Where's all the community development for this Phone? - Essential Phone Questions & Answers

So I considered this phone when it was launched, but I decided not to jump the gun. I'm a regular ROM jumper and I install Kernels etc..
I've thought of this phone to be an easy to unlock and flash, but there's no development for this device, even TWRP is in its' Alpha stages. Did Essential not release device tree's for this phone or is it another reason?

They have not released stock images yet. Probably on the backburner trying to get out fixes for more important issues.
Also, it's a new device with not a lot of users yet. The $450 price tag has brought in a nice jump in Essential owners so we can only be patient. TWRP and Lineage are both being worked on. More ROMS are probably gonna follow.

Related

CM9 News from CyanogenMod Google+

Last night, +Steve Kondik took to twitter to vent a little bit:
"CM has been getting a lot of crap lately for taking so long with a release. Guess what? It's not that easy. We don't just call something stable unless we mean it. *Also, RC1 is soon!* The most stable devices will get the RC first. The system we've put in place should allow other devices to catch up quickly. More details later this week "
Now to combat the obvious questions:
# As Steve stated, this will not be for all CM9 supported devices. The Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus can be considered safe bets, but the final list won't be available until release day.
# As always, the proper day of release is difficult/impossible to predict, but we anticipate a code freeze going in place tomorrow at the earliest.
# Yes, this means we will actively be running two separate RC phases (CM7 and CM9). Bug's should be reported to the issue tracker once the release is made, not in the comments on our posts.
# There has been a lot of talk surrounding Linaro in CM. While CM 9.0 won't ship with all the patches on gerrit, quite a few of them are already incorporated and others are sane enough that they will likely be there. There are still some issues surrounding the updated gcc used for the Linaro patches that don't play nice with AOSP.
# Nexus One: For the time being, the N1 will not be supported. We can get it to build/boot/run, but the hacks required break Google's CTS, so until that is rectified, you won't see any build with CM's official stamp of approval.
CM9 News
And from a followup a few hours later:
******
+Ricardo Cerqueira sat down with XDA recently for a developer interview
To piggy back on our comment about the N1 and CTS, Ricardo describes why we don't just shrug off that requirement.
Because it opened a can of worms that can’t be closed again. Getting it to work needed some very ugly workarounds that directly go against Google’s compatibility document for ICS. An app developer targeting ICS as a minimal version for his apps has the right to expect some functionality to be guaranteed on a device that claims to be ICS, that wasn’t (and isn’t) true for ICS builds with these hacks. That’s one the main reasons CM9 does not officially include a bunch of devices that are “working.”
...and some users understand that, but a lot don’t, and they’ll submit error reports on those apps, or they’ll rate it badly at the Play store. This is not a hypothetical scenario, it has happened whether we like it or not, asked for it or not, CM’s userbase is large enough to matter, even if you don’t count derivatives. We have a responsibility not to cause that kind of grief to app developers and we did. With all the mostly bull**** talk about fragmentation, we actively contributed to a break in the platform, no matter how small. That’s not a good thing :X People SHOULD know these builds contain hacks, but you’ve surely realized by now that they don’t
******
dookie23 said:
....so until that is rectified, you won't see any build with CM's official stamp of approval.
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so.... is that ever gonna get rectified
charlie_su1986 said:
so.... is that ever gonna get rectified
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I wonder what are the hacks he mentioned in the post. Was it the hboot hack, m2sd hack or swap partition...etc?
what is all the fuss about CM9 not releasing a rom officially when we have quite a few talented devs that have already given us the choice of running a near perfect ICS Rom on our nexus one?
EDIT: BCM offers CM9 features, AOKP offers us users the choice of AOKP features and texasice rom has a twist of its own features to. I do not see a problem with CM not releasing an official rom
Kannibalism said:
what is all the fuss about CM9 not releasing a rom officially when we have quite a few talented devs that have already given us the choice of running a near perfect ICS Rom on our nexus one?
EDIT: BCM offers CM9 features, AOKP offers us users the choice of AOKP features and texasice rom has a twist of its own features to. I do not see a problem with CM not releasing an official rom
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Don't get me wrong, I love seeing the talented devs make awesome progress on kang'ing CM9 and things are coming together nicely. What I am getting at is not whether Cyanogenmod is releasing a CM9 rom officially for the Nexus One, but it's what Ricardo Cerqueira said about the hacks breaking Google CTS. This could mean that apps might not run or worse yet, FC's for no reason.
Now, the real questions are, what are these hacks Ricardo was talking about and is that gonna get rectified?
the hacks they talk about could be small stuff like ta camera fix etc since vendors do not always release new drivers.I would say that the nexus one is using a few hacks for drivers in order to make everything work better
I suspect it's a combination, both messing with HBOOT partition sizes (which is not a *bad* thing, but involves a lot more risk than just flashing a new ROM) and the nasty driver hacks that the poor dev's have had to do to try to working around the lack of a Broadcom driver, since they saw fit to release neither a driver nor sufficient documentation. It's hard to see how either could be overcome for an "official" CM9 release. I feel like it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem; with sufficient dev attention things could probably be brought into acceptable shape, but unofficial ports will never have sufficient dev attention.
Disclaimer: I really appreciate all the work that's been done by everyone on all the community ROMs. It's a hard, often thankless job, whether you're debugging mystery driver issues on an older phone or trying to coordinate a release for dozens of different devices with angry, impatient fans. While I'd love to have an official, flawless ICS ROM, at least we get more love from the community than we did from Google
decoherent said:
I suspect it's a combination, both messing with HBOOT partition sizes (which is not a *bad* thing, but involves a lot more risk than just flashing a new ROM) and the nasty driver hacks that the poor dev's have had to do to try to working around the lack of a Broadcom driver, since they saw fit to release neither a driver nor sufficient documentation. It's hard to see how either could be overcome for an "official" CM9 release. I feel like it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem; with sufficient dev attention things could probably be brought into acceptable shape, but unofficial ports will never have sufficient dev attention.
Disclaimer: I really appreciate all the work that's been done by everyone on all the community ROMs. It's a hard, often thankless job, whether you're debugging mystery driver issues on an older phone or trying to coordinate a release for dozens of different devices with angry, impatient fans. While I'd love to have an official, flawless ICS ROM, at least we get more love from the community than we did from Google
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I agree with this post i would put the blame on google for not pushing the vendors for the broadcom drivers since android is open source after all but once again great works by our devs and thanks for letting us experience the latest versions of android on our devices
EDIT: i must admit that i have better devices to use than the nexus one but the community keeps me coming back for more
Sent from my Nexus One using xda premium

