For the last month or so I've been having various problems with my phone and have flashed different versions of Cyanogenmod multiple times. Normally I then immediately login to my Google account, download Titanium Backup, restore all my apps, and go from there. But last week when I restored to CM 11 I decided not to do that right away. I'd noticed that Google Play Services, or Android System were constantly the top users of my battery, and I'd also been getting lots of force closes of system apps. So I figured why not try life without a Google account for just a little bit. My restore actually had one of the minimal GAPPS packages with it, but I haven't signed into Google and have disabled all of the Google packages I could.
I installed both F-Droid and the Amazon App store, and that got me to about 80% of the apps I actually use on a regular basis. I then went on to use my apps to see what if I really missed. The answer to that is, so far, not all the much. I'm using a really minimalist search based launcher, which is great...but I do miss having some information readily available via a widget. Some apps I used weren't available in either Amazon or F-Droid, but I did find an HTML5 app on the Fireplace Market...which seems to be totally fine for my needs.
The biggest surprise has been the battery life. From the time I first got my phone 3 years ago, even when it was running stock with only a few apps, it was a bit of a struggle to get a full days use out of my phone. And the variability was crazy, some days it seemed like I could run through a full battery in about 4 hours, while other times I'd get almost a full 24, both with similar usage patterns. I used battery monitor apps to look into it and sometimes they'd give me some useful information, but a good chunk of the usage always seemed to be core Android functionality. But this week my battery life has been measured in days instead of hours. The first time I went about 72 hours before plugging my phone in, and it was still showing 48% battery remaining. And this was a period where I was using my phone probably more actively than normal, installing and configuring a lot of apps, browsing the web, a couple of hours reading books, etc... I've seen similar life over the last 3 days, but I haven't let it go as long this time before topping off.
So I can't say for certain that this is exclusively due to a lack of GAPPS, I have far fewer apps than I previously did, and any or all of them could have been responsible for excessive usage, and I'm using a minimalist launcher, with no widgets, etc... But still, overall I'm really amazed at the dramatic difference. I didn't even know it was possible to get 4+ days out of a normal smartphone battery, this puts it pretty much on par with my old dumb phones.
So has anyone else run without a Google account for very long and seen similar results, or is this just an anomaly?
I installed both F-Droid and the Amazon App store, and that got me to about 80% of the apps I actually use on a regular basis. I then went on to use my apps to see what if I really missed. The answer to that is, so far, not all the much. I'm using a really minimalist search based launcher, which is great...but I do miss having some information readily available via a widget. Some apps I used weren't available in either Amazon or F-Droid, but I did find an HTML5 app on the Fireplace Market...which seems to be totally fine for my needs.
The biggest surprise has been the battery life. From the time I first got my phone 3 years ago, even when it was running stock with only a few apps, it was a bit of a struggle to get a full days use out of my phone. And the variability was crazy, some days it seemed like I could run through a full battery in about 4 hours, while other times I'd get almost a full 24, both with similar usage patterns. I used battery monitor apps to look into it and sometimes they'd give me some useful information, but a good chunk of the usage always seemed to be core Android functionality. But this week my battery life has been measured in days instead of hours. The first time I went about 72 hours before plugging my phone in, and it was still showing 48% battery remaining. And this was a period where I was using my phone probably more actively than normal, installing and configuring a lot of apps, browsing the web, a couple of hours reading books, etc... I've seen similar life over the last 3 days, but I haven't let it go as long this time before topping off.
So I can't say for certain that this is exclusively due to a lack of GAPPS, I have far fewer apps than I previously did, and any or all of them could have been responsible for excessive usage, and I'm using a minimalist launcher, with no widgets, etc... But still, overall I'm really amazed at the dramatic difference. I didn't even know it was possible to get 4+ days out of a normal smartphone battery, this puts it pretty much on par with my old dumb phones.
So has anyone else run without a Google account for very long and seen similar results, or is this just an anomaly?
