I mean I've had many frikin phones in the pass last one before this was a sensation ...
I'm saying all this cause for the first time I find a stock rom really fast/smooth. So is it really worth it a custom rom?
And I read here and there about a browser lag? What lag? This is one or the smoothest browser I tried on a phone
Let me know what rom u running and if u really feel the difference ..remember ..to review a rom u need a couple of days ..heavy use ..right after u load a rom it would be fast and smooth that's usually the case.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
im using stock KE2
one of the only reasons ive seen people use custom roms is because of the battery life .Im fine on my KE2 i can go for 2+days without a charge
I think what they mean by browser lag is that some custom ROMs have buggy browsers ..... im not sure of this
Mine is KE7 I have no problem with battery either ...
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ill probably change roms a year from now so i can try the AOSP feel of CM7 or CM8 if android 4 is around the corner
basically i want to try "android" for what it is
With the brute force of dualcore and 1Gb ram, i doubt a customized ROM can make a significant difference like what it did on the SGS1. Im using KF1 ( stock with my phone ) and I have no battery or speed issues, I still have all the samsung bloat installed just for stress testing. Will be removing it maybe tomorrow.
Nah, there is no real speed difference that I can notice and I have tried every rom here exept MIUI. A number of guys are running the phone underclocked by 33% and don't notice any difference. Outside of gaming it would seem we have power to spare for the moment. I cant comment on the stock browser as I used it just long enough to figure out the text reflow blows chunks and moved over to opera. I never had a problem making it through the day and that is all the battery I require.
Still performance be it speed or improved battery life is only one aspect of custom roms. There is also the various mods, bug fixes, and extended options and functionality, that chefs throw in that make installing a rom a no brainer to me. Roms are in their infancy on this device, I expect them to get a lot more interesting after 2.3.4 drops and they mature.
I cannot see any performance difference with villainrom either. However it seems to me that the battery usage is much better than with stock rom.
With normal usage (except games) the SGS2 performs great - you just don't need to worry about speed.
@qwerty warrior:
there's a fix for the laggy browser in custom roms.
I've been using VillainRom v1.4 for a little now (tried out MIUI before which was nice but wanted something with a little less bugs.) and mainly the only reason I switched from stock was to test if the battery is any better (been getting similar to stock battery life) and to have a deodexed rom for themes. Also, I've been running my SGS II UC at 500mHz and I had experience no lag at all. Haven't played too many intensive games but, when I played Riptide GP it ran smoothly. Overall to me the main advantage to having a custom rom now (until CM or MIUI are out and stable) are for the themes available to a deodexed rom.
Hope this helps.
Sent from my Galaxy S II using VillainRom v1.4
So I recently installed Virtuous Unity. I love it, it's great and runs really well. But coming from CM7, the battery life is not good. In fact, it's about like before I rooted: aka not good enough.
When I check available memory in CM7, I have over 400. In Sense, I usually have under 200 and my battery lasts a third of the time.
Has anyone else found a way around this? I've seen some others talk about the great battery life that this rom offers, but for me it seems to be the only negative. Any suggestions?
i'm on virtuous unity and so far i've had outstanding battery life.
on sense, you can't have as much free memory as an AOSP or stock android rom, because the ui is such a big file, and demands lots of power.
but free memory doesn't really matter
Sure, I see that Sense is more graphically intensive, but I've been going to bed with percentages left in the 60-70% range, and right now headed to bed I'm looking at 26%. When I see what's running, I have crap I haven't turned on (Netflix, Music, Stocks, and many more apps) that are running without being started.
It might be possible to disable that, but I haven't found a way and instead feel like I have a high end non-rooted device. If you're getting good battery life, did you make any adjustments or did I just get unlucky with my flash?
Sense kills the google experience. Its the worst custom skin out there. The only thing I like bout sense is the wifi drivers. They are super strong. Other then that im sticking with cm7/AOSP roms. No bloat on AOSP. To give you an idea what im talking bout. Average sense rom=315 mb average AOSP rom=90 mb sooooooo what's wrong with this picture. I've seen some sense roms up to 450mb which is straight retarded. Stick with AOSP.
