Database Users

Is rapid Upgrades killing Android Development?

Coming from the Epic, and then from the S3, I have noticed the fragmentation of Android with just the dilution of good development.
With that said, I acknowledge I am a user, not a Developer. I've tried to get interested in development, it is just not where my passion lies.
This is one of those useless posts you see on XDA, however, I feel like there is not much going on in this forum so maybe this is the best discussion we could have.
Take Apple, they have one product to focus on, no one to share the spotlight with. Android on the other hand has several, I have no idea how many, to share the spot light with. S3, S4, S5, Oppo, One, name your poison.
I say all this because I remember back to the Epic... It was Epic. The phone was amazing when it came out, the development was even better.
Now that I'm on the S4, while I don't want to take away anything from what the developers on this phone have done, it is not their fault, but developers will flock to where the demand is. And it just doesn't seem to be here.
Maybe this is Sprints fault? I stay with Sprint because they're the cheapest option I have. Certainly not the best, but definitely the cheapest.
Just trying to promote a discussion, not a flame war. Start now.

socos25 said:
Coming from the Epic, and then from the S3, I have noticed the fragmentation of Android with just the dilution of good development.
With that said, I acknowledge I am a user, not a Developer. I've tried to get interested in development, it is just not where my passion lies.
This is one of those useless posts you see on XDA, however, I feel like there is not much going on in this forum so maybe this is the best discussion we could have.
Take Apple, they have one product to focus on, no one to share the spotlight with. Android on the other hand has several, I have no idea how many, to share the spot light with. S3, S4, S5, Oppo, One, name your poison.
I say all this because I remember back to the Epic... It was Epic. The phone was amazing when it came out, the development was even better.
Now that I'm on the S4, while I don't want to take away anything from what the developers on this phone have done, it is not their fault, but developers will flock to where the demand is. And it just doesn't seem to be here.
Maybe this is Sprints fault? I stay with Sprint because they're the cheapest option I have. Certainly not the best, but definitely the cheapest.
Just trying to promote a discussion, not a flame war. Start now.
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With unified builds, awesome devs are still contributing to our device! Its cool that a talented dev who builds aosp but is with verizon can build for us too. There is no shortage of great development going on, but I'll admit the sprint s4 forums are not as active as I remember the e4gt forums being.
To address your other point, sure - the sheer amount of android devices available will mean the pool of talented devs are spread more thinly across the spectrum of devices, but this community rocks and with a little google-fu (xda helps those who help themselves) I don't think development has really stalled. The forums are just a little less active. What IS a shame is that users here will drive talented devs away from releasing their work publicly on the forums by driving them insane with questions that have been answered 100s of times, petty politics, and flame wars, etc.
But at the end of the day, I would rather have an open OS with a vibrant (or dull) community than a locked down device I can never truly have full control over. But frequent upgrades have always been pushed by manufacturers, at the end of the day profits are the bottom line for them. Thats what is so great about this community, is that the devs here do work that would have gotten them a decent commission or wage elsewhere, FOR FREE. God bless :good::highfive:

