Samsung's Gingerbread vs CyanogenMod7 - Galaxy S I9000 General

While I was on CM7 I kept asking myself whether the time was right to switch to "stock" gingerbread in order to get rid of the few CM7 nasties (such as battery life, FM radio, lack of BLN support,...) without giving up too many of the goodies (performance, performance, performance). I hoped there was some insight into objective comparisons, i.e. people who had tested both and could give some "neutral" feedback. Well, I couldn't find it.
So I now find myself on samsung's gingerbread for the first time and these are my findings*:
Performance**:
CM7
The best I've tried so far. No doubt.
Number of installed apps does not affect performance.
JVR
Acceptable, but after getting used to CM7 there is noticeable lag (lapse between gesture and screen reaction) and hiccups when scrolling down menus. Tested with rfs and ext4 ("lagfix"). All in all, performance is noticeably worse than CM7.
Battery***:
CM7
Improves greatly with GB bootloaders [BL] (custom kernel has to support it) but it only affects standby drain (lowers to about 1~3 %/hr).
Usage drain is ridiculous (20~50 %/hr depending on type of use and connectivity).
Typical average battery life has been about 10~24hrs.
JVR
Standby drain is about the same as with CM7 & GB BL (about 1~3 %/hr).
Usage drain is about 10~30% (general feeling about half as draining).
Typical average battery life is being about 15~36hrs.
Android system process shoots CPU usage up to 99.9% while charging (reboot fixes this). Not sure if this is actually a bug.
Miscellaneous:
CM7
No BLN support (as of custom kernels on Aug 15th). No blinking led notification support.
No FM radio (as of #80)
Voodoo sound/color support is kernel dependent
Minor BT car system (A2DP) bugs. Not reproducible with BT dongle.
Horrible Wifi reception and timeouts with WPA2 + hidden SSID (might be custom kernels).
No TV-out support.
No 720p recording (?)
JVR
BLN support is kernel dependent
Voodoo sound/color support is kernel dependent
I might have overseen a bug or been inaccurate at some point. Please feel free to fill the voids or correct any imprecisions.
*I was on CM7 #80 with Zach's Neo kernel v16 r2 (GB BL!). Have also tried Glitch's.
I am now on JVR Simplicity v0.31 (Semaphore kernel 1.5).
**No OC/UV for the sake of fairness of this test (improves performance about 30~50%).
***Battery findings are merely subjective appreciations I have made on a daily usage basis. No scientific mA/h tests or benchmarks have been made. I apologize for that...
This thread should serve for everyone who has tried both ROMs to give their feedback and for those weighing to make the switch to ask questions and have more info.
Cheers!

Nice job on writing this up.
For me CM7 on the SGS is out of the question, because battery and BLN are two of my most importing things that I need daily.
I even went as far as getting the Samsung Armani Battery 1650Mah battery (same physical size as the stock battery) to give me the extra battery life I need.
As for CM7, I may throw that on my Atrix down the road. Some people that have used the beta of it say they think battery life is better than stock. Time will tell, but battery life is an absolute must on my phones which sadly rules CM7 out for me at least on the SGS...

Problems I have with CM7:
* Battery drain (obviously), but since #86 I usually get through the day without recharging.
* Random reboots
* sometimes suddenly loses reception (comes back after some time)
* broken 2g/3g-toggle (don't know if it's fixed yet, didn't dare to try)
Problems I have with stock-ROMs:
* often Launcher-redraws
* no USB-tethering on Linux
Problems I have with all GB ROMs:
* GPS-performance is bad. It's usable after applying hardware fix, but when comparing with Froyo ROMs (e.g. Darky 9.5), they always win.

You can get led notifications with Neo's kernel, v17r5 currently. No need for BLN app. :]
Otherwise, CM7 is just smoking the stock ROM, specially if many apps are installed. I can compare the phone to AOSP Desire experience, before I exchanged it for SGS a month ago.
Btw, Green battery saver app helps alot, it turns off wifi/mobile for specified intervals, so less drain when idle and you don't need to manually toggle it. Same **** as iPhone does.

I have messed both with CM7 #80 and JVR. Now I am back to stock JVR because CM7:
- does not support 720p recording
- I had a lot of issues with calling, the other person couldn't hear me. This seems to happen randomly to many users and makes it for me unusable.

There's HD recording @ 30fps on 2 recent nightlies I tried.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.

alinescoo said:
I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience there is a great improvement in flash performance in cm7 (and decline in samsung's gb). Especially in flash video playback. Beware though not to expect anything similar to computer-like performance in this field.

You want a fast, smooth UI and not expect a drawback in battery use? There has got to be a sacrificial lamb in there. The fact that idle drain is already comparable with stock roms means there is no more "battery drain" issue in CM7.

