Database Users

GB to ICS and back - mini review

My month with a factory unlocked Galaxy S2​
Bought this in mint condition from a friend for about half price with only 1 hour of use, an unwanted upgrade. Came with 2.3.4 as expected, so hooked up to Kies; no update at the time. As is my wont, I used the phone for a few days to get to grips with TouchWiz (TW) and the phone generally. All quite reasonable, no stability issues and TW is not bad by any means.
My thoughts and trials so far then:
Hardware
Well made, light and thin. Slippery, so a black rubbery skin bought and fitted and I popped a spare 8GB microSD card in, not that the phone needs it for my purposes.
Only criticism is the OLED screen, I'm used to higher resolution (Moto and Sony) and 800x480 looks rather "cheapo" in terms of detail on a screen this large, but no deal breaker. What I do find somewhat at odds with the price of the phone is the slight but noticeable shading and colour tints across the screen at low brightness levels and on some backgrounds. Plus, the screen's legibility outside on a bright day is no better than more run of the mill LCD screens. (I mean cheaper!)
My first GB update
I generally root phones straight after flashing a new firmware version, if it isn't already. I had already successfully rooted the original stock 2.3.4 firmware with Zergrush 4 and debloated that ROM.
I was keen to try a later GB version before trying ICS, and I found 2.3.6 for "Open Europe" on Sammobile and downloaded it. I had already tried Kies, so the USB drivers were present and working. I uninstalled Kies on the PC but left the USB drivers alone. Kies and Odin are not good bedfellows. I did a full factory reset on the phone and erased everything, allowed it to reboot and then powered off, got in to download mode and flashed XXKL1 (which is an engineering version and deodexed it seems). Rooted it via Zergrush 4, deleted known bloat and renamed possible bloat to xxx.bak to clean the ROM for my own usage, and deleted that very annoying start-up sound. Downloaded all the apps I normally use (about 22 of them), including the excellent CPU Spy to check for deep sleep.
I used/charged the phone over the next couple of days to let the OS bed in. No problems encountered at all, and a very pleasing battery life of 30+ hours of light use, with syncing and GPS, 3G, WiFi always on and occasional BT. Magic! Only thing I did is change the Modem to LPR - the KI3 Modem that came with the ROM is not quite as good at holding weak signals. Only just though...
My first ICS update
So, good phone, stable and very usable ROM in 2.3.6. Time had come to try this new ICS thing. Downloaded the LPQ version and installed it, after a full wipe, via Odin. Not impressed by all the automatic installation rubbish at first boot... Rooted via a hot boot CWM and SU/Busybox successfully and did all the same debloating and app installation as GB 2.3.6. Spent some time getting orientated and used to the new menus and so on.
Over the next day or so, I let the ROM settle and began using the ROM - I changed the Modem to LPR as LPQ was not as good, perception wise. ROM was stable and usable, didn't really look or feel much different from 2.3.6 and was worse on battery - I would say 18 hours at best with the same usage pattern.
Absolutely hate the new Exchange thing for live.com email.... real pain usability wise and battery unfriendly.
My second ICS update
So, not overly impressed with LPQ, although it was usable, I decided to try LP7, the UK generic one. Went through the same process as above, and again swapped the Modem from LPS (awful!) to LPR.
No obvious differences at all. Battery life was as poor, but it was usable.
My first CM trial - CM9
So, somewhat disillusioned by Samsung's ICS implementation, I decide to look around for another "mature" ROM. CM9 fitted the bill (I have used CM6 before on another phone) and was smack bang up to date in terms of kernel, AOSP and G Apps. After my usual clean deck start, installed fine, 23/04 build.
At first, I was quite impressed as I could configure more and to my liking. The ROM was stable and I set the phone up with the usual Apps and deleted some useless stuff (like GenieWidget).
Swapped Modem out to LPR - bit of a theme going on here...
I liked the fact that the Spirit FM radio worked (so bought the Pro version as it is that good). The ROM is very usable and never got bogged down, BUT, for reasons I never fully determined, the battery life would start OK and then decline faster during the day. I never saw more than 12 hours life, again using as per my normal pattern and after a few days to settle. There appeared to be various background activities going on that were preventing deep sleep sometimes, but BBS was not really showing me what. Note that I only use BBS as a last resort as it can increase battery use...
No other real problems, but the soft key backlights wouldn't play with NoLED and were somewhat counter-intuitive. A bit trivial, but a mess.
My second CM trial - CM7
I like GB, it is mature and well understood, so CM7 RC 2 was therefore of some appeal. It had been developed over months and must therefore be fairly sorted. Surely.
Installed without issue on a cleaned platform as usual, including G Apps. Did the usual debloat and installed the usual Apps from the Market/Play, and some that were missing, like GMail. LPR modem was already there, Hooray! Spent rather longer fiddling with the settings in CM7 than CM9 since they were less obvious at first, to me anyway.
Switched off and put the phone on wall charge overnight and was rather shocked to find the phone was noticeably warm and displaying "Kernel Panic" in the morning. The phone had only charged by about 5% in total (to 64%). Worry Worry. I put the phone on USB charge until 100% without incident.
Started to use the phone as normal, the phone UI and operation was very good, fluid even. But, first problem I had was in the car. I paired BT fine, as usual, and made a phone call. After the call, I couldn't end the call on the car or phone - it had locked up. Oh dear.
Later, I tried the FM Radio during my daily walk - doesn't work, so why is it there? I tried Spirit FM - no way would it work. Oh dear.
The following day, I noticed that the battery life was amazing! I had never seen this phone sip juice like this. Deep sleep was always easily achieved. That was until the afternoon. I noticed that the battery level was declining at a much higher rate than earlier. I hadn't done anything different, so BBS was called in again. Nothing obvious shown but I kept seeing the GPS icon winking at me from the Notification bar, and continually. I always keep GPS on, but for some reason on this ROM, no GPS signal meant the ROM just kept trying. I played with various settings like Location etc. and managed to stop this odd behaviour, but this was too silly. I use a Smartphone for all the smart features. This wasn't very smart at all.
CM7 was my biggest disappointment of all the above ROM trials. It was the lightest and most promising, and yet the least reliable or functional. Which is a huge shame...
Today...
I'm now back on KL1 2.3.6, and it just works fine - day after day.
The future for me?
I would really like to use CM9 (or CM7 for that matter). They represent a number of ideals for me, including the open nature of development, the collaboration, a pioneering spirit and giving users a choice and a superb base to build on. I am no developer - I can split and modify kernels to a point, I can rehash ROMs with or without adb, I can amend frameworks. But little more.

