State of the Rom situation -is KitKat worth it. - One (M7) General

I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my personal Rom recent experience. I would obviously like to know if others have found the same or if you violently disagree!
The best place to be right now I think is:
s-off (so you can flash whatever you want)
Rooted (so you can back up apps & data freely)
Specifically:
HHboot 1.56 (latest firmware)
ARHD 31.6 Android 4.3 & Sense 5.5) with no mods
Latest radio
I have tried Maximus 30.0 & AHRD 40.3 and found they offered no features/benefits advantage over 31.6 and have a couple of annoying bugs. Battery life is a little worse than 31.6
I have also tried odexed GPE 4.4 with the new launcher. When ART is enabled you can feel the phone is snappier, but that's it. I don't really want to use Google Now. Battery life is worse than sense Roms.

cool story bro

I'm using insertcoin right now and my battery is far more better than any other base I have tried including cm ones. I'm getting over 19h usage with 3h+ screen on time and 3-4h of music through poweramp. Performance is pretty much the same as earlier versions.

I can easily get 13+ hours and about 30% left when I get home with moderate usage on GE 4.4.
Sent from my HTC One using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

leventccc said:
I'm using insertcoin right now and my battery is far more better than any other base I have tried including cm ones. I'm getting over 19h usage with 3h+ screen on time and 3-4h of music through poweramp. Performance is pretty much the same as earlier versions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here.
There aren't many performance improvements and DND shuts off the media volume too which I don't particularly like (I quite often use DND to ignore calls and texts while I game) but other than that, I've got the best battery I've ever seen on a stock ROM.
Going to put EX on and do my undervolt + CPU/GPU O/C and have even better battery life.
I don't really miss ART. I have it on my Nexus 7 2013 and its got some issues.

Thread closed,
We already have a thread for kitkat. Please use this thread rather than creating new ones:
Thoughts of 4.4?