All good points, and I would have to say I agree with you, especially with the shame that developers sometimes are driven away by lazy users.
mxmr said:
With unified builds, awesome devs are still contributing to our device! Its cool that a talented dev who builds aosp but is with verizon can build for us too. There is no shortage of great development going on, but I'll admit the sprint s4 forums are not as active as I remember the e4gt forums being.
To address your other point, sure - the sheer amount of android devices available will mean the pool of talented devs are spread more thinly across the spectrum of devices, but this community rocks and with a little google-fu (xda helps those who help themselves) I don't think development has really stalled. The forums are just a little less active. What IS a shame is that users here will drive talented devs away from releasing their work publicly on the forums by driving them insane with questions that have been answered 100s of times, petty politics, and flame wars, etc.
But at the end of the day, I would rather have an open OS with a vibrant (or dull) community than a locked down device I can never truly have full control over. But frequent upgrades have always been pushed by manufacturers, at the end of the day profits are the bottom line for them. Thats what is so great about this community, is that the devs here do work that would have gotten them a decent commission or wage elsewhere, FOR FREE. God bless :good::highfive:
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I'm not a developer either (well of any roms/android mods at least). But as a long time computer power user and burgeoning programmer (3rd year comp sci major) the development on the S4 is very lack luster. We could get into comparing S4 vs development on older platforms, but I'd rather just discuss the generally bad development in the sprint S4 non-original android dev. forum. Most roms are not suited for daily drivers. I have personally tried 2-3 different versions of Sac's Rom and negalite's rom( as well as 1 try on various other roms) and none was with out major flaws.
The problem as I see it is this: The demand is for the newest rom with the most up to date android features. So as rom developers are getting closer to making a stable working version of their roms, Sprint releases an update at which point most developers switch and start working on new release with out ever making a fully functioning rom. To make matters worse most Rom's are presented as a finished product. Some have a known issues section in the first post ,but I challenge any one who disagrees with me to find a known issues section on a rom that actually contains all the know issues. It doesn't exsist. Instead each user is left to download an unfinished product and only after discovering an issue and digging though 10 pages of forums you find others have the same issue and that there may or may not be a soultion. How f'ing hard is it when a god damn issues is reported to update the orginal post?????? I understand these developers are doing this out of the good of their hearts, but anything worth doing is worth doing correctly. If it is to much work to keep an up to date list of ALL known issues, have one of the roms users do so. Not much work for one fan of a rom to keep list of issues if dev cant be bothered.
You help no one when custom roms break things working in the stock version and present it as a working rom. Custom roms used to add fucntion to a device now, it adds somethings and breaks others. Till this trend changes, the best rom is stock rooted + w/e mod a user desires. When a bunch of things dont work label your Rom alpha when most things work call it beta and only when everything works call it stable. This kind of common sense would improve everyone's experience greatly.

mysongranhills said:
I'm not a developer either (well of any roms/android mods at least). But as a long time computer power user and burgeoning programmer (3rd year comp sci major) the development on the S4 is very lack luster. We could get into comparing S4 vs development on older platforms, but I'd rather just discuss the generally bad development in the sprint S4 non-original android dev. forum. Most roms are not suited for daily drivers. I have personally tried 2-3 different versions of Sac's Rom and negalite's rom( as well as 1 try on various other roms) and none was with out major flaws.
The problem as I see it is this: The demand is for the newest rom with the most up to date android features. So as rom developers are getting closer to making a stable working version of their roms, Sprint releases an update at which point most developers switch and start working on new release with out ever making a fully functioning rom. To make matters worse most Rom's are presented as a finished product. Some have a known issues section in the first post ,but I challenge any one who disagrees with me to find a known issues section on a rom that actually contains all the know issues. It doesn't exsist. Instead each user is left to download an unfinished product and only after discovering an issue and digging though 10 pages of forums you find others have the same issue and that there may or may not be a soultion. How f'ing hard is it when a god damn issues is reported to update the orginal post?????? I understand these developers are doing this out of the good of their hearts, but anything worth doing is worth doing correctly. If it is to much work to keep an up to date list of ALL known issues, have one of the roms users do so. Not much work for one fan of a rom to keep list of issues if dev cant be bothered.
You help no one when custom roms break things working in the stock version and present it as a working rom. Custom roms used to add fucntion to a device now, it adds somethings and breaks others. Till this trend changes, the best rom is stock rooted + w/e mod a user desires. When a bunch of things dont work label your Rom alpha when most things work call it beta and only when everything works call it stable. This kind of common sense would improve everyone's experience greatly.
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To a degree, I definitely am with you on this. I have been with this forum since the days of my old HTC thunderbolt. There are AT LEAST 5 popular daily drivers that worked worlds better than the stock rom for that phone. My particular phone glitches out on the dialer/phone app for all Original Android ROM's meaning I am automatically limited to a TW rom. I've tried everything to fix this but nothing seems to. However, there is one that works flawlessly, Triforce 5.4. It's perfect, so far as I can tell, but is starting to show its age. It may be the only perfect ROM for our phones but is almost completely without bells and whistles, unlike the Thunderbolt, which you could save multiple working images to SD and restore if you felt like using sense one day, CM the next, and I do recall a few completely custom ones loosely based on CM that worked awesome. Anyway that's my say on it. I am sad NAE firmware capabilities don't have a nice Triforce release to go with it, but the PRL and firmware seem to work great with the ROM, so I guess I'll stick to it, even if it is boring. It definitely does everything I need for it to do. Still, finding the issues with each one and helping the developers is part of the process. It's fun and part of the reason why I do what I do. Take my ASUS Transformer. That thing is old as the hills, but has multi window, android 4.4.3, windowed apps, and all manner of other things and it runs super smooth. timduru is the dang wizard of that device and refuses to let it die peacefully.