Reserved for "tips and hints"
Avoiding problems
Always data reset and wipe before doing anything major from one ROM to another, or follow the installation guide for any specific differences in approach.
Avoid Titanium Backup like the plague - it invariably leads to functional issues later if you cross flash. Use Google and/or airdroid for everything, it all just works. So many friends and other forums I contribute to have had too many backup issues to count. Go clean. Forget about Google paranoia.
ES File Explorer is very useful and recommended.
Don't bother "calibrating" the battery - it's an outdated practice and useless. Just use the phone normally, and anyone who claims the battery life is "great" 1 hour after flashing a newly announced ROM is a fool. Likewise NEVER fully discharge a Li-Ion battery. Just keep topping it up. See here: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_charge_when_to_charge_table
Thoughts
Newer ROMs are rarely better ROMs. Better means different things to different folk of course.
ICS ROM core LPQ to LP8 are largely all the same, just variants of the same thing for different markets. Some users believe they perform differently.
Custom kernels and ROMs are always work in progress and should be treated as such. Check out the number of revisions. Some kernel cookers are (welcome) enthusiastic amateurs that assume more is better and cram "fixes" in that the professional salaried software engineers have mysteriously missed. If you only need your stock kernel to be insecure, learn how to make it so. You are running Linux on your box, right?
Deodexing is not a means to improve performance, on the contrary.
Undervolting is a mythical beast
I bought a phone with an FM radio because I want to use it!

And I totally agree. to all of it. Tried all iterations of almost all roms available. For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Except CM9, I don't really think there is any real development going on. Most are just cooked up roms OR stuff taken from the CM9 tree and implemented OR so called fixes that have actually broken something else OR just debloated rooted official firmware (that AFAIK is pretty easy to do with the fantastic dsixda's kitchen or on a rooted rom).
Now fanboy's may flame as much as they wish to, but seriously a stable CM9 (hopefully..!) or a VR 4.0 is all I am willing to wait for.
Till such time VR 3.0 it is.

LenAsh said:
Reserved for "tips and hints"
Newer ROMs are rarely better ROMs. Better means different things to different folk of course.
ICS ROM core LPQ to LP8 are largely all the same, just variants of the same thing for different markets. Some users believe they perform differently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't agree with your final thought. Different ics rooms have really different feels. E.g. Look at scrolling from lpq to lp7.....and there are numerous others as well. If u want more specific thoughts and feedback, just browse through different ics threads in this section..

omeryounos said:
I don't agree with your final thought. Different ics rooms have really different feels. E.g. Look at scrolling from lpq to lp7.....and there are numerous others as well. If u want more specific thoughts and feedback, just browse through different ics threads in this section..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... I have browsed through the sections, and tried various "revisions" or versions of Samsung ICS today while jotting this lot down, and my view, honestly, is there is no real difference. That isn't to say there isn't, I just can't see or feel it. I do accept that playing with 3 ROMs in a few hours is less than ideal. And a drag!
I suppose if someone could deconstruct the ROMs properly and thoroughly...
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, appreciated.

Very nice review! +1
Keep up the good work

I broadly agree with the OP.
ICS/AOSP/AOKP/CM9 have improved over the last few weeks, but I'm back on GB, and will probably stay with it until I get the SGS3.
May be subjective, but for me the GB stock browser, camera and dialler are streets ahead of what the rest can offer. Scrolling is smoother too. And I like/need a radio.

B3311 said:
I broadly agree with the OP.
ICS/AOSP/AOKP/CM9 have improved over the last few weeks, but I'm back on GB, and will probably stay with it until I get the SGS3.
May be subjective, but for me the GB stock browser, camera and dialler are streets ahead of what the rest can offer. Scrolling is smoother too. And I like/need a radio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.

Sigurd02 said:
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I agree that in terms of loading websites, ics default browser is a little bit faster, scrolling and pinch and zooming is much smoother with stock gb browser. Also the dialer is worse on ics as it has removed the contacts section which means I have to put both the dialer and contacts shortcut on the dock.

