Hello, I have been using a pinephone since 2020 and a L5 for about 6 months, on both phones the battery drops a lot very quickly when in use. lately i tested lineage OS on the pinephone and the battery lasts much more, kind of the experience with a normal android. So I wonder how and why an android lasts so much at least when you’re using the phone, considering that AOSP is FOSS I thought it would be easy to port the things regarding the battery lasting longer. I suppose it’s not about the kernel itself but more about the apps? Anyways I am very grateful for all those people making a Linux phone possible.
2 Likes
It is what happens when you have corporations with millions of dollars invest in their smartphones’ ecosystems for over a decade.
1 Like
I understand, but I thought that AOSP being open-source it would be simple to simply copy/port whatever code makes the battery last longer
I don’t think that’s that easy. Power consumption happens on so many edges, beginning with hardware, Kernel, OS, up to the least little edge of any app. You can save power if you put apps into suspend, but also if the app itself has math with power-saving in mind. And sometimes it’s also a question of usability vs power saving. There is no default solution you can just copy paste, especially with different systems.
You may can copy few things. But in the time you study the code of AOSP you also could write a similar solution by your own. At the end you still have a huge amount of work and no solution in few days or weeks.
4 Likes
There are larger issues than simply porting it: reliance on AOSP is also reliance on Google. Purism clearly want to forge their own path and are choosing one of the more expensive routes.
1 Like
Makes sense, I wish I could do more to help with it than just waiting.
1 Like
Are you interested in tackling the software development required?
Interested yes, but I don’t have the skills…just a random long time linux user.
2 Likes
Try Kernel OS or FOSS OS. 
1 Like
never heard of those before lol
1 Like
What distro and interface did you have on the PinePhone before installing LineageOS? My impression is that Phosh is more energy efficient than Plasma Mobile, and Sxmo is the most energy efficient, but I might have been just seeing the differences in the Linux OSes on the PinePhone, and not the interfaces.
Google added a lot of power saving features to the Android kernel and Android has standard power saving features like Doze and App Standby and App Hibernation. Android’s battery saving mode will automatically put background processes to sleep if they haven’t acquired a wake lock.
Most of PureOS’s software wasn’t written with energy efficiency as a primary goal. I know that Purism has made Phosh more energy efficient over time, but it is still based on a wlroots+Wayland+GTK+GNOME stack for desktop PCs and GNOME applications which weren’t optimized for energy efficiency like Android.
3 Likes
I have used arch, mobian, pmos and manjaro as daily drivers on the pinephone, mostly with phosh as I don’t like plasma a lot. Sxmo I tested for a few hours and did not like.
1 Like