arikdahn said:
To a degree, I definitely am with you on this. I have been with this forum since the days of my old HTC thunderbolt. There are AT LEAST 5 popular daily drivers that worked worlds better than the stock rom for that phone. My particular phone glitches out on the dialer/phone app for all Original Android ROM's meaning I am automatically limited to a TW rom. I've tried everything to fix this but nothing seems to. However, there is one that works flawlessly, Triforce 5.4. It's perfect, so far as I can tell, but is starting to show its age. It may be the only perfect ROM for our phones but is almost completely without bells and whistles, unlike the Thunderbolt, which you could save multiple working images to SD and restore if you felt like using sense one day, CM the next, and I do recall a few completely custom ones loosely based on CM that worked awesome. Anyway that's my say on it. I am sad NAE firmware capabilities don't have a nice Triforce release to go with it, but the PRL and firmware seem to work great with the ROM, so I guess I'll stick to it, even if it is boring. It definitely does everything I need for it to do. Still, finding the issues with each one and helping the developers is part of the process. It's fun and part of the reason why I do what I do. Take my ASUS Transformer. That thing is old as the hills, but has multi window, android 4.4.3, windowed apps, and all manner of other things and it runs super smooth. timduru is the dang wizard of that device and refuses to let it die peacefully.
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I just recently got off heavily modded stock and flashed Super S4 and so far it is awesome. Ktoonz's Kernel is baked in and after using recommended recovery to flash I've had no problems. It isn't heavily modded (mostly other mods baked in and some init.d tweaks) but is fast and stable and is one of the very few TW roms I'd recommend.
When I was on HTC Inspire 4G, There were easily 10 Roms (ASOP and Sense) suitable for a daily driver. For the S4 I'd be hard pressed to find 3 stable usable TW roms at a time.
I think android as a platform is changing a lot philosophically, as well. Older custom roms used to be a must have and were the main reason most users wanted root. Now everything is much more framework centric. Now root is used to add functionality through Xposed framework modules,or audio mods like Viper. Previously each and every mod had to be rom specific.

What Custom ROM would you suggest for my needs?

So there's a myriad of ROMs out there for the SM-G900F. So far I've tried only CM13, and while I love the looks and feels of it I feel it isn't stable enough. I want a ROM that is small/clean, stable and fast with as few apps as possible (just enough for it to run properly). I don't want to flash every single ROM available (as I'm really bad at this and might destroy my phone in the process) just to test them out.
So I am asking on here, do you know of any ROM that is minimalistic, clean, fast and stable that would suit my needs? First and foremost I want my phone to work as a phone, but I want most features to work properly. Preferably recently updated too Fast and stable being priorities.
I am thankful for any advice I can get. Currently running my stock rom, but it's freaking 3.8gb big... O_O
Also; I am sorry if this is against the Forum Rules. I skimmed through them before posting and it does not seem to be a conflicting question and the search function will not answer my question as all threads with similar questions are personalized and outdated.

XtreStoLite although it is a bit old, it's still great. (All GS5 apps flawless and lite )
CM12 AOSP, lite (near stock but high customization )
Blisspop Have not tried it but heard it was great.
Galaxy Project, I am going to be flashing to this soon.
These are just a few off the top of my head, as always there are amazing people and rom makers on this form,
so just look around.
Try new kernels to get different functions (double tap to wake) or just for better battery (handle wakelocks...etc better) or faster (overclock gpu and cpu)

I'm also looking for some info on this because the Samsung Galaxy S 5 forums are a complete mess and very difficult to find info relating to ALL aspects of flashing, including rooting and recoveries! It never used to be like this.
So far I have tried these two roms and I'm now tired of the issues, lack of updates and fixes:
- Galaxy Project
- PhoenixROM
Both of the above are nice but the galaxy project has a known bug where you can't send SMS to legitimate international phone numbers such as +61xxxxxx using the default messaging app. So this was a waste of time for me
Phoenix ROM I've found that facebook integration with the phone has restricted contacts sync to the phone. I think this FB sync issue is due to the custom rom but repeated posts asking for comments / help has got nowhere.
Both of the above ROMs are laggy and slow down. There's no comment on this either. Pheonix ROM also doesn't continue playing music where it left off like the stock rom did. To explain further, I have the phone bluetooth with the car. I play music through the car from the phone. I stop the car / exit eg going to a shop. When I get back in the car, the music starts from the beginning of the 2 hour mp3. Pain in the bum. Phones shouldn't be a pain in the bum.
I don't want a ROM where I have to spend weeks customising it. This is boring.
I was going to check out Shohat ROM but reading the comments there's a bug with bluetooth audio streaming.
I'm too looking for a minimalistic (no bloatware!), clean, fast and stable ROM. Bonus would be extra enhancements to fix current problems. Not an easy task.