Related

Samsung's Gingerbread vs CyanogenMod7

While I was on CM7 I kept asking myself whether the time was right to switch to "stock" gingerbread in order to get rid of the few CM7 nasties (such as battery life, FM radio, lack of BLN support,...) without giving up too many of the goodies (performance, performance, performance). I hoped there was some insight into objective comparisons, i.e. people who had tested both and could give some "neutral" feedback. Well, I couldn't find it.
So I now find myself on samsung's gingerbread for the first time and these are my findings*:
Performance**:
CM7
The best I've tried so far. No doubt.
Number of installed apps does not affect performance.
JVR
Acceptable, but after getting used to CM7 there is noticeable lag (lapse between gesture and screen reaction) and hiccups when scrolling down menus. Tested with rfs and ext4 ("lagfix"). All in all, performance is noticeably worse than CM7.
Battery***:
CM7
Improves greatly with GB bootloaders [BL] (custom kernel has to support it) but it only affects standby drain (lowers to about 1~3 %/hr).
Usage drain is ridiculous (20~50 %/hr depending on type of use and connectivity).
Typical average battery life has been about 10~24hrs.
JVR
Standby drain is about the same as with CM7 & GB BL (about 1~3 %/hr).
Usage drain is about 10~30% (general feeling about half as draining).
Typical average battery life is being about 15~36hrs.
Android system process shoots CPU usage up to 99.9% while charging (reboot fixes this). Not sure if this is actually a bug.
Miscellaneous:
CM7
No BLN support (as of custom kernels on Aug 15th). No blinking led notification support.
No FM radio (as of #80)
Voodoo sound/color support is kernel dependent
Minor BT car system (A2DP) bugs. Not reproducible with BT dongle.
Horrible Wifi reception and timeouts with WPA2 + hidden SSID (might be custom kernels).
No TV-out support.
No 720p recording (?)
JVR
BLN support is kernel dependent
Voodoo sound/color support is kernel dependent
I might have overseen a bug or been inaccurate at some point. Please feel free to fill the voids or correct any imprecisions.
*I was on CM7 #80 with Zach's Neo kernel v16 r2 (GB BL!). Have also tried Glitch's.
I am now on JVR Simplicity v0.31 (Semaphore kernel 1.5).
**No OC/UV for the sake of fairness of this test (improves performance about 30~50%).
***Battery findings are merely subjective appreciations I have made on a daily usage basis. No scientific mA/h tests or benchmarks have been made. I apologize for that...
This thread should serve for everyone who has tried both ROMs to give their feedback and for those weighing to make the switch to ask questions and have more info.
Cheers!
Nice job on writing this up.
For me CM7 on the SGS is out of the question, because battery and BLN are two of my most importing things that I need daily.
I even went as far as getting the Samsung Armani Battery 1650Mah battery (same physical size as the stock battery) to give me the extra battery life I need.
As for CM7, I may throw that on my Atrix down the road. Some people that have used the beta of it say they think battery life is better than stock. Time will tell, but battery life is an absolute must on my phones which sadly rules CM7 out for me at least on the SGS...
Problems I have with CM7:
* Battery drain (obviously), but since #86 I usually get through the day without recharging.
* Random reboots
* sometimes suddenly loses reception (comes back after some time)
* broken 2g/3g-toggle (don't know if it's fixed yet, didn't dare to try)
Problems I have with stock-ROMs:
* often Launcher-redraws
* no USB-tethering on Linux
Problems I have with all GB ROMs:
* GPS-performance is bad. It's usable after applying hardware fix, but when comparing with Froyo ROMs (e.g. Darky 9.5), they always win.
You can get led notifications with Neo's kernel, v17r5 currently. No need for BLN app. :]
Otherwise, CM7 is just smoking the stock ROM, specially if many apps are installed. I can compare the phone to AOSP Desire experience, before I exchanged it for SGS a month ago.
Btw, Green battery saver app helps alot, it turns off wifi/mobile for specified intervals, so less drain when idle and you don't need to manually toggle it. Same **** as iPhone does.
I have messed both with CM7 #80 and JVR. Now I am back to stock JVR because CM7:
- does not support 720p recording
- I had a lot of issues with calling, the other person couldn't hear me. This seems to happen randomly to many users and makes it for me unusable.
There's HD recording @ 30fps on 2 recent nightlies I tried.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.
alinescoo said:
I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience there is a great improvement in flash performance in cm7 (and decline in samsung's gb). Especially in flash video playback. Beware though not to expect anything similar to computer-like performance in this field.
You want a fast, smooth UI and not expect a drawback in battery use? There has got to be a sacrificial lamb in there. The fact that idle drain is already comparable with stock roms means there is no more "battery drain" issue in CM7.
I left CM7 with fugumod kernel overnight, I lost 2% battery in 9 hours.
I left Simplicity overnight. I lost 10% in 9 hours.
Just my findings off of one test
Nice Job
Thank you for your interesting info
filiptc said:
In my experience there is a great improvement in flash performance in cm7 (and decline in samsung's gb). Especially in flash video playback. Beware though not to expect anything similar to computer-like performance in this field.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alinescoo said:
I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for me, flash is crazy good since jvq and flash update. 720p fluid in the browser. silky smooth scrolling, gpu helps a lot.
Quite accurate but:
-wifi for me is horrible on stock and cm7...compared the galaxy s my old iphone 3gs was much better.
-battery when phone is on use is same on cm7 and stock... 'till you use data connection. When using 2g/3g on cm7, battery goes down like a hell.
This because samsung driver are closed source i suppose.
Imho Gingebread is not a great update respect froyo.
Just switched back to stock rom from cm7 nightly. I really liked cm's features but after a while the battery drain was too much.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I was just about to post a thread like this! The last samsung rom i tried, jvq, was for lack of a better word, **** compared to CM7. I wondered if JVR was better but its probably not much better than jvq. For me, i think i can live with the 'drawbacks' of CM7 as it just makes the phone as good as it should be - fast as hell.
Interestingly enough, as you can see from my sig im posting from a galaxy tab. The stock sammy firmware on this is much better on this than most stock sgs roms.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Necrolust said:
I was just about to post a thread like this! The last samsung rom i tried, jvq, was for lack of a better word, **** compared to CM7. I wondered if JVR was better but its probably not much better than jvq. For me, i think i can live with the 'drawbacks' of CM7 as it just makes the phone as good as it should be - fast as hell.
Interestingly enough, as you can see from my sig im posting from a galaxy tab. The stock sammy firmware on this is much better on this than most stock sgs roms.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to say that I was the same (and I still like to switch roms) but JVR is like from a different dev team at Samsung. I am talking about stock JVR. Give it a try and you will see that it is the perfect stock rom.
My issue with CM7 are the colours. Both on stock and Voodoo. There is something about it that I can't get right even after following a few guides here.
Having said that, CM7 is a very good, features rich, fast rom. I don't think any stock rom would get to that speed due to the filesystem difference.
K.
It's interesting that nobody mentions the problem during calls. Is this an isolated problem, happening to only a few of us ?
I am very very impatient when it comes to responsiveness so I'm on CM7 for a while. Hoever, most likely, I will go back to stock because of:
-problems during calls (other person can't hear me - hold-unhold call sometimes fixes this, sometimes not)
- headset controlls not working (can't answer calls, can't control music); very annoying, this was introduced when a fix for FM radio was tried. FM radio still does not work but it managed to screw up the headset controls
- no 720p recording - well, you CAN record but the frames skip a lot and audio is not synced
- when using 3g/h battery goes down REALLY fast and phone heats up a LOT
- last but not least devs are concentrating on SGS2, so any fixes will probably take a long while to be implemented (if there's gonna be any fixes); the development has slowed a lot (still, my thank to the devs for their hard work)
The grass is always greener on the other side, is it? I love CM for its pure android experience, its speed and the control. But yes, there are bugs and that's to be expected if you have to work with closed source blob's and pretty weird hardware (search for atinm's post in the CM7 thread). I'm willing to live with the remaining bugs because the advantages of CM7 are just to big. But my next phone is going to be a Nexus one for sure. That's the only way I'm guaranteed a real android phone without any of the OEM crap.
Jvr odexed with a few fixes is best for me. Camera, colours, no radio and battery drain just not good enough on cm7 for my needs.
Stock Samsung jvr is better than my cm7 2.2.4 nexus one.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Experiences, Thoughts, and Advice on ROMs

