Related
Hi guys,
So i'm running with the samsung captivate and as we know the development for that phone is completely outstanding and i'd say is probably the best for the Galaxy S lines in terms of quality of roms, and the variety you can choose from.
My buddy got a nexus S and he likes android but he's not happy with his nexus S as it stands now. His problems are mostly around slow browser, he says he has reception issues with vodaphone UK whereas before he had none, and the phone often hangs and can get slow, battery life is bad.
Now i wanted to ask you guys in the development forum if its worth it for me to root/unlock his nexus S (i've read up on unlocking the bootloader etc so I think I can pull it off) and load one of these custom roms. However, I dont think any of these roms are very well developed.
Do most of you experience good performance on the Nexus S with stock google updates? Do you think my friend has a dud phone, or should I go ahead and put Bionix on his phone? I dont want to be his tech support going forward, so I fear the rom is still very beta and I dont want to be stuck always helping him, but if one flash will set him for at least a few months i dont mind helping him.
Any thoughts? thanks.
edit: my face is red.. can a mod move this to general please ?
Um wow, well i got my nexus s couple of weeks ago, and i did run it with the stock for for almost a week, and i cant say the same things as your friend. The phone is really fast, battery is ok ( it dies as all the smartphones within a day if you play a lot with it ) and no hangings what so ever.
Maybe tell him to make a hard reset, or if he installed a lot of things, then try to install less things after the hard reset.
You can make it blazingly fast if you use a custom kernel, i was using modaco r10 as rom and 1.3ghz bionix kernel, and trust me it was fast fast fast. Only minor thing was the restarts here and there.
Other than that the phone is really fast and stable, with no problems whatsoever.
Wrong section, please avoid!
nickbarbs said:
My buddy got a nexus S and he likes android but he's not happy with his nexus S as it stands now. His problems are mostly around slow browser, he says he has reception issues with vodaphone UK whereas before he had none, and the phone often hangs and can get slow, battery life is bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
make sure your friend is using 3G and not stuck on EDGE
not sure which frecuency Vodaphone UK runs on, but last i recal they are on the same bands as Orange UK
Nexus S 3G runs on 900/1700/2100
Other than these two:
Overclocking
Loading modded roms
I mean let's all be honest, even if you undervolt and remain stable, any overclocking that will allow noticable performance, will have just as much noticable effect on the battery. And these are mobile devices. Battery should be considered top priority, not speed.
And what's the deal with wanting to load all these custom roms? Are they significantly better than stock, Adeo, or gingerblur? What do we need to load a fully custom rom for? Are they lightning fast and extend battery life by 100%? I guess I just don't get it. Deodexing and visual mods can be done without an unlocked bootloader.
Basically what im trying to say is. What is everyone *****ing about?
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
As far as I know, there is no way to unlock the Atrix's bootloader. It is encrypted. You may check the xda's frontpage, there is news several weeks ago regards to the Moto's bootloader.
mccoy007 said:
As far as I know, there is no way to unlock the Atrix's bootloader. It is encrypted. You may check the xda's frontpage, there is news several weeks ago regards to the Moto's bootloader.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you missed the purpose of the thread. He is not asking HOW to do it, only WHY you would need to, other then overclocking or loading ROMs.
Honestly, it does make a big difference. Battery life can be very substantially increased in many of these roms. They both over and under clock processors to maximize the life. It's possible to get gingerbread on the inspire right now through custom roms because the boot loader isnt locked. It's possible to completely remove sense, whereas we have to live with motoblur. There really are a lot of reasons. Honestly, look at what Xda is all about, it's android development. Just take a look at the atrix dev forum vs the inspire one. Phones with a strong development community tend to live far longer because they can upgrade the os long after the company stops trying. The original g1 was only officially upgraded to 1.6 (I believe) but Xda has a few 2.2 roms that actually run pretty solid.
Tl:dr the list goes on and on of reasons that you want an accessible boot loader.
