[Xperia Z5 Compact Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] NeoBeum:
I've been picking apart the google and sony apps in the stock firmware, but I just ran into some problems recovering my backups in nougat.

from what i can see in my tests, googles nearby & ui suck up alot of the play services battery usage, and almost all of the GApps have even more settings in settings now... I've managed to disable/prevent the playstore from auto updating, but i don't know if it has to do with the toggle in dev options to auto update the system.

the next biggest culprit are the sony anonymous analytics - support and diagnostics. you can run them with minimal permissions and still be able to gather reports for battery and wifi, but if you allow access to contacts, it automatically creates a hidden account, then links itself to the new xperia account manager, which i think replaced the sony account manager from lollipop and marshmallow. Tips gets divided into 3, and lets you disable the service, but it doesn't matter because it's receiving from somewhere else that i haven't found yet. probably whats new.

i feel like sony changed the 'software update' app - because before when I disabled software update on marshmallow - i wouldn't get any notifications for updates, but it's not the case for me currently.

My hunch is that XL, Whats New and Software Update all share the same info now.

I have a couple of screengrabs from a few battery tests I was doing, but at the moment the compact is on my bed next to my xbox controller being a paper weight... i'll just pull the SD out and post the pics, it clearly shows that any data/activity for some of the GApps and Sony apps are really bogging down the stock firmware

Also, earlier you said something about locked bootloader ... because this is my first sony handset in a while - im used to samsung....

i had root on 32.2.A.0.253, and the toggle switch for bootloader was greyed out, and switched off, my DRM keys were active, but would reflashing the TA just be the equivalent of samsung's triangle hide ? i probably shouldnt say this - but google really didn't like it because i basically had free reign on the playstore and could maintain licenses for every app, and then just remove it. that build got borked when i thought id try my luck with an OTA update. it accepted it... but then things got messy later.

im still new learning all this stuff still. im still trying to work my way through my Ubuntu VM on my laptop.

TWRP 3.0.2 using the 6.0.1 rootkernel 5.23 will have issues with the Nougat update. You can get it working, but when you start restoring, after the first time, my compact doesn't like the partitioning, and instead of having an internal as a FUSE, it is ROOTFS.

Then I get stuck on loops. That's why it's on my bed right now. at one stage I was able to have both marshmallow and nougat backups on my sd, and i could restore from either, but the problem was - I was changing carriers, and at the time I didn't have a working SIM, so I don't know if the backups were working 100% because i couldn't make voice calls. when i got that sorted from optus - i know for certain that one of the later backups i did on nougat screwed up because I lost the voice codecs completely, and dialing out would be completely silent, as well as incoming.

i might hop on my main laptop and get the pics off my SD and work at getting my phone back up and running and able to restore without looping

edit: i'm in the land down under by the way - so all of my stuff is Generic Australian releases i get from xperifirm

also i forgot to mention, simply by having a quick setting shortcut - will run the app as a background process, so if you have nearby, or some other crap there, everytime you sweep past the page it's on for the first time, it'll flash briefly, then turn itself back off

it's really obvious with VPN, because I have my vpn app to close itself automatically, so i can watch it open and close as a process when i open the quick settings pull down

---------- Post added at 23:05 ---------- Previous post was at 22:26 ----------

here's the TWRP 3.0.2 for 6.0.1 32.2.A.0.305 running a restore for 7.0 32.3.A.0.376...snippet of my latest log from a few minutes ago

I:Setting up '/data' as data/media emulated storage.
I:Can not create '/sdcard' folder.
I:mount -o bind '/data/media' '/sdcard' process ended with RC=0
I:Backup folder set to '/data/media/0/TWRP/BACKUPS/CBXXXXXXXX'
I:Settings storage is '/data/media/0'
Updating partition details...
I:mount -o bind '/data/media/0' '/sdcard' process ended with RC=0
I:Data backup size is 1515MB, free: 21535MB.
I:cmd: /sbin/exfat-fuse -o big_writes,max_read=131072,max_write=131072 /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /external_sd
__bionic_open_tzdata: couldn't find any tzdata when looking for localtime!
__bionic_open_tzdata: couldn't find any tzdata when looking for GMT!

the cannot create sdcard folder is what is causing my "E: legacy environment not initialized blah blah... properties may not be seen or something...... blah blah" error i think....

I had a problem where the phone thinks I have 16GB internal too... i haven't figured that one out yet

here's the battery life tests i was doing with the stock apps... the time stamp won't make sense for the first 2 because I was just coming out a flash changing settings from the automatic sync everything to my restricted stuff, walking to the bus stop on my way to watch Logan (Great Movie BTW) and only just insterted my sim card after I had lunch and the movie started...

[IMG="PIC01"]http://i.imgur.com/50yMyYRm.png[/IMG] [IMG="PIC02"]http://i.imgur.com/frfF8Ovm.png[/IMG]

The interesting thing is this from the other day:

[IMG="Test Compare"]http://i.imgur.com/AQlAbWLm.png[/IMG]

This was my restricting everthing from the Welcome First Start Setup, and then enabling the settings so it matches the settings that would be enabled, if you were to let the Welcome FIrst Start do everything and sign in to everything.

edit: almost all the stock G and Sony apps have minimum permissions and are data restricted

It sort of hammered in my hunch that some of the services are draining the battery excessively... because for both tests, doing the opposite initial setup, and it's results being ... well... opposite... and because this is my light usage on a normal day.. or spread over 2

[IMG="Usage"]http://i.imgur.com/FbICiabm.png[/IMG][IMG="Battery"]http://i.imgur.com/vhLdFrlm.png[/IMG]

while my phone's in its bung state, i could test the TWRP App over Google Play - and see what it does, but there's no option for Z5C, so I don't know what to select, and if it will bung the phone even harder.

i had a quick look, but have no idea what to choose, or where to look to actually find what version of TWRP it will flash to recovery