug is a complete OPEN Source solution to mpdecision and it is done in kernel instead of userspace (which it has to poll the kernel in order to make its decisions therefore inherently slower than in kernel solution like intelliplug).

MPDecision: Off

Intelliplug: On

Profile: Conservative

Touch Boost: Off

Hysteresis Value: 8

Threshold Value: 350

Set Maximum Screen Off Freq: 600mhz

GPU:

Max Freq: 450mhz

Governor: simple_ondemand*

Simple GPU Algorithm: enabled

Laziness: 5

Ramp: 4

*Similar to CPU governors, the options may be different for you depending on your ROM/kernel

Other Tips:

The standard Facebook app uses a lot of battery, and has many privacy issues. There is another app called 'Tinfoil for Facebook' that is an amazing alternative, and uses absolutely no battery when its not being used. Only catch is, there's no facility for push notifications. Which is fine by me. I always have them off anyway.

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OK, now that we have all that covered, lets move on!