Hey guys,
First off, I don't post much on here, but have been doing alot of reading to stay "up-to-date". Yesterday, I just got the Nexus S 4G through Sprint cuz my Epic 4G took a crap and they were backordered so I said sure to the Nexus S.
I spent most the day yesterday looking for ROMs for it and found out about ICS and got all excited for that. So, after looking around I decided on Crossbones 0.1.3 ICS. Overall, I'm liking it but after using it for about a day now, I am noticing the battery life (in comparison to my Epic, which ran the current Legendary ROM with the Samurai Kernel) is HORRIBLE. I don't want to be quick to say it's the phone, ROM, or ICS though. Maybe there's a different way of closing out unused apps that I don't know about? I did just find that you can swipe away unused recent apps. Will that help?
Basically, for a ROM, I look for stability, battery life, speed, and looks. In that order. In GB, I always used Launcher Pro, btw.
So, my question is for those that use or used Crossbones, what are your experiences so far? Also, if it's recommended that I go back to GB for awhile until things get a lil better on ICS (I heard its coming OTA soon), which ROM are people liking? With ICS out now, searching for a good GB ROM has become a lil difficult. So far I read about MUIU (or whatever it is) and CM7, which my gf has on her Dinc2 and her Nook Color. I'm kinda "eh" about CM7. It "just works" imo and I think that's what they are going for. Def not a fan of the looks though. I also miss my power options in my notification pull down too.
PS-
That and I can't get Facebook to add to my account sync. When I go to add it, it does it, goes back to the accounts screen, but its not there. Very strange. Ok, gonna shut up now. this is long enough. lol Thanks in advance.
I've had my Nexus S for a couple of weeks now, I put the stock ICS ROM on the first day and during this time my battery has significantly improved. There are probably three reasons for this, but perhaps not all will apply to you?
1) I've stopped turning everything on, all of the time and constantly tweaking / fiddling / admiring the AMOLED.
2) I've refined how the device uses battery (logged out of Google+).
3) The battery has matured a little.
There's another side effect...
4) I've stopped worrying about the battery so much as I get a day of use from it.
Ice Cream Sandwich and ROMs using it are gonna improve in time. Gingerbread has been out for a year or so and has all this development. So from this there's a lot of potential from ICS...
I'm going to keep my device running the standard ROM for the time being as it's my daily driver, but wanting a device to potentially brick and hack. Thinking about the Galaxy S.
davidsteele1975 said:
I've had my Nexus S for a couple of weeks now, I put the stock ICS ROM on the first day and during this time my battery has significantly improved. There are probably three reasons for this, but perhaps not all will apply to you?
1) I've stopped turning everything on, all of the time and constantly tweaking / fiddling / admiring the AMOLED.
2) I've refined how the device uses battery (logged out of Google+).
3) The battery has matured a little.
There's another side effect...
4) I've stopped worrying about the battery so much as I get a day of use from it.
Ice Cream Sandwich and ROMs using it are gonna improve in time. Gingerbread has been out for a year or so and has all this development. So from this there's a lot of potential from ICS...
I'm going to keep my device running the standard ROM for the time being as it's my daily driver, but wanting a device to potentially brick and hack. Thinking about the Galaxy S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. So far in terms of battery saving tricks, I've disabled animations, the screen is set to about 1/4 brightness, only thing that constantly does anything is k9
mail to check my inbox every 15 mins (that I'm aware of lol). So it could be that my battery needs to "mature"? Btw, are there any good themes out yet? I miss my transparent text msg threads and I really miss my power controls on the notification pull down. I'm def not digging the white on the contacts and SMS screens. Lol
::BUMP:: Seriously? No one else?
Well is was getting bad battery and weird force closes on cross bones, i'm on vhgomex(thinks that's right), it's been a lot better for me and it has the notification power widget in it
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
BrianDigital said:
Well is was getting bad battery and weird force closes on cross bones, i'm on vhgomex(thinks that's right), it's been a lot better for me and it has the notification power widget in it
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I havent had any issues with the rom running or any FCs... Took a look at gomez. Gonna do a nandroid and give it try. Looks promising, and FB sync is supposed to work. lol
infamshxr said:
::BUMP:: Seriously? No one else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you're not getting many answers because your issues have already been addressed. A simple search will find many (most) ROMs with notification toggles and Facebook sync. I personally recommend AOKP.
I'd say it's just the rom. I'm on an ICS rom, everything works great and I have significantly better battery life than before.
I'm on AndroidME with Eugene's speedy-3 kernel. I don't have Facebook sync and power toggles in notification though, but I don't really care for those two features anyway.
Well I'm on Gomez now. Things already seem to be better. Absolutely no issues so far. I'll know for sure in a day or so.
Well I uninstall bloat.sys apps I don't use with root uninstaller
As for Bette battery life. Honestly think. What could someone do to the phone to put out better battery life. Almost nothing but SBC kernels and the CPU speed and goveners. That's it.
Most of you guys don't have battery issues you just play with your phone all day instead of doing your work.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Shark_On_Land said:
Well I uninstall bloat.sys apps I don't use with root uninstaller
As for Bette battery life. Honestly think. What could someone do to the phone to put out better battery life. Almost nothing but SBC kernels and the CPU speed and goveners. That's it.
Most of you guys don't have battery issues you just play with your phone all day instead of doing your work.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A: that was fairly rude. I'm legitimately asking for help and advice. I didn't make the thread to be judged or ridiculed on my phone usage. I don't judge others on how they use they're phone, so why should I be?
B: I'm comparing this all with my epic. I don't over clock or mess with the CPU settings cuz that's beyond my knowledge atm. Like I said, battery seems MUCH better now with this rom . Now my only gripe is volume. Way quieter on this phone which seems to be a known issue. Trying out volume+ soon. Also, at the end of my day, I'll post my battery stats and see what you guys think. But like I said, I think its OK now.