Just the fact that there's no response to my previous post shows the forums for the s5 is dead. Time to buy a new phone i think.
Shame really since htc development continued well after the phones were outdated.

dieselboy said:
Just the fact that there's no response to my previous post shows the forums for the s5 is dead. Time to buy a new phone i think.
Shame really since htc development continued well after the phones were outdated.
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Well this is a reply.... The S5 is still a great phone tho, but its your wallet.
And yea, some people make those question threads, but never reply unless they need help, or they screwed something up.
Either way, this is still a supported phone by many developers and staff. Enjoy your life.
As for a recommended ROM try Blisspop, if you want stock TW you could always go back to TGP.

epeglab said:
Well this is a reply.... The S5 is still a great phone tho, but its your wallet.
And yea, some people make those question threads, but never reply unless they need help, or they screwed something up.
Either way, this is still a supported phone by many developers and staff. Enjoy your life.
As for a recommended ROM try Blisspop, if you want stock TW you could always go back to TGP.
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Thanks for your help. The frustration is the lack of updates to ROMs when there's bugs. Lack of information. And difficulty in finding ROMs suitable.
I'll look up Blisspop, thanks.
Don't know what TW or TGP means. I'll google it.

dieselboy said:
Thanks for your help. The frustration is the lack of updates to ROMs when there's bugs. Lack of information. And difficulty in finding ROMs suitable.
I'll look up Blisspop, thanks.
Don't know what TW or TGP means. I'll google it.
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TW == TouchWiz
TGP == The galaxy project.
Of course there are many Roms that I have not mentioned, also if you really want barebones android try cm 12, it's the closest to stock (AOSP) AFAIK. Just browse the forms.
Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk

Ah ok thanks. TGP is too buggy and laggy for me, similar to PhoenixROM. I do prefer touchwhiz though.
Currently using OmegaROM. It's fast and smooth. little customisations so thats good. I thought NFC was not working, but it turns out bluetooth being on and connected to my smartwatch was causing NFC not to work.
Facebook contacts sync still not working in this ROM though. Contacts sync works with Stock Samsung roms, but no others apparently. . Facebook has blocked contacts sync, not sure why.

[Q] What Happened to this phone?

Let's be honest to ourselves here guys, out beloved Moto X Style was officially released in September which means this phone has now been out for at least 3 months and while all the effort that has since been put in this devices by key developers and people from day 1 up till now is very much appreciated and will continue to be appreciated, the development of this device compared to most flagships has been slow motion.
I am just trying to understand what the hell went wrong with this phone that made it end up with such super slow motion development, as when I originally bought the device I was thinking this phone would be at least in the top 20 most active phones on XDA development wise.
It had so much going for it, easy root, easy unlockable bootloader, a pretty much almost complete stock version of android, kernel sources released and motorolas good track record of updating their flagship phones in a timely manner and good hardware to accompany the great bloatware free stock software and a cheap price compared to some other flagships from other companies such as Samsung and Sony
With all this in mind I thought developers would flock to this device and we would have a massive development forum with loads of options between custom roms, mods, themes and other tweaks etc
But this is far from the case and I know the Nexus 6P being released probably had something to do with it, Still this should have been at least in top 20
At first I thought when Android 6.0 MM will be released development will increase then we needed the kernel sources as that was apparently not enough, then we had kernel sources but apart from 1 or 2 roms showing up being in alpha stages nothings changed too much.
This is such a disappointment to say the least.
If only I could understand why this is happening maybe something could be done to fix this or increase the development of this phone, I dont know maybe get some developers from the nexus 6p forums on here some how ...
Any ideas why this has happened and if anything can be done to increase development?
IS THERE ANY WAY WE AS A COMMUNITY CAN GET MORE DEVELOPERS TO WORK ON THIS DEVICE?

