[Moto Z Play Guides, News, & Discussion] lichking21st:
Battery optimization

The following was from my experience of using the Galaxy S4 for about four years, trying to get a good balance between battery and functionality on the old hardware. This should work on all android systems in general since most of them are just app installs.

Most of these will require Root, Xposed, and a few dollars to support the devs and unlock app goodies.

Maximum Battery

To squeeze the most out of your Android device at the cost of performance and push notifications, I recommend the following:

Apps:

Boot Manager

Greenify (Free)

Deep Sleep Battery Saver

Kernel Adiutor

First use Boot Manager to turn off anything that doesn't need to start on boot, this will reduce the amount of applications initially sucking up battery.

Following this, use Greenify's App Analyser to shut down apps that should only run on demand such as Facebook. Apps such as the Facebook Messenger should not be Greenified with the free version as this will prevent it from syncing. If Greenify has trouble closing apps, check the settings and make sure it's working in Root or Boost (Xposed) mode.

Using Kernel Adiutor, make sure your CPU minimum frequency is as low as it can be. You can also throttle your CPU or choose a more conservative CPU governor.

Lastly set Deep Sleep Battery Saver to keep the phone asleep, waking up every X minutes as required to sync.

Balanced

My personal preference, the following settings will increase the latency of push notifications, but should save some battery by doing so whilst still keeping the phone fairly responsive when asleep.

Apps:

Boot Manager

Greenify (Paid)

Amplify (Paid)

As with above, Boot Manager should be used to disable anything you don't want to run on startup. Personally I've disabled apps such as Kindle, Chromium, Facebook.

The paid version of Greenify is well worth it, you are now able to greenify system apps, which works very well on stock ROMs where many apps are installed in /system. In addition to this, the option for GCM push for greenified apps means that push notifications work with greenified apps.

I currently have enabled Shallow Hibernation, Aggressive Doze, Wakeup Timer Coalescing, Telephony Wakeup, Don't Remove Notification, Deep Hibernation and GCM push for greenified apps.

Note that these options require Greenify to be running in Boost (Xposed) mode.

With application background activity blocked through Greenify, there's still the problem of wakelocks from GCM applications firing too often, and other apps that aren't suited to being greenified. That's where Amplify comes in.

With Amplify, you can reduce the frequency of app wakelocks. The paid version lets you select which wakelocks to block.

As a general rule, leave Amplify running and collecting stats for at least a day, then start by limiting the rate at which alarms fire first. Start with the list of 'safe' alarms, then moving on to applications you recognize by name such as "com.skype.android.push" for skype push notification alarms. Then move on to the wakelocks list.

You should not limit any wakelock within "*"s, unless they are on the safe list. Wakelocks caused by *alarm* should be fixed within the alarms list.

Balanced (Free)

Don't want to spend a dollar? Well, I lived off this setup for a while.

Apps:

Boot Manager

Greenify (Free)

Amplify (Free)

AppOpsXposed

As with the previous few optimisation schemes, disable apps you don't want to start on boot with Boot Manager.

With the free version of Greenify however, push notifications will NOT wake up your apps, so disable them with care. System apps also cannot be greenified.

Amplify will also not help much, but its default settings do stop some wakelocks, so we install it.

We can limit the effects of power consuming apps without greenifying them by using App Ops, available here. After installing, head into the app and on the 'Device' tab, turn off the 'Keep Awake' permission for offending apps.

Audio Mods

Only the newest mod from A.R.I.S.E. seem to work on our device. I've tried to flash previous versions of ViPER with no success (The driver seems to install fine but no processing occurs).

Possible Bug:

Audio processing from Viper and Atmos stops after an interruption (call etc.)

This is actually a known issue from the old Viper4Android XDA post, and I seem to have encountered it. A temporary solution is a reboot or to just switch the effects on and off.

However there is a more permanent fix I am currently testing. In the meantime, if you are having issues with sound processing, look to the bottom of the first post here.

Notification Light

The Moto Z Play has a hidden white LED light called the 'charging' LED just between the front speakers and camera. It seems to come on when flashing firmware. Some LED control apps including this are able to utilize it for a more useful purpose.