ASB-V63
AutoSystemBoost — V63 Release Notes
V63 is the largest ASB refinement since V62. It adds new user controls for sleep, GPS, wake-locks, networking and performance; a tiered thermal-budget engine; safer device-specific gating; and an evidence chain that explains every major decision. V63 is designed to reduce unnecessary heat and energy use without replacing required performance with blind caps.
Actual battery-life gains depend on display time, signal quality, applications, Bluetooth/audio route, ambient temperature and the length of true screen-off periods. V63 therefore reports its evidence instead of promising one fixed percentage for every device.
V62 → V63 at a glance
| Area | V62 release baseline | V63 release improvement | Practical result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thermal control | Device-aware limits, but no P0 validation of an implausible selected thermal source. | Validates socd against CPU peers, falls back to a real CPU zone, records confidence and revalidates the primary source. |
A false vendor thermal report cannot become a fake 90–95°C governor input. |
| Performance tuning | Per-device frequency scaling and profile limits. | Adds Performance Ceiling (60–100%), a tiered thermal budget and optional Observe / Shadow mode. | Users can trade peak headroom for cooler, calmer sustained use without fixed model tables. |
| Sleep-side power | Quiet Night and V62 Doze controls. | Adds Act on Wakelocks, Trim Background GPS, Quiet Radio at Night and screen-off classification. | V63 can identify or selectively address the app/radio work that prevents real sleep. |
| Networking | Network buffers, qdisc and restore-aware baseline. | Adds Spread Network Load (RPS) and Transmit Queue controls. | Fast Wi-Fi can distribute softirq work; loaded wireless links can reduce queueing latency. |
| Audio / DSP | V62 repaired DSP routing and output safety. | Adds route-aware offload evidence, Bluetooth reconnect trace and conflict-first audio verdicts. | DSP remains usable while diagnosis stops making unproven offload claims. |
| Multi-device safety | V62 removed fixed OP15 frequency assumptions. | Adds capability manifest, device tiers, exact-fingerprint property domains and lease arbitration. | Unknown devices degrade safely instead of receiving copied property packs. |
| Configuration writes | Validated config updates. | Adds atomic linked thermal writes, config backup/preview, writer provenance and legacy-state recovery. | New controls and valid slider values work even after an older retained config. |
| Upgrade path | Config schema 17. | Tested schema-17 → schema-18 additive migration with backup and idempotence. | A V62 update preserves existing choices and adds V63 controls safely. |
| Release build integrity | A release-only pre-build check could require the next GitHub release asset before the first build produced it; selective packaging could also omit a tool that ZIP validation required. | update.json is strictly post-build OTA metadata, while the release package contract now proves that every required tools/ runtime helper is copied back after the developer-tool exclusion. |
The first V63 build has no dependency on a future asset or manifest contents, and required diagnostic/runtime tools cannot silently disappear from the flashable ZIP. |
New V63 tweaks and controls
Battery, heat and performance
Performance Ceiling
New WebUI control: Performance Ceiling (perf_ceiling_pct, 60–100%, default 100%).
This is a proportional ceiling over the profile’s own device-correct CPU/GPU limits. It does not substitute one fixed frequency table for all phones and it does not raise the profile floors that keep scrolling and audio responsive. For example, 90% is a mild everyday reduction; 75% is an explicit battery-first trade-off for travel or light use.1
| Setting | What V63 changes | Safety boundary |
|---|---|---|
100% |
Keeps the selected profile’s normal limits. | Default; no extra ceiling. |
95–90% |
Applies a modest proportional cap. | Suitable for calmer everyday use when peak benchmark speed is not needed. |
85–75% |
Applies a clearer sustained-performance trade-off. | Better suited to travel, charging or battery-first intent. |
70–60% |
Strong conservative cap. | Available only as an intentional user choice; it is not selected silently. |
Adaptive Thermal Budget — enabled by default
V63 adds a tiered thermal-budget engine, operating before the hard thermal cap is raised. It evaluates available thermal headroom, skin trend, temperature rise rate and battery-current evidence. Instead of jumping directly from unrestricted performance to a hard restriction, it can apply a light, moderate or severe trim and holds that choice for a dwell interval to avoid oscillation.2
The shipped policy is deliberately bounded:
| V63 thermal-budget control | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
thermal_budget_enable |
1 |
Enables adaptive pre-cap response. |
thermal_budget_light_headroom_pct / thermal_budget_light_trim_pct |
70% / 8% |
First gentle response while headroom is narrowing. |
thermal_budget_moderate_headroom_pct / thermal_budget_moderate_trim_pct |
45% / 18% |
More visible response for sustained pressure. |
thermal_budget_severe_headroom_pct / thermal_budget_severe_trim_pct |
25% / 32% |
Conservative response before hard thermal protection dominates. |
thermal_budget_dwell_s |
30 s |
Prevents caps from rapidly moving up and down. |
Camera activity receives special treatment: a light budget response is not allowed to undermine a protected camera deadline. Hard thermal safety and platform thermal limits always retain priority.
