[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] AnonVendetta:
Right now I've testing Phh Treble 8.x (based on pure AOSP) for the past 2 weeks, and I'm mostly liking what I see.....except the battery drains too fast. I'm getting about 4 to 6 hrs SOT. Drain when idle/dozing isn't too bad, except when my 4G LTE signal gets weak in certain areas.

Some basic info:

Kernel: Schwifty v5

SELinux always permissive (by unpacking boot.img with Android Image Kitchen, making a few edits, then repacking)

ROM is pre-rooted with Phh's Superuser (already built into ROM, not by me, I wont touch Magisk)

ROM is deodexed, I did this manually with SuperR's Kitchen, the GSI as provided is odexed by default

Xposed installed, with 2 modules (ForceDoze for doze parameter tweaking, and GravityBox O)

Data/cache are ext4 (I gave up on F2FS after getting some extreme corruption/instability on other devices I own)

Bootstack: I have tried [MENTION=319057]Oki[/MENTION]'s modded B12 bootstack, as well as LOS 15.1 bootstack

Modem: LOS 15.1

boot.img/vendor.img sourced from LOS15.1

No GApps package/components are installed (I do, however, use MicroG, Play Store, and F-Droid for apps)

I currently charge twice a day, I use Battery Charge Limit to limit charging to 80/85%, and start charging between 10 to 20%. I dont charge in between at all, except maybe for short emergency sessions when I cant afford risking the battery dying. I use the ZTE stock power supply and a Anker PowerLine braided cable (original ZTE cable shorted out months ago and couldnt reliably transfer data to/from PC). Ampere shows my battery capacity to be 3100mah, which I believe is normal and healthy for an A7.

I have tried with the stock boot.img (patched by Schwifty), and my modded img that sets SELinux permissive, no difference in battery life. I need it set that way because my dalvik cache directory doesnt populate after deodexing, SElinux blocks something when enforcing, making for long boot times (up to several mins). I have also tried without Schwifty. I tried Hellsgate as well but there are too many app forced closed that does not occur with Schwifty.

I deodexed the ROM because I use MicroG, it requires a patched framework.jar for signature spoofing support. But you cannot patch an odexed framework.jar.

In regards to bootstacks, there seems to be no discernable difference in battery life, regardless of whether I'm using modded B20 BS or LOS15.1 BS. It is said that B12 BS isnt battery efficient, but LOS BS doesnt seem to be any better.

As for the modem, maybe I will try with B12/B20 stock A2017U modem instead of LOS, I personally believe that the modem may be playing a role in this, since battery seems to drain much faster in low signal areas.

I chose LOS boot.img/vendor.img as the best choice, because they are updated regularly, whereas our other devs dont update these images (required by Treble ROMs) very often. ZTE never blessed up with official Treble support, so the onus is on the dev community to carry the mantle and keep these up to date.

At this point I am about ready to go back to AOSP Extended Nougat and call it a day, SOT there was much better with Radioactive kernel. But Phh Treble is smooth, stable, no lags or crashes, and I have found alternatives/workarounds for all the functionality I need. I am a minimalist by philosophy, I dont like to install lots of apps or unnecessary stuff, preferring to keep things to the essentials. But I would like to continue testing for awhile longer before turning back.

I started this thread to solicit suggestions in regards to better battery life on Treble ROMs.

A few absolutes:

1. I will not use Magisk under any circumstances

2. Pie ROMs wont be considered, since Xposed doesn't support Pie

3. I will not use LOS as my ROM, because it gets too many OTA updates (almost every day). I like to make direct changes to the system partition (no Magisk systemless mods), frequent updates mean I constantly have to undo/redo my changes. Phh Treble gets updates once every couple of months, I can deal with that cycle.

Thanks!