Bad Android Kernel? How To Fix

[SRFast]

My Essential PH-1 continues to suffer from high battery drain during phone idle. I have concluded the phone has a wakelock issue and never goes into deep doze/sleep. Average battery life is 16-17 hours after a full charge. I suspect the problem is a bad kernel, probably from the OTA beta upgrade and never replaced when the official upgrade was downloaded. How do I resolve this issue? I am not experienced with sideloading and don't want to brick my device. TIA

 

[Glenn Quagmire]

Put on 7.1. It is fixed. Got my new phone. Made plenty of calls, After 2 days it still has almost 2 days left.