Yes, yes, it's possible to love a phone. Heck, you sleep next to it, don't you? Rate this thread to indicate your love for the Lenovo Zuk Z2 Pro, all things considered. A higher rating indicates that the Lenovo Zuk Z2 Pro is an incredible phone that you enjoy tremendously. You love it.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
Overclocking it makes everything even more considerable keeping up with newer phones but still so beautiful
IP certification would be perfect
I'm gonna post this here; I sent this originally as a private message since someone was asking about buying a Z2 Pro, and I figured a "here's kinda how it is as of September 2017" roundup might be useful for others looking at buying one, or trying to decide between the Pro and Plus.
So I own a Z2 Pro, and after several months of trying various options for custom and factory ROMs for it, and then getting a regular Z2 Plus for my wife, and setting THAT up...
Frankly, if I were going to get one now, I'd get the Z2 Plus Z2132 instead. Bigger battery, MUCH better custom ROM community with more stable & official builds, official TWRP, better-supported camera... to me, the extra $150 for the Pro has only meant more headaches trying to get something stable to work as a daily driver with regular security updates - and the AMOLED screen, UFS vs eMMC internal storage speed, and supposedly better camera haven't really ended up being as much of a difference as I thought. Yeah there's more storage & RAM, but... for daily use, at least on Nougat, 4GB RAM / 64GB storage is still plenty.
ZUI (factory firmware) issues:
Long story short, the official ZUI is an annoying mess for me, even with root (I use Magisk so I can have root utilities like Titanium Backup but still keep playing Pokemon Go with my wife)... the dialer and settings and built-in calendar app and lots of things still have Chinese showing up around the edges even when the system is set to English. Trying to disable built-in apps and use Google Dialer & Contacts doesn't quite work right, you can't actually install something like OpenGapps but have to piecemeal it together with packages from apkmirror or similar, and Google contact sync stops every week or two without warning - since I need contact, calendar, and email sync to work for business purposes, that's a show-stopper for me.
Seems like the Plus gets updates to ZUI before the Pro does, by a couple weeks.
Custom ROM issues:
The Pro camera really only looks & performs great under ZUI. It's not Camera2 HAL compatible and, unless Lenovo decides to pursue that with their own sources, never will support fancy HDR+ modes or zero shutter lag with Google Camera apps. AEX recent builds are starting to get really close to stock ZUI quality, since they imported & shimmed the ZUI camera blobs somehow, but some others like Mokee might still accidentally mechanically jam your camera trying to enable OIS. Ouch.
The U-Health app on stock ZUI is the only thing that can talk to the heart rate/blood-oxygen sensor on the back of the phone under the flash. Nobody has got U-Health working under a custom ROM since it requires the ZUI framework and integration with Lenovo's user login ecosystem. But the step sensor is apparently generic and supported by Google Fit, so if you just want to see if you're hitting 10K steps per day, you're all set. All the other sensors (gyro, orientation, proximity, magnetic, GPS/GLONASS, pressure, gravity, etc.) seem to work fine in custom ROMs.
You'll hear a lot about the "blue LED of death" - that's a hard freeze, the screen goes blank and the notification LED goes blue (with a 50% duty cycle, which looks different than just being "on"). You can restart from there by holding the power button for 8-10 seconds, so don't panic. Unfortunately, it seems to be reeeeeally easy to hard freeze the phone by doing some things with Bluetooth, or entering/exiting deep sleep (like if I have a clock alarm and a calendar reminder or two that would all go off simultaneously, and it's plugged in to charge, trying to wake itself up and play all those notifications at the same time has actually made it freeze instead and I've slept through an alarm that never went off) or other stuff that involves switching CPU states too much... I don't know. It seems like, at the end of the day, the stock (ZUI) thermal-engine.conf might have something to do with it... it sets super-low limits for temperatures, and the CPU ends up throttling, and it'll try to crash out perhaps as a safety measure instead of getting too hot... or maybe the constant state-switching leads to instability. Anyway, it's not too hot. They're just being super-conservative. Not sure. You can pull a different thermal config that'll ease up a lot, get you better benchmarks, and still isn't actually putting the hardware at risk.
Custom ROMs:
LineageOS 14 - there isn't a current build. I mean, there IS, and theoretically work is still being done on it, by a couple different people (long story and some drama involved there...) but there's no daily driver with working sound and no progress reports being made in XDA forums.
