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flashing gingerbread to galaxy tab p1000 is a nice idea. It opens many app compatiblity to the tab. But its full of issues compared to froyo. I'll share my issues.
first the goodies
Those who still having odin flashing doubts quote here i can give you a beginners guide.
I am going through every aspects. Some are previously discussed but some are not mentioned in any other threads or forums i think. Please share yours too if any.
I flashed gingerbread european version xxjq1.
The best thing i noticed was booting time. of tab went down to less than half on froyo. Very fast booting. Also booting sound changed to a nice music though its not a big deal.
Lock screen is the same as froyo as i expected something like galaxy s2.
But you can set different wallpapers for your home screen and lock screen which was not in froyo.
Home screen is looking same but its samsung home 2.3.3 version. Icons on the home screen dock is changed. Browser icon changed to green. Except that nothing looks changed on home screen from froyo.
Now comes surprise. The notification bar became extremely smooth compared to froyo. Flawless. But not as smooth as galaxy s2 or better devices like that.
Over theme color changed so the notification bar icons color also changed to a more dark green. Best other thing about notification bar is, if you have an ongoing call minimized the bar
looks crystal green lighted. Its awesome to see which is missing on froyo.
Another thing which i think very handy is music player got integrated into notification bar.
When music player is running you can play/pause, previous/next, fast forward/backward straight from notification bar. Big improvement.
now technical
Task manager got updated. There is one more tab named downloaded.
Your newly installed programs are listed here. So dont have to go to settings applications.
Ram manager changed. There is no stage 1 stage 2 option. Only one button clear memory. I think it is good.
Stock browser's change should be admitted. Its like wow. I assure you no other browser you installed comes even close to its user interface. I am writing this now in it. It bacame buttery smooth to navigate. Not a small lag when scrolling on a big content rich page and switching to new tabs. There was no lag to scroll even when youtube was playing in desktop mode with flash. Even my desktop firefox lags a little to scroll when playing hq youtube but our tab aced.
Also there is a memo button and phone button integrated into browser menu bar which is very handy. Overall browser is awesome.
I forgot to mention before there is no new stock wallpapers.
Now about music player the onboard virtual 5.1 improvement is incredible.its like wow compared to froyo. Plug in your headphone and you will notice.
In settings the battery info has greatly improved. There is a graphic demo of battery use.
And ofcourse battery consumption DECREASED much much much. I have to say that beacause i had a problem with the battery. When its about 40%-45% it suddenly dropped to 3% and shuts down in 3-5 min. But now its completely gone. Plus i assure you that you will be amazed with the battery capacity of our great tab.
When using camera the preview has been improved much. Its like flowing when scrolling through pictures. Plus quality of recorded video increased much.
now the media storage system improved much. As i mentioned tab became fast, media scanning also became much fast. Sdcard thing changed to usb storage on gingerbread. Plus there is a progress bar in notification for media scanning. Thats good beacuse we couldn't see progress before.
Call setings is having more options than before video calls voice mail etc on the first page itself.
The stock video player codec improved much. Before i had a brrip mp4 movie showing unsupported format. But now it works smooth. Plus video player became smooth overall on playing.
Anyone with more goodies please add. I'll add more when knowing. I wrote all this for those who want to know changes before trying gingerbread on their tab.
By issues, I assumed you meant problems/bugs/incompatbilities. Are you saying there are no disadvantages to doing it? I've a forgotten XEU tab. I keep hoping Samsung might officially offer GB but the longer it goes the less likely it seems.
jeremyr62 said:
By issues, I assumed you meant problems/bugs/incompatbilities. Are you saying there are no disadvantages to doing it? I've a forgotten XEU tab. I keep hoping Samsung might officially offer GB but the longer it goes the less likely it seems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ofcourse there are disadvantages. I was little busy two days so i cant finish. By issues i definitely mean bugs and problems.
Yeah, now comes the problems
Starting from the beginning, the power on is having little problem. On froyo you have to press power button for like 1 or 1.5 sec and release. Tab will power on after one more second. But now I have to press it until it power on. I don't know if its bug or not but for me its annoying.
after booting here comes bigger problem. The four button leds on bottom never turns off until screen goes off completely. Even if there is 1% charge the leds are on. And ofcourse it doesn't turn off when playing videos. Its really annoying like if you are watching a full length movie in a dark room you have to keep starting at these led and its really annoying.
but I have found a solution. There's a widget named buttonbacklight in market. it requires root access. But very useful. And if you turns off screen and on it again led lights again. You have to turn it off again. but that's not hard as starring at those leds all the time. Plus you can cut the led brightness to half with this widget. Great for dark environments. Thanks to the widget maker.