Sent from my Green Sludge using XDA Premium App
I love my virtuous unity rom, I don't know bout you guys but I get excellent battery life for a smart phone. Yeah cm7 could give me an extra 10% but its just so damn ugly it ruins my phone,makes it look old and cheap. The only thing I miss is the scrolling wallpaper I hate that virtuous can't do but hey its the price you gotta pay for an elegant phone. But to all their own.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA Premium App
I like both. I have no problem with either, I'm just really enjoying Sense 3.0 and it's lock screen, weather and smooth animation. It's not lagging for me either, which is nice. But it's not a 10% battery difference. More like 40%. If I have 65% on CM7 and 25% on Virtuous Unity at the end of the day...
If there's nothing that can be done that's cool, I'll flip flip back and forth at will I suppose. But the purpose of this thread was to see if anything can be done to improve the battery life.
ULTIMATEHURT said:
Sense kills the google experience. Its the worst custom skin out there.
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Click to collapse
Huh? Have you used Touchwiz or how can anything be worse than Motoblur? I'd have to say Sense is one of the best overlay UIs out of the bunch but I prefer AOSP experience. I would like to have the Sense Widgets and apps to choose but I like the speed and customization I have now.
kalel33 said:
Huh? Have you used Touchwiz or how can anything be worse than Motoblur? I'd have to say Sense is one of the best overlay UIs out of the bunch but I prefer AOSP experience. I would like to have the Sense Widgets and apps to choose but I like the speed and customization I have now.
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Click to collapse
Generally, plain Android fans don't care what custom UI you're talking about, they're going to hate and say it sucks no matter what.
I certainly didn't mean to start a flame war on which is best. I really do like aspects of each. But the battery life is not good on that rom compared to CM7. Not even close.
In that case - look for the differences, they're in your 3rd party apps or ROM settings. Most people, including myself, get very good battery life with VU.
Sense is definitely not the worst.. That trophy goes to MotoBlur by far. I think Sense is the second best overlay next to TouchWiz 4.0
But to answer your question I'm actually getting a little less battery than AOSP, which is really good for VU. To extend your battery life have you tried re-calibrating it? That should help a lot. Also you can try using ADW or LPP for your Launcher because the Sense launcher takes up so much RAM. But of course then you'd be killing half of the Sense experience. But I don't use the Sense widgets all that much so maybe you won't mind going that direction.
I know, it's a 2 year old phone with just 1GB RAM and TouchWiz on top of it.
I've spent the last 2 days trying a LOT of roms to try to make the phone feel faster, because I don't want to buy a new one. I really like this one. The camera is AMAZING, decent battery life, love blocking mode, etc. As a phone it works great: good speaker, strong vibration, great signal, etc.
But there's one single thing that makes this phone feel "old": the speed. Just the speed. If it were faster and more fluid then there would be absolutely no reason to upgrade to the new phones (except, well, maybe more RAM and battery).
Yesterday I tried like 15 AOSP roms: CM11, temasek, ultimaAOSP, NeatROMAOSP, Vanir, AOKP, SlimKat, etc.
Nothing. It's slightly faster, but the problem is the animations. They just look wrong all the time. There's frame drops everywhere. And bugs and crashes, so back to Samsung stock today. Tried another 10 samsung based roms. Nothing new. Speed is still the same and frame drops are still there...
I guess I'll have to end up buying a new phone, but definitely not a flagship. I'm looking at midrange phones that come with AOSP. Found one with 2GB RAM, 13Mpx camera, 2500 battery, 5 inch 720P IPS screen, microSD and dual SIM for 199$. Great price, and comes with 4.4 stock Android.
Tried the phone at the store the other day and it just made my SGS3 look like the midranger, and that with a MediaTek A7 1.3 quad core!
+++
Exactly. Well,animations are smooth on AOSP with right kernel,but still not as it should be. This phone sucks when it comes to UI performance.
Now I even got broken camera and media playback,too,after stressing it with every new test on my phone.
Well,probably this phone worked the best with 4.1.2. I think it's all about crappy processor,called exynos.
