I've got an Android phone whose stock Android version is 2.1. I've tried several times to install some custom ROMs (mostly Cyanogenmod based) with Android 2.2 and 2.3.
The full charged battery lasts:
- >3 days with the 2.1 stock version
- 1.5~2 days with android 2.2
- ~1 day with android 2.3
...And they say that android 4 drains the battery even faster!
I'm wondering why this happens:
- Is the newer software using the hardware more intensively? What pieces of hardware? What pieces of software? And why?
- In general, should I expect a custom ROM to drain battery faster than a stock one (same Android version)? The ROMs I installed were supposed to be more optimized than the stock one, and have less crappy services running, but meh!
- If the phone was designed for a newer Android version (say 2.3) would I get a big battery boost by switching to a former version (2.1)?