Mokee 7 - continues to be a thing (based on LineageOS sources), but... I don't know, it's all nightlies in terms of stability (at least when I tried it). Everything mostly works, it's just crashy. Wouldn't recommend. However, the maintainer is a guy whose name you'll see a lot: SY/Siyang. He's basically THE guy on the Lenovo Chinese forums responsible for building Z2 Pro ports of various custom/aftermarket ROMs like Resurrection Remix, AICP, Flyme, MIUI, HydrogenOS, etc. Apparently being a kernel developer means you know how to play around. But that's all it really is; playing around - he doesn't actively maintain any of them, just kinda builds them & throws them out there, but isn't in it to do active bug fixes. He also includes 3-4 packages of Chinese bloatware that involve some kind of adware/affiliate marketing to try and make some money - I don't begrudge him that, and you can disable/freeze them, but it's still not "clean".
MIUI/Flyme/HydrogenOS - I think they're all Android 6 (MM) based, so I haven't looked into them. Built by Siyang.
AICP - Built by Siyang. This was actually pretty good, but it crashed out on me with an alarm set twice and I was late for work. Ditched.
Resurrection Remix - Built by Siyang. This was also pretty good, but the 5.8.4 builds have problems. 5.8.3 was best, but got blue LED a couple times and ditched it too, not interested in moving backward in security patches.
...which brings us to AEX (AOSP Extended) - this is the only working Nougat ROM being actively developed & maintained for the Z2 Pro as of this writing that's stable for daily driver use, but it's REALLY good. @davidevinavil has done a fantastic job and is very responsive on the XDA forums. Since he's just using the same thermal-engine.conf as ZUI it doesn't score as high as possible on benchmarks, but you can grab the one from void23's kernel and use that (void hasn't updated his kernel for AEX 4.6 yet and doesn't seem to plan to with the release of Oreo "real soon now", so I don't recommend actually using his kernel anymore).
Works well with Magisk (for root, root hiding, and making Google Play Store like your weird-ass Chinese OEM phone, etc.), supports OMS/substratum themes, has current security patches, generally non-crashy, and camera quality is pretty good (both the built-in camera app, and with Open Camera and CameraNextModV7). F2FS support for /data & /cache might work, but the dev doesn't use those (even though, in theory, it makes a notable difference since the Pro has UFS instead of eMMC 5.2 storage) so plan on using ext4 for everything. Haven't tried device encryption yet, but if I were going to, it would be on this one.
Custom Kernels:
Void kernel - Void23 did some nice work based on AEX 4.5, and some people successfully use it with other ROMs as well. It works best with most current AEX 4.5, but from the reading I've done I wouldn't use it with 4.6. However, you can grab his thermal-engine.conf file from his installer package, and put it into /system/etc/ of a clean AEX 4.6 install and that'll give you a little more headroom before CPU/GPU/chipset throttling occurs.
TWRP:
There's a few, but @davidevinavil has the only 3.1.1 release, and it works the best as far as I can tell. There's a 3.1.0 release on the zukfans.eu German language forum (reasons...) that mostly works well but sometimes can't install some ROMs, and a Chinese release of 3.1.0 by wzsx150 that seems to work best for installing all the Lenovo forum ports by Siyang plus has a few extra goodies (like rebooting directly to EDL/port 9008 mode for QPST/QFIL flashing). As much as I'd love to have my /data partition encrypted, I haven't bothered testing lately. I'm guessing best compatibility would be using AEX and @davidevinavil's TWRP, but haven't actually tested. Again, F2FS is hit or miss.
But you know what's even better about @davidevinavil and AEX for the Z2 Pro? It's essentially a port of his work on AEX for the Z2 Plus! And on the Z2 Plus, it's only one of many actively supported and maintained custom ROMs! And there's an unofficial EAS-enabled version of AEX on that phone, so that bigger battery will go even farther!
So yeah. I like being able to quickly run a nandroid backup & restore and all, and have more room for video files & music, but as far as actual daily driver quality of life... not sure if the extra $150+ is worth it for the Pro, especially when you have the same CPU/GPU and bigger battery on the Plus. The every-so-slightly nicer camera seems to actually be a problem that delays getting working custom ROMs, and the other differences don't translate into noticeable daily quality of life improvements for me - I mean it's not like the plus is SLOW by any stretch. But it's got more RAM & storage, and USB 3 transfer speed, so if you use it as a glorified thumb drive a lot, or tend to load up lots of movies/music, then maybe it's worth it. And the AMOLED screen is pretty.
Oh, and there's a LOT more protective cases for the Z2 (plus) than the Z2 Pro.
So there you go. If you have any other questions about daily life with a Z2 Pro, feel free to ask me!
---------- Post added at 02:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:09 PM ----------
It's fast, and it's working pretty well for me, but it took a LOT to get to where it's actually a reliable daily driver for work.
I have owned mine for 15 months and paid $400. If I broke it right now I would buy another one for the $260 it is selling at.