Observe / Shadow mode and intent presets
V63 introduces shadow_mode: ASB calculates and records its policy decision but avoids policy writes. It is intended for diagnosis and validation before a new policy is trusted on a device. This is available through the observe intent preset rather than as an aggressive default.3
The new asb_intent.sh helper supplies safe-writer-backed presets for daily, camera, game, travel, charging and observe. Presets use already validated V63 knobs; they do not edit governor.conf directly or bypass its full semantic validation.3
New sleep, GPS and wake-lock controls
Act on Wakelocks
New WebUI control: Act on Wakelocks (wakelock_action, default off).
V63 always observes significant wake sources when the kernel exposes them. When this control is enabled, an application must satisfy multiple safeguards before V63 acts: it must be user-installed, hold a relevant partial wakelock through a long screen-off interval, and the device must demonstrably remain awake. The action is Android’s reversible restricted bucket; V63 does not force-stop the app and never targets kernel/system sources, the modem, display, alarms, sensors, authenticator, dialer, SMS, messaging or clock apps.4
Trim Background GPS
New WebUI control: Trim Background GPS (gnss_trim, default off).
V63 targets a narrow case: a third-party app that continues holding location while cached and screen-off. It limits that app to coarse location only while the condition persists. Foreground use, navigation, fitness/route tracking, emergency/finding functions and protected classes are excluded. Permissions are not revoked; full access returns when the app leaves the cached state, and all ASB restrictions are restored when the control is disabled or ASB is removed.5
Quiet Radio at Night
New WebUI control: Quiet Radio at Night (night_modem_idle, default off).
This control works inside the learned/configured night window and only while screen-off. It changes keepalive/probe timing so fewer background sockets wake the modem path. It does not power the radio off, and it does not suppress calls, SMS or high-priority push. The explicit trade-off is that a polling application can be later until morning; users who rely on polling instead of push should leave it disabled.6
Screen-off classifier
V63 adds a read-only asb_screenoff_class observer. It distinguishes genuine sleep from screen-off audio, VPN/tunnel activity, GNSS-held work, charging and other confounders before anyone attributes drain to CPU policy. The classifier writes no system node and changes no user policy in this release cycle.7
New network controls
Spread Network Load
New WebUI control: Spread Network Load (net_rps, default stock).
V63 can direct receive-packet work to the efficiency cluster (little) or all available cores (all) when the device exposes the relevant queue nodes. On high-throughput Wi-Fi, this can prevent one core from being pinned by softirq work. On a slow link, waking extra cores can cost more energy than it saves, which is why stock remains the default and “prime-only” steering is intentionally not offered.8
Transmit Queue
New WebUI control: Transmit Queue (net_txqueue, default stock).
The new choices are short (256) and shorter (128), alongside stock behaviour. They are aimed at reducing bufferbloat and loaded-link latency, not at claiming guaranteed higher throughput. V63 captures previous values before change and restores them when the control returns to stock.8
Network safety and diagnostics
Network writers act only on real, active interfaces with writable queues. V63 records the applied result rather than assuming a driver accepted the request. Existing route/buffer/qdisc controls remain available and restore-aware; the new RPS and queue controls complement them instead of replacing them.