I left CM7 with fugumod kernel overnight, I lost 2% battery in 9 hours.
I left Simplicity overnight. I lost 10% in 9 hours.
Just my findings off of one test

Nice Job
Thank you for your interesting info

filiptc said:
In my experience there is a great improvement in flash performance in cm7 (and decline in samsung's gb). Especially in flash video playback. Beware though not to expect anything similar to computer-like performance in this field.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alinescoo said:
I was wondering, in CM7 does flash performance is still as low as in stock roms ? Most of the video websites I visit work awfull on JVR.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for me, flash is crazy good since jvq and flash update. 720p fluid in the browser. silky smooth scrolling, gpu helps a lot.

Quite accurate but:
-wifi for me is horrible on stock and cm7...compared the galaxy s my old iphone 3gs was much better.
-battery when phone is on use is same on cm7 and stock... 'till you use data connection. When using 2g/3g on cm7, battery goes down like a hell.
This because samsung driver are closed source i suppose.
Imho Gingebread is not a great update respect froyo.

Just switched back to stock rom from cm7 nightly. I really liked cm's features but after a while the battery drain was too much.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I was just about to post a thread like this! The last samsung rom i tried, jvq, was for lack of a better word, **** compared to CM7. I wondered if JVR was better but its probably not much better than jvq. For me, i think i can live with the 'drawbacks' of CM7 as it just makes the phone as good as it should be - fast as hell.
Interestingly enough, as you can see from my sig im posting from a galaxy tab. The stock sammy firmware on this is much better on this than most stock sgs roms.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App

Necrolust said:
I was just about to post a thread like this! The last samsung rom i tried, jvq, was for lack of a better word, **** compared to CM7. I wondered if JVR was better but its probably not much better than jvq. For me, i think i can live with the 'drawbacks' of CM7 as it just makes the phone as good as it should be - fast as hell.
Interestingly enough, as you can see from my sig im posting from a galaxy tab. The stock sammy firmware on this is much better on this than most stock sgs roms.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to say that I was the same (and I still like to switch roms) but JVR is like from a different dev team at Samsung. I am talking about stock JVR. Give it a try and you will see that it is the perfect stock rom.
My issue with CM7 are the colours. Both on stock and Voodoo. There is something about it that I can't get right even after following a few guides here.
Having said that, CM7 is a very good, features rich, fast rom. I don't think any stock rom would get to that speed due to the filesystem difference.
K.

It's interesting that nobody mentions the problem during calls. Is this an isolated problem, happening to only a few of us ?

I am very very impatient when it comes to responsiveness so I'm on CM7 for a while. Hoever, most likely, I will go back to stock because of:
-problems during calls (other person can't hear me - hold-unhold call sometimes fixes this, sometimes not)
- headset controlls not working (can't answer calls, can't control music); very annoying, this was introduced when a fix for FM radio was tried. FM radio still does not work but it managed to screw up the headset controls
- no 720p recording - well, you CAN record but the frames skip a lot and audio is not synced
- when using 3g/h battery goes down REALLY fast and phone heats up a LOT
- last but not least devs are concentrating on SGS2, so any fixes will probably take a long while to be implemented (if there's gonna be any fixes); the development has slowed a lot (still, my thank to the devs for their hard work)

The grass is always greener on the other side, is it? I love CM for its pure android experience, its speed and the control. But yes, there are bugs and that's to be expected if you have to work with closed source blob's and pretty weird hardware (search for atinm's post in the CM7 thread). I'm willing to live with the remaining bugs because the advantages of CM7 are just to big. But my next phone is going to be a Nexus one for sure. That's the only way I'm guaranteed a real android phone without any of the OEM crap.

Jvr odexed with a few fixes is best for me. Camera, colours, no radio and battery drain just not good enough on cm7 for my needs.
Stock Samsung jvr is better than my cm7 2.2.4 nexus one.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Related

