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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:
Been an owner of SGP 621 for almost 4 years now. Device still runs good though battery has been noticeably not as good already. I just want your thoughts about your preference if whether you use stock or custom rom as daily driver. Your thoughts about the battery life and smoothness of either and the pros and cons you found out. Are you planning to change tablets soon?
I had it for some years now, still like it. Looked around to see what options are out there, but the Android market for tablet are not very big unfortunately. I'm not very fond of huge TV sized phones (always used compact versions), so a tablet is nice to have to. I bought a Lenovo Tab4 for my mom, and actually like it when I was configuring it. Maybe it will be the next one when my Xperia Tab's life runs out.
Don't think I have noticed any huge drop on battery life, recharge it a couple of times a week at most. Think I get a fair amount of hours from it, bit hard to tell depending how I use it. But for most times I get about 2-4 days. I have used a couple of custom roms on it, but had some trouble with the WiFi connection just dropped on those, so I'm on the latest firmware (rooted and debloated 6.0 which feels a bit old, but works). Maybe I'll try another round with some roms in a while.
Do you feel laggy using it as stock right now? Are you attracted to upgrade to ipad mini?
Always modded stock! I've just tried AICP Oreo on my Z3TC and hated it so just about to reflash 291. Custom ROMs generally have issues which tend to frustrate.
I am running AICP, 9.0 Pie. Really great and smooth ROM, even better with a custom launcher. Would never go back to stock again. It's amazing how well our old Z3 Tablets run Pie.
Hi all
I used AOKP on Samsung and LG some years ago, and it was incredible. I've tried many other ROMs (like 2 a month for a year), it was not the same. crDroid came close, but is still lacking. I want to buy a new phone that is known to have very stable AOKP support. I'm talking about someone who's used the device for 6-12 months at least with no known issues (or minor issues that legit don't bother them), and uses almost every aspect of the ROM's features (I've seen phones that don't support the ribbon, for example, which is a deal breaker).
My budget is anywhere from $300-$1000, I don't really care, so long as the device has at least 2GB RAM and an OK processor.
I don't care too much about the GPU because modern games block rooted devices anyway.
Phone size etc doesn't matter, though I'd prefer bigger rather than smaller.
At least 1920x1080 res, but larger is fine.
I'd prefer very good battery life. I don't want a second hand phone as people tend to ruin batteries, and replacements tend to have terrible shelf lives.
Getdroidtips dot com has some phones listed (I can't post the exact link to the list because too low rep ). The Google Pixel XL looks like a very good choice, but it seems you can't buy them new anymore.
Any suggestions from existing AOKP users? All advice will be much appreciated.
@aggregate1166877
I'm not an AOKP user.
The latest AOKP Custom ROM is based on Android 8.1. A Custom ROM such as TWRP is required to flash it, what presupposes that device's bootloader can get unlocked.
So your options are restricted to Android devices a TWRP exists for and its bootloader can get unlocked.
Hello everyone i am about to get tab s7+ and i love the table just one question we have root and twrp why there is no custom rom and if i am rooted how to update the software also what do i lose with root what magisk don't fix? Thanks in advance
Hi. I think the lack of custom ROMs is because the device is fairly new - hence - not that popular, additionaly being an Android tablet. I ditched my Iconia A500 years ago and never thought I would go for a tablet again until this gem came out. I would recommend you to try it first for some time and play with it because there are tons of features (literally) in this device that would doubtedly work on any custom ROM in the beginning. At least that's my personal opinion - stick with stock for some time. Samsung have done a really great job! ....And what's more - Android 11 with One UI 3.1 is rolling out these days. It will allow you as far as I've heard to use Google discover on your foremost left screen instead of Samsung daily.
drkalo said:
Hi. I think the lack of custom ROMs is because the device is fairly new - hence - not that popular, additionaly being an Android tablet. I ditched my Iconia A500 years ago and never thought I would go for a tablet again until this gem came out. I would recommend you to try it first for some time and play with it because there are tons of features (literally) in this device that would doubtedly work on any custom ROM in the beginning. At least that's my personal opinion - stick with stock for some time. Samsung have done a really great job! ....And what's more - Android 11 with One UI 3.1 is rolling out these days. It will allow you as far as I've heard to use Google discover on your foremost left screen instead of Samsung daily.