Thermal-source safety and cross-device correctness
A bad socd sensor cannot become a false governor input
Some devices expose a thermal zone named socd whose value may diverge sharply from actual CPU zones. V63 checks a selected socd against validated CPU peers. It rejects a source that is more than 25°C above the peer median or 12°C or more below it. When a valid peer exists, ASB uses that real CPU sysfs zone as the control path; it does not invent a median with no readable path.9
A valid socd retains priority and receives peer-checked confidence. If no usable fallback exists, V63 stays conservative and reports low confidence rather than pretending the sensor is validated. V63 also revalidates a primary socd every 60 seconds, allowing recovery from transient vendor-reporting faults.9
Provenance everywhere it matters
The following fields are now available through /dev/.asb/state, native status JSON, effective-policy JSON, asbdiag and full-day logkit:
| V63 field | Meaning |
|---|---|
thermal_control_source, thermal_control_zone |
The actual sensor path controlling ASB thermal policy. |
thermal_source_confidence |
Uninitialized, fallback/unvalidated or peer-checked source confidence. |
thermal_rejected_type, thermal_rejected_raw |
Evidence for a rejected candidate; raw values are not rendered as degrees. |
startup_quarantined |
Early boot samples excluded from Smart learning. |
battery_window_confidence, battery_window_reason |
Explains whether a drain window is trustworthy; charging invalidates discharge confidence. |
This is a major cross-device improvement: a field log can now distinguish a bad sensor, a platform clamp, a real ASB trim, audio work or a radio issue before anyone changes a policy.
Capability-gated multi-device architecture
V63 does not copy a generic “tweak pack” to every Snapdragon phone. It introduces several layers that decide what can actually be justified on the current device:
| V63 subsystem | Function | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Capability Manifest | Read-only probe of CPU policies, OPP availability, cgroup/uclamp, thermal, GPU, camera and battery-current paths. | A node existing is not treated as proof it is safe to write. |
| Device Tier / Device Pack | Unknown devices stay generic; mutable vendor domains require a validated exact build fingerprint. | An OTA or similar model name cannot silently authorize stale properties. |
| Managed Properties | Optional property blocks are applied only after feature and device-domain validation. | Properties are no longer loaded blindly at boot through a global system.prop payload. |
| Lease Arbiter | Coordinates baseline, Smart, profile, user cap, camera, safety and platform thermal priority. | Competing writers can back off instead of fighting the same node. |
| Effective Policy | Read-only machine-readable view of applied config, capability/tier context, energy policy and transaction provenance. | Support can inspect what ASB can actually justify, not only selected UI values. |
No AIST/SysTwks-style property bundle, global sysctl pack,
swapoff, zram recreation or conflicting audio overlay was imported into V63. Optional mechanisms are capability-gated, owned, recorded and reversible.
Audio, DSP and Bluetooth diagnostics
V63 keeps the working AIDL DSP path while making audio evidence substantially more reliable.
The full-day recorder now captures route context, AudioFlinger evidence, relevant platform/vendor offload properties and Bluetooth reconnect evidence with MAC redaction. Its verdict is conservative by design: an offload/compress thread is not claimed to belong to active Bluetooth playback unless route evidence supports that conclusion. Conflicting property evidence wins over an optimistic observation.10
DSP output restrictions continue to prevent headphone-oriented processing from unintentionally boosting speakers. DSP source checks remain part of both workflows.11
Configuration reliability, backup and recovery
Atomic safe writer with transaction provenance
runtime/asb_config_safe.sh is the only runtime writer for governor.conf. Every change is staged, validated as a complete config and atomically renamed. Transactions now record a stable result class, reason, key, pre/post epoch and honest reload status. The state path is injectable for staging/host tests while production remains at the normal device location.12
Three important WebUI/update fixes
| Fixed case | V63 resolution |
|---|---|
Valid 69–70°C throttle slider update could leave ceiling < enter. |
Slider writes enter, matching ceiling and manual mode in one atomic transaction. |
| A retained older config did not contain a newly added V63 key. | Writer accepts a key known to either the active config or the current shipped schema; arbitrary keys remain rejected. |
| An old inverted thermal pair blocked every unrelated write. | A narrow, logged legacy recovery aligns an in-range ceiling to the existing enter value, then applies normal validation. Explicit invalid thermal edits still fail. |
When the last recovery is used, recovery=legacy_thermal_ceiling appears in the transaction sidecar, effective policy and diagnostics. No hidden policy repair occurs without evidence.
