Question Why is the battery life so much worse on custom ROMs compared to MIUI 13?

[Linkoh]

I've been trying a few custom ROMs (ArrowOS and Ricedroid) and a few custom kernels (Vantom and Sleepy) and I've noticed that the battery life is just worse. I went from an active drain of 10%/hr and an idle drain of 0.5%/hr (on debloated MIUI) to an active drain of around 12-15%/hr and an idle drain of 0.8-1.0%/hr (on Ricedroid+Sleepy, best one so far in my experience), which is an obvious increment in comparison.
I've also seen a huge number of people complaining about terrible drain on basically every custom ROM I've seen on here.

It's confusing because performance also seems to take a hit, so it's an overall worse experience, outside of the additional functionality which is often pretty great (both ArrowOS and Ricedroid look amazing).

So why is the battery life so much better on MIUI compared to these almost (?)-AOSP custom ROMs? What can I do to further increase battery life AND performance?

 

[jnsson]

So why is the battery life so much better on MIUI compared to these almost (?)-AOSP custom ROMs?

Because MIUI has too aggressive battery management which result in apps not working as it should (i.e notification not coming). One of the reasons I use custom rom.

 

[Patoilo]

I've been trying a few custom ROMs (ArrowOS and Ricedroid) and a few custom kernels (Vantom and Sleepy) and I've noticed that the battery life is just worse. I went from an active drain of 10%/hr and an idle drain of 0.5%/hr (on debloated MIUI) to an active drain of around 12-15%/hr and an idle drain of 0.8-1.0%/hr (on Ricedroid+Sleepy, best one so far in my experience), which is an obvious increment in comparison.
I've also seen a huge number of people complaining about terrible drain on basically every custom ROM I've seen on here.

It's confusing because performance also seems to take a hit, so it's an overall worse experience, outside of the additional functionality which is often pretty great (both ArrowOS and Ricedroid look amazing).

So why is the battery life so much better on MIUI compared to these almost (?)-AOSP custom ROMs? What can I do to further increase battery life AND performance?

I´d suggest that you apply GMS Doze magisk module, Naptime app (from Francisco Franco, which also includes a magisk module) and also apply restrictions on battery usage of most Google stuff.
That really makes a difference.
I haven´t tried it yet on the RN10PRO (as my bootloader only unlocks this Sunday), but on Poco F2 Pro, while using Ricedroid and Immensity Kernel - these dozing/restriction tricks made active drain stay around 8%/hr (vs 12.5%/hr previously) and idle drain to go down to 0.4%/hr (vs 1.1%/hr previously).
Good luck

 

[Linkoh]

I´d suggest that you apply GMS Doze magisk module, Naptime app (from Francisco Franco, which also includes a magisk module) and also apply restrictions on battery usage of most Google stuff.
That really makes a difference.
I haven´t tried it yet on the RN10PRO (as my bootloader only unlocks this Sunday), but on Poco F2 Pro, while using Ricedroid and Immensity Kernel - these dozing/restriction tricks made active drain stay around 8%/hr (vs 12.5%/hr previously) and idle drain to go down to 0.4%/hr (vs 1.1%/hr previously).
Good luck

Yo thank you for the tips, I'm definitely gonna try your strategy and I'm excited to see if it works for me too! Can I ask you what kind of apps you restricted? It would be great Also did you restrict GMS or did you just put it on "optimised"?

 

[SaulPanzer]

It hasn't been my experience with Arrow 12.1 vs MIUI 13, not a like for like comparison though to be fair.

MIUI was constantly chirping away to Xiaomi and Google, and my locked down vanilla Arrow install barely does anything while idle so the battery life is pretty impressive.
I charged it to 100% yesterday, since then I've watched some stuff on youtube, listened to an audiobook, made a few calls, messed around with wallpapers etc...and it's at 70%.

Can't really say much in terms of gaming performance since dropping the play store has cut off the games I'd usually install. General usage is at least as snappy as MIUI was, probably faster since I have 1/4 of the stuff installed.

 

[Linkoh]

It hasn't been my experience with Arrow 12.1 vs MIUI 13, not a like for like comparison though to be fair.

MIUI was constantly chirping away to Xiaomi and Google, and my locked down vanilla Arrow install barely does anything while idle so the battery life is pretty impressive.
I charged it to 100% yesterday, since then I've watched some stuff on youtube, listened to an audiobook, made a few calls, messed around with wallpapers etc...and it's at 70%.

Can't really say much in terms of gaming performance since dropping the play store has cut off the games I'd usually install. General usage is at least as snappy as MIUI was, probably faster since I have 1/4 of the stuff installed.

