Android comes out of the box with so many ways to customize your experience with your phone. All of which love to drain your battery.
Besides the normal turn everything off that you are not using theory there are even more ways that you can reduce the drain on your battery no matter what version of android you use.
Believe it or not this is my home screen...
Pretty dull right? Yea maybe, but hear me out here.
From this screen I can launch anything I want as fast as I want and at the same time prevent would be snoopers from knowing what the heck to do with this thing as well as drastically improve battery consumption by the screen itself.
The secret? Gesture controls. One swype and I'm in my app drawer. A different swipe I'm in my phone app. Double tap and there's facebook. You can customize these any way you want and it is made possible by an app called Nova launcher.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher
This also allows you to change things that slow your phone down like scroll effects, scroll speed, transition effects and others that do nothing other than look pretty but destroy your overall experience and battery life.
On top of that it also gives you options to speed things up even more while at the same time reducing the overall strain on the processor by disabling un-needed animations and allowing you to set up customized commands for nearly anything you want.
You don't have to take the extreme minimalist approach that I have to see improved battery life with this app. While my battery does last a very very long time, up to two days under normal use (excluding graphic intense gaming) you can at the very least speed up your device and get more time out of your battery than you did before.
Hope this helps.
On a side note.....Widgets are the bane of your battery. They access the internet, they lag your phone by updating all the time, They cause the screen to use more battery than needed, and while it is nice to have these updates at a glance you might be surprised how easy it is to get that info another way and how much you really won't miss it when you don't have to plug your phone in constantly.
Happy customizing!!