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Good day all
I used to have a Captivate (Galaxy SI) then the Note I. Once I purchase a device, I instantly flash a CM rom. It's been a year of suffer with the not-fully-supported Note. Frequent reboots, Bluetooth and UI glitches, heat and charging problems. It's easier to live with theses issues instead of living with TouchWiz.
Long story short, I'm planning to purchase a new device. What do you think the best high-end device (other than f#$%ing Samsung) in terms of CM support.
I know, I know that the Nexuses are best bets ! But I wanna explorer other options (screen size, SD, resolution, camera, etc) :victory:
I've seen people give appraisals on Oppo Find 5.
You precious advices and suggestions brothers.
AhmadAlmousa said:
Good day all
I used to have a Captivate (Galaxy SI) then the Note I. Once I purchase a device, I instantly flash a CM rom. It's been a year of suffer with the not-fully-supported Note. Frequent reboots, Bluetooth and UI glitches, heat and charging problems. It's easier to live with theses issues instead of living with TouchWiz.
Long story short, I'm planning to purchase a new device. What do you think the best high-end device (other than f#$%ing Samsung) in terms of CM support.
I know, I know that the Nexuses are best bets ! But I wanna explorer other options (screen size, SD, resolution, camera, etc) :victory:
I've seen people give appraisals on Oppo Find 5.
You precious advices and suggestions brothers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well you can buy a nexus, some devices in sony are open sourced..or better you can buy a google play edition phone :good:
Where do you think CM would perform better... on Google Edition phones or the Open Source Sony ones.
AhmadAlmousa said:
Where do you think CM would perform better... on Google Edition phones or the Open Source Sony ones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that depends on the phones spec..:good:
AhmadAlmousa said:
Where do you think CM would perform better... on Google Edition phones or the Open Source Sony ones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CM is developed as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code.
in conclusion phones like Nexus will always have a CM support.
Also visit HERE to see a list of supported devices.
Gens, I fully understand your inputs. For instance, my Note, which has been receiving its share of the nightlies and RCs. So far, I'm still getting heat problems, lags, bluetooth connectivity issues, battery drains.
I'm not looking for supported device. I'm trying to find almost(fully) supported high-end device. So far, I found that my best bet could be
1-Oppo Find 5
2-Xperia Z
3-Qualacomm-based Galaxy devices ?
What do you think the best of them could be ?
AhmadAlmousa said:
Gens, I fully understand your inputs. For instance, my Note, which has been receiving its share of the nightlies and RCs. So far, I'm still getting heat problems, lags, bluetooth connectivity issues, battery drains.
I'm not looking for supported device. I'm trying to find almost(fully) supported high-end device. So far, I found that my best bet could be
1-Oppo Find 5
2-Xperia Z
3-Qualacomm-based Galaxy devices ?
What do you think the best of them could be ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oppo FFInd 5 is the one.:good:
Are you still feeling happy with that device? What would be your pros and cons of this device? For how much time you're thinking to keep it?
My pros:
Good camera quality
Quite fast (only Sammy's sh*ts makes it slow
Big devs support
Good audio quality
Cons:
Very,very boring UI but luckily we can customize it
It's very hard to use it with one hand, and sometimes I am feeling too lazy to use it with two hands
Design looks cheap
Hardware buttons could be more sensitive
Missing camera button
Power button might stuck, so I am avoiding to use as often as possible
Cons
Lack of Exynos sources - Devs have hard time with AOSP
Touchwiz UI is childish - Looks like something from "The Early Learning Centre"
Casing chips easily and cracks with no effort
Poor multi tasking in Touchwiz roms.
Quicky dated, aesthetically
SDS
Poor warranty handling in the above case
Dodgy EFS problems
Camera not great with AOSP roms. Toss up between performance and UI vs camera.
Pros
Nice thin "slate" feel in the hand
Not Pink in colour
Still reasonably quick with AOSP
Negative for me is lack of true development .
Cut and paste sammy roms .#
Same old same old Android roms .
Lack of fluidity in much of the design and apps its still nowhere near as user friendly as it could be .
SDS and poor warranty from Samsung is not a recommend and likewise the multiple modems .
Samsung / network upgrade path is far to complicated .
Kies is a bad piece of software .
Saying that i shall keep until a significantly better phone forces me to change or even go back to non smart for the phone part .
Dumb phone + 7inch Tablet + 12inch Tablet for home use .
Well, to be honests i'm pretty happy with my S3.
Only cons i can find is the really, really poor (for a 700 euros device) materials quality.