Got it 25 months so far, since October '17, bought 215€. In my eyes, it is like a the OnePlus 3 6/128 of its time, except the silly multilanguage chinese "stock" rom in which I have stucked yet (a modified MM version). I was about buying a new phone and change battery, root-rom-kernel etc at this one, and just change battery, root-rom-kernel etc this one. Decided to stay because even at 50€ more , it's impossible to find anything else equipped with just OIS, 6 GB ram, amoled, UFS, though I'd expected to be able to buy much more, such as >=8 ram, cooling, macro & wide, as we are two years after.
Sooo no. One more year will be good enough with it. That's the only (main) device I have kept for more than 10 months What more could I want? :angel: :highfive: :victory:
Related
I am on the lookout for best VFM phone(with 820 chipset, decent camera), currently. I am a power user, hence, flashing/rooting is good with me.
My budget is INR 20K. How would you rate LEMax2 ?
With CM13 ROM, are all issues hw/sw resolved ?
please let me know since I am buying for wifey. And she is not techie.
Thanks for your time.
I am using Cm13 (Mokee) + pixel Launcher, about 2 days and everything is working fine.
on cm13 camera is pretty bad, everything else worked for me (except IR, but i'm not using it)
Buying for wife and she isn't a techie? Then just stick with the latest stock Indian firmware and put Google Now, Pixel or ZenUI launcher on there. Everything works fine, it's fast, stable and has Google services properly preinstalled. The way eui has the notifications is clean and easy to use, and having the quick toggles in the multitasking shade is fine once you get used where they are. Battery life is good. She won't really gain anything from CM.
If you're going to review it, then I strongly advice to mention about the fingerprint issue, it is really hit or miss. Mine worked for 14 days and now is kinda dead, I even flashed 3-4 Roms, but still I can't get it to work.
EDIT: From what I read in LeEco forums, fingerprints issues seems due to faulty hardware, but I guess no one really knows if it is HW or SW related. I tried MoKee, CM 13 and EUI (Cuoco92), and none of them worked so far.
Camera is little above average, you can take pretty good shots with enough lighting, otherwise it's not that great in darkest places.
I really enjoy the screen, IPS panel and QuadHD resolution make everything sharper, with well balanced colors and more over has good visibility outdoors with sunlight.
I don't like AMOLED screens, they have way too saturated colors for my tastes, but that is up to your personal preferences.
I would recommend it, given a few flaws like no expandable memory, no jack audio, software support uncertain, fingerprint not that great.
But after all, where else you can find a device with 4GB RAM, Snap820 and QuadHD 5,7" screen for less than 200 €?
Hi, thanks for the feedback. Is fingerprint issue h/w or s/w issue ?
I thought it might be s/w bug, which would be resolved thru update to stock/ CM rom.
Also, how is the camera, screen. Do you recommend it as the best VFM phone ?
Thanks,
Thanks, I like to keep phones updated to latest android version. I saw some activity related to CM13/CM14. Is it a dead/slow end ?
I would like to buy the phone only if there is sufficient support for the device. And if there are not h/w issues. fingerprint works well ?
Thanks @Star_dust6, thanks for the update. I should be good to order it then
Honestly on the ROM it shipped with I did have some hit or miss issues with the fingerprint sensor. Since flashing the official indian ROM I've had zero issues. Only when my hands are dirty, but that is to be expected.
Hey guys! I've been using LG G3 VS985 on 4.4.4 for quite a long time and i didn't like stock rom at all. I am considering to flash custom rom but i don't know which one to choose as i am new to this custom rom stuff.Here's a list of what i want in a custom rom:-
1-It should be stable because i want to use it on my daily driver
2-Performance is my main concern.Stock rom was choppy in animations
3-Battery Life
4-Camera should be usable as i've heard you've to compromise camera for nice custom rom.OR just suggest an alternative camera app.
I wanted to flash CAF AOSP[6.0.1] but the reviews were not good as it had number of issues. Also i am OK with older version of androids.Don't want the Android N.
Why not just stay with stock but update to 6.0 ? I've kept mine stock for over 2 years (taking the OTAs as they come). AFAIK an update to 7 is not availabe yet, and given the age of the phone it may never be.
To address your points:
1. It's STABLE. I can't remember the last time I had to reboot.
2. Performance is fine to me. Granted I don't do any gaming (that's what tablets are for!), but I haven't run into any issues with streaming video, email, photos, or reading.
3. Battery life is so-so, and always has been. I haven't really measured it because I have a wireless charging back. When I come home or to the office, I just place the phone on the Qi pad. A collateral benefit is that I always remember where the phone is!