I'm using Wanamlite v11.1, Siyahkernel v3.1, and Apex Launcher.
A winning combination in my opinion, that is now at least as good as the best GB ROMs in terms of battery life. 7 hours standby with 30 minutes screen time and i'm still on 87%.
In terms of fluidity and performance I think ICS /w Apex beats GB handsdown.

Thanks for the recommendation, but I avoid ROM mix ups, I can do that myself. The ones I have looked at have had some very dubious scripts and additions. I usually look at build.prop first, and generally find all sorts of hybrid attempts at adding stuff that is completely wrong. Lines taken from websites, other phones and so on.

LenAsh said:
Thanks for the recommendation, but I avoid ROM mix ups, I can do that myself. The ones I have looked at have had some very dubious scripts and additions. I usually look at build.prop first, and generally find all sorts of hybrid attempts at adding stuff that is completely wrong. Lines taken from websites, other phones and so on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends, it was like you say in Gingerbread days, not with ICS WanamLite nor Dynamic, only tried these + CM9
I am using Dynamic 1.4 LP9, it is as smooth and fast as CM9, but everything working because it is Samsung based
I tried the included NEAK and Speedmod kernels, similar performance and very good battery life, only 3% drain overnight, I dont play with processor tweaking

Sigurd02 said:
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dialer is laggy if you compare it with GB. CM9 variants have slightly more response dialers but overall, GB dialer is way more responsive. There is a small but noticeable lag when pressing a key and the time it takes to register on ICS (CM9 & stock).
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Browser is a definitive improvement yes, and the desktop mode is welcome but browser mods have been available on GB since long.
It is not that ICS is bad. It is actually very good, but the way it has been implemented on S2 is downright ridiculous...! And not one stable vanilla build isn't really helping..

kranti2064 said:
For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is something I have been contemplating for quite some time now, quite possibly the last month. The only real thing stopping me is that for some reason alot of games (eg dead space and modern combat 3) don't seem to like it when i change roms, and even though all the ingame data is there, sometimes it decides I have to re-download.
I do miss it alot though.. and also red pill kernel
I might end up doing a backup of current my CM9 and take the plunge sometime soon. I've been using CM9 since around feb and lately I think my interest has plateaued and now I'm just beginning to get frustrated with little lags that are popping up more frequently (probably due for a wipe mind you!). The only thing about villiam rom is the bloody touch wiz launcher.. I just don't like messing with the launcher roms were made for either.
kranti2064 said:
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mass lols to be had at the fact that a majority of the time they would be played on the device through the mono loudspeaker too

I also go back for GB..becoz i feel that ics so laggy at dialer,and PES2012 freeze and cant play on ics..but in GB all working great..
Daripada galaxy s2 non-G

melorib said:
Depends, it was like you say in Gingerbread days, not with ICS WanamLite nor Dynamic, only tried these + CM9
I am using Dynamic 1.4 LP9, it is as smooth and fast as CM9, but everything working because it is Samsung based
I tried the included NEAK and Speedmod kernels, similar performance and very good battery life, only 3% drain overnight, I dont play with processor tweaking
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
kranti2064 said:
And I totally agree. to all of it. Tried all iterations of almost all roms available. For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Except CM9, I don't really think there is any real development going on. Most are just cooked up roms OR stuff taken from the CM9 tree and implemented OR so called fixes that have actually broken something else OR just debloated rooted official firmware (that AFAIK is pretty easy to do with the fantastic dsixda's kitchen or on a rooted rom).
Now fanboy's may flame as much as they wish to, but seriously a stable CM9 (hopefully..!) or a VR 4.0 is all I am willing to wait for.
Till such time VR 3.0 it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Currently trying ninphetamine kernel (as per VR3 - thanks for the heads up) on my fave stock KL1 more for interest than anything. Seems OK, no obvious difference from stock running as is apart from it being insecure, need a couple of days to evaluate in real life use.

Bloody good post. I've been using CM9 since the video recording bug was solved, and thats probably the longest I've used any ROM on the SGS2, I really like AOSP but the problem is it does still have quite a few bugs, and isn't quite as fast or as battery friendly as I remember the likes of Hyperdroid v6 being.
This makes me tempted to go back to GB. For me, it is still the ultimate for a daily driver. But I'm lazy so I'll probably stick with CM9.

kranti2064 said:
Dialer is laggy if you compare it with GB. CM9 variants have slightly more response dialers but overall, GB dialer is way more responsive. There is a small but noticeable lag when pressing a key and the time it takes to register on ICS (CM9 & stock).
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ICS dialer laggy , doesn't happen to me on stock LP9 or Dynamic based on LP9 and CM9 is as smooth as they come. Whilst mono audio is fine for you I quite like having stereo audio. Choice, not limitations my friend

tameracingdriver said:
Bloody good post. I've been using CM9 since the video recording bug was solved, and thats probably the longest I've used any ROM on the SGS2, I really like AOSP but the problem is it does still have quite a few bugs, and isn't quite as fast or as battery friendly as I remember the likes of Hyperdroid v6 being.
This makes me tempted to go back to GB. For me, it is still the ultimate for a daily driver. But I'm lazy so I'll probably stick with CM9.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cheers for that - I would definitely recommend the 2.3.6 KL1 off Sammobile if you want a solid GB.