The UI is quite user friendly (in my opinion), well it suffer some lag here and there but (for me) it's really rare (and i'm on no root, stock device).
Plus we will get soon the 4.3 upgrade, and here we will see more improvements for our "baby"... most of all the REAL multicore support, that must "kill" once and for all the lags.
The camera is so good (i'm not a photographer or photo professional user), i find the pictures i snap of good quality and with sammy apps i can modify them however i like. I repeat, i'm not a pro but i love to take a huge number of picture when i'm around with my friends or girl, and my S3 is the best for that job (i don't have to carry around extra weight as other cameras).
There comes now another pro that most of other devices haven't: external SD card.
That's something that any device must have in 2013 becouse of the better cameras (that mean huge dimension for each snapped pic), "consolle like" games (someone is 1-2gb ....) etc. etc....
Now for the "comparison" with a newer phone, my girl have a S4 and i tell you i would never chenge my S3 for it or ever for a HTC one (that anyone is crazy for at the moment)... don't get me wrong, S4 and HTC One are really great devices, but i find useless to drain out your poket of all your moneys, for a slightly better upgrade... Plus with 4.3, S3 will get a lot of S4 features too.
I'll buy a new phone when an amazing Nexus/Galaxy S will be released, but it must be something that will make me really "WOW".
rootSU said:
Cons
Lack of Exynos sources - Devs have hard time with AOSP
Touchwiz UI is childish - Looks like something from "The Early Learning Centre"
Casing chips easily and cracks with no effort
Poor multi tasking in Touchwiz roms.
Quicky dated, aesthetically
SDS
Poor warranty handling in the above case
Dodgy EFS problems
Camera not great with AOSP roms. Toss up between performance and UI vs camera.
Pros
Nice thin "slate" feel in the hand
Not Pink in colour
Still reasonably quick with AOSP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is that really true?
I feel both AOSP and Samsung based roms equally smooth... (Slimed Samsung roms of course)
beeeto said:
Is that really true?
I feel both AOSP and Samsung based roms equally smooth... (Slimed Samsung roms of course)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touchwiz ROMs lag instead of managing memory correctly in my experience. Multi Tasking is much smoother on AOSP
I find the phone OK I really like the amoled screen but I think it time to upgrade to 1080p
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
with the newest omni 4.4 nightly, i'm quite OK with the hardware.
however, i do not like samsung's "we are the centre of the world" behaviour, so most probably it will be my last samsung phone. on the other hand, other producers seem to act similarly (think of the sony z1 camera/unlocked desaster, which i do not expect to get fixed in reasonable time)...
Hi!
I have been a heavy user of custom ROMs for more than three years now on all my Android devices. Lately, although I have a phone that not so long ago was still Samsung's flagship (the galaxy S4, I9505), the pictures I get with it really suck. A couple weeks ago, the phone could not detect my SIM card (pure hardware issue), so I re-installed the stock firmware and took it to the repair shop to get the warranty repair. They fixed it and I got my phone back. Just to make sure it was working fine, I decided to use the stock ROM for a while, and oh surprise: the camera takes much better pics in low light conditions or indoor than the same camera with any custom ROM app (usually AOSP-based, AOKP or CM-based). I tried to download the Google camera, and the low light pictures really suck. Then I tried a bunch of camera apps from the Play store, but I invariably got similar results to what I got with my custom ROMs.
That got me thinking. I'm no dev nor programmer, so I won't get technical, but it seems to me that there can be two reasons for the samsung app to work better:
- Either it has access to (proprietary) hardware drivers that other camera apps cannot access, and therefore it can get everything out of the camera hardware
- Or Samsung (which is not known to be great for its software) has developed a great camera software.
I would think it's something along the lines of the first reason. So does that mean I am either stuck with a ROM I cannot stand (Touchwiz is awful, has always been, and may always be) and a decent camera, or a decent ROM but a camera that is kind of useless when I'm indoor?
If so, how are the cameras on other similar phones (I'm thinking Nexus 5, Sony Xperia, etc.), running on custom ROMs compared to the stock camera apps? Is there also a noticeable difference, or is it just with Samsung?
I understood that you cannot run the Samsung camera apk on a custom ROM (even one on a Samsung phone), because the camera relies on some kind of Samsung proprietary framework.
Does this mean I should be looking for a phone that is running not only on open source software, but also open source hardware, does that even exist?
Anyone has noticed something similar? Am I the only one to be bothered by this?
I'll post here a couple pics taken in the same ambient light conditions. One with the Samsung camera (Auto setting), one with Google camera, and one with another camera app from the market (don't remember which one, but I tested about 15 of them and their results were quite similar).