Ability to load a custom recovery menu. Nandroid.
it's simple dude. people do it because they can.
Besides the fact you would get work and support from the awesome devs here another good reason would be most phones have their shortcomings.Most of the time this can be fixed in the software.The awesome devs here are able to in most cases get it sorted out within a week or 2 whereas if the phone manufacturer or carrier is gonna do something about it your gonna wait 6 months to get an update. A prime example of this was the rediculously low external and earpiece speaker volume on the inspire.On max volume it was just too low. Now the rom chefs can cook up custom roms with 20% volume increase.
The 2 reasons you want to exclude are the main points. It's like saying "other than drowning; what's the point of learning to swim".
i want android 2.3.3 , can i ? no! i have to wait to an official update from motorola.. why ?!
i want htc sence in motorola , can i ? no !
we love to play and change things.. uman nature
seh6183 said:
Other than these two:
Overclocking
Loading modded roms
I mean let's all be honest, even if you undervolt and remain stable, any overclocking that will allow noticable performance, will have just as much noticable effect on the battery. And these are mobile devices. Battery should be considered top priority, not speed.
And what's the deal with wanting to load all these custom roms? Are they significantly better than stock, Adeo, or gingerblur? What do we need to load a fully custom rom for? Are they lightning fast and extend battery life by 100%? I guess I just don't get it. Deodexing and visual mods can be done without an unlocked bootloader.
Basically what im trying to say is. What is everyone *****ing about?
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your first question says "ignoring custom ROMs..." and your second question says "What about custom Roms..." so I'll address the second question.
ROMs. Gingerbread. AOSP. Stock Android. Kernels.
Another consideration in favor of ROMs is the continuation of support by the dev community even after the manufacturer has EOL'ed a product. You still see the Dream (G1) getting roms with new features even though the phone has been effectively dead for a while now.
It is always in the phone manufacturer's and the carrier's best interests to kill off support to get you to buy the newest, latest device.
daveop said:
Just take a look at the atrix dev forum vs the inspire one. Phones with a strong development community tend to live far longer because they can upgrade the os long after the company stops trying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I love my atrix.. but I visited the Inspire 4G dev forums... and.. yeah I got a little bit jealous. lol
I hope the few devs we have don't end up leaving and can crack this bootloader!!!!
s1mpd1ddy said:
I love my atrix.. but I visited the Inspire 4G dev forums... and.. yeah I got a little bit jealous. lol
I hope the few devs we have don't end up leaving and can crack this bootloader!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know what you mean. That's one thing I like/liked about my FUZE: there was a pretty active dev community, at least until the HD2 came out.
I'm planning on getting an Atrix on Monday and this is making me think about getting an Inspire instead. I guess I'll get the Atrix and if it blows I can take it back, get an inspire, and pocket $100.
Wow is this seriously a question?
Nandroid backups, AOSP ROMs like Cyanogen where you get updates every NIGHT if you wish from the source Android build so it'll always be the latest version - no waiting for Motocrap. Battery life is usually way better, TONS of tweaks (being able to tweak my color balance of the screen, gamma levels, haptic feedback behavior, autobrightness levels and thresholds, lockscreen and messaging gestures, etc). That's all before even mentioning performance increases like overclocking, deodexing for themes, ext4 modifications for faster I/O. There's just way too many things to list but if you've never experienced a phone that has custom ROMs (especially Cyanogen) then I can see why you don't miss anything, but if you have, like me, you'll probably never want to settle for an Android phone that doesn't allow custom ROMs.
custom roms is reason enough...like dinan said if you ever used them you would understand. pretty much all the problems that people are having with the atrix could be solved if our devs had access to the bootloader.
I do see the importance of having continued support after moto leaves the phone behind. And it would be nice to have a dev make a rom to fix the coloring on the Atrix screen. Also I didn't realize that updates to custom roms come so often and that they had that much support.
I am starting to see now.