EDIT: Btw,you can try archidroid 1x with his boeffla presets,though. After all,it's not that bad.
I think you are just setting unrealistic expectations if none of those ROMS, without TouchWiz, were any good for you.
There is nothing crappy about the processor mate. your case is an isolated issue. If the archi ROM is not smooth for you then there is something wrong with your phone.
it's always wise to stick to ROMs and kernels which are built using proper sources.
Do not restore a massive amount of data soon after a flash. Let the ROM settle a bit. Trim your device memory once in a while.
Also a megawipe is recommended after so many flashes.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app
I put Cyanogenmod CM11 on mine after updating to stock 4.3. It felt like a completely different phone and brought back the speed. It absolutely flies and battery time is double what it was on stock 4.3.
I tested alot of Roms but regading speed and batterylife i use Temasek with Yank kernel. No OC and de S3 flys.
Oh god, it's like reading a thread I could have written myself. I feel you, mate. Got the same damn frustations sometimes.
It seems that whichever ROM "camp" you choose, you're gonna have drawbacks. Tried so many different variants of TW-roms and i just feel they are all too slow and with lags.
Many of the AOSP-roms are quite fast (using ArchiDroid atm which is incredibly fast!) but then you get the problem of crappy camera, no Allshare, tethering issues, many games that have sound-issues and all those random bugs we all know about but try to live with
Perhaps the new Kitkat port can solve these issues but it seems there is a lot of work to be done still. Still I'm glad there's a community like XDA with such awesome people (Like Kryten who posted earlier ) who put the time into developing these things.. Or we would be stuck with even slower ROM's from Samsung.
Is there any way to get rid of it, or at least reduce it?
Install smart droid, further debloat, run greenify and boeffla, custom launcher and its quick, no lag
Even the s5 can't run without lag using Touchwiz.
Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk
jennifercolemanme said:
Is there any way to get rid of it, or at least reduce it?
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Click to collapse
Yes there is, activate Developer Options by tapping on the Build Number in About Phone. In there are 3 settings for animations. The 1st thing I do on every rom is decrease them to 25%. On CM11 and temaseks builds you have a slider which allows you to fine tune the settings instead of the picker which you find on other roms.
My personal experience is that OmniRom is just snappier than any of the others, even when I have a whole bunch of apps open, incoming calls get displayed almost instantly, the dialer and contacts open almost instantly. In my case of course. Everyone has their favourite rom/kernel combination. I have also had great success using Yank555's kernel with the default settings (which include a slight overclock with no noticeable battery drain.
So my temporarily solution is to completely disable the animations in developer settings.
It's a good solution, for now.
My combo right now is stock Samsung 4.3 debloated (many useless apps freezed. Other apps freezed also using Titanium Backup) with Boeffla kernel.
It gets annoying when animations aren't smooth and consistent, but I guess it's expected when Touchwiz is on top and just 1GB RAM.
Taking about RAM, this phone has almost no multitasking also! It's impossible to keep one Chrome or Internet tab open in the background while you do something else. When you go back to the Internet app it has to reload again.
And no custom rom can fix this either. I spent one week with AOSP Vanir rom and didn't had multitasking there either.
What I'm trying to say is that this phone has turned old faster than it should have, precisely because of a bad 4.3 update by Samsung and also just 1GB RAM.
And talking about speed and lag again, trust me, I've tied all the good roms available. It won't matter if you install a custom kernel. If you overclock the phone then battery will last even less than before, and it doesn't make a huge difference in speed animation and fluidity.
I'm sure AOSP roms like CM11 and others do work faster and more fluid in newest phones like G2, SGS4, HTC One, etc. It's because they have a better processor and 2GB RAM.
In the end I think it's the hardware that's to blame for the lag (and bad 4.3 update by Samsung too).
The phone is great otherwise. I love almost everything about it, like I previously said. Most times I can't believe how good the camera is, the screen is enough for me (no need for 1080P), size and weight is perfect, etc.
I would have preferred to own the US SGS3 model with it's 2GB RAM than the EU model. In the long run I think it's better.
But anyway, the lag is not huge, just annoying. And I only notice it when opening and closing apps.