Anyway, even if you don' have a solution to the problem but can point me to information that could help me understand how to choose my next phone, I would really appreciate. Thanks!
Cheers,
Fa
fabecoool said:
Hi!
I have been a heavy user of custom ROMs for more than three years now on all my Android devices. Lately, although I have a phone that not so long ago was still Samsung's flagship (the galaxy S4, I9505), the pictures I get with it really suck. A couple weeks ago, the phone could not detect my SIM card (pure hardware issue), so I re-installed the stock firmware and took it to the repair shop to get the warranty repair. They fixed it and I got my phone back. Just to make sure it was working fine, I decided to use the stock ROM for a while, and oh surprise: the camera takes much better pics in low light conditions or indoor than the same camera with any custom ROM app (usually AOSP-based, AOKP or CM-based). I tried to download the Google camera, and the low light pictures really suck. Then I tried a bunch of camera apps from the Play store, but I invariably got similar results to what I got with my custom ROMs.
That got me thinking. I'm no dev nor programmer, so I won't get technical, but it seems to me that there can be two reasons for the samsung app to work better:
- Either it has access to (proprietary) hardware drivers that other camera apps cannot access, and therefore it can get everything out of the camera hardware
- Or Samsung (which is not known to be great for its software) has developed a great camera software.
I would think it's something along the lines of the first reason. So does that mean I am either stuck with a ROM I cannot stand (Touchwiz is awful, has always been, and may always be) and a decent camera, or a decent ROM but a camera that is kind of useless when I'm indoor?
If so, how are the cameras on other similar phones (I'm thinking Nexus 5, Sony Xperia, etc.), running on custom ROMs compared to the stock camera apps? Is there also a noticeable difference, or is it just with Samsung?
I understood that you cannot run the Samsung camera apk on a custom ROM (even one on a Samsung phone), because the camera relies on some kind of Samsung proprietary framework.
Does this mean I should be looking for a phone that is running not only on open source software, but also open source hardware, does that even exist?
Anyone has noticed something similar? Am I the only one to be bothered by this?
I'll post here a couple pics taken in the same ambient light conditions. One with the Samsung camera (Auto setting), one with Google camera, and one with another camera app from the market (don't remember which one, but I tested about 15 of them and their results were quite similar).
Anyway, even if you don' have a solution to the problem but can point me to information that could help me understand how to choose my next phone, I would really appreciate. Thanks!
Cheers,
Fa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So here come the pics. Of course XDA compresses them, but you'll get the idea.
Fa
That is the example difference between things that are built for the device over using open-source options. Software will always be better from the OEM. You see the same thing with HTC and Sony devices. Take the m7 and m8. They have great cameras as long as you use HTC Sense. Other wise all you get is a basic 4 mpx camera that sucks. If you want one that works the same no matter the rom then get a nexus. This is something OEM are doing to make people want to use their software
Thanks @zelendel,
A Nexus could be an option, but the screen size of the Nexus 5 was already too large for me (and so is my current phone, the Galaxy S4), so there's no way I'm getting a Nexus 6 (plus it's prohibitively expensive, at least here in Europe). When will Google make a Nexus mini or compact? That would rock, especially if they go the Sony way (not compromising too much on hardware features). The only downside of Nexus phone is their lack of MicroSD card slot, but that's off topic.
Anyway, what about the Google Edition phones? As I understand, they have the same hardware as their OEM counterpart (don't they?), but instead of running on proprietary stock ROMs, they ship with a pure Vanilla Android. Does this mean they ship with a camera that sucks, or is there some kind of tweak included to get the most of the camera with those editions, too? If so, would flashing that ROM help (if I can get my hands on it)? Unfortunately it seems the whole Google Edition concept has not gained a lot of traction (maybe because of the unavailability of the handsets in many places, maybe thanks to the OEM who did not play fair game and rather managed to get their crappy proprietary stock versions in the hands of customers), so I'm trying not to get too excited about this either.
I guess I will have to go to my local phone shop, spend time there with different devices and see if some of them have less heavily customized skins than TouchWiz. That means I'll no longer go for a Samsung, which have been my only devices so far. The end of an era...
fabecoool said:
Thanks @zelendel,
A Nexus could be an option, but the screen size of the Nexus 5 was already too large for me (and so is my current phone, the Galaxy S4), so there's no way I'm getting a Nexus 6 (plus it's prohibitively expensive, at least here in Europe). When will Google make a Nexus mini or compact? That would rock, especially if they go the Sony way (not compromising too much on hardware features). The only downside of Nexus phone is their lack of MicroSD card slot, but that's off topic.
