Which ROM for Xperia Tablet Z in the year 2019?! - Xperia Tablet Z Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi guys,
I want to flash a new ROM on my Xperia Tablet Z (running the last offical stock ROM) which became very slooooow during the last months. Since I have not read or done anything about custom ROMs for quite a long time, I have no idea about current developments. So I hope you can help me finding the best ROM for my needs!
Thanks a lot in advance!
What is important:
- lean (the smaller, the better - I do not need any sophisticated features or add-ons, no Sony bloatware or whatever)
- fast
- stable
- no bugs or non-working functionality (like e.g. no bluetooth function, sound problems etc.)
- dual audio via bluetooth (if possible)
What is not important:
- having the latest version available (just for having it)
- fancy design
- additional software

P-A-L-A-D-I-N said:
Hi guys,
I want to flash a new ROM on my Xperia Tablet Z (running the last offical stock ROM) which became very slooooow during the last months. Since I have not read or done anything about custom ROMs for quite a long time, I have no idea about current developments. So I hope you can help me finding the best ROM for my needs!
Thanks a lot in advance!
What is important:
- lean (the smaller, the better - I do not need any sophisticated features or add-ons, no Sony bloatware or whatever)
- fast
- stable
- no bugs or non-working functionality (like e.g. no bluetooth function, sound problems etc.)
- dual audio via bluetooth (if possible)
What is not important:
- having the latest version available (just for having it)
- fancy design
- additional software
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since 3 weeks I'm running the official LineageOS 15.1 (Oreo) on my tablet (WiFi only, aka SGP311 aka pollux_windy). There's also a flavour for the LTE model (pollux). Extremely reliable, fast and lean. Nightly updates; not necessary to update every night, though, but at least once a month for latest security patches is fine. Make sure you pick the right version.
Only drawback I'm aware of is that GPS functionality currently is broken. But that appears to be true for every Oreo or Nougat based custom ROM I tried so far. If you really need GPS then you'll have to go back to a a version that's old enough (apparently before April or May 2018). This one here had working GPS when I tested it 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately it didn't have any updates since several months now.
Can't say anything about bluetooth audio, though. But I think I would have read about it if there was a problem.
Good luck.

lm089 said:
Since 3 weeks I'm running the official LineageOS 15.1 (Oreo) on my tablet (WiFi only, aka SGP311 aka pollux_windy). There's also a flavour for the LTE model (pollux). Extremely reliable, fast and lean. Nightly updates; not necessary to update every night, though, but at least once a month for latest security patches is fine. Make sure you pick the right version.
Only drawback I'm aware of is that GPS functionality currently is broken. But that appears to be true for every Oreo or Nougat based custom ROM I tried so far. If you really need GPS then you'll have to go back to a a version that's old enough (apparently before April or May 2018). This one here had working GPS when I tested it 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately it didn't have any updates since several months now.
Can't say anything about bluetooth audio, though. But I think I would have read about it if there was a problem.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, the older one is a bit too old, I guess. Android 6 won't support dual bluetooth audio and is not really up to date any more. I think I should not go less than Android 7.
Hopefully, they will solve the GPS issue on Oreo. And hopefully, they will do so without the need of flashing a new firmware but just a simple update!
Thanks for telling me about your favorite ROMs, Im089! If there are no other ideas, I think I will give LineageOS 15.1 a try although GPS is needed time by time.

Related

Why has it been 2 months and GPS is still broken in CM 11 nightlies?

For Pollux Windy SGP311, It has been reported in a variety of threads that the CM11 nightly builds have broken GPs since end of May. I have been a fan of Cynaogen mod, I have moved to Omnirom which has a working GPS.
Ye i used to be fan too, used to be. Not anymore.
CM support also suck bad, i have no regrets changing to Omni :good:.
I have to say, my experience of custom ROM support for this device (311) has put me off using them in future.
Depending on which custom ROM you choose, there are problems with GPS or sound stutter or HDMI or all & more
I've gone back to rooted stock Sony - it's so nice that everything just works
Condidering that they broke handsfree bluetooth connection with most big car manufacturers in 2013 on a mainstream device like the nexus 4 and never fixed it i think it is save to say that they aren't keen on bugfixing once newer devices are out. I have moved on to other roms long since.