I forgot to mention, the light sensor now works perfectly. on froyo it takes some time to adjust the brightness on changing lighting condi tions as it has nothing to deal with hardware. but now its fine.
Now comes a big problem. The camera is having real problems on autofocusing. you can't use the camera to take shots close by two or three inches on a dark room by autofocusing and flash. You will get only a bright white picture. this was not in froyo. It was perfect. so you can't use the tabs camera to capture text in a dark room. I tried it on black surface also but no use. Its not for completely dark but with limited light also. Set the flash to auto and if flash is needed to take picture then closeups are not possible. I think this is not mentioned anywhere before. And the flash turns off after focusing. Not good on dark rooms as you can't see any
preview.
Sorry I forgot to mention before, there is a big improvement also for the camera. There's TOUCH FOCUS added now.
On froyo there was four options on USB settings. but 'ask on connection' is absent now.
Its very hard if you connect your phone for different purposes frequently as you have to go to settings and change it.
Now comes another problem for media. On froyo music or video pause when you disconnect headphone or what that is connected to 3.5 mm jack. This is good and is present in gingerbread also. But it pauses when you plugs headphone or whatever into the jack. This is annoying but not too hard to deal with.
The gallery app has not improvedand became worse than before. Its very slow and lags to load files. I expected rotation animation on switching landscape portrait modes.
although the Codec improved on video player, its user interface became hard to user.
You can't set brightness for video if your phone's brightness is set to auto. so if you're watching a movie and you want to increase or decrease brightness you'll have to exit video and change brightness. Not on user defined brightness. But very annoying when brightness is auto.
And the screen rotation animation when you switch between two landscape modes is gone. It was a little eye candy.
Another problem is also very annoying. On froyo there was different two different icons for downloaded and downloading tasks as there was a little animation for downloading ones so that you know something is downloading. But now there's no animation for downloading and both exactly same icon. There's only animation for something that is installing. So if you wanna know if something is downloading or the download is complete, you have to pull notification bar down. very annoying if you left something downloading and came to see if its complete as you have to unlock phone and pull down the bar.
Get back soon.little busy.
ram
ram usage is much high than gingerbread. I've got upto 120mb ram usage in froyo. But gingerbread usually use 190 to 200 mb all time. U have to use task manager apps to clear some apps and bring usage to 150mb. But memory management depends on apps independent offree ram. If u run an hd game with a download in some heavy browser, ur download 'll cancel because the game force close browser for resource.
I want to read your review of ICS on your Iconia. What do you like, what you think is lacking and should have been different as compared to HC. Positive and negative reviews are important so don't feel like you only have to pick just what you like or what is wrong with it. Write it all. Your first impressions and if you want, a followup later - once you've had some time with it.
I'd like to ask that you put some thought into it. Not that it has to be long but no single sentences. I'll just get a mod to clean the thread of them.
I'll get the ball rolling:
I went ahead and installed and can report no issues so far. A couple of things though.
After it booted [after the install] it wouldn't connect to the network automatically - I had to manually tell it to connect, though it still had the credentials and has since connected fine upon multiple reboots.
The browser bookmarks synced automatically. My problem was with HC - for the life of me it wouldn't sync my browser - all my other computers synced up fine with my primary and I tried everything I could to get it to sync with HC but it wouldn't and that was from a fresh reset a few weeks ago. After rebooting into ICS I found all my bookmarks synced up quickly so I'm happy again.
No screen issues and it's far more snappier than it was on fresh vanilla HC. To be fair, I reset a few weeks ago and only installed about 5 apps - aldiko, dropbox, docs etc... the basics. Even vanilla HC was a bit of a bear sometimes but ICS is not.
No more stuttering when swiping through homescreen in orientations other than normal which is great to see.
I much prefer the new app drawer. It's a much more unified experience and swiping is so snappy! That's is the biggest things for me. But it's also nice to see a clean area. The HC apps/widget/wallpaper nightmare was just that. Not in terms of navigation, it just looked fugly and dropped me out of the whole HC look. Now it's far more complimentary to the ICS experience.