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
mccoy007 said:
As far as I know, there is no way to unlock the Atrix's bootloader. It is encrypted. You may check the xda's frontpage, there is news several weeks ago regards to the Moto's bootloader.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Luckily, there are a few other people working on the bootloader (I hope), as it is signed, not encrypted; there is a difference.
My phone before the Atrix was the TytnII, and the only reason I was able to keep it as long as I did was because of custom ROMS. If they are able to increase the performance of this phone the way they increased the performance of my 300Mhz/128MB RAM TytnII, then I will be giddy as a school-girl.
Do I need an unlocked bootloader? No, I absolutely love my phone the way it is right now, as this is my first Android, so I don't know what else is possible.
Battery life?
I am running a test of a custom kernel for my captivate. I turned off everything and wanted to see how long it would last.
No wifi or data (no sim card installed) it ran idle for 11 days.
Custom Kernel with no wifi or data its going to last about 50 days. (based on current estimate as im still testing it)
Just an FYI, there are devices with locked bootloaders that have custom ROMs. This includes the X10, which has a Gingerbread ROM. The issue is getting a newer Android build to work with a stock kernel. Unlocking the bootloader is key to building custom kernels but there are methods for getting custom ROMs without a custom kernel.
Developer support.
/thread
-Sent from my Galaxy Tab
Athailias said:
Battery life?
I am running a test of a custom kernel for my captivate. I turned off everything and wanted to see how long it would last.
No wifi or data (no sim card installed) it ran idle for 11 days.
Custom Kernel with no wifi or data its going to last about 50 days. (based on current estimate as im still testing it)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well this isn't exactly a real world situation. Who's to say that you're not running the cpu at 1mhz with the screen powered off 24/7. wouldn't you prefer to test under load and real use?
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
I'm new to rooting and I'm a middle-aged lady, so go easy
Having said that, I'm quite proud that I followed these instructions for rooting, and it worked first time and I got the magical S=off and bootloader version 0.86.0000.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=995549
I guess that was just step one. I have two key questions:
1. Even before I consider installing another ROM, I thought once I was rooted I could uninstall the TMO bloatware. However, when I go to manage apps, it's the same situation as pre-root where the uninstall option is disabled. Am I missing something (some steps).
2. What is the easiest (least techie way) to install a ROM. Is it ROM Manager from the marketplace? I don't mind the more rigorous techie approach if required but I'd just as soon keep this easy as I'm probably going to try some different ROMs until I settle on one I like.
3. Finally, thoughts on the best gingerbread ROM. Important things to me are battery life, push email, and your standard business applications. I'm not a gamer at all so could care less about overclocking.
I'm loving my Nexus S with 2.3.4 now (just manually updated) but would like to get comparable functionality on a 4G phone instead of a 3G phone.
THANKS IN ADVANCE for any tips.
You can use Titanium Backup, but make a backup of you're rom before you start removing, so I would just freeze the app in TB and go from there, also Installing any Rom its better to do it in recovery then it is to use Rom Manager, you will need Rom Manager to flash the recovery but other then that, most people use recovery to install Roms, I am not sure about the Rom, I use 2.2.1 still but theres alot of info on Roms here, just do a search or go here myTouch 4G Android Development
Also, you should seriously consider flashing the engineering bootloader...makes life much easier in the case of a soft brick...
EDIT: Just saw the last part of the question...I am on RoyalGinger and get amazing battery life...no need to overclock because it is fast and smooth right out the gate. Battery life cannot be judged within the first couple days of running the ROM...make sure to calibrate your battery.
thanks for the responses, this is going to be exciting. Like I said, not messing with my Nexus S, but wanted to try different ROMs on the mytouch 4G.
Re: >>>Also, you should seriously consider flashing the engineering bootloader...makes life much easier in the case of a soft brick...<<<
please can you point me to the xda link with instructions to do this.