Dude, if you have not tried CheckRom RevoHD V6, then you have not tried the BEST gingerbread rom for sgs2.
This is why I can not use ICS (yet). Checkrom is just too perfect of a Rom.
Try it, tweak it to your liking, use it for a week or 3 then try and go back to stock.
CheckRom XDA thread

[Q] Slim Bean or Mimicry 1.5 ?

I've been running Mimicry 1.5 for quite a while now (and very happy with it) but I'm interested in the Slim Bean thing; it looks pretty cool. I'm not clear on the advantages though (if any). Can someone fill me in?

Well we are talking jb vs ics for one, I would suggest making a nandroid and try it out, if you don't like it restore nandroid and the worse thing you can say is you wasted 20 min of your life...
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

I agree to the post above.
I've tried both roms and I prefered the SlimBean Rom It is very smooth and personally I've had some problems with mimicry. For me it is the best JB Rom I've ever tried
Good luck

I've been on mimicry (every release) since this new rom few days ago, and i didn't have so many problems with it: some casual hot reboots, or really little and stupid issues, same as slimbean, but we have to consider this is the first release.
There aren't big differences on usage between those roms ( except for OS features ofc); BUT, this rom i found it slim for real: smooth like mimicry at least, faster on response and better battery life.
So, i agree with the users above: if u liked mimicry take a nandroid backup, and give slimbean a shot!

Mimicry 1.5 is faster
you can try to install 15 same aplication on you phone and than you can see wich one is faster Mimicry 1.5 or slim bean

running right now slim bean,
was very happy at the beginning with all the features and the speed. But after restoring my backup (70 apps with mybackup-pro) the SlimBean Rom is getting sometimes really slow. Not always, but browser is sometimes not reacting or I get system FC or the phone is not waking up or apps are not responding.
With CM10.1 v21 I had installed 200+ Apps, the phone was a little bit slower but responding to all my actions and phone buttons.
Hopefully flinny integrates in v23 a few SlimBean features.

Tried slimbean but unfortunately I can't seem to get it to run smoothly - things start hanging and frequently memory seems very tight, even when I'm running nothing but the core gapps with it. Darn shame too, I'm quite fond of many of the look&feel updates.
I'm not altogether sure what I could do to tweak things further; I have system and data partitions formatted to ext4, made sure I did a full format/wipe, immediately did the switch to 240dpi before touching anything... I'm not quite sure how to tell what all's being loaded beyond looking at Running Apps, maybe I could trim things down if I fiddle with the "Performance" option in settings, but I don't know a lot about that. Seems odd that Play Music is running all the bloody time.
Mimicry 1.5 runs very smooth for me - Google+ and Facebook used to hog up memory but Greenify seems to have taken care of that.

shadowfist23 said:
Tried slimbean but unfortunately I can't seem to get it to run smoothly - things start hanging and frequently memory seems very tight, even when I'm running nothing but the core gapps with it. Darn shame too, I'm quite fond of many of the look&feel updates.
I'm not altogether sure what I could do to tweak things further; I have system and data partitions formatted to ext4, made sure I did a full format/wipe, immediately did the switch to 240dpi before touching anything... I'm not quite sure how to tell what all's being loaded beyond looking at Running Apps, maybe I could trim things down if I fiddle with the "Performance" option in settings, but I don't know a lot about that. Seems odd that Play Music is running all the bloody time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try limiting the number of background processes (under developer options) to 2; may be a total illusion, but I think it made things much better for me.

dsip said:
Try limiting the number of background processes (under developer options) to 2; may be a total illusion, but I think it made things much better for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give that a shot, thanks!
Hrm. Oddly, I've just noticed the Camera app is missing. I somewhat suspect (but haven't tested) that it might have been left out of 6.2, as one person in the Development thread mentioned it missing but others have not, and I'm guessing he loaded 6.2 straight up (as I have) and most folks upgraded from 6 to 6.2.
Is there a way to backup/restore one's Settings? I find that's the tedious part about reflashing - I bet there's a tool for it I'm just unfamiliar with.

i think there is an option in mybackup to save system-settings and restore them later. and i use nova-launcher, which allows me to save all the homescreens but without the widgets.

shadowfist23 said:
Hrm. Oddly, I've just noticed the Camera app is missing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah ha. Fixed when I did a FORMAT of System and Data instead of just a wipe of them (using 4EXT Recovery Control). Another rookie mistake on my part...

I try a lot of roms, now I using SlimBean. Fast, modern and without big errors.

good question!
I wish to know too. I use to run mimicry, but since a few month I can't get tired of Venom viperZ. Since the 1.x version, I have absolutely NO issue.
The 2.0 is really fast and usable.
I"ll maybe try slimbean if there's so much good review on that one.