The whole swiping apps/notifications features is nice but I'm not sure it's really doing anything. I opened Gmaps and saw it listed in the running apps list in Settings - went to the homescreen - opened up the recent list and swiped Gmaps out - went back to settings>apps and it was still present. It wasn't a solid test, to be sure, but I'm not sure how significant the swipe to remove tasks is and whether it is actually meant to kills tasks or just remove them from the list. [confusion on my part] Second to that, I'm pretty ambivalent about the swiping notifications feature - an X to press, a tab to swipe - it's all the same and neither adds to or takes away from that basic function.
I could care less about the ring and I haven't read anywhere that we were suppose to get it at all so it's no surprise to me to not see it. Same with face-unlock. It's not something I would use.
Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Looking good so far.
Since the update I have been testing all of my apps. So far all are working correctly. I was disappointed that I lost root, however that was an easy fix. I searched the forum and found an easy way to get full root. Had a few hickups at first with the browser and network connections, but they seemed to correct themselves as the day progressed.
Overall I am very happy.
nishka256 said:
Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Screen flickering is what I am also experiencing quite a lot with ICS. With honeycomb, that was never an issue but a lot of apps make the screen flicker in ICS. For me, the stock browser and scrolling is blazing fast with ICS. It had a bit of lag when on honeycomb. Also, I just tried uninstalling zinio and I was able to. Couldn't do the same with tegra games, however, though!
So far I am really liking ICS but there are definitely a few issues that need to be worked on. The update process in itself was not smooth. I had to try 4 times, reboot and even factory reset before I was able to update the tablet to ICS.
Overall, I am having mixed reviews.
I had no problems downloading or updating. I just don't see much difference from honeycomb. I can now use some ics only apps, so that's ok. Switching home screens seems to have less lag. I guess I just expected more from this update.
Overall I guess it is nice to be up to date but it still feels llike the same old tablet.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium
ICS + A500 : Home Screen Long Press Disaster
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!
So far, so good. I never expected the Ultimate Tablet Nirvana from ICS... just incremental improvements. The A500 is smoother and more responsive. I really like the new media player, especially the row of movies/clip thumbs, etc at the bottom. Chrome is a big thing. I've used about every browser out there and was never fully satisfied with any of them. Chrome, for the first time, gives a desktop experience on a tablet. That alone makes the ICS upgrade worthwhile.
On a side note, my 64gb micro-sdxc card arrived the same day I updated, so that's another nice In Your Face to the iPad rabble out there. 80gb of storage.
idroids said:
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to realize that ICS is written for use on phones and tablets, not just tablets. The old way may have been quicker on tablets but wouldn't be very useful for phones (and their much smaller screens). It was a necessary sacrifice.
I personally don't have an issue with the new way, just because I'm not adding 10 apps or widgets to a screen anyway and I don't find the movements that time consuming vs. the old way. If I WERE adding lots of apps or widgets to a screen then I suppose I'd agree completely. I however prefer the widgets in a bigger area instead of having to scroll forever through them, in fact to me it seems a better trade off for the widgets.
ICS appears to be more polished than hc when it came out. Hc 3.0.1 was not a refined experience. There will be some changes when 4.0.4 is pushed, but it is enough to prevent me from going out and purchasing the next new tablet.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium
The Good:
Everything is more responsive, period. Moving around is quicker, switching home screens is quicker, moving through apps and widgets is quicker. Not that the A500 was slow before, but it had its hiccups. This gives the tablet new life, imo - it really feels like a different piece of hardware.
The interface is more streamlined. I've never been into form over function, but in this case everything works well together. Many apps now written for ICS fit in with the whole scheme of things which creates a more uniform experience and aesthetic. Many ICS App widgets now allow you to choose either their default or black, which fits in with the ICS color scheme.
Some, dare I say most? video issues seem to have been addressed as I can play files I'd needed to use 3rd party apps to play on the included player now. Flash also seems more fluid.
Notifications are easily closed (with one X vs. many).
Widgets are laid out in a drawer vs. scroll bar making it much better and easier (for some) to go through and add them to screens.
Settings have been improved; for example, there's now a setting to see the data apps use, factory reset is now under a more obvious tab and other settings are found more easily as well.
Booting is fairly quick vs. Honeycomb. Seems to boot in under a minute no matter how many apps are installed. Booting is generally fast based on the amt. of apps that are installed, but I seemed to boot in roughly the same time before installing apps as after installing over 200 of them.
Some of the new features are nice, the screenshot ability is definitely welcome and swiping away apps is also great. Note: some apps will never fully close as they use services that run in the background.