Re: using Recovery mode to install ROMs, please can you also send me that xda link. Is it similar to running manual updates on the Nexus S? I do that in recovery mode. I copy the zip to the root of the sdcard and run install from recovery mode.
My husband thinks I'm crazy, but jokes that my "mobile tinkering" is cheaper than if I were interested in jewelry ;-)
fionalindberg said:
I'm new to rooting and I'm a middle-aged lady, so go easy
Having said that, I'm quite proud that I followed these instructions for rooting, and it worked first time and I got the magical S=off and bootloader version 0.86.0000.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=995549
I guess that was just step one. I have two key questions:
1. Even before I consider installing another ROM, I thought once I was rooted I could uninstall the TMO bloatware. However, when I go to manage apps, it's the same situation as pre-root where the uninstall option is disabled. Am I missing something (some steps).
2. What is the easiest (least techie way) to install a ROM. Is it ROM Manager from the marketplace? I don't mind the more rigorous techie approach if required but I'd just as soon keep this easy as I'm probably going to try some different ROMs until I settle on one I like.
3. Finally, thoughts on the best gingerbread ROM. Important things to me are battery life, push email, and your standard business applications. I'm not a gamer at all so could care less about overclocking.
I'm loving my Nexus S with 2.3.4 now (just manually updated) but would like to get comparable functionality on a 4G phone instead of a 3G phone.
THANKS IN ADVANCE for any tips.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. you can only freeze apps on the stock rom you cant uninstall them even if your rooted. you'd have to download a bloatware removed MT4G rom there are a few floating around. (basically the stock rom with a the bloat removed and zip-aligned.
2. Rom manager is an ok way of installing roms but your best is to use rom manager to boot into recovery and install the roms from there. luckily its pretty easy from CWM 3.0.2.4.
3. it seems like for your case the 2.3.3 sense roms would work the best since they are more business oriented. though there arent any right now that are running super stable. though there was a leak today of thw 2.6.35 kernel which should bring about new stuff for all the GB sense roms soon. otherwise CM7 works really well.
A few follow-on questions. I want to understand where I'm at before I proceed with installing ROMs.
So, I've been running numerous speed-tests post-root. Wow, horrible. Averaging 2 mbps down, about 1 mbps up. I admit its been a few months since I used the MT4G since I got the Nexus S, but I'm routinely getting 3-5 mbps down and 1-1.5 mbps up on the NS and that's only a 3G phone. However, I do know 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 both patched the radio so maybe that is partly why it's better than the MT4G
Any chance anything in the root process could have impacted the radio? It's actually been on Edge a few times this afternoon too.
Conversely, any ROMs that patch the radio and improve speeds?
on the MT4g the radio hasnt really been touched at all by the forums. i only noticed today that we had a choice between 3 different radios. those havent been tested so we dont know what the pluses and negatives are yet. though i can tell you that your speed will vary. where i am i get about 4 mbps on a normal basis though maybe a bit less depending on signal. i also want to ask what speed tester your using. if your using speedtest.net then i suggest you try something else cause you might want a secondary source to test from.
Installed RoyalGinger 1.06. Loving it so far. Will see how it goes at the office without charging it during the day. I installed it about 8 hours ago and batt life seems much better than native espresso from TMO. I even streamed music from Amazon cloud player for about an hour and batt barely budged. Still a bit concerned about the radios but I'll retest speeds from the office where I usually get better speeds. I did get a few download speeds of 4mbps but upload still worse than Nexus S. Not even getting 1 mbps upload!
Hello all I've been out of the phone modding game for about 4 years and just picked up a w8 model and like the phone though sad to see no cm.
I've been browsing the site and had a few questions about modding my phone.. Several roms specifically say it supports w8 while others just say 935F.. is there really additional code to support the w8 or the rom just hasn't been verified by the developer?
Also several roms say to install the latest bootloader and modem but the link only takes you to the 935F versions.. I already have the latest update from Wind in Canada which ends in API1 is this good enough or do I need to flash a different downloaded version and if so can someone point me in the right direction for the Wind files..