Just for an update from myself, I tried SlimBean 6.2 and ended up having a significant slowdown issue after several days; long pauses on most items and Google Search in particular became so slow as to be unusable. Oddly there was also a significant delay when starting up the Torch from the widget, which happens to be one of my most-used functions of the phone. 6.2 also uses Hangouts rather than Talk, and my hatred for Hangouts still burns like an unquenchable fire. Still, looking at the slimbean.net site the torch issue at least seems to have been fixed, so if blk_jack is kind enough to bless us with a new SlimBean ROM I'll probably try it again.
I have been using Flinny's CM10.1 Andromadus test build 24 for several days now but I am starting to see a slowdown there too occasionally, again especially with Google Search. Generally though I'm very fond of it, good chunk of free memory most times and it even runs Ingress pretty well, which is the one game/app I run that pushes my phone to its very limits.
I noticed someone mention "kbeezie's data swap mod" in the SlimBean thread and plan to investigate that when I have time, though I suspect I may need something faster than my class 4 32gb card (class 10 ones are pretty cheap now, but I'm somewhat poor, so).
I'm not gonna cry if I have to go back to Mimicry 1.5, which still has my love, even if the new JB builds are shiny and have some pretty cool UI enhancements.

shadowfist23 said:
Just for an update from myself, I tried SlimBean 6.2 and ended up having a significant slowdown issue after several days; long pauses on most items and Google Search in particular became so slow as to be unusable. Oddly there was also a significant delay when starting up the Torch from the widget, which happens to be one of my most-used functions of the phone. 6.2 also uses Hangouts rather than Talk, and my hatred for Hangouts still burns like an unquenchable fire. Still, looking at the slimbean.net site the torch issue at least seems to have been fixed, so if blk_jack is kind enough to bless us with a new SlimBean ROM I'll probably try it again.
I have been using Flinny's CM10.1 Andromadus test build 24 for several days now but I am starting to see a slowdown there too occasionally, again especially with Google Search. Generally though I'm very fond of it, good chunk of free memory most times and it even runs Ingress pretty well, which is the one game/app I run that pushes my phone to its very limits.
I noticed someone mention "kbeezie's data swap mod" in the SlimBean thread and plan to investigate that when I have time, though I suspect I may need something faster than my class 4 32gb card (class 10 ones are pretty cheap now, but I'm somewhat poor, so).
I'm not gonna cry if I have to go back to Mimicry 1.5, which still has my love, even if the new JB builds are shiny and have some pretty cool UI enhancements.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
welcome to android world.
I never seen any android rom that keep his original speed after a while of use.
even on recent devices, such as s3. You should reflash the rom.zip every time your rom is going laggy.

ROM comparison threads are not allowed. Closed

[4.4] Android KitKat is made to run on OUR old phone!!

Google released nexus 5, and as you know it contains the brand new Android version KitKat.
Apperently google has make it compatible with old phones (such as ours) even those with as low as 512mb RAM.
It uses 60% less memory than JellyBean!
So let's just wait for the sources to be released D
source:
http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.no/2013/10/android-for-all-and-new-nexus-5.html?m=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fecfiMSIe8k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Yip! No reason for me to get a new device, the software just keeps getting better

That's only about ram, how about cpu, gpu and so on?

thomasnguyen said:
That's only about ram, how about cpu, gpu and so on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The GPU load can be reduced to a level better suited to our phone, I'm already doing this on CM 9.1.
The CPU however will be interesting to see, but the two (memory footprint and CPU load) go together in some cases
Regardless of that though, more than likely Google would not have made the effort of giving 4.4 such a small memory footprint for the sake of old devices* if they did not also make sure it is perfectly capable of being run on comparable CPUs.
*They explicitly stated that was the intention.

Where did you get the statistic that it uses 60% less memory than Jelly Bean ? @david234000
---------- Post added at 07:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:30 AM ----------
Where did you get the statistic that it uses 60% less memory than Jelly Bean ?
 @david234000

Our GPU is still decent, but still below a tier of the second best GPUs (Mali 400 of s2 s3).
RAM issue is interesting because we are employing the slowest memory DDR1, as well as 512 MB of physical memory (some devices have 640 physical but advertise them as 512 MB)
CPU is also very weak compared to other low end offerings, but it should not be the bottleneck of our device (it is probably RAM)
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

hope it comes out Android 4.4 for our device, Android 4.2 runs well then kitkat should run even better

ThunderOver said:
hope it comes out Android 4.4 for our device, Android 4.2 runs well then kitkat should run even better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My friend if 4.4 runs better than 4.2 then... awesome :highfive:

So does anybody know when are the sources going to be released?

kogli said:
So does anybody know when are the sources going to be released?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
was released 4 days ago.. read this
and yesterday Samsung Galaxy nexus (oldest) already had its ports... read this
S3 already has leaked versions today ...read this
Check this out! You , YES! you are an " Android ". Not your phone but U.​

Google already released the source..cyanogenmod already pushed the source..so just wait for cyanogenmod
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

At least, it will run as good as the latest 4.2 builds for our device, so let's wait what our devs can do with KitKat to make it even more enjoyable :good:
Especially the RAM optimizations will be something our devices will benefit from. As being said before, that has been one of the weakest parts of the system in the past. Multitasking and such things should profit from that. Let's wait and see...

I have high hopes for Kit Kat. I am not sure if it'll actually run "our" poor device (i9000) run any better but i believe adding TRIM and better memory management can yield some positive effects.
Kit Kat was released for FUTURE low spec phones. When they said about Lower RAM, i immediately knew they were talking about those dual core processors and so on. I'd really love to have Hangouts as my primary sms app but the kind of resources it needs, our phone is just not enough to power it up.
Anyway, this seems like a fair challange for Android. If Kit Kat successfully powers our devices "Better" than previous android versions then i am SOLD for Google. :fingers-crossed:
Anxiously waiting for a Kit Kat ROM. Heck, imma upgrade it that very day, even if its an Alpha build lol.