djsynth said:
If only I could understand why this is happening maybe something could be done to fix this or increase the development of this phone, I dont know maybe get some developers from the nexus 6p forums on here some how ...
Any ideas why this has happened and if anything can be done to increase development?
IS THERE ANY WAY WE AS A COMMUNITY CAN GET MORE DEVELOPERS TO WORK ON THIS DEVICE?
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I think it's due to a combination of factors, such as :
1) The popularity of the phone/ manufacturer. These figures show Lenovo/Motorloa in 5th place for sales, having a 3.7% market share in Q3 2015
2) The OS (Android) has improved a lot over recent years, to the extent where a lot of people (like me) are happy to stay with stock
3) With phones getting more expensive, more people are put off from unlocking their bootloader due to warranty issues
4) I'm no longer convinced about the benefits of custom ROMs - seems a lot of the time they break more things than they fix. Maybe a lot of other people now think the same.
5) Some apps, for example ones for mobile banking or subscrition TV & Video, will not work with a rooted phone.
In the past I've had various phones from various manufacturers, and I'd say if you get your kicks from installing custom ROMs, then buy a Nexus.

When i had the one plus one there were so many roms that was a brain storm... I prefer some and reliable roms than a plethora where you get confused!!!

2) The OS (Android) has improved a lot over recent years, to the extent where a lot of people (like me) are happy to stay with stock
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4) I'm no longer convinced about the benefits of custom ROMs - seems a lot of the time they break more things than they fix. Maybe a lot of other people now think the same.
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IMO you hit the nail on the head. I love this phone. I had the MXPE 2014 as well, was not a fan. Also owned the original, Loved it.
This MXPE has been great in imo, the lack of development has not been disappointing to me. The stock rom is really pretty good, there are minor tweaks that can be done but most can do these on their own.
I used to be a flash-aholic, but like @GretaLewd has stated...custom roms tend to break things. I'm more in favor of kernel development. But how many different kernels can you have? One way or another they'll be the same.
I also own a Nexus 6P, but my MXPE is my go to device.
I see users complaining about this phone constantly, I really don't think it matters what phone you put in the hands of those users...they would still find fault and complain.
Motorola and Lenovo did good by this device, I just hope they keep up with incrementals for a while.

Isn't the 64bit cpu reason because it takes more work to get cm/aosp roms?
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

Good thread. Would love to hear more thoughts
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

Ordered the device today. Hope slow development doesn't disappoint me on this device, as others have stated...

I have been using this device for 2 months now. I am happy with it an didn't face a single issue. I can do a little bit tweaking myself using Xposed.
So far the slow development doesn't bother me.

Only buy a device for what it can do out of the box, not what you hope it will be able to do with additional modding and development... Nothing else is guaranteed!
As it stands I'm very happy with my rooted stock Style, not need for custom roms.

chrisund123 said:
Only buy a device for what it can do out of the box, not what you hope it will be able to do with additional modding and development... Nothing else is guaranteed!
As it stands I'm very happy with my rooted stock Style, not need for custom roms.
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That's a good way to approach Android phones I suppose but I believe
it's still nice to buy a phone that's great out of the box and good development wise, usually flagships tend to have good development and then the mid range and low end phones tend to get smaller developments but I guess there's an exception to everything.

patt2k said:
Isn't the 64bit cpu reason because it takes more work to get cm/aosp roms?
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
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I doubt that's the reason since 64 Bit has been the standard since Lollipop and pretty much all the flagships have a 64bit cpu since the beggining of 2015 but that doesn't stop other development forums from flourishing.

GretaLewd said:
I think it's due to a combination of factors, such as :
1) The popularity of the phone/ manufacturer. These figures show Lenovo/Motorloa in 5th place for sales, having a 3.7% market share in Q3 2015
2) The OS (Android) has improved a lot over recent years, to the extent where a lot of people (like me) are happy to stay with stock
3) With phones getting more expensive, more people are put off from unlocking their bootloader due to warranty issues
4) I'm no longer convinced about the benefits of custom ROMs - seems a lot of the time they break more things than they fix. Maybe a lot of other people now think the same.
5) Some apps, for example ones for mobile banking or subscrition TV & Video, will not work with a rooted phone.
In the past I've had various phones from various manufacturers, and I'd say if you get your kicks from installing custom ROMs, then buy a Nexus.
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Thank you for your break down on your thoughts of the subject and I must admit you've mention some very valid points here especially Point 1,2 and 5 but I think out of all of these its Point 1 and 2 that are the most significant, I suppose Motorola have a really small market share explains the lack of adoption between developers when comparing to some of the more prominent manufacturers such as samsung.
and The Android Stock OS has improved significantly within the past couple of years adding some new features that previously people had to root their phones to acomplish such as full app permission controls and backing up app data which google does for you now.