Try entering development settings and change the animator duration scale to 0.5 the transition animation scale to 0.5 and the window animation scale to 0.5
It will make anything faster
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app
AlmoGS said:
Try entering development settings and change the animator duration scale to 0.5 the transition animation scale to 0.5 and the window animation scale to 0.5
It will make anything faster
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't understand it.
It doesn't matter the scale animation (just tried with 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 again), there's still frame drops everywhere.
It doesn't make anything "faster". It's even more annoying watching the frame drops at 0.25.
It's not a solution. There is NO solution to the animation frame drops, not even on custom roms...
Only "solution" is to turn animation scale completely to 0.
I have sgs3 intl and I had a lot of lags and frame drops and I switched to CM 11 nightly and it's became faster and no frame drop and it's like new.
What Android version do you use?
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if you want to have the same camera quality, i suggest you archidroid 1.7.16.
faster rom i ever tried
What lag? My S3 is smmmmoooooooth on CM11
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Sensamic said:
You don't understand it.
It doesn't matter the scale animation (just tried with 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 again), there's still frame drops everywhere.
It doesn't make anything "faster". It's even more annoying watching the frame drops at 0.25.
It's not a solution. There is NO solution to the animation frame drops, not even on custom roms...
Only "solution" is to turn animation scale completely to 0.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright,my last bet will be to go on Archidroid stock based ROM,use it's own boeffla preset setting and turn animations to 1.5x. Animations will be smooth all around,only custom launcher is needed,because when opening or closing apps on touchwiz,it's still stuttery. I'm still using touchwiz launcher,though (lovely animations all around!).
I noticed 1.0x is the worst speed for animations on stock ROMs. I mean,with 1.0x,I notice some fps drops much more when opening a new windows with animations. Like it's too fast for CPU to tune right time for speed and animation and that makes it laggy. So it's all about wrong timing,as 0.5x also feels much more smoother,it's noticeable.
But the 1.5x setting compensates that. No more stuttery animations at all and it feels pretty beautiful. This was my last solution for stock touchwiz ROM,and I'm pretty happy. Try it yourself.
EDIT: Btw,if you also want to keep touchwiz,try xposed app settings,find there touchwiz launcher and tick the checkbox for "resident" option. That way it will keep the launcher in memory hardly,so when you will go back to launcher , shadows under the icons won't redraw and thus stuttery animations will be reduced and will happen much more rare.
On multitasking, try maximising your swap. Never have problems going from Chrome, email, FB etc. Also try removing apps 'receiver' settings, so they don't open on unlock, wifi connect etc..
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There have been a select FEW roms that solved most of the issues you talking about, but they mostly old and the developers have moved on. The truth is, AOSP kitkat isnt optimized for our phones and you most likely wont find a stock based ROM that doesn't lag. I think the main culprit is Jellybean + Samsung together. I don't ever recall ICS having frame drops or lagging really. Samsung did a crappy job optimizing jellybean for our phone. Jellybean is hardware intensive, more than ICS and Kitkat. Seems like it was a temp solution while Google worked on KitKat and now our phone is unfortunately stuck there.
Do yourself a favor and don't get a Samsung if you want proper performance.
Everytime of the day i use my phone i get mixed experiences in terms or smoothness. Sometimes it feels buttery sometimes the animation and games shutter. This is why i'm always on the hunt for new ROMs. Anyone can explain this?
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ng1998 said:
Everytime of the day i use my phone i get mixed experiences in terms or smoothness. Sometimes it feels buttery sometimes the animation and games shutter. This is why i'm always on the hunt for new ROMs. Anyone can explain this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats why touchwiz sucks man
Welcome to the world of the i9300.
Nothing's perfect
But advice... use stock Roms as they have less bugs and better 3d performance.. So try neatrom by sale or archidroid 1.x and don't install lots of unneeded bloatware in the aroma installer. Then if you have a custom kernel like boeffla kernel use a governor that can provide good performance (if ur ready to sacrifice a bit of battery life)...e.g I recommend zzmoove (performance profile) as it works well for me
Sent from a "Galaxy" far, far away with my Ultra Ray Gun