Yeah, my stock MIUI was terrible both performance-wise and battery-wise, but after debloating it (by disabling basically every Xiaomi service / app) my phone was flying with amazing battery.

I'm guessing that you've flashed the vanilla / degoogled ROM, right? This sounds like a good idea. I flashed the gapps version and my experience was not nice, and just restricting Google Services' battery usage made my phone go 0.1%/hr overnight which is insane.
Though, active drain remains insanely high around 15%/hr... Can't find out why

 

[SaulPanzer]

I'm guessing that you've flashed the vanilla / degoogled ROM, right?

Vanilla ArrowOS 12.1, no gapps or anything like that and I'm not rooted if makes a difference.
I use F-droid for most things and a few I grabbed from the official GIT repos like brave-browser, yubikey stuff and session, netguard is blocking everything I don't actively use.
Also I'm using Nova launcher instead of Quickstep, I haven't tested to see if that makes a change to the battery life.

If you're after all the fancy extras then that won't work for you, it's slick and I like the feel of the phone but definitely feels minimal.

 

[Slluxx]

It hasn't been my experience with Arrow 12.1

Same. My phone charges in ~20 minutes and lasts several days without charging. With more screentime, thats obviously reduced but ive never had a phone/rom combo that lasts as long as this one. I hate MIUI for their agressive battery management which brings more bugs and less batterylife. And its so good that even though i want to upgrade to the next android version, im going to stay right where i am because it seems like no rom can keep up with this.

 

[Linkoh]

Vanilla ArrowOS 12.1, no gapps or anything like that and I'm not rooted if makes a difference.
I use F-droid for most things and a few I grabbed from the official GIT repos like brave-browser, yubikey stuff and session, netguard is blocking everything I don't actively use.
Also I'm using Nova launcher instead of Quickstep, I haven't tested to see if that makes a change to the battery life.

If you're after all the fancy extras then that won't work for you, it's slick and I like the feel of the phone but definitely feels minimal.

Hmm that's interesting. I don't rely on much Google stuff (except GPay and Maps which are very hard to replace), so this actually sounds appealing to me. Can I ask you to send a screenshot of Accubattery / BatteryGuru if possible? I have had horrible luck with battery life so far it seems

 

[SaulPanzer]

Hmm that's interesting. I don't rely on much Google stuff (except GPay and Maps which are very hard to replace), so this actually sounds appealing to me. Can I ask you to send a screenshot of Accubattery / BatteryGuru if possible? I have had horrible luck with battery life so far it seems

I think GPay needs extra stuff that I don't have but I don't use it so not 100% on that and I use Organicmaps but not like a car GPS so no idea if it's capable of that.

I installed Accubattery yesterday with the phone at ~97%, pretty light usage and fell asleep with a video streaming on the phone since then.
For fair disclosure I'm not entirely sure how accurate the battery measurements are since my phone says there's still nearly 1.5h of charge time left when it hits full charge.

 

[Linkoh]

I think GPay needs extra stuff that I don't have but I don't use it so not 100% on that and I use Organicmaps but not like a car GPS so no idea if it's capable of that.

I installed Accubattery yesterday with the phone at ~97%, pretty light usage and fell asleep with a video streaming on the phone since then.
For fair disclosure I'm not entirely sure how accurate the battery measurements are since my phone says there's still nearly 1.5h of charge time left when it hits full charge.

View attachment 5780339

Wow, actually insane. Thank you for sharing the screenshots! Can I ask you if you noticed any kind of hiccups or lags? Do you run it on 120hz?

 

[SaulPanzer]

Wow, actually insane. Thank you for sharing the screenshots! Can I ask you if you noticed any kind of hiccups or lags? Do you run it on 120hz?

No problem, I run it on 60hz since I don't game or do any video stuff.
There are options for 60Hz-60Hz/60Hz-120Hz/120Hz-120Hz, I can select them but with my usage I don't notice any visible difference and leave it on 60.

No lag that I can notice apart from data lag (loading a site like twitch takes a second or 2 for all the thumbnails to load, the browser itself opens instantly).

I've had 1 hiccup in the month or so I've used the ROM, for some reason the fingerprint unlock didn't work 1 time and I had to restart the phone.
I just restarted to test it and from hitting restart it only takes 17 seconds to reboot back to the lock screen so no major hassle.

The other problems are ones I make for myself by using a non Gapps vanilla ROM, so limited customization, can't install a fancy camera app, certain apps won't install without rooting etc...(non issues for me personally).