You need to follow development before buying a device these days. i.e. always wait at least 1-2 months. If you follow the development forums you would get an idea if developers are interested in said device or not. I for one, bought it right after I found out that AICP (CM12) rom was being developed. I was interested in running CM13 instead of other AOSP variations. And before I got the device the first (almost daily driver) builds were already uploaded.

Once cm is solid quite a few roms will pop up. Won't be long now.

Official MM has only been out for our phone for a little over a month. give it some time it may pick up. either way it's still an awesome phone out the box... and as stated above, once CM13 is stable im sure we'll see some of the other custom ROMs that are based off it.

GretaLewd said:
2) The OS (Android) has improved a lot over recent years, to the extent where a lot of people (like me) are happy to stay with stock
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This is a great point, but I'd like to add that this is especially applicable to our MXPE. We're really close to stock as it is, so there's little motivation to go ROM to debloat like there is on Samsung, LG, and similar phones. On the flip side, we have a lot of really neat features (active display, approach, accelerator gestures, voice controls) that we would lose if we went ROM.
For me, these two points combine, leaving me with little motivation to ROM my phone, especially since I can could get most of the advantages of CyanogenMod with something like GravityBox, which will allow me to keep the Motorola features (I'm currently unrooted because of the warranty, but I'll be rooted in the future for sure) . Of course, these are my own personal opinions, but I suspect that they reflect at least some of the mindset of this community.

I agree with others, that custom roms are often more trouble than they're worth. The only reason to use them these days is if your device isn't going to be updated to the latest version of Android.

Ever since moto introduced 99% stock android + moto display, roms have been entirely unnecessary for me. I used to rom my phones to gain greater flexibility + customizability. Now that I have stock android + Xposed, I doubt I will ever flash another custom rom again.

I'm still waiting for custom super roms that will make this device best in the market. Why can we have a rom with 1080p display, tweak kernel with better control for heating issue for overall battery life and speed?
Sent from my XT1575 using XDA Free mobile app

The biggest issue is that developers don't support devices they don't own. With the launch of the nexus 6 (not the 6p) most developers got it and had no need to update to a y newer devices.
Also to the comment that all flag ships are 64 bit this is not the case. If you look the most popular devices as far as developers are concerned are non 64 bit.
Also as android matures you will see less and less roms. As it will be come harder. There are very few real development teams. Most are just kitchen sink roms. A base with tons of cherry picks and a new name. Nothing even worth looking at twice. But more developers are closing up the source of their projects because of these types of roms.
To be honest most users have no point in flashing roms. Only those that like the development side of it will continue to mod roms and flash things.

funny thing that older moto g's got cyan 14.1 but moto g4 plus didnt

Ok so cyanogenmod.org got all moto devices listed and they said moto g series getting cyanogen 14.1 but moto g4 plus not anywhere in cyanogenmod.org list:crying:
I hate unofficial buggy ROMs

mayank.bhola1 said:
Ok so cyanogenmod.org got all moto devices listed and they said moto g series getting cyanogen 14.1 but moto g4 plus not anywhere in cyanogenmod.org list:crying:
I hate unofficial buggy ROMs
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Official roms are buggy too if you ever tried nightlies or snapshots. And we will see, maybe official will come until cm statet it comes not

They didn't say all G family, they post this list:
falcon, peregrine, titan, thea, osprey
They are 1st 2nd and 3rd Gen.

FlaminisRex said:
They didn't say all G family, they post this list:
falcon, peregrine, titan, thea, osprey
They are 1st 2nd and 3rd Gen.
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If it's not in the list, it will be added, thats possible.
@mayank.bhola1:
No need to scared and say it will never come. If you didn't have a proof, don't open such scaring threads "no official cyanogen 14.1" that's really annoying to others, because some people trust it and won't buy the device maybe(just an opinion)

I avoid anything cm based. Always worse on battery life.

trsix said:
I avoid anything cm based. Always worse on battery life.
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That's not true that all cm based has "always" worse battery life. On my galaxy's I got more battery compared to Samsung roms(official or mod) and also on my other devices cm gives me more battery life then stock, even to aosp! Maybe you encountered bad experiences, but it totally depends on the device tree, drivers, modem, source, etc etc... And the knowledge of the dev :angel:

My experience with CM was that a lot of the features added where useless to me and they just added battery drain and new bugs. And when a bug was fixed in a nightly, there was a good chance that another two bugs would pop up.
Not cool if you really need to use your phone as a phone. Maybe OK if you don't have a job or you stay at home all the time.