Im on bigxie's rom and icup kernel im getting great battery life with this but thats just me.i dont know whats great for you.try this rom its somewhat minimalist or pure stock with just statusbar widgets and other features.no 'omg' tweaks that cause more harm than good.and it has trebuchet which is perfectly put into the mix.im satisfied with this .been with this rom since build 1 and ive been happy with its consistency.no bugs encountered
Sent from a Nexus S
dark06 said:
Im on bigxie's rom and icup kernel im getting great battery life with this but thats just me.i dont know whats great for you.try this rom its somewhat minimalist or pure stock with just statusbar widgets and other features.no 'omg' tweaks that cause more harm than good.and it has trebuchet which is perfectly put into the mix.im satisfied with this .been with this rom since build 1 and ive been happy with its consistency.no bugs encountered
Sent from a Nexus S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the opinion. I'll keep that one in mind if this doesn't work out. Sounds a lot like Gomez. Gomez has basically just what you listed. I'd def take stability over extra crap. Lol
Sry for the double post,but to report back, totally forgot to post my battery stats, but they were definitely better. By far. Still not much luck on the sound tho. Got an app the boosts my media volume but my ringer wasn't affected, which sucks. Anything on this that I haven't possibly found?
I'm going back to CM7. 7.2 is out and honesty its just more optimized for this device. CM optimizes their ROMs to very fast high standards and do stuff a lot of you newbies can't even think of. (Yes, these will be implemented in BESTROM.)
So I'm going back. To smoothness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Shark_On_Land said:
I'm going back to CM7. 7.2 is out and honesty its just more optimized for this device. CM optimizes their ROMs to very fast high standards and do stuff a lot of you newbies can't even think of. (Yes, these will be implemented in BESTROM.)
So I'm going back. To smoothness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You really shouldn't be so rude and demean other members of this forum like that. Frankly, no one cares if you're going back to CM7 or not. But thank you for your belittling feedback.
To the original poster, I'm running Pete Alfonso's nightlies along with Mathkid's Matrix CFS kernel. With a bit of overclock and tweaking of the kernel settings, I get great smoothness, stability, and decent battery life. To me, any battery life that gets me from "up in the morning" to "home at night" is fine, because I have my charger at my desk. But typically, I can survive a full 24 hours on one charge.
Who knows, though. Maybe I'm just too much of a newbie to realize the full potential of what my device can do and therefore it's my fault that the battery life is as good as it is.
Hey! I've just recently switched to my Galaxy Nexus, but was a Crespo owner since it came out. Been reading your post but I would agree that you should try out the AOKP rom along with a custom undervolted kernel for longer battery life.
I haven't really tinkered with my Nexus S in awhile (I gave it to my gf when I got the Galaxy Nexus) but the last thing I remembered was either installing aokp or cm9. In due time the custom ics roms will improve and the power widgets in the notification bar will be brought back, but they usually want to focus on stability then add new features little by little. Hope you are having fun your Crespo!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
So far I'm still rocking gomez's. Really loving the battery life. Only issue I've had is 3g doesn't always come back after using wifi. Not a big deal tho I guess. Really stable too. I was thinking of using mathkidskernel but don't wanna possibly screw up what I got now. I'm backed up so maybe one of these days. Heard alotof good things about mathkids kernel. Heard good things about aopk too, so that's my other go to. Lol
kto_matchu said:
You really shouldn't be so rude and demean other members of this forum like that. Frankly, no one cares if you're going back to CM7 or not. But thank you for your belittling feedback.
To the original poster, I'm running Pete Alfonso's nightlies along with Mathkid's Matrix CFS kernel. With a bit of overclock and tweaking of the kernel settings, I get great smoothness, stability, and decent battery life. To me, any battery life that gets me from "up in the morning" to "home at night" is fine, because I have my charger at my desk. But typically, I can survive a full 24 hours on one charge.
Who knows, though. Maybe I'm just too much of a newbie to realize the full potential of what my device can do and therefore it's my fault that the battery life is as good as it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry if that was rude but you have to take in count that
I myself is using modified CM7.1RC0AOSP2.3.7GB as base. But far as CM9AOSP4.0.3ICS goes its still not ready for folks like me for DD yet.
As I described below how extensively its optimized and most of it is outside the scope of current XDA.
What you have to understand is performance is not measured via synthetic benchmarks (ex: Quadrant). The biggest issue with people is that they don't know enough to know that they don't know, so they compare it with silly numbers (ex: score) they can't comprehend what they see, much less put numbers behind real life activities that's not applicable in controlled environment.
OS development which eliminates most of it but on software level custom base rom (ex: CyanogenMod) is highly optimized and tweaked to run on optimal performance. Mostly, but not all. But does it mean it can't be tweaked any further? (Rhetorical) No. How do I know? We (scope outside of XDA) tweaked it to the next level. How you ask?
1) Optimized ext4fs: reduced r/w rate (healthy NAND lifespan), improved journaling (corrupted data writeback integrity) = Which improves the IOPs and performance access rate.
2) HC3.x fugu binaries, patched sqlite libraries, mSD read ahead buffer fix.
3) Modified VM: OOM (Out Of Memory), LMK (Low Memory Killer), VM heap (Virtual Machine), DRA (Dirty Ratio), DBR (Dirty Background Ratio), DWC (Dirty Writeback Centisecs), DEC (Dirty Expired Centisecs), SWP (Swap), VCP (VFS Cache Pressure).
4) Increased minfree value: Background, Foreground, Empty, Hidden, Visible, Secondary, Content.
5) Optimized cache: File and Drop cache, Forced cache (resident loop).
6) Custom kernel: OC/UC, UV/SVS/VDD, BFS/CFS, RSU/NP/VR/SP supported.
7) Custom ROM: Optimized Rom script and props (ex: CyanogenMod).
this as its tweaked to THE next level. I'll stick with AOSP2.3.7GB until ICS4.X is more stable and we understand more as most memory grouping and adjustments might be changed.
I bet most of you only do 2 of those thing (6&7)
i suggest you try androiduser aosp rom with icup kernel. you dont have to do anything else and with normal usage you'll get 24+ hours