The Bad:
Some users preferred the long press, split screen and 1-click adding of apps and widgets to the home screen vs. the App Drawer approach. I am inclined to agree that this method can be faster for adding multiple app icons and widgets to the home screens.
The Ugly: (bugs?)
The native browser still doesn't seem to be able to handle encrypted content from Google Chrome, and so the native browser cannot be synced with a Google Account which has had its content encrypted. It can only handle accounts with their passwords encrypted (which is the default).
How I see it is, if Chrome Beta can handle it, I don't see why there wasn't a setting added to the native ICS Browser to allow for it. To me, this doesn't make sense. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
***At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates (apparently).
Will append to list as I come across stuff.
***Update: This doesn't seem to be specific to ICS. After further investigation it seems this WAS caused by something on Acer's end (as of 4/29/2012, updated 5/22/2012).
UPDATE:
As of 5/22/2012 I have not been having/seeing any issues. I have noticed that when the tablet is extremely low on power (under 10% or so) it turns the wifi off when sleeping, even though I've set it to never turn wifi off. I'm not certain if this is a bug or working as intended in ICS as some power saving feature. This never, ever happens when the tablet is on A/C power or docked. When I wake the tablet, wifi is connected to automatically. I'm personally happy that it does this, but I can see it being a problem for some people...so I don't really want to file this under bug/issues.
Neoprimal said:
At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm betting this is simply they message they're sending because their servers are being overloaded from the ICS push.
Why ICS for Tablets AND Phones?
Taking the split screen feature away from my A500 is like taking my steering wheel and my automatic transmissions away from my car! Argggghhh!
Cutting corners on an OS so that it works exactly the same on phones and tablets makes about as much sense as saying that the engines used on a 2-seater plane, in a jet fighter, and in a 747 should all work the same so as to give the passengers the same experience. That is "plane" old silly. What is even SILLIER is to insist on putting a plush airliner seat into a 2 passenger plane or to insist on keeping a propeller on jumbo 747s.
I totally get that the split screen (showing ALL the home screens at once above and the Apps and the Widgets below) would not work well on an small phone but why should it since it's NOT designed for a small screen? Why do tablet users have to put up with taking 3 steps backward just so that phone users can take 3 steps forward.
Tablet users should simply be given the choice to customize their experience so that they can take advantage of the extra real estate on their screens instead of being forced to put up with restrictive aspects of an OS that is trying to be everything to everyone. Sure ICS is a big improvement on Honeycomb, but why did some aspects of its OS have to be amputated simply to satisfy some designer's need to have a single OS for 2 VERY different gadgets?
So PLEASE, when the next version of ICS comes out PLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEASSSEEE give us tablet users the split screen again through the long tap on the Home Screens! Think about it! How often are you going to change your background? Making the long tap lead ONLY to the background change screen is such a WASTE of a unique gesture!
Well if you absolutely want long press to open drawer, try Apex launcher, it's based on ICS launcher but there's an option for binding long press/double tap to any function of the launcher. There is many more options that should suits you. Nova launcher is another alternative you can try.
Positives
A couple of the things I noticed right off is that when recording you don't get the terrible background noise you always seemed to get on hc supports avi video format now which I was happy with and the camera and video app seem to be recording at better detail not sure if its me or my cam? The browser is also blazing fast for me now. Layout is also crisp and clean the ring is useful makes taking screenshots a snap.
Negatives...have noticed some apps cause terrible lag for me there was also a lot of lag and freezing the first couple of hours I had the update. Also sometimes the screen flickers stated above ^^^^ none of these are big issues and shouldn't keep you from updating to enjoy
I had a lot of issues with the ICS update. I finally had to do a factory reset. Some issues were solved, but others remain:
Seems to be solved:
- Unstable applications (flashing and crashing, including Gmail).
- Unstable folders (flashing, crashing and all icons on the desktop disappearing).
Unsolved:
- Wifi is unstable and does not auto-connect (I have to connect manually when I restart the tablet or when I get home... it was working fine before ICS).
- The GPS does not work (I am not sure if it was working before ICS... as I had not had the time to test, so maybe it is not new).
- System update does not work (indicates that network coverage is insufficient despite the signal being strong and staying beside the wireless router).
ICS = bitter pill to swallow!
Well I learned the hard way that I shouldn't have jumped on the ICS bandwagon too early!
I cannot believe that in 2012 we have people designing MAJOR OS updates that have MAJOR problems and bugs!
Why not just wait another month or so and work out these major problems before unleashing ICS on everyone.