Would you upgrade to cm 11 or 12.1 on a daily driver?

Why/background if you are interested:
I have been using the LG G3 for about a year and my wife dropped hers in the water so I'm getting the note up and running, it got me thinking about updating from CM10.1.3 to 11 or 12. I didn't see anything great from 11 to 12.1 on my G3, couple lock screen options etc simple stuff, however I have to cycle the data toggle every so often to get data working, the loss of bluetooth was a deal breaker and required 12.1, but I digress.
The heart of the question:
on CM's website I see there is a snapshot (not going for nightly, but, also it's not stable) for both 11 and 12. In your opinion what do you think about cm11 or cm 12.1 on the note 2. The snapshot worked pretty well on the G3. Are they stable enough for you? worth it? Many benefits? Blown out of the water? Side notes - I won't use full screen casting (I have an android box), I will use pandora/etc music apps with the chromecast option to our stereo some mornings, I don't care how my lock screen looks or functions (I turned them off on my G3).
Thoughts about security and oudated apps:
[/U] Issues I foresee if I stay on cm10 - security - stagefright exploit, if apps are changed and I don't update my apps and errors occur or some stuff might get outdated and just stop working and require an update to use it, on that note I see my navionics app stopped working and won't load/initialize. My LG G3 kept loosing bluetooth in Pandora and Soundcloud after they were updated, I fixed it by moving to cm12.1. I turned off auto update to avoid this on the note 2 with apps
What baseband is needed?
I never did an OTA update when I got it. I rooted the note 2 the day I got it, but I can't remember what build it was on, I'm on baseband VRAMC3. Lastly I had to update the oem software on the LG to get a newer baseband for cm12.1. TWRP wouldn't even flash cm12 until I updated. Do I need to do anything similar for the note 2, or can I flash from 10 to 12? [/B
Cm13
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
I honestly got out of using the AOSP ROMs for my Note since I noticed some issues with camera quality not being as good as the stock. it wasn't horrible. but I would see some glitches with video and I could just see the image caliber was not as good as a touchwiz ROM.

Overall love

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:

Buying a Z5 Compact to use with LineageOS - good or bad idea?

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.

Should I root my phone? Help me pick (or not pick) a ROM

I’m very happy with my oldie Galaxy S6 (SM-G920T / zerofltetmo) - with two main problems:
- It got really slow in the last couple of years.
- Recently whenever I’m at a spot with no reception (and thanks to AT&T, there are plenty of those), the phone will not pick up signal again once I’m back in coverage. Airplane on/off doesn’t help, I have to reboot it.
I’d love to gain another year or two of use from it. I spent a few hours researching my options, looks like they are:
1. Resurrection Remix 6.2.0 (Oreo 8.1.0) Official, stable, and explicitly supports the G920T… although discontinued last year so no more security patches?
2. NexusOS 9.0 (Pie 9.0) Another rare build that supports the 920T, but in beta.
3. Resurrection Remix v7.0 (Pie 9.0) Not sure if it’s for my phone, I think this table is wrong?
4. I can just wipe it and keep using the stock 7.0 ROM... but it comes with all the bloatware and none of the security updates (Samsung gave up on S6 patches 1.5 years ago).
What I care about: Stability, speed, smooth performance, and security. I need things to work. call audio, SMS, Android Auto, Bluetooth, the Bank of America app, etc. What I don't care about: using the latest Android OS (I'm sure Oreo/Pie have features I'd appreciate, but I'd pick performance over new features), Samsung Pay or Android Pay. So is rooting even an option for me? Is it really that “there are no smooth, stable rooted ROMs for the S6”? :-\
And what do you think is more secure these days? A stock Android Nougat that Samsung gave up on issuing any patches 1.5 years ago… or a rooted but more current firmware?

Categories

Resources