[Noob] Custom Kernels

[vinylgruve]

For starters Motorola Droid running 2.1 w/ Cyanogen 5.0.7.1 & Smoked Glass Esque.

Anywho, I've noticed my phone has been running a bit hotter and the battery life has decreased since updating to 5.0.7.1. But lately I've been curious about custom kernels and which to pick.

Now I did skim through the Overclocking 101 FAQ but the explanation of 5-slot versus 7-slot kernels is a little hazy (but a huge thanks to Skull One for doing the research and writing that out).

I am now wondering, what do I pick? Bekit vs P3Droid? 5 slot or 7 slot? Should I stick to medium voltage or switch to low voltage? What about On-Demand or clock speed? Should I just stick with the stock that comes with CM?

Any tips or suggestions would be super helpful. And apologies to the mods if this was posted in the wrong forum.

[mjh68]

For starters Motorola Droid running 2.1 w/ Cyanogen 5.0.7.1 & Smoked Glass Esque.

Anywho, I've noticed my phone has been running a bit hotter and the battery life has decreased since updating to 5.0.7.1. But lately I've been curious about custom kernels and which to pick.

Now I did skim through the Overclocking 101 FAQ but the explanation of 5-slot versus 7-slot kernels is a little hazy (but a huge thanks to Skull One for doing the research and writing that out).

I am now wondering, what do I pick? Bekit vs P3Droid? 5 slot or 7 slot? Should I stick to medium voltage or switch to low voltage? What about On-Demand or clock speed? Should I just stick with the stock that comes with CM?

Any tips or suggestions would be super helpful. And apologies to the mods if this was posted in the wrong forum.

Unfortunately , some of this is subjective especially because everyone's droids chipsets are all just a little different and have different tolerances.
Low voltage ideally should be cooler, but not everyone's phones can run them properly so can cause soft reboots, heat issues etc.. Especially when overclocking if your processor can't handle the increased speed without enough juice it will cause erratic behavior .
Med - Std volt will run a little warmer and drain battery faster, but some droids can't overclock without them. I know this doesn't sound helpful , but you need to try different kernels and see how your droid reacts . Even the different dev's kernels seem to be different in different phones. Bekit's kernels and P3's kernels both are excellent, but I notice a little increase in heat using Bekit's over P3's at least at different speeds.

As far as settings go ,the most popular is on demand . This setting will allow your phone to determine how much juice it needs between the maximum and minimum settings to get the job done. It ramps up to max a little slower , but runs cooler and saves battery . Performance means the phone will run at maximum pretty much all the time and burn battery quicker.

Conservative will always give you the most battery , but it is slower and takes longer to ramp up while using.

Personally, I overclock ,but I have heard alot of people say that beyond 800 mghz you don't see that drastic improvement over battery life. 600 would be to slow for me , but depends on what you like !

Phone safety the battery is stable up to about 60 C , processor up to 170 C so unless your not watching temps and really maxing out the processor its pretty hard to damage your phone .

[vinylgruve]

Thanks for the input on everything. I did kind of gather that it's trial and error but hoped not at the same time. Do you use setcpu in conjunction with all of this as well?

I did some research on the processor itself and see it's capable up to 1.2GHz, but I doubt I'd go anywhere near that. How's your battery life @ 800MHz? Are you using a low-voltage kernel or standard because low-voltage can have issues with over clocking?

[borgey401]

Thanks for the input on everything. I did kind of gather that it's trial and error but hoped not at the same time. Do you use setcpu in conjunction with all of this as well?

I did some research on the processor itself and see it's capable up to 1.2GHz, but I doubt I'd go anywhere near that. How's your battery life @ 800MHz? Are you using a low-voltage kernel or standard because low-voltage can have issues with over clocking?

I have always used low voltage kernels for all my ROMs. But then again, that's my Droid, and like the other post said earlier each Droid is different from one another. I usually OC to 1.0 GHZ and to be honest the battery life is not bad at all it's not much different at all from 800 MHZ. I always use bekits kernels I find his the best in my personally experience. If you ask different people this question you're going to get different answers tho. It's all on what reacts the best on you're phone. If i was you tho I would def stay away from increased voltage kernels and stick with low voltage, or standard ( medium ) voltage.

[skourg3]

It really is a phone specific thing. On my phone, Bekit's LV Kernels aren't stable >800mhz or so (I would get random though infrequent soft reboots). P3Droid's LV kernels are stable for me, but run much hotter than Bekit kernels. I use 7 slot standard voltage Bekit kernels (normally the 1ghz kernel) and find they seem to run overall best on my phone. Also, there is a 1.3ghz kernel out there.. I ran it for awhile, but it was completely unnecessary IMO.

As to the number of slots, it affects the amount of steps available to set your clock speeds. So a 5 slot 1ghz kernel might be able to run at 250, 400, 600, 800, 1000, where a 7 slot might have 250, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000. The kernel can only have so many slots without having problems, but I don't know of any downsides to having 7-slot kernels off the top of my head.. they've always worked well for me anyway.

Anyway, try a few out and see what works for you. I normally keep my phone at 800mhz with my normal profile (higher while on a charger, lower at low battery). Just set up profiles and have setcpu set to ondemand and you should be fine. Battery life, temp, and stability are going to require some trial and error though.