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.

[DOUBT]Is CM12.1 a real possibility?

Hi guys, I'm thinking of buying a OP2, and yesterday I recieved my invite, but I don't want Oxygen OS because I usually do hard modding stuff, so I would need at least CM12.1 and starting from there maybe a ROM like RR or AOKP.
But the CM development is still in process. So my question is, it's real thing for sure in time (I don't care how much time)? Or it may be the possibility that CM never comes??
Thanks.
I'd say: Wait until they got Android M managed. It's possible that CM 12.1 will never be that important for us, because all hopes are in Android M and it's possibility to get at least the fingerprint working. Fallout 4 also made us wait longer, because most devs are overwhelmed from it (me too ). Also the OPT isn't that frequented until now, so... it's too early to discuss about general abilities. But I doubt, OPT won't get CM. Too many were hyped and it's a damn good phone - not only for the price. Let's hope, devs will get the needed support from OnePlus to get their sources working. Fingers crossed .
Sign to get Oxygen OS open sourced.
ONEPLUS, Carl Pei, Pete Leu: Release Sources for Oxygen OS!We need more development. - Sign the Petition!
https://www.change.org/p/oneplus-ca...utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=whatsapp
Apparently he already answered right?

[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.

Xa1 ultra repository

I will be creating a repository of root methods and guides, recoveries, roms and stock files. This will be a one stop shop for all your developer needs.
So far the only development. Is by Janjan, providing root, and a twrp recovery
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xa1-ultra/development/g3221-built-sources-t3622886
idontwanttobeanoob said:
I will be creating a repository of root methods and guides, recoveries, roms and stock files. This will be a one stop shop for all your developer needs.
So far the only development. Is by Janjan, providing root, and a twrp recovery
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xa1-ultra/development/g3221-built-sources-t3622886
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Click to collapse
considering all development for this device, from the only dev that ever worked on it, has stopped. I regret buying this device. I thought for sure Sony would have better action than this. I had a note 2 before this, and they were still developing for that phone when I stopped using it 2 months Ago. I think im going to try to sell it. it's really pathetic. but it is what it is
Sent from my Xperia XA1 Ultra using XDA Labs
I am in the process of moving but once that is done I will be working on porting a few roms so that we have some choices. Don't give up yet. I have faith in the community
idontwanttobeanoob said:
I am in the process of moving but once that is done I will be working on porting a few roms so that we have some choices. Don't give up yet. I have faith in the community
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just bought this coming from a Nexus 6P and was surprised that nothing had really been done with it it seems to be a good phone, just some of the stock options suck lol. I saw your thread for root and custom recovery and am going to try it I'm the next couple days.
You said you are going to be porting some Roms over, any ideas which you will be attempting? If you are taking requests I wouldn't mind Pure Nexus.. It's pretty kickass from a well known dev.. Or maybe even crdroid (lineage based)? Thanks for your work so far and keep at it.. Like I said, pretty good phone, just no development much yet.
mikeandjaimie said:
I just bought this coming from a Nexus 6P and was surprised that nothing had really been done with it it seems to be a good phone, just some of the stock options suck lol. I saw your thread for root and custom recovery and am going to try it I'm the next couple days.
You said you are going to be porting some Roms over, any ideas which you will be attempting? If you are taking requests I wouldn't mind Pure Nexus.. It's pretty kickass from a well known dev.. Or maybe even crdroid (lineage based)? Thanks for your work so far and keep at it.. Like I said, pretty good phone, just no development much yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The option for root and recovery is done by JanJan who has stopped working on this device. Please give him a thanks and your credit. Mid level phones have a habit of taking a few months to really get development going. But this phone should have plenty in the coming months!