I mean didn't the ICS designer and programmers TEST ICS ON ALL TABLET AND PHONE platforms BEFORE releasing it to the world?
I'm going to milk my airplane analogy some more and say this:
Releasing ICS without having thoroughly tested it across ALL platforms is like building a plane and not knowing if it is designed well enough to fly at different altitudes and even worse not being sure it can actually land well in ALL major airports in the world in spite of different weather conditions.
Can you tell I am SICK of designers and programmers NOT having done their homework and using the general public to test their new OS for them?!
This HAS GOT to change!
I have one huge problem. In HC 3.2.1, when I press the volume button, it brought out the volume bar, and by taping the speaker icon, I can turn the volume to off, now it doesn't do anything!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's really annoying to have to hold the volume button to turn off the sound.
One Giant bonus I like in ICS is you can make native folders without the need of a secondary app.
Having one strange flaw which is my tablet randomly vibrates for no apparent reason other than that so far so go and the whole UI just seems a bit smoother than it was before on HC. Browser seems Way more Responsive than HC as well.
I'm pretty happy with ICS but GPS is not working at all. I need to check the gps.conf but it was working on HC.
Best feature of ICS: Chrome browser.
Will there be a new build for the Nook color?
PIE Status Update: 22-23 January, speed bump, scalability
We wrapped up the elementary work, now we will look into the technical issues that are still left. If you were afraid of buggy betas, it has gotten to a point where its pretty decent for daily use.
We rewrote the original AOSP control pretty much from scratch now. Even if it was once based on the Google control, you wont be able to recognize much when you see the code (which comes out soon). It is blazing fast now and responsive due to hardware acceleration and optimized drawing. The old betas were a bit laggy due to test code, we cleaned up completely. It should not be heavy on your battery either. Flicking or navigating it blind is simple. Until now we can do:
- Per app color, it has its own theme aswell but when switched off it picks up colors you define per app (see video)
- Recents key transforms into /// kill-all-button inside the recents view
- Rubberbanding for fast navigation
- Displays status informations like clock, date, notifications on touch
- We wrote our own custom panels for notifications and toggles that can be flicked into view - these are still basic though
- It can be on either of all the four sides, you can even set up multi trigger areas
- It is resolution independent and scalable - it will not look distorted on tablets and phablets anymore
- You can control the animations, even switch them off
- It supports per-app-expand, meaning that it can jump into PIE mode for apps you chose
First updates starting to roll out soon. 1-2-3 hours.
Introduction:
Everyone uses there android device differently, and as a result not everyone will be looking for the same features from a ROM, and as a result developers simply do not know what to do to satisfy the many needs of the andoid users.
what I aim to do with this thread is to provide a review of 2 of the best ROMs out there for our device (based on my opinion), and include some tips, bugs and suggestions for the future.
What I have here is a review of 2 android 4.4.2 ROMs for the xperia arc/s. the ROMs are VANIR AOSP and C-rom.
let's start with a introduction to VANIR AOSP:
Vanir aosp is a ROM built with the user who likes a degree of customization to there phone in mind. the devs behind it have decided to build a ROM completely based on what is important and necessary for the users. they added only those features that passed certain criteria and only those features were allowed to be put into the ROM build. any unnecessary features were not added.
The result is a light, super stable and lagless ROM that would be more than enough to please the android user.
THE GOOD:
-lots of customization options in settings
-very very stable
-very fast and all the time around 200mb free ram
-nice 'on the go mode' feature
-nice option for choosing boot animations
-dual panel mode for settings
THE BAD:
-only features the devs have picked are added to the rom, so if you have a feature you want but the dev thinks its not important it won't be added
-floating windows for apps cannot be moved
THE BUGS:
-sound manager forces close message every time I try to open it
-adding a new user causes a force close message to appear whenever trienf to open gallery
-swiping on the keyboard causes the aosp keyboard to force close
-screen recorder doesn't work (should just be removed from our devices completely, the arc will never be fat enough to screen record)
-camera video doesnt work (although ion kernel would be the problem)
C-ROM:
c-rom is a ROM that is simply mind blowing, the ROM just has every feature I can simply think off, and in some instances it had features I have never even heard off.
the dev behind it added every feature from android I can think off, all into one amazing rom, for those people who like to change every single thing on there phone.
