can rooting and getting a custom rom give me better battery life? if so, which one(s) will do it? thanks for the help.
Kernel and kernel settings are going to have more effect on battery life.. the ROM has little to no effect, really.
EDIT: as well as the usual factors like signal strength, etc...
Going off of what 2def said, the following things will be your best friend when you need longer battery life:
CPU clock speed (underclocking)
CPU voltage (undervolting)
Signal management (LTE toggle, Airplane mode)
Fewer clock cycles per second mean less power used, a lower voltage level means less power used per clock cycle and smart signal management is simply the most efficient method of power conservation for LTE-enabled devices.
ah ok. i don't really know anything about rooting and i'm afraid i'm going to ruin my phone and it would stop working. i just need a bit more battery life though so i'm looking into it.
I've had disappointing battery life since I was on the official AOKP 4.1 builds, and I can't quite figure it out. Yesterday, I was down to half my battery, and when I looked at my screen on time in the settings, it said my screen had only been on for about 24 minutes, total. Which would mean that, on a full charge, I'd get about 48 minutes of screen on time... That seems pretty bad, to me.
Currently, I'm on the DizzyThermal AOKP 4.2 builds, and I've been using franco's kernel releases (I even have the franco kernel app, and I have it set to run in "BeastlyBattery" mode).
I wish I could figure out why my battery seems to not give me much use. I feel like I should be getting at least 2 hours of screen on time. 48 minutes is not a lot at all.