Anyway, what about the Google Edition phones? As I understand, they have the same hardware as their OEM counterpart (don't they?), but instead of running on proprietary stock ROMs, they ship with a pure Vanilla Android. Does this mean they ship with a camera that sucks, or is there some kind of tweak included to get the most of the camera with those editions, too? If so, would flashing that ROM help (if I can get my hands on it)? Unfortunately it seems the whole Google Edition concept has not gained a lot of traction (maybe because of the unavailability of the handsets in many places, maybe thanks to the OEM who did not play fair game and rather managed to get their crappy proprietary stock versions in the hands of customers), so I'm trying not to get too excited about this either.
I guess I will have to go to my local phone shop, spend time there with different devices and see if some of them have less heavily customized skins than TouchWiz. That means I'll no longer go for a Samsung, which have been my only devices so far. The end of an era...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The GPE device dont come with stock android completely. I have a GPE HTC M7 and the gpe software has some of the closed sourced drivers and such for things like Beats audio and the camera. As I run pure AOSP I wind up with a 4mpx camera that really sucks. While i agree alot of the newer devices have huge screens that make it almost pointless for me. The m7 is not bad at about 5in. But then again it doesnt have an SD card slot but comes with 32gb of storage which I think is plenty for my use. Part of me misses my old samsung devices but I made the mistake once of getting the one with the Samsungs chip and not the snapdragon which killed development.
zelendel said:
The GPE device dont come with stock android completely. I have a GPE HTC M7 and the gpe software has some of the closed sourced drivers and such for things like Beats audio and the camera. As I run pure AOSP I wind up with a 4mpx camera that really sucks. While i agree alot of the newer devices have huge screens that make it almost pointless for me. The m7 is not bad at about 5in. But then again it doesnt have an SD card slot but comes with 32gb of storage which I think is plenty for my use. Part of me misses my old samsung devices but I made the mistake once of getting the one with the Samsungs chip and not the snapdragon which killed development.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright! Well, if I could find the GPE edition for my phone (I9505), then I would get all the camera features and none of the TouchWiz crap, which would already be quite an improvement over what I have now (complete TW stock). I guess another possibility would be to flash a stock based ROM that is rooted and from which I could remove all the bloatware...
OK, the hunt is on for a new ROM!
Cheers!
Fa
fabecoool said:
Alright! Well, if I could find the GPE edition for my phone (I9505), then I would get all the camera features and none of the TouchWiz crap, which would already be quite an improvement over what I have now (complete TW stock). I guess another possibility would be to flash a stock based ROM that is rooted and from which I could remove all the bloatware...
OK, the hunt is on for a new ROM!
Cheers!
Fa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want all the features of the camera then yes I would run a stock de bloated rom. I used to run Samsung devices and you can remove most things which will give you the camera app which has all the best features.
Out of all of the devices out there that support LineageOS, the Z5 Compact looks the most appealing to me, because of the good audio quality, nice design/build, and reasonable size.
But is it foolish to purchase a Z5C with the intention of using it to run a custom ROMs?
Are people here using custom ROMs purely as a stopgap until they can get a newer phone that supports Oreo? I don't need or want the latest, greatest hardware, but ever since buying my first smartphone (a Nexus) I've become accustomed to using the latest software. Is the Z5 Compact a dead end in that regard? Or is it likely that I'll be using Android P and Q on this device in the next couple of years?
"But Strobelite, if you're worried about being able to use the latest version of Android, why don't you just get something by Motorola? Those have a healthy, active developer community. Or, you could just be a normal person, and buy a new phone."
If it runs GApps, I won't use it
Audio quality is important to me
The Motorola phones are ugly, in my opinion
Hi, since a few weeks I'm running on LineageOS 14.1 with my z5 Compact and I don't miss the stock rom at all. I didn't test all features yet (e.g. MHL), but I'm very satisfied until now. It's stable (didn't encounter any random reboot), fast and battery life is ok for me (I use Amplify and Greenify with xposed).
I only can recommend this and if you want to run without GApps, this is the way to go. I'm using Yalp store and it's even faster updating my apps than the original Play store.
Phone has FM Radio, SD card slot, fast and accurate GPS and enough power (LOS doesn't seem to run as hot as the stock rom (you can choose between performance profiles), so it's another plus for me).
Just try it and see if it works for you.
The only thing that annoyed me is the camera, the quality is just bad and sometimes it doesn't focus (or too late)
If you dont miss the camera then yes.
Strobelite said:
But is it foolish to purchase a Z5C with the intention of using it to run a custom ROMs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can understand your problem but of course it is imo.