Going back to Gingerbread - my experiences

So a few days ago I realized I just can't use JB as a daily driver. I *love* 4.x and am a big fan of almost every change introduced, so I've been using ICS and later JB builds as soon as builds were available (thanks, devs!). But on the DZ it just ain't cutting it. I haven't had a single day without freezes, spontaneous reboots, unbearable slowdowns, graphic glitches etc.
Well I'm back to ILWT CM7, which I haven't used for about 11 months. I've frozen almost every stock app, and have found a usable Holo-style replacement for almost all of them, except for the Browser and the hideous pre-ICS Calendar (any suggestions?). Also every 3rd party SMS app is so bloated.
So far, what I miss:
- I really miss pulling down the status bar in the lockscreen! But that requires a 3rd-party lockscreen replacement which is a huge PITA. Also no 4.x unified lockscreen music controls.
- 4.x Rich Notifications. I added music controls in the CM7 notification power widget, but it's a pretty crappy solution (reminds me of iOS)
- JB makes scrolling in apps (among other things) smoother, and some things were considerably more "fluid". JB wasn't *that* smooth anyhow, at least on the DZ.
- 2.x interface is hideous, "fixed" with ICS Mixer theme, Holo-styled apps and a font change.
- Overall UI polish degradations and papercuts, like the power menu, the loss of holo action bar and the ugly old icons of app menu options.
- Some newer apps don't support 2.x which sucks.
- Tons of 4.x improvements I didn't mention. ICS and JB are such vast improvements from GB. JB is so much more consistent, and it sucks that htc are assholes and dropped support for DZ and DHD.
What's better:
- Much more stable.
- Faster!
- Can actually multitask now because there's no need for the OS to constantly kill things in the background. lol at Titanium constantly getting killed in the background on JB.
- Better battery life.
- The proper drivers mean some apps work here but not in 4.x. For example, any app that uses the phone as a webcam.
So anyone else back on Gingerbread and can share their experience?
Most of the time im running a gingerbread rom. Never get the freezes you are talking about on any 4.x rom in 6 months or so, are you sure you had all partitions in ext4?
I do agree battery life is much lower than in 2.3.x and thats one of the main reasons i tend to stick with them. The ui is much better with 4.x but id rather have an ugly ui then a phone that isnt 100%
Overall ics and somewhat jb has been proven to be running almost perfect on the vision and right now im on an ics (a sense rom which i usualy hate!) But there are just too many things dragging me back to gingerbread, battery life being the biggest issue as im a heavy user
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
demkantor said:
Most of the time im running a gingerbread rom. Never get the freezes you are talking about on any 4.x rom in 6 months or so, are you sure you had all partitions in ext4?
I do agree battery life is much lower than in 2.3.x and thats one of the main reasons i tend to stick with them. The ui is much better with 4.x but id rather have an ugly ui then a phone that isnt 100%
Overall ics and somewhat jb has been proven to be running almost perfect on the vision and right now im on an ics (a sense rom which i usualy hate!) But there are just too many things dragging me back to gingerbread, battery life being the biggest issue as im a heavy user
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to say the battery life on the newest Andromadous JB test builds are amazing and much better than GB. I even have the CPU governor set the minimum to 800 MHz with maximum to 1500 Mhz and I can still run a full day without recharging (I do quite a bit of web browsing on my G2 and occasional calls).
Possibly between some gb roms it is better but the best battery life that i consistantly get is with elitemodcm7 and ilwtcm7, with heavy use i can get through a full day 18+ hours every time. If i use a little less on some of the ics roms i can get close but not always (elitemod cm9 kernel with mimicry seems to be the best battery life) i poor life on old jb test builds that slowy got a little better, have tried a build since around 90 something but im sure ill test again soon.
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
demkantor said:
Possibly between some gb roms it is better but the best battery life that i consistantly get is with elitemodcm7 and ilwtcm7, with heavy use i can get through a full day 18+ hours every time. If i use a little less on some of the ics roms i can get close but not always (elitemod cm9 kernel with mimicry seems to be the best battery life) i poor life on old jb test builds that slowy got a little better, have tried a build since around 90 something but im sure ill test again soon.
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, definitely try the new test builds, I was really amazed at the big difference in battery life in the newest builds.
euhh, its not beacause of your DZ.
- On the galaxy sII, MOST of the ICS and JB roms are not smooth at all. Lot of crashes , etc. Even on the official update.
- on galaxy note, same thing. Looks like stock JB run better anyway, good thing.
- on nexus S it is the worst since the last JB update.
- on desire ( one of the most supported device) , lot of crashes with ICS.
- And I dont tell you about the milestone (very old device)...
^^^
All the phones mentionned above, are running GB right now.
They not all mine, most of them are my friends phone, they ask me to root it to try new roms. All of them complaining about ICS/JB stability.
I didnt try the big ass phones like the sIII, but they are so powerfull that you can't feel any slowdown.
Thanks for that info, overdose. I've been wondering how other phones with more dev support were handling JB. Here's hoping with the new Nexus phones soon we can finally have a device that handles stock Android decently.
I've ran into an old CM7 bug with the Lense lockscreen... basically what happens is that, for some reason, the software thinks pulling down the Lense should launch a custom app instead of unlocking the device. Since I didn't have any custom app defined, pulling down does nothing and there is no way to unlock the device
So I have to fix it with adb which is pretty pathetic. Ironically I'm typing this from a restored Jelly Bean ROM.
edit: I got it fixed, and in the process dropped my phone and severely cracked the screen. Hahaha. Oh well DZ we had a good run.
Pickx said:
Thanks for that info, overdose. I've been wondering how other phones with more dev support were handling JB. Here's hoping with the new Nexus phones soon we can finally have a device that handles stock Android decently.
I've ran into an old CM7 bug with the Lense lockscreen... basically what happens is that, for some reason, the software thinks pulling down the Lense should launch a custom app instead of unlocking the device. Since I didn't have any custom app defined, pulling down does nothing and there is no way to unlock the device
So I have to fix it with adb which is pretty pathetic. Ironically I'm typing this from a restored Jelly Bean ROM.
edit: I got it fixed, and in the process dropped my phone and severely cracked the screen. Hahaha. Oh well DZ we had a good run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DZ screen are cheap.
I have 2 in stock just in case, with the HTC logo. I paid them 30 $ ea. a year ago .
I don't have a desire z but a nexus one and did have 2 regular desires before (my ex gf had ICS spazedog ROM - working pretty good) now I'm running spazedog jellybean rom on the n1 and its smooth than cm was maybe a bit slower to open apps but no real lag or freeze or reboots after a couple weeks. Only problem is no video camera and had to install an app from play store to take pictures without a soft reboot and still the pictures don't look great. That and can't play YouTube videos in app or browser or its reboots. Other than that its pretty reliable and the desire z should be a slightly better phone. Maybe something else causing the issues?