4. Get Open Camera from the Play store. It lets you set things like ISO, color balance, focus type, scene mode, etc. Works fine with the G3 on 6.0
The only real problem I've had is that the battery died after about 18 months (same thing happened to my wife's G3). That may well be a result of heat generated by the wireless charging, but since the battery on the G3 is replaceable, the fix was a $20 battery from LG.
I don't particularly like the stock interface, but Nova Launcher took care of that.
tjupille said:
Why not just stay with stock but update to 6.0 ? I've kept mine stock for over 2 years (taking the OTAs as they come). AFAIK an update to 7 is not availabe yet, and given the age of the phone it may never be.
To address your points:
1. It's STABLE. I can't remember the last time I had to reboot.
2. Performance is fine to me. Granted I don't do any gaming (that's what tablets are for!), but I haven't run into any issues with streaming video, email, photos, or reading.
3. Battery life is so-so, and always has been. I haven't really measured it because I have a wireless charging back. When I come home or to the office, I just place the phone on the Qi pad. A collateral benefit is that I always remember where the phone is!
4. Get Open Camera from the Play store. It lets you set things like ISO, color balance, focus type, scene mode, etc. Works fine with the G3 on 6.0
The only real problem I've had is that the battery died after about 18 months (same thing happened to my wife's G3). That may well be a result of heat generated by the wireless charging, but since the battery on the G3 is replaceable, the fix was a $20 battery from LG.
I don't particularly like the stock interface, but Nova Launcher took care of that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As for why I'm looking. Magisk framework and MagiskSU can't modify the stock ROM boot.img and verify even when bumped. For why that matters, no netflix now or very soon if rooted. Custom ROM can use a script to bump the boot.img after flashing seSuperUser and avoid the SafetyNet DRM checks.
For why that matters, no netflix now or very soon if rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, but the OP didn't say he needed to be rooted. In fact, since the G3 is my "daily driver', I prefer to keep it stock unrooted (with Nova /launcher to take the rough edges off the LG UI.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against rooting per se; I have three tablets (Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Samsung S2 8.0) that are all rooted. Unlike the G3, however, they are not "mission critical" for me. When I break something (and believe mei, I have! ) I can afford to take the time to figure out a fix.
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.
So, being the phone nerd that I am, I have no idea how I never knew about this phone till now. So! Id like to ask all of you, who have the phone, is it still worth it? Are you happy with your purchase? Did you switch to the ROG Phone 3 or the Note 20 Ultra? Hows the OS? I like to customize my phone alot so, remove any and all bloatware, root the phone and perhaps install a custom rom, etc. Is any of that possible on this phone? Ill be honest! I really just want this phone for its 7.1 inch screen. I previously had the Huawei Mate 20 X so, this looks like a very welcome upgrade. So what are your thoughts on this phone, please share?
I have BS3Pro china device. flash to global rom and this is my opinions.
What I like about this phone :
- Huge display for read cartoon/ watch some video
- beautiful 90hz screen that make my cartoon reading feel great when scroll down to next page
- Great gaming experience here
- Battery is great (if not do a "lot" of gaming) (pubg 90fps can do around 4hr before phone died)
- Fast battery charging from 0% to 100% with around 1hr
What I'm not impressive about this phone:
- Camera focusing(not autofocus) is not done they work. miss focus 80% of time
- Speaker is not loud enough. if you need to race a sound with noisy place, You will hear little sound of your phone.
- Speaker quality is decent. Not great but not worse either
- fingerprint scanner will not work if your screen have a little dirty or oily
The worst part of this phone:
- Software update(Global rom) is very slow. This phone still have miui11 and the last update is probably 2 month ago(if i'm not wrong)
- Lack of community.
- No hope for custom rom.
Summary. this is a good phone that used by few people(I assum). That's make the manufacturer lower the priority in term of software update. and blackshark company didn't have space for custom rom for their phone.
You can still unlock bootloader and install custom recovery for rooting your phone. But no custom rom were made for this phone here.
If you don't mind about custom rom, frequent software update, lack of community to discuss. this is a good phone if your prefer big one.
Phone would be worth it $400 now. ZERO updates coming, xiaomi has abandoned the BS3pro, especially the global model
I love it. If you're rooted you can customise it using swift installer, and a few other apps that work like the audio headquarters, viper, and superstatus bar, CustoMiuizer, etc. I use the Samsung notifications shade etc.
Though I wish there were ways to update the phone since I can't get update to install since I'm rooted.
Other than that. I love it. Just wish it had 120hz
tried any GSIs?
like Mitku01 said, the phone is great. You don't find a better phone with a big screen.
Global support is bad. My Black Shark 3 Pro is still on security patch 2020-06-05.
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...