I don't know what you're on about with regards to hangouts, it runs like a dream on my phone.
Are you running a bunch of background stuff? I intentionally ditched the Facebook app because it alone greens half the phone's resources, crazy.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Hr Kristian said:
I don't know what you're on about with regards to hangouts, it runs like a dream on my phone.
Are you running a bunch of background stuff? I intentionally ditched the Facebook app because it alone greens half the phone's resources, crazy.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, I ditched that app too and saw a massive speed improvement

Hr Kristian said:
I don't know what you're on about with regards to hangouts, it runs like a dream on my phone.
Are you running a bunch of background stuff? I intentionally ditched the Facebook app because it alone greens half the phone's resources, crazy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if you were serious when you said "it runs like a dream". It runs just fine It STARTS like a *****. And you obviously can't run Hangouts running in the background because its just too resource hungry. In almost all cases, it takes like 6-7 and sometimes as long as 12 seconds to load hangouts app (too much ram clearing going on in background i think) and you try to go back, the Launcher will redraw because Hangouts had kill the other processes in the background to make room for itself.
Before you say anything. I am not new to this stuff. I am using CM 4.2.2 (some oct Nightly) w/ Devil Kernel and BigMem (420MB). I use Greenify so other apps like Facebook & Googleplus are always Hibernated in the background which means more RAM is always available to apps like Hangouts.
Its the CPU which is the main bottleneck. A single core just doesn't cut it these days. However, on a Dual Core phone with same amount of RAM ... THATs where hangouts runs like a dream.
Anyway, i am not complaining. I just hope things could get better than that, especially when we have TRIM support and ART in our disposal with Kit Kat. I have been using i9000 since THREE years (or more) now. Bought it back in 2010 i think when it launched, and i am not letting it go any time sooner. (Just love Voodoo Sound)

abobobilly said:
I don't know if you were serious when you said "it runs like a dream". It runs just fine It STARTS like a *****. And you obviously can't run Hangouts running in the background because its just too resource hungry. In almost all cases, it takes like 6-7 and sometimes as long as 12 seconds to load hangouts app (too much ram clearing going on in background i think) and you try to go back, the Launcher will redraw because Hangouts had kill the other processes in the background to make room for itself.
Before you say anything. I am not new to this stuff. I am using CM 4.2.2 (some oct Nightly) w/ Devil Kernel and BigMem (420MB). I use Greenify so other apps like Facebook & Googleplus are always Hibernated in the background which means more RAM is always available to apps like Hangouts.
Its the CPU which is the main bottleneck. A single core just doesn't cut it these days. However, on a Dual Core phone with same amount of RAM ... THATs where hangouts runs like a dream.
Anyway, i am not complaining. I just hope things could get better than that, especially when we have TRIM support and ART in our disposal with Kit Kat. I have been using i9000 since THREE years (or more) now. Bought it back in 2010 i think when it launched, and i am not letting it go any time sooner. (Just love Voodoo Sound)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm on a nexus s, single core/ 512m ram/ we have 4.4 available to our phone and it's a bit laggy.. As far as the rest of the updated 4.4 apps, the run great, no lag on my 4.3.1 ROM... 4.1.2 is still the fastest/smoothest/ less resource heavy (modern-ish) ROM available... "New" is good, but "works perfectly" is better...
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Setting.Out said:
I'm on a nexus s, single core/ 512m ram/ we have 4.4 available to our phone and it's a bit laggy.. As far as the rest of the updated 4.4 apps, the run great, no lag on my 4.3.1 ROM... 4.1.2 is still the fastest/smoothest/ less resource heavy (modern-ish) ROM available... "New" is good, but "works perfectly" is better...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, agreed on that. 4.1.2 is still the smoothest. However, Nexus S users are still better off because they have a faster NAND Flash as compared to us the i9000 users. So at the end of the day, our phones lag much more than the Nexus S.
Still, like you said. "new is good". I am hoping this "new" to be "perfect". Lets see what actually happens.