Sent from my Nexus One using xda app-developers app
@createpassword...
Everyone use their phone differently, I agree with much of what you are saying but I highly disagree with bettery battery life on 4.x compared with 2.x, no matter how much you tweak or change things the best roms (for battery life) on 4.x have never been able to compete with the best 2.x in that regard. I will say that the improvment have been incredible over the past 6 months or so, but I'm a heavy user, and maybe its the way I use my phone that runs the battery fast but I easily can get a day with 2.x (about 6hours screen on) and I'm always struggling even with the best 4.x to do the same, (max maybe 4~4.5hrs screen up)
But again, we all use our phones differently. Right now I'm on an ics Rom, about 6hours up, 56% left of battery with just under 2hrs screen on. Granted this is not the best ics rom for battery life but let's I was using say mimicry or elitemod ics, I would be @ maybe 65 @ most, with certain 2.x is be well over 70 right now
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
Fair enough, but like I said we all use phones differently, and I will disagree that screen on time is meaningless being the most power is being used when screen is on. I'm sure I could have my phone on, with screen off, put it in airplane mode and let it sit for 3days to see it still has 30% (or whatever) juice left, no matter the os. But that dosent matter to me as I want my phone to last when I'm using it
Listen, you may get the best life out of ics or jb on your phone, I get better life on 2.x, I'm not saying these newer roms are inferior, I'm saying that one of the most important features is battery life to me and I have always gotten the best life in older operating systems. Having said that, I'm a flashaholic and I try nearly every Rom available for any phone I have. Mimicry is amazing, fast, stable, and pretty good battery life. If I absolutely need to be sure I have power left by the end of the day I'm not running mimicry (im a heavy user and the ways I use my phone it just isn't going to happen) and don't say I have bad apps with memory leaks and wake locks because I've been around long enough to know to test for all this. I don't use Many different apps and the ones I do use I know are good (and the same ones I use not matter the os)
Let's just agree you have different experiences with your phone as I have with mine, I'm not steering anyone away from using
Ics or jb, and ill continue to use thenm too. But I (not you) get bettery life with 2.x
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
demkantor said:
Fair enough, but like I said we all use phones differently, and I will disagree that screen on time is meaningless being the most power is being used when screen is on. I'm sure I could have my phone on, with screen off, put it in airplane mode and let it sit for 3days to see it still has 30% (or whatever) juice left, no matter the os. But that dosent matter to me as I want my phone to last when I'm using it
Listen, you may get the best life out of ics or jb on your phone, I get better life on 2.x, I'm not saying these newer roms are inferior, I'm saying that one of the most important features is battery life to me and I have always gotten the best life in older operating systems. Having said that, I'm a flashaholic and I try nearly every Rom available for any phone I have. Mimicry is amazing, fast, stable, and pretty good battery life. If I absolutely need to be sure I have power left by the end of the day I'm not running mimicry (im a heavy user and the ways I use my phone it just isn't going to happen) and don't say I have bad apps with memory leaks and wake locks because I've been around long enough to know to test for all this. I don't use Many different apps and the ones I do use I know are good (and the same ones I use not matter the os)
Let's just agree you have different experiences with your phone as I have with mine, I'm not steering anyone away from using
Ics or jb, and ill continue to use thenm too. But I (not you) get bettery life with 2.x
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obviously battery life varies with the way you use your phone. If you're ever interested in trying JB again, definitely give the test builds a shot. Remember to do a full wipe though, I assume you do anyways. I was shocked at how much the JB test builds improved battery life and responsiveness compared to the Virtuous G-lite I was using for a while.
well thats somewhat a relative point. you see when i consistently get (im picking #s here) 24hrs of battery use with 6 of those hours being screen on time with 2.x. then i compare the use of 4.x where i consistently get 18hrs of use with 4hrs screen on.
this compares not only the screen on time but also the overall time the phone lasts between charges. i feel most people comparing batteries understand that this is over a course of time and that the first day they flash a new rom will not give the best overall picture of what the battery consumption level is.
true the most power consumption is happening when the screen is on, but noting the amount of screen on time along with how long the battery lasts (consistently) will give anyone a good idea of whats going on. see if there is a day that i use my phone less, the battery tends to last longer (you get that) noting how long screen on time is gives a general picture of how frequently the phone is used that day.
also comparing what operating systems do in deep sleep is useful, again that hopefully is not the best way in determining battery life as you are lacking realworld use of the phone. yes its important to note, but like i said if i stuck the phone in a sock drawer for three days with the sim pulled and wifi off, i couldnt care much the results because my use of my phone will never be compared to it sitting in a sock drawer for any period of time.
so one of us is not getting the other, or there is some **** comparing going on over battery life testing. either way i say its best not to waste time and electronic ink over this. lets just say your right for the sake of i dont really care.
I've been in somewhat the same boat having gone back to CM7 many times for speed and stability. Mimicry was very nice but Skype would crash in it and it was an app that I always used. Now that Skype has made some major updates, I'm considering either installing Mimicry again or Jelly Baby. The latter is going to be updated soon from what I've been reading so I'll likely wait and try that.
rizzers said:
I've been in somewhat the same boat having gone back to CM7 many times for speed and stability. Mimicry was very nice but Skype would crash in it and it was an app that I always used. Now that Skype has made some major updates, I'm considering either installing Mimicry again or Jelly Baby. The latter is going to be updated soon from what I've been reading so I'll likely wait and try that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly scrolling in cm7 looks laggish to me compared to flinnys don't know why . how is jelly baby compared to flinnys in terms of performance?
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Just my 2 pence but, frankly, any and every CM9.x/CM10.x rom I've ever tried on my DZ has been laggy/buggy after some time. On the other hand, the AOSP counterparts have ALWAYS been faster in general and didn't slow down, unlike CM. Hell, it was the same even with CM7 (with some exceptions, primarily ILWT CM7). This is obviously logical since CM has more things going on unlike AOSP which is pretty light on the feature side (nothing you can't take care of with a couple of apps, mind you). From my experience, CM9+ roms just don't work on the DZ. Whatever I do, they always end up slowing down to the point where I can't even use the phone. As for battery life...I don't have much to say in particular, it has always been below average whatever rom I was running (again with a few exceptions, like G-Lite).
Just as I said though, just my opinion so don't take my word for it.

