How can you tell the benefits without providing concrete proof? I am running encrypted since I got my POCO and installed LOS16. I haven't encountered any issues at all with regards to performance or battery life.
The benefits he talked about are:
-Battery Life Improvement
-Slightly Better Response Times
This is true, but sometimes it cannot be noticed. Why?
-Battery Life Improvement
Booting to an encrypted phone has process,
First is booting. After booting, you have to type in your password/passcode, etc.
Code:
After typing the password/passcode, the CPU starts decrypting the phone
After decrypted, the device starts to soft reboot (rebooting without power loss, this is different than a usual reboot)
and booting for the second time.
It can cost a little amount of battery because of the CPU decrypting the phone and the device's first and second boot.
Maybe, you can't even notice because it has a slight impact on battery (maybe 1 or 2%) It is barely noticeable but for some users that likes to reboot their device so much, it can be a big issue.
That's why unencrypted device has slight battery life improvement.
-Slightly Better Response Times
Maybe some users experienced this seeing that their device slows down for a reason.
For me, I did some benchmarks on an encrypted device and on unencrypted device.
Code:
Parameters
-Android 10 CrDroid
-Unrooted
-No other apps other than stock apps that comes with the ROM
The R/W (Read and Write) on both devices is not the same. But not a huge difference in their scores.
Maybe the encrypted one lags on starting an app but barely noticeable on daily usage.
So unencrypted device has slightly better response times in terms of R/W
As emphasized by Immortalis (I am so sorry, I don't know the format to tag somebody)
Encryption pros: your data is safe, because if the phone gets stolen, thief can't read your data and adds the possibility to enter password before Android boot. Cons: this makes read/write operations become slower, but not noticeable in daily use, only on synthetic benchmarks.
Decryption: faster r/w, but no security.
Encryption is available on every ROM. Stock Google firmware is encrypted by default.