Frequently Asked Questions
Most asked Questions yet some are the most annoying and dumbest..
Q: Hi. Thanks for the wonderful kernel release, now what app should I use to play with settings..??
A: **Synapse**by Andreilux which is available from the Google PlayStore..
Q: I am using Synapse to dump logs where do I look for them..??
A: On your sdcard you would have seen a folder named "Synapse" then inside it there would be a folder for logs(very straight-forward)..
Q: I am getting "no uci support" error when running Synapse..??
A: You failed to flash the reset kernel 1st..
Q: What the heck is BLX..??
A: Battery life extender or should we simply imply battery health preserver..originally done by @Ezekeel and now ported by @Savoca more details from this page by Ezekeel
Q: Why do we freakin need the reset kernel..??
A: All the configurations and necessary scripts to run Synapse are preloaded there..you can dirty flash the kernel though it wont be guaranteed whether Synapse will work on boot..
Q: Why is my phone getting Random reboots using your freakin wannabe kernel..??
A: You might want to look into 3 things that might get you in trouble..
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Unstable undervolting..you might have been trying too hard to achieve the same undervolt from your previous kernel..it won't be here..
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Hotplug settings..you might have been playing around by now with the Hotplug well there are certain values there that can make your phone too finicky so you might just want to do some trial and error and at the same time some reading(below) about what are the parameters about..
- As mentioned by XDA-member lewonsky you might want to uncheck the SPC(Standalone power collapse) idle mode on the CPU Tab(2nd check box if not mistaken)..not all chips are created equal..i can use this idle state w/o issues on my wife's phone..may be different for your case..
Q: OMG my phone settings do not stick with Synapse..??
A: On first launch of app do READ and UNDERSTAND the preface message...
Q: Why can't you put some of this and that..??
A: Simplicity..close to stock function as much as possible..i will only add features i feel that i like adding and find beneficial..
Q: Why no high OC so lame!!!...
A: Read above..yet this still can be considered to perform better than Stock and yet its fully loaded when it has too be demanded with features..Try it you won't die for sure..
Q: OMG toolchain is 4.9.x...ewwwwwww..yuck so lame!!
A: GCC 4.9.x is the stable release 4.9.x is a pre-release and is under development..
Q: OMG this is great!!!..When are we gonna get the next update..??
A: Next question please....I hate questions that begin with WHEN.....
Q: Why is Battery bad??..??
A: this is a Work in Progress project..so you and me can and will experience some issues along the way..also you are ought to observe the performance for at least 36hours before things settled down..also would not mind to see your issue as long as you can provide logs..
Q: Why no Fast Charge??
A: HTC implements a counter code to something that will exceed 1000ma so IMHO they know that the components are not guaranteed safe when going over that regulation..as i have said i won't incorporate stuff thats gonna break your phones and render them useless..
Q: Why no ZRAM??
A: We do have a heapful of RAM and i am striving to squeeze a bit more out..ZRAM adds up a bit overhead to the whole system resulting to an additional battery cost due to the CPU cycles used on compressing and decompressing..
Q: Why Games laggggggggg???
A: Some games are not optimized to run on Adreno some Titles from GLU have issues scaling to the highest GPU Clock(to mention is Robocop) unlike GameLoft Games which do not have issues..to check whether GPU is scaling you can go to this path via root explorer [B]/sys/devices/platform/kgsl.3d.0/gpu_time_in_state[/B]..this file displays how much time the gpu spent in the corresponding clocks..(lowest is 200 and highest is 450) if values for the highest GPU clock is not 0 then it means it stayed on that frequency for that long..
Q: OMG!! Sweep2wake!! does this drain my battery??
A: its a battery hogger..it will add up another 2-3% drain since it keeps the screen IRQ awake..there are other apps/mods that can substitute the waking action..as i have mentioned and want to elaborate more stuff does not guarantee its good, there's always a kick back to the nuts..more features you want the more things get complicated the more codes mess up and it adds up to a bit of battery overhead..you can monitor the wake activity via BBS since i added a wakelock flag for all wake options..wakelock flag is "touchpanel_wake"..
Q: What the hell is "suspend_backoff" doing on the top of my wakelock list??
A: its the wakelock result of enabling any wake options, it shows the number of times the phone did not enter sleep because of an external activity or app in the background doing something to prevent phone from suspending..
Q: Why no MLG??
A: MLG was never a native feature to the M7 to begin with..
Q: Now what the heck is Entropy??
A: Entropy is a pool of random numbers that applications have access as a part of its resources..it was noted By Google/Android Devs some time ago that Entropy pool starts to sink at quite some time after ICS was launched and up to date there are still debates about this..an innovation introduced in my kernel is an automated Entropy generator so that everything loads up smoothly, fast and off course the Entropy pool does not run empty..this does not have any side-effect or whatsoever as seeding is done automatically with kernel triggers(Credits to a great Mentor of mine)
Q: Why no extra CPU Governors??