A noob's journey to find a custom ROM for best battery life Galaxy S2 GT-I9100

Greetings All,
First post here so I hope I don't f#@% up.
I know there've been a million threads closed about this because everyone's setup and usage is different. I found it really frustrating to not get an 'answer', thinking to myself ‘why not compare apples with apples?’ ie stock vs custom ROM with the same usage. So I thought I'd share my experience for anyone else frustrated with the lack of “The Answer”
I bought a refurbished (new screen, battery and back cover) SGS2 GT-I9100 unlocked with Vodafone stock ROM. I was getting the battery warning at 4 hours (!) after a few calls and texts, about 15 min of FB, same for Gmail (WiFi on/Data off at home), and about an hour of driving with Google Navigation and playing music (Wifi/Data/GPS on). Battery usage showed that next to the screen at #1, GPS/Navigation was the biggest drain followed by playing music. All the other stuff was insignificant by comparison.
By uninstalling and disabling everything Samsung, Vodafone, and stuff I didn’t use, it stretched to 6 hours. 50% improvement but still unacceptable as I wanted to get at least a work-day plus travel ie 10 hours.
So a custom ROM was required which started the saga of rooting. Did hours of research and unsuccessfully tried a few through a Samsung developers’ program (Odin?). I finally resorted to spending money and sent the IMEI# to online services. Some said the phone was rootable, some not. I paid my twenty-five bucks to 1-ClickRoot and it didn’t work (but I used it to root my wife’s Motorola Mileston2) and finally rooted the SGS2 with Framaroot (I think it was either free or the price of a can of Coke). Couldn’t have been simpler – downloaded the file with the browser, explored to the (apk?) file and opened it, tried the first 2 vulnerability options unsuccessfully and on the third, success. Rebooted – voila.
I tried a few custom ROMs that, while they were highly recommended and had all the customisable bells and whistles and ‘great battery life’, I didn’t like the UI. Plus I just wanted a ‘normal’ phone with a good camera (I’m a hobby photographer) which could also browse the web, use GPS navigation, play music, have custom ringtones and pics for contacts, and the ‘important’ stuff for me at the bottom of the home screens - phone, messaging, contacts, browser and apps. I didn’t need to be able to customise virtually everything on the phone and some of these ROMs were 400-900MB compared to under 200MB for most.
Which brings me to CyanogenMod 10.1 (CM10.1). The UI is closer to standard (plus many more options) so I found the transition from the stock ROM easy. And with the same usage PLUS an EXTRA hour of Google Navigation/GPS/music – 10 hours easy with 20-33% battery left (!). Added a high capacity battery (2600mAh over 1800mAh factory, same physical size) and I now go from 0700 to 0100 the following day regularly – 18 hours with 1-9% battery left.
Hope this helps…
Cheers,
Ferenc
25 bucks for rooting :laugh:
Eek i get about 5hrs + screen on time wid ics 4.0.4 xwlpt wid speedmod kernel....
Btw since u are hobby photographer.. The camera app on cm10.1 sucks when compared to that of the stock...so does the picture quality ...
No regrets here??
Best battery would be NeatROM +Apolo Kernel IMO
I've got two ROMs that deliver really nice battery life:
1. XWKE7 2.3.3 Samsung Stock (somehow it doesn't deliver such a good battery life now)
- This once got me through 3 days of regular usage with roundabout 10% left. Somhow "Android OS" drains me now, so I get two days maximum.
2. CM10.1 stable + DorimanX 9.14 kernel
- Got a tip about this combo from a friend, and well, it rocks. If you want an up-to-date version of android and great battery life, choose this.
There is various things you can do.I use rooted stock rom, running custom kernel and have all the crap stripped out.
I find custom roms better in some things and worse in others=overall not worth it for me.
You try what you like, but a GB rom c/w speedmod should be good.
That 25 bucks though...
Best Combo would be NeatROM (Extra-Lite) JB + Apolo Kernel 4.13 (Extreme V2, if possible for your phone and won't reboot)
weirdly enough but best power consumption I ever had on SG2 was with CM11 from 10-Dec-2013 by Wayland_ACE
(I've used mostly CM nightlies starting from 7.2)
Later versions from here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2597199 much worse for some reason...
Not enough time to investigate fully yet, but BetterBatteryStats shows very similar picture...
Now just flashed this one - http://download.cyanogenmod.org/get/jenkins/57551/cm-11-20140202-NIGHTLY-i9100.zip .... we'll see...
CM 11 with ART runtime solved all my leakages during sleep mode. (Some apps like "stocks" were draining power when Dalvik was used)
CM11 nightlies seem to be good and stable, the only issue is: phone doesn't enter a deep sleep after charging(stuck on 200MHz). Shut down & power up solves, yet very annoying issue.
One thing, GB tops in battery life...
But i dont like it(GB theme is ugly)
gvovs said:
CM 11 with ART runtime solved all my leakages during sleep mode. (Some apps like "stocks" were draining power when Dalvik was used)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting.....
Cheap root?
doctor_droid said:
25 bucks for rooting :laugh:
Eek i get about 5hrs + screen on time wid ics 4.0.4 xwlpt wid speedmod kernel....
Btw since u are hobby photographer.. The camera app on cm10.1 sucks when compared to that of the stock...so does the picture quality ...
No regrets here??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your response Doc
Twenty five bucks is cheap for a root Ok, it was 2am and I was desperate to root my phone after 18 hours of research over a coupla'days and repeated attempts which never ended up with SuperUser in my Apps drawer. I know better now...
Tonight I have 33% battery left after 12hrs/4.5hrs screen on - pretty happy...
Funny you say the cm10.1 camera app sux - yeah sure the colours are a bit over-saturated (but gee it makes for pretty pictures ) but so far i've found the lag between shutter-press and shot, and Auto White-Balance the best so far, other than Fast Burst Camera which for me is too low res for anything other than phone screen or Facebook/YouTube small window viewing on PC. I take a lot of pics of my happy 4yo daughter who stubbornly refuses to smile 'properly' 'at' the camera and her most delightful smiles are at the top of a swing which has been pushed a bit too hard (I'm getting quite good at predicting the lag now, but MANY missed pearls). I've installed Camera 4.2 for panorama shots (can't remember what the google name is) and find it has too few options for me (particularly white balance) and much the same lag. You sound like a bit of a camera app connoisseur - any suggestions for no lag (I mean really, it's digital, can't you capture it NOW?)/accurate white balance/good colour saturation? I really only got a mobile phone when the cameras got good enough to 'replace' a point-and-shoot, so camera is a biggy for me
Cheers,
Ferenc
okay... still using CM11 nightlies, finally can leave the phone not in charger overnight and still use it next day.
average charge loss (radio and wifi on) is 2 to 4% per hour, some syncs are enabled. Also ART(supposedly unsupported by CM) enabled.
All is smooth.
@ferenczoltan - u r a camera pro ... I m a noob in terms of camera and i can only look for end user comparison points like touch to focus or image blurriness and few more... For me the stock camera app seems to more hardware dedicated..
As for rom .. 4.5hrs screen on time and still 1/3rd juice left? 2000mAh battery ..right?
Edit - saw ur old.reply... its 2600mAh
I like this thread. I would suggest adding a poll to it so that users can vote for the best battery life rom.
I've been trying a lot of roms with the goal to find one that that has a good battery life and even if some roms are better that others none are excellent. It makes me laugh when I read that you judge a rom on its built-in apps (camera...) since you can instal all the apps you need (like a better camera on xda or even on the market.
I don't know if I'm the only one but I get the feeling that the "out of the box" rom and kernel gave me the better results but I won't go back to full stock, that's for sure.
Currently on : Neat extra lite + Apollo V2
mastawindu said:
I like this thread. I would suggest adding a poll to it so that users can vote for the best battery life rom.
I've been trying a lot of roms with the goal to find one that that has a good battery life and even if some roms are better that others none are excellent. It makes me laugh when I read that you judge a rom on its built-in apps (camera...) since you can instal all the apps you need (like a better camera on xda or even on the market.
I don't know if I'm the only one but I get the feeling that the "out of the box" rom and kernel gave me the better results but I won't go back to full stock, that's for sure.
Currently on : Neat extra lite + Apollo V2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be more precise...stock rom camera libs are much more better as compared to custom ones. no matter which app I use in custom roms the quality is still inferior when compared to stock ..
And yes u r right .. out of the box combo is the best m on stock rom 4.1.2 deodexed zipalign rooted and wid a secure kernel (my own kitchen made rom)
Wizzedkat
Guys has anyone using Wizzedkat rom?
Battery life on that rom is terrible...had to revert back to slimsaber 4.4.2
Haven't tried deodexed stock roms yet. On KK, the best battery life was on beanstalk, AOSB and Cyan fox. Amazing deep sleep battery life for AOSB and beanstalk. Stock kernel.
Hey,
I also had battery problems on my previous rom so I went looking for another rom... I ended up with Chameleon rom, it is based on stock samsung(4.1.2[emoji20]) firmware with pure aosp look (everything related to samsung is replaced by aosp apps except the camera) it also has aokp ROM Control included so you are able to tweak the rom and the best part is the screen time... 4 hours on a 2 year old stock samsung battery