THE GOOD:
-tons of customizations
-lots of free ram, around 200mb all the time
-super smooth
-good turn on and off speeds (experienced this with v5.9 not v5.6)
-movable floating windows
-on the go mode
THE BAD:
-opening apps in floating mode is a little tedious
-slightly high battery consumption
THR BUGS:
there are bugs in both versions of c-rom so here goes:
v5.6:
-multi user support doesn't work, causes tons of force close messages when switching to the new user
-no option for enabling widget support on the lockscreen (only way to get the option is by editing build.prop file, but that causes the high end graphics option to dissapear from the performance menu)
-sound recorder doesn't have a ui, so users can't launch it from drawer (vanir aosp has this)
-no dowbloads app from drawer, and hence I can't make shortcuts to the download manager because there sinply isn't icon for it.
-no option to opt out of c-rom stats, it came up once then disappeared, but I know the menu for it exists
-can't put apps into floating window mode with halo switched off (in vanir aosp you can do this)
v5.9 bugs:
-no camera (video) although could be due to ion kernel?
-kernel logo sometimes comes up while I am using the phone
-the button in the status bar that switches between the tiles and the notification view move out of alignment when pressed
-no save page option in the browser but the option is there?
-swiping on aosp keyboard causes it to force close
-no force high end graphics option in settings
-no sound recorder icon in drawer
-opening the advanced settings option in the performance control app causes a force close
-exposed module causes a bootloop (stuck on kernel logo)
-no option to opt out of c-rom stats
-multi user support works fine, but causes a force lose on all media apps, I.e. try opening gallery and it force closes
so as you can see both ROMs are each unique but they are considered (by me) the best ROMs for xperia arc.
some tips for everyone:
-downloads in kitkat are found under an app called 'documents'
-to enable widget support on lockscreen in c-rom v5.6 you need to modify build.prop file changing the low ram config option to false
-there is no sound recorder icon in the drawer, although the app is installed, if you want to record using it, create a new message and add an attachment, when picking the attachment pick sound recorder and that's it.
some suggestions for c-rom in the future:
-would be great if you could add a dual panel mode like in vanir
-a better way if opening apps in floating window
my final verdict though on both ROMs, is that they are both amazing ROMs, but I think the award has to go to c-rom, due to its vast number of customizations while being a stable and smooth ROM. Good job 3andala
I would like to also point out that, I am not disrespecting others developers who have made a kk ROM for xperia arc, I am simply giving my opinion on 2 ROMs that I really like and consider to be the best for my xperia arc.
my ultimate goal really from a thread like this is to maybe one day see all developers working on only one ROM, that would be the smoothest ROM, with the most features etc..... that everyone would use, and just simply have a ROM that takes the device to it's limits, a ROM that we can all say that its the most complete ROM ever made for the xperia arc, and there will never be a better rom for this device than this. anyone with me?
anyway that's it from me, I hope you liked what if provided and if I helped you let me know as it makes me happy.
P.S. is there any way of increasing the brightness of the notification LED? there are patches for this on ICS and jb but no patches for this on kitkat, so could anyone advise me how its done?
Android P in depth review (updating...)
Hi XDA, this is my opinion on the freshest dev preview of android P
Appearance
The appearance looks smoother and polished. The notifications have rounded corners and the Heads Up notifications appear like they are actually coming from the status bar instead of a rectangle taking up the screen. This is looking more and more similar to IOS, but android's customizability takes the lead. The new settings app looks a lot like the touchwiz settings because of the color coded icons. The clock has shifted to the left because P is made to support "notch" devices (i'll explain why Google is working hard for this feature later). The settings menu is organized more like touchwiz with the colored icons and that is a plus in my book. Overall, I believe this OS has achieved a greater standard when it comes to appearance.
New Features
Since this is only DP1, we are not seeing many new features, but I have seen the screenshot editor, different volume controls, the new settings app, etc. The screenshot editor is a much needed tool for me because I use social media and need to crop my screenshots, now this function can help me do just that. The volume defaults to media rather than ringer. The ring has 3 options, silent, vibrate, or ring. I believe this to be a better standard because I am always adjusting the media volume, but never the ring volume. This switch has kept the average consumer in mind. The new settings app has many battery tweaks! First off, there is a new power saving mode that doesn't tint your nav bar and status bar an ugly red color. This time, the battery saver works by limiting background power usage on applications and has a greater improvement on SOT. On DP2 at Google I/O, there will probably be more features to look for.