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great advice you changed my mind and I am running a dual booted oneplus 6t and I won't do stock. But like you said tons of stuff on this gorgeous tablet. especially dex l have never used it that is awesome okay have a great day C-ya.
imzaki1994 said:
Hello everyone i am about to get tab s7+ and i love the table just one question we have root and twrp why there is no custom rom and if i am rooted how to update the software also what do i lose with root what magisk don't fix? Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A general thing to lose with root for all Samsung devices would be those Knox-related stuffs, namely Secure Folders.
I've been trying to boot a GSI on the tablet but up to now all attempts have failed. The tablet refused to boot, despite there were no problems with the flashing.
I personally don't really care about those Samsung features as I've very little use of them at the moment. I bought the tablet mainly for its size and its 120Hz display, but after using it for a while, it seems the tablet's stock firmware is indeed not good enough (especially with the Android 11 update) and unless there be plenty of hope for custom ROM/GSI, you'd better off getting a recent version of iPad Pro 12.9 inch for nearly the same price, if rooting is not important.
LSS4181 said:
A general thing to lose with root for all Samsung devices would be those Knox-related stuffs, namely Secure Folders.
I've been trying to boot a GSI on the tablet but up to now all attempts have failed. The tablet refused to boot, despite there were no problems with the flashing.
I personally don't really care about those Samsung features as I've very little use of them at the moment. I bought the tablet mainly for its size and its 120Hz display, but after using it for a while, it seems the tablet's stock firmware is indeed not good enough (especially with the Android 11 update) and unless there be plenty of hope for custom ROM/GSI, you'd better off getting a recent version of iPad Pro 12.9 inch for nearly the same price, if rooting is not important.
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Click to collapse
Sorry but could you possibly share what's not good about the firmware? I've never used such a feature rich device before and everything runs smooth as butter, I'm using it as screen extender for Win10 laptop, Chromecasting, Samsung Secure folder with encryption, deeply integrated with all Samsung apps, I connected my 2TB NTFS external HDD with Paragon's NTFS plugin that allows NTFS write operations, home Internet runs at impressive speeds (50 and more MB per sec download), I draw a lot and the only thing that I've changed is the launcher. Of course if custom ROMs support all of these features it would be perfect!!!
drkalo said:
Sorry but could you possibly share what's not good about the firmware? I've never used such a feature rich device before and everything runs smooth as butter, I'm using it as screen extender for Win10 laptop, Chromecasting, Samsung Secure folder with encryption, deeply integrated with all Samsung apps, I connected my 2TB NTFS external HDD with Paragon's NTFS plugin that allows NTFS write operations, home Internet runs at impressive speeds (50 and more MB per sec download), I draw a lot and the only thing that I've changed is the launcher. Of course if custom ROMs support all of these features it would be perfect!!!
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You're right about the other features. For office/productivity works this tablet is an excellent choice.
On the other hand, this tablet's performance is very disappointing when it comes to gaming. I'm currently dealing with some touch-related issues when playing games (none of which would be a fatal issue for office/productivity), and comparing to my old tablets, I was expecting much more performance according to its specifications.
I think the tablet was never meant for gaming at all to begin with, however the specifications.
I'm working on a lineageos 18.1 bringup but this is the first time I'm dooing this, so I don't expect it to work very well. I'm fairly new to android development but recently I got official maintainer for resurrection remix for the oneplus 6 and 6T.
Here is my current progress, I will make the vendor repository next:
GitHub - Bush-cat/android_device_samsung_gts7xlwifi: Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 + (gts7xlwifi) Device repo
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 + (gts7xlwifi) Device repo. Contribute to Bush-cat/android_device_samsung_gts7xlwifi development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
GitHub - Bush-cat/android_device_samsung_gts7xl-common
Contribute to Bush-cat/android_device_samsung_gts7xl-common development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Hello
I just changed the battery of this fabulous smartphone which I've been using for several years.
