Arch by definition is bare bones, you install what you want or need. Because of that, the installation process can be daunting for newcomers (hint: use the Install guide on their wiki), but you get full control.
I used Arch and Fedora with i3 on my old laptop, imo battery life with those was good.
Latest version of Jerboa on Google Play doesn't work with servers below 0.18;
For those who want to use Jerboa to access lemmy.world before the upgrade to 0.18.x happens, you can install a specific release from GitHub instead of Google Play. I found version 0.0.34-alpha to work (using it rn to post this). https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa/releases/tag/0.0.34
Edit: since the update is done, it's probably best to go back to latest version. Glad I helped someone!