SoNic67 said:
My experience with CM was that a lot of the features added where useless to me and they just added battery drain and new bugs. And when a bug was fixed in a nightly, there was a good chance that another two bugs would pop up.
Not cool if you really need to use your phone as a phone. Maybe OK if you don't have a job or you stay at home all the time.
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So you concluding that we must stick to stock ROMs ??

Depends of what you do for living... and if need a reliable phone line for that.

SoNic67 said:
Depends of what you do for living... and if need a reliable phone line for that.
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I knew a device which stock cos rom is the hell on earth(random reboots, bugs, freezes) compared to cm and nearly all people saying wow after flashing cm instead of staying on stock. CM is widely available for devices and always a chance to get more out of your device when the manufacturer gives up the development after launching the device or won't fix bugs in acceptable time.

Not the case here. Moto firmware is stable and not bloated.

CM is best after OEM leaves device support. I had Asus Zenfone 5 earlier but no official CM so developers made unofficial one but Asus had serious issues with bootloader unlock as no developer was able to resolve screen freeze issues. So running custom ROMs on that device was hell bad.

If you think making cm and make it official is easy then do it urself, we really want to see. Things are not same as 1st,2nd &3rd. The chipset are way different than the previous gen. So stop posting useless things. Dont open thread for you own satisfaction.

Just my $0.02 : The premise behind getting a custom ROM is that it's for those who have an above average idea about OS, customizations, working on a system level and such.
The whole argument about stability, and what one does for their living is a bit too far fetched in context of using a device that is dependable. Stock ROMs are made by OEMs keeping a novice end-user in view, who may or may not have sufficient time, knowledge or inclination of going beyond what the device came shipped with.
Custom ROMs and development is undertaken almost completely as a voluntary exercise by the devs, mostly on cost of their own resources and go far as to offer their work off forum threads which they'd personally support. Those flashing and modding devices are ones testing the work undertaken by devs, and even after a ROM gets official status, work on development continues with feedback from users and updating security, porting features from other devices, expanding customization et al.
Battery use, smoothness of UI, connectivity, stability, obviously are essential to one's experience of using their phone, but are highly dependent on how well one's put to use the abilities of their custom ROM, apart from what applications or settings one's gotten on, and that would come about only with experimenting, learning and keeping oneself updated with their device's software.
Stock ROMs, barring the few odd ones which run stock Android are almost always crammed with bloatware, uncustomizable UI/features and locked in to a mesh of regulatory compliances, OEM/vendor/third party interests and above all marketing the device as a product - which means you're good to go for just about as long as the OEM cares, and that isn't usually long enough given they'd obviously be focused on selling newer products.
So, it's just that mileage may vary but if you're willing to stick around to learn and experiment, customizing is the only way to truly own your phone.
Sent from my Moto G4 Plus using XDA Labs

Frances91 said:
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Stock ROMs, barring the few odd ones which run stock Android are almost always crammed with bloatware, uncustomizable UI/features and locked in to a mesh of regulatory compliances, OEM/vendor/third party interests and above all marketing the device as a product - which means you're good to go for just about as long as the OEM cares, and that isn't usually long enough given they'd obviously be focused on selling newer products.
So, it's just that mileage may vary but if you're willing to stick around to learn and experiment, customizing is the only way to truly own your phone.
Sent from my Moto G4 Plus using XDA Labs
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I think the G4 is close to AOSP. Using Xposed you can get many fancy features found in custom roms. GravityBox gives you much of what CM offers.
Security features make it much more difficult to customize a phone. Pay by phone, i.e. "Wallet" will become important.
Custom roms are used more now for keeping old phones current. Not that much happening with new phones. Look at CyanogenMod https://download.cyanogenmod.org/ to view this.