A: Ondemand has been tweaked to suffice to all your needs..I will not put any other governors that are just derivatives from the existing ones..also I added back in Interactive(From Google) so you have quite a handful IMHO..Conservative was also overhauled to be a bit conscious with heavy loads albeit still being one of the best when it comes to being a powersaving Governor..
Q: What setting do you use for Hotplug??
A: Depends on what you want your phone or how would you like it to perform..actually you cant mix battery and performance on one serving it still needs user-defined settings so will share how the hotplug options work..
- Number of CPU's boosted - Allows you to use the input boost function built within the kernel and at the same time is supported also by HTC's Ondemand, preferably if you want your phone to be slick and responsive use at least 2 cores..else if you deem to have the best battery life just use 1..note that upon our observation choosing one CPU frequently keeps at least 3 cores online for a short period rather than choosing 2 though at quite some time the extra 2 will be offline and things are not that smooth..preferrably 2 is ideal as the 2nd core will just stay idle and just makes sure things are smooth also this keeps the 1st core to use lower clocks rather ramp it up quickly..(preferred = 2)
- Boost period before CPU(N) goes offline - Time that usually keeps the other CPU's on boost online before it goes off..typically for short periods of use, you will see the benefit of having this value around 2-3 seconds(unit is in MS) as if you are continously using your phone it will feel smooth as it still keeps the other cores online..though again for battery life values from 1 second down to 500ms would be ideal as it quickly turns off cores when uneeded..(preferred = values from 1000 down to 500ms)
- Boost period for CPU(N) - This is the field where you can control how long the hotplugged core would stay online, for this field typical value of 2-3 seconds is ideal as you may need to do something with the phone within those timeframes also helps the responsiveness of system..(preferred = 2000 to 3000ms)
- Sampling history size - Well if you want a faster response from Hotplug setting this to 5-10 makes it a monster, else values 10 and up are preferred to be mild..(preferred = 10 or should depend on your preference should least have an impact overall for this value..though the aggressiveness of Hotplug will be notceable)
- Sampling update rate - How frequent you want to sample??well for this field 10 seconds should be enough as if we translate it, it will take/evaluate 6 samples in a minute..that value is ideal though if you want it to save more juice increasing it to 15 seconds and reducing the Sampling history size to a proportion to this value could result in Magic..(preferred = 100 above for Mild and 50 below for Aggression)
- Offline load - This is a load threshold wherein helps on short periods where the cpu has to go offline and still has something or something comes up for it to do..setting this above 3 will make Hotplug ramp up at least 3 cores and waits a bit longer for it to unplug other online cores as it serves as a "wait" before cores can completely suspend/shut-off..(preferred = 0)
- Fast-lane load - This field improves latency and efficiency when turning cores on..should be aggressive when values lesser than the default(95) one is set..(preferred = default)
- Maximum number of cores to Hotplug - Should be easier for you to decide on how much you would use..(preferred = 4 for full potential and 3 or less to save more juice)
- Minimum number of cores to Hotplug - Should stay always to one, unless you want to waste battery..(preferred = 1)
Q: Can you explain the Voltage control..??
A: I have implemented the same approach @Stratosk did on Mako, he basically grouped the frequency table into 2 categories Higher and Lower frequencies, this way we can allow lower clocks to be undervolted a bit more than the higher clocks which requires a tad of voltage to be stable(specially when Overclocked), also by default there is a voltage boost of 25mV which Qualcomm implemented to stabilize and prevent Cache errors which can lead to instability or other issues. Normally all you know/see is just the plain Voltage table, but in reality what we have under the hood is final_voltage = voltage_from_acpu_table + 25mV at quite some time the extra voltage boost is not shown clearly..voltage boost applies to Chips that are binned good/higher..the SLOW binned chips do not use voltage boost thus because they already use a higher voltage table compared to the higher binned chips.
Q: I am having a hard time figuring what would be the best setting for my Phone, can you please help me with that..??
A: Well basically given all the information about the Hotplug from one of the topics above, I'd say there are different ways to play with it that will depend on how you utilize your phone. I'd say you scan some samples below that i have tested out myself based on different scenarios that I usually do with my Phone.
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Sleek and quick response - this is intended for users who always want the phone to be responsive and quick. this can be achieved with the ff. settings:(Actually the default settings should be best for this)
Number of CPU's boosted: - 2 or more
Boost period before CPU(N) goes offline: - 500ms or more(stays online longer)
Boost period for CPU(N): - 2000ms or more(stays online longer)
Sampling Update rate: - 10ms to 50ms
Offline Load: - 2% to 5%(takes a long time before shutting a core down)
Fastlane Load: - 100% or less
Input/Output is busy: - ENABLED