abobobilly said:
I don't know if you were serious when you said "it runs like a dream". It runs just fine It STARTS like a *****. And you obviously can't run Hangouts running in the background because its just too resource hungry. In almost all cases, it takes like 6-7 and sometimes as long as 12 seconds to load hangouts app (too much ram clearing going on in background i think) and you try to go back, the Launcher will redraw because Hangouts had kill the other processes in the background to make room for itself.
Before you say anything. I am not new to this stuff. I am using CM 4.2.2 (some oct Nightly) w/ Devil Kernel and BigMem (420MB). I use Greenify so other apps like Facebook & Googleplus are always Hibernated in the background which means more RAM is always available to apps like Hangouts.
Its the CPU which is the main bottleneck. A single core just doesn't cut it these days. However, on a Dual Core phone with same amount of RAM ... THATs where hangouts runs like a dream.
Anyway, i am not complaining. I just hope things could get better than that, especially when we have TRIM support and ART in our disposal with Kit Kat. I have been using i9000 since THREE years (or more) now. Bought it back in 2010 i think when it launched, and i am not letting it go any time sooner. (Just love Voodoo Sound)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry, you must be confusing me with someone who takes another person's anecdotal evidence over my own.
I don't use Greenify, I don't use Ram Manager, I have nothing of the sorts installed, I use Hangouts, and I use ADW Launcher, and I've spent the last 5 minutes switching between apps trying to reproduce your issues, and I am not able to.
Hangouts does load kind of slow (about 4 secs to load from nothing), I have thousands of SMS going through it so I am not surprised, Spotify is much worse with my offline playlists. I go into Hangouts (all the regular background services running, obviously); Home Key out to ADW, it's still there (I am not forcing it to memory), all 5 pages and widgets. I hop into Hangouts; it's still there with no lag; switch to camera, it's no issue, switch to XDA, bam, that is one hungy fella so it uses about 3 seconds to load my first screen.
I could go on forever. The fact is though: Your issues are not my issues. It's also worth noting I have the slow i9000, not the fast one, I am running 1GHz, regular animations, no RAM optimizations like zRAM or Samepage Merging. Regular ol' CM Kernel.
I've also been on this phone for "THREE years" as you so calmly put it. I also love our Wolfston DAC, I love that for some reason, my old CM9.1 w/Semaphore ran like ****, but my new CM10.1.3 runs like the wind, including all the apps.
I do not care that you have issues, it frankly seems like you've painted yourself into a corner with all your optimizations (I had them running on 9.1), maybe you're doing something wrong, despite your amazing three years of experience.
I run my phone like a champ, you do not, sorry 'bro.
EDIT: For those that do struggle with memory problems, look into "Long press back to kill" in dev options, back on CM9.1 I used it a lot because I knew my apps and phone better than the OS did. It's a god-send for people who want control.

Hr Kristian said:
I'm sorry, you must be confusing me with someone who takes another person's anecdotal evidence over my own.
I don't use Greenify, I don't use Ram Manager, I have nothing of the sorts installed, I use Hangouts, and I use ADW Launcher, and I've spent the last 5 minutes switching between apps trying to reproduce your issues, and I am not able to.
Hangouts does load kind of slow (about 4 secs to load from nothing), I have thousands of SMS going through it so I am not surprised, Spotify is much worse with my offline playlists. I go into Hangouts (all the regular background services running, obviously); Home Key out to ADW, it's still there (I am not forcing it to memory), all 5 pages and widgets. I hop into Hangouts; it's still there with no lag; switch to camera, it's no issue, switch to XDA, bam, that is one hungy fella so it uses about 3 seconds to load my first screen.
I could go on forever. The fact is though: Your issues are not my issues. It's also worth noting I have the slow i9000, not the fast one, I am running 1GHz, regular animations, no RAM optimizations like zRAM or Samepage Merging. Regular ol' CM Kernel.
I've also been on this phone for "THREE years" as you so calmly put it. I also love our Wolfston DAC, I love that for some reason, my old CM9.1 w/Semaphore ran like ****, but my new CM10.1.3 runs like the wind, including all the apps.
I do not care that you have issues, it frankly seems like you've painted yourself into a corner with all your optimizations (I had them running on 9.1), maybe you're doing something wrong, despite your amazing three years of experience.
I run my phone like a champ, you do not, sorry 'bro.
EDIT: For those that do struggle with memory problems, look into "Long press back to kill" in dev options, back on CM9.1 I used it a lot because I knew my apps and phone better than the OS did. It's a god-send for people who want control.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you are happy with your phone. Good for you.
You are being a little too unrealistic about the performances while you seem to disregard the problems/limitations that still exist as of this day, as well as the problems in the older ROMs.
The CM9.1 you are talking about was ICS which in itself was a worst nightmare for everyone. Its main problem regarding "Internal Storage Low" were enough to put some off. (However scripts to bypass that was available and i survived that perfectly fine, because of the "functionality" i was getting). It was Jelly Bean (CM10 and later) where things started to pick up the pace, and now 4.1.3 users seem happier because its slightly less hungry on RAM than 4.2 or later users (which is where "I" am).
That being said, i did mention about the Hangouts' Load Times. If i am at home then i can bear agonizingly slow load times of Hangouts but if i am outside or in an emergency, then its a genuine problem. (Stock CM SMS app takes like half a second to load up)
Lets talk about the point where your ROM starts to get slower after some time of usage, until you reflash it. TRIM support eliminates this issue which is in 4.3. That, combined with the fact that i9000 has a agonizingly slow NAND Flash used in it, greatly affects the performance ... which your post is implying that its "not happening with you". If its not, then Good for you. OR maybe you just arent' accepting it because you'll feel pwned ... MAYBE.
And i am not using any RAM Manager, never have in the first place. But Greenify is something essential, something which can actually replace the "AutoRun" program we used to use back in the days. If you don't know about it, or don't want to use it ... fine. But don't start pointing fingers are people or making it look like "We are Wrong" and "You are the Genius",
The only thing i mentioned about "Hangouts" was A FACT which you proved yourself, however apparently trying to hide or reduce its implications for some unknown reason. I didn't even mention any other problem where you are trying to be jumpy with your attitude.
Lets not turn the tables here and focus on the Kit Kat's discussion. I am looking forward to it. If you aren't, Good for you.