It recently started to give problems and I was charging it several times a day so I decided to change my phone for a newer one and after that I bought the battery to change it to the Xiaomi and to give it a second life using it as replacement phone.
I've been using the whole time the provided official global ROM, but now that it was left behind without updates, I was wondering what is the most advisable custom ROM in terms of stability, battery consumption and newest android version. I know this might be a very wide question. However I have no experience in the world of custom ROMs, although I guess I can manage to install one to the give the phone a newer oportunity.
Any advice? Thank you in advance.
xdaforo said:
Hello
I just changed the battery of this fabulous smartphone which I've been using for several years.
It recently started to give problems and I was charging it several times a day so I decided to change my phone for a newer one and after that I bought the battery to change it to the Xiaomi and to give it a second life using it as replacement phone.
I've been using the whole time the provided official global ROM, but now that it was left behind without updates, I was wondering what is the most advisable custom ROM in terms of stability, battery consumption and newest android version. I know this might be a very wide question. However I have no experience in the world of custom ROMs, although I guess I can manage to install one to the give the phone a newer oportunity.
Any advice? Thank you in advance.
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Click to collapse
I can tell Im around custom ROMs for a very long time. My all time favourite is crDroid because it's in the market since ages and has very solid name. Very solid performance as well. Lot of customizations but smooth at the same time. If you don't care about customizations, other good option is LineageOS (mother of all custom ROMs actually, and crDroid is based on it too).
What Id like to stress out - you have even Android 12 available, but it lags like hell on mido aka Redmi Note 4. Better option for this old device is Android 11, and best one in my opinion - Android 10. True, you won't get updates anymore, but you have fully operational, smooth as silk performance. I've been switching between versions so Im speaking from experience.
Feel free to ask for any other details.
Lord Sithek said:
I can tell Im around custom ROMs for a very long time. My all time favourite is crDroid because it's in the market since ages and has very solid name. Very solid performance as well. Lot of customizations but smooth at the same time. If you don't care about customizations, other good option is LineageOS (mother of all custom ROMs actually, and crDroid is based on it too).
What Id like to stress out - you have even Android 12 available, but it lags like hell on mido aka Redmi Note 4. Better option for this old device is Android 11, and best one in my opinion - Android 10. True, you won't get updates anymore, but you have fully operational, smooth as silk performance. I've been switching between versions so Im speaking from experience.
Feel free to ask for any other details.
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If I want to try android 12L which one do you recommend the smoothest experience for better daily use (no gaming), I mean for social media, browsing, watching youtube, etc. Hope for battery life too.
For a long time, I've used Havoc OS (v4.16 Android 11 now) + Fussion Kernel.
Thanks
aditya.jazzmaster said:
If I want to try android 12L which one do you recommend the smoothest experience for better daily use (no gaming), I mean for social media, browsing, watching youtube, etc. Hope for battery life too.
For a long time, I've used Havoc OS (v4.16 Android 11 now) + Fussion Kernel.
Thanks
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Click to collapse
Probably LineageOs since it's most lightweight. But I've tried it some time ago too and it was lagging as well. Maybe something changed since then, but honestly I think that mido just can't handle A12 well
Lord Sithek said:
I can tell Im around custom ROMs for a very long time. My all time favourite is crDroid because it's in the market since ages and has very solid name. Very solid performance as well. Lot of customizations but smooth at the same time. If you don't care about customizations, other good option is LineageOS (mother of all custom ROMs actually, and crDroid is based on it too).
What Id like to stress out - you have even Android 12 available, but it lags like hell on mido aka Redmi Note 4. Better option for this old device is Android 11, and best one in my opinion - Android 10. True, you won't get updates anymore, but you have fully operational, smooth as silk performance. I've been switching between versions so Im speaking from experience.
Feel free to ask for any other details.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, thank you for your experienced opinion.
I don't think I need a very customizable ROM so it seems LineageOS might seem the best option. And following your advice, android 10 could be enough for the device since I prefer it to be lightweighted.