I'd like to jump in for kernel and recovery development, but the problem is I don't have experience and I have to setup a dedicated Linux machine from one of unused laptop. Also, I have to work like everybody. I have four Xperia (Z Ultra, XA Ultra, XA1 Ultra, and L1). I just need other developers to help me get started.
Note: I only have US version except Z Ultra (C6833).
Hii
Just to give my opinion too on this topic
I did the mistake.. Usually I do my own research by google-ing all the reviews
Then I read some opinions, then i look also on you tube and then the most important
I do look at xda forum to see the support of the device
And i saw all that...but than I saw the forum is not like I am used to..its like dead .. not
just there are no one posting things..but the custom rom support is not there...
Well, I said to me also... ok its a 6 inch.. not everybody likes phablets..
Like, 5 inch is more popular.. maybe that is the reson there are no development..
And then I said..ok announced in Feb/March but just got to the market about May..
So..new device..should be some development..
Unfortunally I got one with bootloader unlock NO status..
And now I can not even get root..
But still... It was weird to have such an phone on XDA with dead forum all at all
Did a bit more research last few day after I got the device
As It looks like all the X series from the Sony Xperia... has no support..
Like there are 7 or 8 devices from the X series and the only one is the X Performance Model wich has like 4 to 5 custom roms
and a few stock modified kernels..
All the other phones do not have anything..
Or let me say the best example the XA Ultra also 6 inch from last year 2016 Model
Has not evan 1 thread or commend under xda forum for custom roms or kernels or what ever..like
more then one year and what?? Nothing..
So I do not hope we will have anything...not to get fooled its a new devices it will be in time and
we will need to wait ... bla bla bla.. nothing will happen
The best thing is to fool yourself with different launchers so that after some of use of the phone
You get sort of a feeling you did flash something..and get the feeling you changed the phone
Thats all...
Would point to NOVA laungher..and some others wich have much settings to modify the looks and
the way it works...
I really to not think anything will happen.. ever
i bought the regular xa1 thinking that there'd be insane development going on for it. looking back, i shouldn't have unlocked bootloader, and looked at getting different phone. if i try to take it back to the store now even though it's under 1 year warranty, they'll just say, "oh we can't replace it, we got to send it off to sony" in which case they won't do anything as sony will see that the bootloader is unlocked
Not to say custom ROMs aren't great and all, I too was here for the good stuff, but people complaining and taking phones back is a bit dramatic.
The stock ROM is great. It doesn't really need a custom ROM. It's a perfectly reasonable phone by itself.
A custom ROM makes sense in phones such as Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi, where they botch everything to make it "unique", but Sony phones tread the line carefully to keep it pure as possible whilst adding actual useful features.
If you're picking up phones just to hack them, maybe you should try to start your own development on them. Get the toolchains, bring up a Linux system and get creative. Then you can be the hero of your own story.
What is the best way to return to fully stock? Relock the bootloader and flash the latest firmware? Might sell mine too and get an Essential PH-1.
So since this is my first Sony device and may be my last for a few reasons question I want to return everything to stock, and I use the method that was provided it won't relock bootloader right? I have to manually relock it like any other device? I just wanna return to stock so I can try and see what it take to get a Oreo rom once the update comes through.
Actually maybe do some research when this phone first came out with had start of support. We have twrp and custom kernel. There's a search button. Try it out.
I know that this thread seems to be dead but I was wondering if someone could share the sound file for plugging in the charging cord

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