Z5 line has never been widely supported by developers and the Compact is the one with less roms now. You can imagine what kind of future it would have.
Luckily in the past we had great guys who made stock rom root/mods/DRM restoration but the AOSP scene is completely different. As always you lose some features with non-stock roms, usually Camera quality (because you lose closed source vendor optimizations/software) and minor ones.
There will be probably 1 or 2 roms for future android versions (thanks to projects like SLim rom, PAC, Resurrection,...) but there are already few mantainers, especially for the Z5c, and some aosp roms are also unofficially maintained by one person...
Sony lost people (and developers) appeal after the Z3 line and this gets reflected in custom rom support for the newer Xperia lines. If you really want the latest OS on your phone for the next 4 years you should go for something else imo.
Z5c is still great device, refined materials and with good battery but don't expect a forum support like Samsungs, Huaweis,... Unfortunately the old days where flagship phones were < 4,5" are gone.
Maybe you already know it but GSMarena has a great phone-finder search engine which can help you refine your search for compact products.
Okay, I might be pre-biased, but I have heard about Sony firmware being exceptionally buggy even after many updates. (By all means, this is not Sony-exclusive problem.)
Can people still using the stock firmware confirm whether it is acceptable for daily use? How often do you reboot the phone?
I was actually planning on buying the phone with the suspicion that I will have to install LineageOS right away. Is there any experince of running LineageOS on it? Do all the nice features, like 4k screen, work?
lockywolf said:
Okay, I might be pre-biased, but I have heard about Sony firmware being exceptionally buggy even after many updates. (By all means, this is not Sony-exclusive problem.)
Can people still using the stock firmware confirm whether it is acceptable for daily use? How often do you reboot the phone?
I was actually planning on buying the phone with the suspicion that I will have to install LineageOS right away. Is there any experince of running LineageOS on it? Do all the nice features, like 4k screen, work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey there, I hope you're doing okay
Answering your question, yes, upgrading from a stock rom to a custom rom will make your experience a lot better. not only in performance, in battery , and customization
and even better if you root + stock rom, that's it. your phone value will increase because not only can you experience the latest Android 13 but you can also do multitasking work very smoothly
Also, battery consumption will be reduced twice, and you can customize it starting from the icons, status bar, and lockscreen. Not only that, you can also install root modules
i mean, you can also use xiaomi camera app on your sony phone camera
think about it with sony camera and xiaomi camera software
If you can do everything, i will consider not buying a new phone rather than saving that money and investing it to make more money and buy an iPhone, but still, Android is better
I hope you liked my reply
Please like it and follow me. I will be very apreciative. Thank you so much
lockywolf said:
Okay, I might be pre-biased, but I have heard about Sony firmware being exceptionally buggy even after many updates. (By all means, this is not Sony-exclusive problem.)
Can people still using the stock firmware confirm whether it is acceptable for daily use? How often do you reboot the phone?
I was actually planning on buying the phone with the suspicion that I will have to install LineageOS right away. Is there any experince of running LineageOS on it? Do all the nice features, like 4k screen, work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bro and also, there are more roms than lineagos, so think about it
follow this forum
Sony Xperia 1
The Sony Xperia 1 is a 6.5" phone with a 1644x3840p display. The Snapdragon 855 chipset is paired with 6GB of RAM and 64/128GB of storage. The main camera is 12+12+12MP and the selfie camera is 8MP. The battery has a 3330mAh capacity.
forum.xda-developers.com
It makes no sense to install a custom ROM on a phone like the Xperia 1 close to launch. All the unique features of the phone (mainly the cameras) are locked behind the Sony custom API that is used by the stock apps running on the Sony app framework.
So at the very least you will need a Magisk module that ports over the latest version of the app framework to any generic ROM, and then install the stock (camera) apps.
Personally, I find the stock ROM close enough to AOSP that I haven't felt a need to install any custom ROM for the past 5 years now. When you install a custom ROM you are simply trading Sony bugs for things like missing implementations, partial hardware support etc.
There is nothing buggy. It's close to the os pixels launch with, their custom version of AOSP.
Just has a few more apps for camera stuff.
As an owner of the major flagship devices, this is the best all around experience and the best camera.
I recently had a Xiaomi 13 pro and thought it'd camera was best, nah this beats it and the os is leagues better. I have a pixel 7 pro also and I honestly won't ever use it again in comparison and I have the best roms I could build for it.
And as the others have said lineage is not an immediate thing anyone should just flash, and it's one of a gazillion roms and definitely not the first ROM I would flash...