SOT/Battery life
The SOT has increased from 6 hrs on DU to 10 hrs on P. This is because P limits the background camera and microphone usage for apps such as Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The new battery saver feature can be turned on at any time and increases the SOT even more! I use the kirisakura harmony kernel for P and it is as good as the stock kernel, with better audio quality.
Tweaks, root, what else?
TWRP 3.2.1-2 works, but the password decryption is still faulty. It still registers what lock setting you're using. Magisk v16.1 has been released on the beta thread and magisk manager is bundled in (it is working and registering this time). Some magisk modules are not working because of P, but that should all be fixed in a few days. The only CK i've seen is Kirisakura harmony.
Overall...
Android P is a great OS for people that like new features and is relatively stable for a new OS. There are some api compatibility notifications, but that is because app devs haven't upgraded to the new api. I will be using this as my DD until official P comes out.
Thanks.
Bugs? Battery life? What apps don't work?
TokedUp said:
Bugs? Battery life? What apps don't work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if anyone will agree with me but my battery life is the same or better as stock for me. I had a couple force closes in the first 5 minutes after my first boot but only 2 since then. Snapchat comes up with a toast message occasionally that says something like "API compatibility error" or something, but the app still works. It has a couple hang ups here and there. I honestly feel like it's DP2 or 3 material. Been running for 24 hours, just my experience though.
Jackaroop said:
I don't know if anyone will agree with me but my battery life is the same or better as stock for me. I had a couple force closes in the first 5 minutes after my first boot but only 2 since then. Snapchat comes up with a toast message occasionally that says something like "API compatibility error" or something, but the app still works. It has a couple hang ups here and there. I honestly feel like it's DP2 or 3 material. Been running for 24 hours, just my experience though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also have been running for 24 hours and battery is on par with stock Oreo. Haven't had any issues with apps, I don't use many though. Bluetooth works but it still said I was connected to my head unit after I turned my car off and was in my house, toggle off and on fixed it. Bluetooth icon doesn't show unless it's connected but it seems to be by design. Seems very stable for a dp1 but I think I might flash back to Oreo if root isn't available soon.
Sent from my marlin using XDA Labs
tekanina said:
Also have been running for 24 hours and battery is on par with stock Oreo. Haven't had any issues with apps, I don't use many though. Bluetooth works but it still said I was connected to my head unit after I turned my car off and was in my house, toggle off and on fixed it. Bluetooth icon doesn't show unless it's connected but it seems to be by design. Seems very stable for a dp1 but I think I might flash back to Oreo if root isn't available soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks like root is available just an issue with the magisk manager right now.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/pixel-xl/help/aod-pixel-xl-p-dp1-t3760506/post75821115
Jackaroop said:
Looks like root is available just an issue with the magisk manager right now.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/pixel-xl/help/aod-pixel-xl-p-dp1-t3760506/post75821115
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am currently figuring out a method to get your root apps on P, will be posted soon (along with a few other things
I actually like p alot even though I'm starting to see a hint of iOS
Pros
For me battery is better than Oreo
I like certain aspects of design
Seems more stable
Cons
I hate iOS
Limited root for now
I hate ios
joeeboogz said:
I actually like p alot even though I'm starting to see a hint of iOS
Pros
For me battery is better than Oreo
I like certain aspects of design
Seems more stable
Cons
I hate iOS
Limited root for now
I hate ios
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well you can hate it but iOS is far ahead of android when it comes to the UI.
I personally like the new UI on P.
Bugs so far (fresh image install, 100% unmodified non-rooted) in my few hours of testing. Keep in mind that I paid attention to every little detail:
1. Phone didn't want to wake one time to the point where I thought the phone was off. It took maybe 10-15 seconds of fiddling with the power button to wake it.
- This alone makes me think that an alarm clock could be missed.
2. Randomly goes from silent to ring.
- May be dangerous for some people depending on situation (business meetings, school setting, sleeping).
3. Launcher settings can be seen through the app drawer background.
- Tacky cosmetic mistake.
4. Adaptive brightness appears broken.
I'm sure there are more that I haven't encountered as it was only for a couple of hours. I wouldn't run it as a daily driver if you rely on your phone for things like business, alarm clock, maps, etc.
It's pretty functional for an alpha release but I wouldn't call this stable enough for everyday use unless you're comfortable with the possibility of the phone switching to ring randomly, missing an alarm clock for an important event, or phone not waking to capture a life moment (picture/video).
richii0207 said:
Bugs so far (fresh install, 100% unmodified non-rooted) in my few hours of testing:
1. Phone didn't want to wake one time to the point where I thought the phone was off. It took maybe 10-15 seconds of fiddling with the power button to wake it.
