[How-To] SetCPU profiles

[KSmithInNY]

I figured I'd document a fairly comprehensive profile setup in SetCPU to save battery but keep the phone acting snappy as ever.

[Warn] CM7 users!! You need to make sure Menu>Settings>Cyanogenmod settings>Performance>CPU - "Set on boot" is not checked! If this is checked, please uncheck it, reboot the phone, then proceed.[/warn]

Prereqs:
- Phone must be rooted
- You need the SetCPU app. There are 2 ways to obtain the app. The first is to buy it from the market. Yes, this costs money BUT your supporting a developer of an awesome app and anytime he updates said app you get notified through the market and can easily install the newest version. The second way to obtain the app is free from the developers thread on XDA.
- Make a fresh NAND backup of your phone (just in case you get crazy)
- An OC-able processor is suggested otherwise you need to adjust some numbers based on your phones inability to OC

Concept:
What we're going to do is setup specific scenarios which will control your CPU. These scenarios can be based on performance, battery saving, or general protection of your device. The profiles I am going to describe below are a mixture of these three things.

How-To setup profiles
- Open SetCPU
- Grant it SU permission
- Click the profiles tab
- Click enable profiles then click add profile
- Make your screen look like this (explanation/description below)

• The first profile is to protect your phone from ... YOU! If the device gets to hot, it will automatically scale the processor down to allow it to cool. Once it cools it will obey the profile it would typically follow. This is the highest priority profile which is why it's at the top of the list. This profile will take priority over any other profile which is a good thing.
• The second is to save battery while the screen is off. This will lock the CPU between these lower frequencies when the screen is off, using less mv, resulting in less battery usage. Think about it like this, do you need your phone to scale to 748MHz just to receive a text then of course scale all the way back down? No!
• The next is for when the phone is charging. This includes USB and AC charging. The first 2 rules we discussed above have a higher priority so the phone will obey them first, but where this charging profile comes in to play is, even if you have 10% battery once you plug your phone into a charging source it will then be allowed to freely scale back up to 748. Without a charging profile the phone would stay locked at whatever frequency it's told to follow by a battery % profile.
• Our first battery profile!!! I'm going to go really in depth and explain how this works in hopes it gives you a better idea on priorities. I will not do this for the rest of the battery profiles but the concept is the same.
  
  What this profile means is ... When the phone is cooler than 104 degrees F, and the screen is on, is not plugged into an AC or USB power source, and has less than 10% battery remaining to set it so the CPU can only scale between 480 and 480.
  
  What i just did was type out exactly how the phone views profiles based on priority. It's first priority is to protect from heat. It's second is to save battery when the screen is off. It's 3rd is to increase performance while charging, and finally it considered percentage of battery left. Hope that helps.
• The rest are all battery profiles by reading my above description, they should make sense.

Of course these numbers are all dependent on your preference and your device. If you prefer to clock up to 768, make the necessary adjustments to your profiles. If you want to have the phone clock up to 748 while on AC power and only 729 while on USB power, make the necessary adjustments. This list is not the end all be all. It's very organic and very user dependent. My goal was to provide a pretty good setup for those who do not know all the in's and out's.

Enjoy.

EDIT - For those that may be curious, my phone was unplugged at 6:00am and has been used to browse, moderate forums , gtalk, send and receive about 10 emails, received about 30 emails on my corporate account, couple calls for a few minutes each, few calendar reminder events ... what i consider standard usage. The battery was at 79% at 1pm so with all that usage i averaged 3% per hour and that while OC'ed to 25% higher than standard running CPU not too shabby

 

[JerryScript]

Thanks, nice write up. You didn't mention governors, do you recommend a particular one for this setup?

I haven't heard of anyone having trouble with setCPU on the Optimus V. From a quick google search, it looks like the issue was very device and/or kernel specific with CM.

For anyone reading this and wondering about all the posts saying you shouldn't underclock on your Optimus V, this how-to primarly underclocks while the screen is off, so you won't see a problem with underclocking in this manner. If you do find an app that runs when the screen is off is having issues and you suspect it needs a higher clock value to run, try raising the screen-off value a notch at a time till you find the right sweet spot.

 

[camf3xu]

I felt When i underclocked with screen off my lock screen was laggy on unlock

 

[pbailey212]

I don't underclock at all, with droidwall and juice defender, I use about 60% of my battery all day and charge it back up while I sleep, and that's with heavy use and poor signal at work, I don't see the need for it, and it does make your phone lag a bit when you first unlock it

 

[Irate Iguana]

Actually improved my battery pretty well, usually moderate usage has me at 40% by 12~ hours, I was only down to 60% :O

(was using bumblebee at the time)

 

[bigcat73]

What do I do with the levels on the main screen? Will these settings affect my profiles?

 

[chuang4u]

I tried these settings and wanted to revert to the original, but after uninstalling setcpu, a widget that states the cpu speed still makes it seem like the settings on setcpu have been saved (even with the program uninstalled). I did a NAND restore, and after installing the widget the cpu speeds are still the same as when I had setcpu installed (but i never restored the backup of setcpu). Is there something special I need to do to revert it back to the original setting?

also, from what I've read on this thread: http://forums.androidcentral.com/op...attery-drain-optimization-tests-part-2-a.html
it makes it seem like a underclocking (even with the screen off) can actually harm battery life because the phone has to rev up to the higher clock speed when the screen comes on. Is this not true?

P.S. I am using harmonia 1.3.1

 

[chuang4u]

What do I do with the levels on the main screen? Will these settings affect my profiles?

I was wondering about the settings on the main screen as well. does anyone know what the main screen should be set at?

 

[bigcat73]

I was wondering about the settings on the main screen as well. does anyone know what the main screen should be set at?

It seems like if the enable profiles box is checked, it doesn't matter what that is set to. If you put the setcpu widget on your homescreen, it will display the max/min that apply to your current profile no matter what the main screen says

 

[00damedash]

thanks!!!!! this has my OV sipping on power LIKE TEA STRAIGHT OUT OF A KETTLE

 

[polnrg]

Hi, finally I found an interesting tutorial, many thanks to share it!!; I have just a question...

Do you know if these settings works on LG Optimus Hub ?
I made a soft root with Unlockroot program, its processor go to 800Mhz and still have the LG factory ICS Rom.

we'll keep in touch.

 

[ThatGuyLurkin]

Test it out. The max Overclock on your phone is 800, so what's the highest you can overclock and remain stable?





Sent from my LG-VM670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[polnrg]

Hi, your help is very appreciated!

..my max Overlock is 800 (same as factory) I don't want to flash it with another rom because, as for example, CWM 10 still unstable in photo and level sound is worse than original LG rom. Both programs (SetCPU and CPU Tuner) don't give me more; but it's Ok because I only just want to save battery. BTW I have BusyBox and Root Browser on board..

Do you know what must be the correct values?