Backup, import preview and Smart reset
V63 adds a versioned config-backup tool with checksum and import preview. The preview uses the same config validation surface without changing the active config. V63 also adds Smart Learning Reset, which clears only learner-owned history, buckets and night-window data; it leaves configuration, baselines and uninstall/restore records intact.13
Complete V63 configuration additions
V63 adds 15 configuration keys over the public V62 release. The visible controls are marked below; advanced keys are shipped with bounded defaults and validated by both shell and native config contracts.
| Group | New V63 keys | Default / availability |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | perf_ceiling_pct |
WebUI: 100%; 60–100% in 5% steps. |
| Sleep / app work | wakelock_action, gnss_trim, night_modem_idle |
WebUI: all default off; explicitly opt-in. |
| Networking | net_rps, net_txqueue |
WebUI: both stock by default. |
| Adaptive thermal budget | thermal_budget_enable, thermal_budget_dwell_s, thermal_budget_light_headroom_pct, thermal_budget_light_trim_pct, thermal_budget_moderate_headroom_pct, thermal_budget_moderate_trim_pct, thermal_budget_severe_headroom_pct, thermal_budget_severe_trim_pct |
Enabled with bounded 3-tier defaults and 30-second dwell. |
| Advanced diagnostics | shadow_mode |
Default off; used by the Observe intent for calculate-and-log behaviour. |
Updating from V62
Updating from V62 is supported and permanently tested. V62 uses config schema 17; V63 uses schema 18.
| Upgrade step | V63 behaviour |
|---|---|
| Existing profile | Preserved for an in-place update. |
Existing governor.conf |
Preserved as the user’s authoritative configuration. |
| Backup | governor.conf.bak.schema17.<timestamp> is written before boot-time merge. |
| Duplicate legacy records | The first historical value is retained; duplicates are removed so shell and native readers cannot diverge. |
| New V63 values | The 15 missing V63-only keys are added from governor.conf.shipped. |
| Existing V62 choices | Retained; V63 does not silently replace them with new defaults. |
| Schema marker | Moves to 18 only after successful migration. |
| Next boot | Migration is idempotent; schema 18 is a no-op. |
The permanent V62→V63 contract tests backup creation, additive merge, absence of duplicate keys, idempotence and a post-migration safe-writer update. It is mandatory in both build-release.yml and build-debug.yml.14
Release validation
| Gate | V63 public release result |
|---|---|
| V62 schema-17 → V63 schema-18 migration contract | PASS |
Native thermal socd high/low/fallback/recovery fixtures |
PASS |
| Atomic config-writer, thermal-slider and legacy-recovery contracts | PASS |
| P0 state / effective policy / logkit provenance contract | PASS |
| DSP source contract | PASS |
| Schema synchronisation and source lint | 0 errors |
| Native strict-warning budget | 79 / 79 baseline |
tools/asb_diag.sh and system/bin/asbdiag |
Byte-identical |
| V62 migration test in debug and release workflows | Mandatory |
Shared update.json / module.prop metadata validator |
Mandatory in debug and release; stale release metadata is rejected before compile. |
What to expect after updating
V63 should feel more controlled and more explainable, not artificially more aggressive. On a device with correct thermal reporting, behaviour remains close to V62 while diagnostics and adaptive policy improve. On a device with a bad socd report, V63 prevents false thermal restriction and uses a real CPU thermal path when one is available.
The new sleep controls are intentionally opt-in. Quiet Radio, Background GPS Trim and Wakelock Action can be valuable when a full-day report shows the matching cause, but they are not marketed as universal magic switches. A proper overnight conclusion needs a continuous multi-hour screen-off capture with radio, audio and location context.
V62 historical foundation
V62 remains the foundation for V63. It introduced a clean-install-safe posture, device-native frequency cap scaling, profile-aware uclamp control, screen-off quieting, bounded camera hold, video-aware GPU limits, safer DSP routing, robust settings read-back, 11-language WebUI coverage and a complete asbdiag diagnostic path.
V63 builds on that work with new controls, adaptive thermal budgeting, evidence-first diagnostics, capability-gated multi-device safety, configuration recovery and a verified public upgrade path.