Ok I consider my optimus lazy because my other optimus with bad esn can go up to 864 completely stable. It clearly showed on one of mmarz's graphs that 806 was the most efficient and used the least amount of power to complete tasks. The slower speeds used the most power. I think its actually comon sense, faster speeds-less time to finish tasks-more battery savings. Thats my opinion though.
Now back to topic. All I said was that backside rom had bad battery life compared to bumblebee. I used the same settings and apps for both. Could be gingerbreads features? Or could be that bumblebee has many more tweaks and mods which give better battery life? Only JerryScript and obijohn would know.
It's not common sense because it's simply not that simple.
Getting it done faster CAN use less power, but not always, also too high and while you may not crash, you can still be having errors slowing you down.
As for only them knowing, no.
It's not hard to look at what tweaks have been done in most cases, usually it's only a few config scripts. Bumblebee and Harmonia are both based on a stock kernel working off Stock + Xionia. Harmonia went a bit deeper and actually had drivers changed out from different versions and different phones. It's a real mutt, but a mutt that works.
As for GB, we don't have access to GB drivers for our phone, the community has had to make them. So they are not as efficient. Then there is all the extra code CM put in. Bumblebee took a stripped, efficient system and made it more efficient for speed reasons. CM is about features, not so much about speed. Harmonia stripped it for efficiency.
A lower min on standby will give you better battery life as the CPU will be going with less speed therefore using less power. It will also increase the longitivtiy of your CPU.
And this is why it's not so simple.
Standby isn't just standby.
Things happen in the background and if you are too low, you just sent the cpu skyrocketing. Now, yes, it gets the job done faster, IF it's a single process. How about a weather checking app,. it starts up, send out a request for the temp, then goes idle. problem is, yes, it may skyrocket while checking, but what about while waiting for that return information? It can sit at just enough to go over your minimum and therefore peg your cpu at 100% while doing almost nothing. This is just one example and while small, imagine this happening over and over again.
The same applies to the high and lows for radio streaming, too low and your cpu pegs, too high and your cpu is being wasteful. You are actually better to err on the high side, but being high isn't good either.
Also, worry less about the cpu life and worry more about your battery.
Heat kills batteries. Too high of an overclock creates heat, thereby killing your battery faster in terms of battery life and in the life expectancy of the battery, and this will come into play sooner than the cpu failing most likely. Don't think it;s hot? try a high overclock and then hit the GPS with mapping and see what happens.
806-806 are the same speeds that I use on bumblebee and the battery life is much, much better than backside. And it shouldn't have to do with the kernel but with this specific phone.
Be careful using what you know about Bumblebee on this rom. They are quite different animals in many regards, but not all.
It can be the kernel, as well as the heavy CM interface tweaks and the drivers, which I discussed earlier. CM is not all Google code and not all Device manufacturer code, so there is likely inefficiencies all over since we may not have all of the proper API's.