- This alone makes me think that an alarm clock could be missed.
2. Randomly goes from silent to ring.
- May be dangerous for some people depending on situation (business meetings, school setting, sleeping).
3. Launcher settings can be seen through the app drawer background.
- Tacky cosmetic mistake.
4. Adaptive brightness appears broken.
I'm sure there are more that I haven't encountered as it was only for a couple of hours. I wouldn't run it as a daily driver if you rely on your phone for things like business, alarm clock, maps, etc.
It's pretty functional for an alpha release but I wouldn't call this stable enough for everyday use unless you're comfortable with the possibility of the phone switching to ring randomly, missing an alarm clock for an important event, or phone not waking to capture a life moment (picture/video).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
did u flash factory (with wipe) or full ota file??
onesolo said:
did u flash factory (with wipe) or full ota file??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flash image with full wipe.
richii0207 said:
Bugs so far (fresh image install, 100% unmodified non-rooted) in my few hours of testing:
1. Phone didn't want to wake one time to the point where I thought the phone was off. It took maybe 10-15 seconds of fiddling with the power button to wake it.
- This alone makes me think that an alarm clock could be missed.
2. Randomly goes from silent to ring.
- May be dangerous for some people depending on situation (business meetings, school setting, sleeping).
3. Launcher settings can be seen through the app drawer background.
- Tacky cosmetic mistake.
4. Adaptive brightness appears broken.
I'm sure there are more that I haven't encountered as it was only for a couple of hours. I wouldn't run it as a daily driver if you rely on your phone for things like business, alarm clock, maps, etc.
It's pretty functional for an alpha release but I wouldn't call this stable enough for everyday use unless you're comfortable with the possibility of the phone switching to ring randomly, missing an alarm clock for an important event, or phone not waking to capture a life moment (picture/video).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's weird I didn't have any of these issues except for the launcher settings icons displaying over the app drawer.
I did however encounter some minor problems:
On the settings icon shortcuts, when I click on "Data usage" I get an error saying "app not installed"
I cannot get the new screenshots editor, when I click on edit right after taking a screenshot it takes mo to the Google photos editor
I have noticed errors related to API compatibility showing on certain apps
Some apps don't seem to work correctly, GSam Battery Monitor for example is showing wrong stats (SOT jumped from 3 to 4h in a couple of minutes)
Other than that everything seems to work in a good and smooth way.
Words with Friends kept FCing
Pros:
1. Beautiful UI
2. Battery life is great (no orange bar for battery saving mode)
3. Notification management! P recognizes the types of notifications you want/ or don't want and gives you a quick option to disable them.
4. No FCs so far (might just be me)
Cons:
1. Launcher settings can be seen through app drawer (dev preview ****)
2. Settings icons are hideous
3. Media volume setting comes up by default when pressing the volume button. (might just be me)
I love so much about P. I can't wait for until it's out of dev preview.
guruguap239 said:
Pros:
1. Beautiful UI
2. Battery life is great (no orange bar for battery saving mode)
3. Notification management! P recognizes the types of notifications you want/ or don't want and gives you a quick option to disable them.
4. No FCs so far (might just be me)
Cons:
1. Launcher settings can be seen through app drawer (dev preview ****)
2. Settings icons are hideous
3. Media volume setting comes up by default when pressing the volume button. (might just be me)
I love so much about P. I can't wait for until it's out of dev preview.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I read that now volume keys always default to media volume rather than ring volume. Check one of the feature list posts in xda news to verify.
Review updated, includes more stuff
I've been running Android P for about 3 days now my Pixel XL. I haven't had many issues at all, but my battery seems to drain/die much fast than it did on 8.1.
I may try to re flash P again to see if a fresh install helps in anyway. Especially since everyone seems to be getting much better battery life with P.
I'll update if I see any difference.
So you are getting 10 hours of SoT with this P preview? Seems unreal man!
nory82688 said:
I've been running Android P for about 3 days now my Pixel XL. I haven't had many issues at all, but my battery seems to drain/die much fast than it did on 8.1.
I may try to re flash P again to see if a fresh install helps in anyway. Especially since everyone seems to be getting much better battery life with P.
I'll update if I see any difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm also getting worse battery life on P, although I did just update from 8.1 with the factory image without wiping. I might just give it a try after wiping but I'd really rather not. I'm using a normal Pixel, non-XL.