One last thing.. I see a lot of people discussing flashing a csc.. but not sure what that is. I assume it's local carrier settings or something but how often is it needed? And does it only need to be done with certain roms or if there are certain issues.
I've only really used HTC and Nexus phones previously so don't wanna brick this pretty new toy as I bought it second hand and don't have warranty.
Also.. probably not the place to ask but what roms do you guys prefer that supports w8? I'm looking for something fast debloated and lots of customization.. haven't really seen the N7 so not sure about new UX.. I've usually gone cm all the way so used to default android..
Thanks for any info/advice/recommendations
I can't believe this question isn't answered. All samsung line with a pile of unecessary variations is confusing. I just picked up the phone and have no idea, while it should be same cpu=same rom
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet, development, Imo, is dead. There isn't stable root, no rom development outside of slightly modded stuff to change your status bar and the most recent breakthrough was substratum... Which wasn't even meant for this phone but rather the s8 but it still works. Now I use and love substratum but I really want an aosp/pixel rom and stable root and Xposed but I don't think that any of this is coming ever. I could be wrong. But I'm tired of buying locked down Samsung devices because of this. This seems more like a rant but it's more of a psa to developers who wanna help the hopeless. Ya know?
RileyIssKing said:
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet, development, Imo, is dead. There isn't stable root, no rom development outside of slightly modded stuff to change your status bar and the most recent breakthrough was substratum... Which wasn't even meant for this phone but rather the s8 but it still works. Now I use and love substratum but I really want an aosp/pixel rom and stable root and Xposed but I don't think that any of this is coming ever. I could be wrong. But I'm tired of buying locked down Samsung devices because of this. This seems more like a rant but it's more of a psa to developers who wanna help the hopeless. Ya know?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I purchased this phone coming from an Iphone 6Plus, thinking I could definitely obtain root on the most sold android phone still in use. Nope. Pretty disappointing as I think it may be the best phone ever made.
RileyIssKing said:
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet, development, Imo, is dead. There isn't stable root, no rom development outside of slightly modded stuff to change your status bar and the most recent breakthrough was substratum... Which wasn't even meant for this phone but rather the s8 but it still works. Now I use and love substratum but I really want an aosp/pixel rom and stable root and Xposed but I don't think that any of this is coming ever. I could be wrong. But I'm tired of buying locked down Samsung devices because of this. This seems more like a rant but it's more of a psa to developers who wanna help the hopeless. Ya know?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't do enough research before buying S7. Coming from Nexus 6p this is really foreign to me. I saw s7 had root but didn't look into the 2 different processors, all the different carriers (it doesn't matter on Nexus devices.)
Far as Development goes...its probably not going to happen unless someone finds a way to unlock the bootloader. Next best thing might be Safe Strap but afaik there's nothing in the works.
For now I'm making the best of it. I'm having a decent experience with the Eng kernel. Currently looking into the nonrooted Rom. My hope is I'll be able to make some changes (like installing viper) then switching to the stock boot.img and trying to make those changes stick. Supposedly it's possible but I'm still trying to get some guidance. Experimenting with this phone sucks because the process for root is pretty long then setting everything up THEN it might not work so back to square one.
Especially once done with purchase plan or contract (should you have one) and out of warranty. After that point, it's mine to do with as I please! (I know, should be able to do it whenever, but I'm playing by their rules for a minute.) So it's already BS for those who bought first few months and have paid off.
Personally, what is driving me crazy is battery drain. I'm running about 144k on AnTuTu, so no major complaints with performance, but plugging it in more than once a day sucks. Power drain when I'm not doing anything: sucks. I know it's all this useless crapware running in the background, even tho I killed some with Package Disabler Pro. Just addressing that would improve my mood. If AT&T is trying to ensure we'll all look very carefully at unlocked phones next time, they are doing a bang-up job.