[Q] Best Battery Life Kitkat Rom

Just wondering what Rom people are running who are concerned with battery life. I listen to music and podcasts quite often. Right now I'm using Dan's google edition rom and I love the layout and speed but I noticed my phone getting quite warm and I'm concerned.
Cheers,
T
spotlesst said:
Just wondering what Rom people are running who are concerned with battery life. I listen to music and podcasts quite often. Right now I'm using Dan's google edition rom and I love the layout and speed but I noticed my phone getting quite warm and I'm concerned.
Cheers,
T
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I prefer Gummy Rom. PAC is pretty good too.
azuziel said:
I prefer Gummy Rom. PAC is pretty good too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have the link to gummy. I found pac but couldn't find the gummy rom
Cheers,
T
Gummy
spotlesst said:
Just wondering what Rom people are running who are concerned with battery life. I listen to music and podcasts quite often. Right now I'm using Dan's google edition rom and I love the layout and speed but I noticed my phone getting quite warm and I'm concerned.
Cheers,
T
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange, that ROM behaved well for me. Any chance you have an misbehaving app?
Besides Dan's GE ROM, I've had great luck w/ Slimrom.
Another idea is that beside the rom, try using ktoonsez's kernel (if you're not already). With the tweaker app that comes with it you can load a bunch of profiles to turn your phone into a battery saving miser or power hungry gaming machine and everything in between.
(During the day I don't use my phone much and load a battery saving profile then at night switch to performance. While I charge the phone every day, I could definitely go at least two.. maybe more.)
iBASTiD' Mapleleaf rom works well also although I can't tell which phone you have or where your from. His rom is basically stock 4.4.2 with a non stock kernel (Adam's) In the addon section he provides a flashable file to remove the standard samsung apps if you like it a little skinnier.... I have been running it for a couple of days now and it is solid...
Forgot to mention... it does apps2sd also...
There isn't a "best" rom, but with that being said I love Vanir for the nightly updates.
Sent from my SGH-I337M using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

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