king200 said:
I think the G4 is close to AOSP. Using Xposed you can get many fancy features found in custom roms. GravityBox gives you much of what CM offers.
Security features make it much more difficult to customize a phone. Pay by phone, i.e. "Wallet" will become important.
Custom roms are used more now for keeping old phones current. Not that much happening with new phones. Look at CyanogenMod https://download.cyanogenmod.org/ to view this.
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If you're considering using Xposed for the 'fancy features' and use wallet, and yet vouch for stock Roms I'm not sure what you're on to. You'd need for more mods running on a stock ROM which would anyways take months or even years to get updated to run latest Android versions. Some times you'd just stick around with frequent updates which are still two SDK versions behind the current official release, basically cycling through bloat, partner apps and constant rooting, modding to just keep your phone worth it's use.
As for new phones, it takes a fair amount of time, effort and understanding to access available sources and build a device tree from which custom ROMs are built.
Besides, not many users, unless they've specifically bought the new device to work on development, adopt customization till about several months after their purchase. As for CyanogenMod site they list the official ROMs, which are painstakingly built after months of testing. What you see on there are mostly devices which are either usually a year old or are stock Android - both being fitting scenarios for system level modifications to drive both performance and customization. You'd be hard pressed to find Android OEMs updating devices or even offering security patches for long.
Also, do remember MIUI, Oxygen and several other OEM ROMs that run across some of the most successful phones evolved from the custom ROMs community development.
And yeah, there's the custom kernels as well which almost always need a custom ROM.
Unless you've hit upon a groundbreaking counter claim to all the benefit of custom ROMs you would be among a tiny minority of informed users who ascribe to that idea. I would really like to benefit from what you can share about it, I am sure I can hit up the devs in my subscribed threads and help them make better decision with their time and efforts.
Sent from my Moto G4 Plus using XDA Labs

What is the most bug free custom ROM for Axon 7?

I'd love to get some totally un-biased views here, including pros and cons. This will probably also help others given the current circumstances and wading through old threads containing up to 4000 posts is a real PIA. Current info condensed into one new thread would be great and not introduce clutter in the ROM threads.
Given that even if we get Oreo, there will most likely be no further official updates, just wondering, from all of you who have used many ROMs, what is an honest view of which ROMs are nearly bug free? Are any bug free? For me stuff like call and camera issues are a total deal breaker. I use my phone for personal and work, including interstate and minor overseas travel. Not going to even install any ROM that is compromised in some way.
I put OmniROM MM on my Oppo Find 7 and that was fantastic. It even got updated to Nougat and I think still has updates so I reset it to a non rooted, stock (Omni) state and passed it on to my eldest daughter. It's being enjoyed and well used still.
I'd really like to get that kind of service life from my Axon 7 as it is a very good phone still.

I reccomend Oreo AEX,although i heard that dualsim is not currently working

Just like asking "what are the best headphones?", or "what are the best speakers?", the only real way to tell how well a certain ROM will work for YOU on YOUR PHONE is to try it. Even between phones of the exact same model, there will always be different experiences across users. Backup, wipe, flash & see if the features/performance you find are what work for you.

Well that won't be happening. I use it for work. Can't be flashing it all the time. Just needs to work and leave it alone.

RobboW said:
Well that won't be happening. I use it for work. Can't be flashing it all the time. Just needs to work and leave it alone.
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I'd use raystef's stock based roms then, check them out.
Most are nougat, one is oreo beta, pick your poison.

I've had really good experiences with Official lineageOS. It has been a seamless process without any hitches. I'm personally waiting for the official release of lineageOS 15.1 (if and when it comes out). I've installed lineage on various devices and have been super happy with all of them. My Moto G Titan feels like a new phone after I've installed it.

Victor13f said:
I've had really good experiences with Official lineageOS. It has been a seamless process without any hitches. I'm personally waiting for the official release of lineageOS 15.1 (if and when it comes out). I've installed lineage on various devices and have been super happy with all of them. My Moto G Titan feels like a new phone after I've installed it.
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It's very device specific though. Sometimes a custom ROM (such as LOS, OMNI etc) will work well on one type of phone and be buggy on a different one. Not all phones work the same on them and I think the Axon 7 is one of those that ends up with buggy ROMs. The camera and DAC are complications that can be hard to get running well, also dual SIM can be an issue and I use it all.
If it's a choice between custom with bugs or stay on stock Nougat I would stay stock.

RobboW said:
If it's a choice between custom with bugs or stay on stock Nougat I would stay stock.
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The feedback on LOS doesn't seem to be too bad and I do understand that since I am also still stock but the problem is that the stock ROM is filled with bugs aswell. The screen brightness bug I get sometimes, the call bug, my Google play store crashes often, my GPS doesn't work properly etc etc. Those are all bugs the stock ROM itself has.