What people like about cyanogenmod?

hello,
i am just a system administrator at the xUSSR and have experience with building linux/*nix machines/environments/fixing software/sources/debugging it and etc.
i'v got my exynos note3 last weekend and was thinking about custom firmware. there is no real alternative for users except modification of samsung firmwares right now. easy alternative.
we actually can get (partially port/adapt) everything we want from cyanogenmod and make it feel like real cyanogenmod while sitting on firmware that based on samsung one. why noone done/tryed to do that before?
what exactly you want from cyanogenmod on note3?
i liked cyanogenmod for keeping it clean and giving user vanilla experience, ota updates and keeping awesome features that android drop like app permission manager that was dropped in 4.4 in favor of google-play policy.

Only reason i'm not using cm is becouse of no TW camera :/
Everything else is better on cm: simple, stock apps, themes, no bloat, etc..

Everyone want cm but nobody doing a port for n900
Sent from my SM-N900 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Everyone is waiting for vanilla version or CM 11 for exynos device. nobody has succeeded yet. But something is happening now. We like all the features in CM. So we are waiting for one.
Sent from my SM-N900 using XDA Free mobile app

CM can never be alternative of stock galaxy note 3 rom. I need pen function to work with but CM does not support. Also camera application of cm is not user friendly,

I love Cyanogenmod, have used it for 2 years on my previous phone.
But like @dhruva7 said. I want a perfectly working camare and pen thingy.
Everything just has to work. I don't think anyone bought this phone just for it's browser.
So if theres S-pen functionality and a descent camera application that does 13mp photo's and still can film in 4k and slomo, I'm in! :victory:

from the OP: "i liked cyanogenmod for keeping it clean and giving user vanilla experience, ota updates and keeping awesome features that android drop"
Also: fast as hell, less memory clutter, the phone is snappier, everything feels better plus you get all the Google uniform interface design instead of T/W's crap where every program looks like it was designed from a different class of kindergarden children.

Cyanogenmod is an amazing rom, full of features, clean & fast, and with the constant updates it gets better and better

The folks above said it all.
Pros of CM:
- with the monster of a processor with 4 cores running @ 2.3 gHz (in your Exynos case, 4 @ 1,9 gHz and 4 @ 1,3 gHz), s**tload of RAM and so on, the CM is "fast as hell", which is an understatement. On any TouchWiz based ROM the usable limit is 2740 MB, and on boot around 1-1,2 GB are already busy with Samsung's bloat. On CM the max is 2840, and on boot the already busy memory is not a lot, I've managed to cut it down to around 600 MB, which leaves... 2.2 GB free.
- with CM, you're always with the latest possible base of Android.
- with CM, you get circa 26 GB of free storage, TW ROMs give you 22 max.
Long story short, if you intend to use the Note for some awfully heavy duty processing and you want to eke out every shred of resources it has, CM (or for that matter, any AOSP based ROM) is the way to go.
Cons of CM:
- it takes many nightly updates before you get a good really stable version, you have no idea what bugs might be within a nightly.
- the Note is named that way for a reason. xD That thing has a Wacom digitizer which allows the use of that nifty S-Pen and it's abilities, also, I shamefully must admit, it's fun as hell to use. However, Samsung are being businessmen in this regard, some might go as far as calling them d**ks, because the SDK for that pen is not open source, therefore, devs are not able to put software for it into any AOSP ROM.
- yes, the Camera. Samsung's camera app also is not open source, and you take noticeably better photos with it than with the AOSP camera.
Summary: being a sysadmin, you're able to control your server with an Android device, I'm not sure if that is loading the phone a lot or not, but if it does, and you use that Note for processing more than casual use (photos, doodling and drawing, etc.), CM is what you probably need.
Otherwise, TW based ROM would be better.
P.S. The best phone for heavy duty processing right now would be the OnePlus One, it has the Note's 3 gigs of ram, 4 cores running at 2,5 gHz, and CM is it's STOCK firmware.

Problems with Goldeneye

Hey guys I just installed Goldeneye on my ATT S4. The reason I left 4.4.2 was to hopefully gain a little more speed, I play a game on my phone all the time called Ace Fishing and every now and then I get a reduction in frames that really hurts me ingame.
Well I updated per instructions for Safestrap users and everything got up and running no problem, but this rom uses alot more RAM than the previous version and the lag has gotten atleast twice as bad since upgrading. I always clear activities and clear ram before launching. Its fine for 5 minutes but then all the background tasks start kicking in and when I check it says 1.37gb in use! 4.2.4 I had down to 535-605MB in use while playing. I have disabled every running app I see in the application manager (that it will allow me) I have also done all the tricks I can find online, like disabling S voice, force GPU rendering, I even tried setting limit background process to no background process which made no difference.
Is there anything I can do to make this rom run as fast as 4.4.2 or atleast cut the RAM it uses in half like it was?
(I chose goldeneye full install not slim, would slim be faster?)
Thanks!!

Atually Stock Lollipop is slow as hell compared to KitKat. I've been using GE for some time and I had to go back to 4.4 because the phone was really slow, I mean... Really. I recommend you to install Pure Nexus ROM, I personally think is the fastest. There're also some ROMs LP bases which were compiled preferably for gaming. Search for ROMs in the "Android Development" sub-forum.
Wish you luck.

I found a solution. I bought a galaxy note5. lmao