CM7 vs Stock Froyo

Hi guys,
It's been a week since I installed CM7.0.3. I think I can write down pros and cons of both roms. By the way I tried dk and joker but didn't find them stable.
Here it goes;
Speed:
CM7 hands down. Butter smooth.
Stock rom isn't too bad but lags 0.2 seconds when opening stuff which is a tad annoying. Also laggy with angry birds. (i don't play games, just tried it for testing)
Stability:
CM7 is good but not as stable as stock froyo. Froyo keeps runing and running. CM7 has crashed 3 times in a week.
Battery life:
I am getting 30 hours with CM7. 55 hours with stock froyo. (same cpu speed)
Common Apps:
This is where stock rom wins as well. CM7 Gmaps and Gtalk fonts really suck.
It may not be a big deal for some users but for me it is a big problem as I use these apps at least 5 times a day.
With stock rom skype is unusable. CM7 wins here if you use hands free option.
Radio: (reception)
I can't tell the difference to be fair. wifi, gps, cell. they all feel the same. Stock gps is definitely more battery friendly.
Customization:
CM7 wins again. Stock froyo is not customizable unless you install shed loads of apps on it.
Conclusion:
CM7 is like an aston martin. If you get one you'll have a big grin on your face. On the other hand you'll spend a lot of time waiting for a recovery van on the side of a motorway.
Then stock froyo must be a good old toyota corolla. It always gets you there. Not in style though...
Haha, good comparison.
I would say battery life is pretty similar, not any significant gains over stock rom though I will tone down the cpu frequency further in standby as I have noticed CM7 is better in this aspect.
I would agree with the majority of your comparison though, nice balanced review.
I get good battery life from CM7, because I use SetCPU and smartly set profiles. (low battery=low cpu clock, screen off=low-ish cpu clock...)
nejc121 said:
I get good battery life from CM7, because I use SetCPU and smartly set profiles. (low battery=low cpu clock, screen off=low-ish cpu clock...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I experienced some problems with setcpu. On low cpu clock setting, when I receive a call it takes 3 rings for the phone to realize it is receiving a call. Which makes me miss lots of calls.
That's a drawback of setting the min speed too low. Which is why I keep it at 245.
BTW, it is not recommended to use SetCPU anymore, because it may clash and cause issues with the default CM Settings. Keeping the governor at Smartass under CM Settings, is equivalent to having a profile in SetCPU for Screen Off.
i like CM7 very much, but with FroYo my battery (with wifi or data on all the time, and juicedeffender) was last for 2 days... now, with wifi (not all day) its like 1 day max.... very disappointing... :\
Nice comparison, I mostly agree to this. I haven't noticed any crashes so far (been using for ~a week now) and my sd card loads faster on reboot.
I really like using CM7, and there's no going back to stock froyo.
I'm running CM7 nightly for quite some time now and I can say it works even better.
Running it overclocked at all times, lasts a day or two depending on how much I stress the phone.
As for camera I flashed the MIUI camera which is a lot better then stock CM7 one, image quality and speed of the app is marvelous.
Just like you said, it's highly customizable; I wouldn't go back to the stock one anytime soon
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using XDA App
You can say what you want, but for me, even stock rom is faster than CM7, especially in settings menu (scrolling), but of course applications is a different thing (if you have enough patience to find one)..
CM7 looks dull and takes the punch out of user experience.
Battery life is not a issue if it is more than a day.
Ultimately what sells is user experience and hence hTC Sense wins.
you can't compare stock froyo with aosp gingerbread
-SmOgER said:
You can say what you want, but for me, even stock rom is faster than CM7, especially in settings menu (scrolling), but of course applications is a different thing (if you have enough patience to find one)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, can't agree with that at all.
You just need to run a benchmark app to see cm7 is way faster than stock even without over clocking.
Not sure what you mean by the second part of your post.
AloneInShadow707 said:
I'm running CM7 nightly for quite some time now and I can say it works even better.
Running it overclocked at all times, lasts a day or two depending on how much I stress the phone.
As for camera I flashed the MIUI camera which is a lot better then stock CM7 one, image quality and speed of the app is marvelous.
Just like you said, it's highly customizable; I wouldn't go back to the stock one anytime soon
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey could you send me the link to the camera update???? Thanks!!
I am planning of using the CM 7.0.3 Stable version. Does anyone know how the camera quality is in this version???
ameya88 said:
I am planning of using the CM 7.0.3 Stable version. Does anyone know how the camera quality is in this version???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In a word;
Crap
I find CM nightly builds more stable than the 7.0.3

Tell us your (real) reasons staying on a Froyo ROM or moving to a GB ROM.

Ok people, like the tittle says, state your reasons.This is for current ROMs we have available at the moment and also lets put in perspective that we will never get a official GB source for our Vibrants. I feel this will help any newb in deciding what he/she would like to flash on his/her Vibrant and also those of us who will not succumb to ads telling you your phone is old as **** and you NEED to buy a new one or else you will never be cool again and will live the rest of your life as a looser with hairy palms.
Tell us what ROM you're on. Try to be professional when stating your reasons. Give us your opinion on other ROMs you were on or tried but DO NOT flame the ROM cuz we all know Devs work really hard to give us (for FREE) these masterpieces for us to enjoy or else we could be stuck on stock and there ain't nothing worse than that. NO FLAMING other people's opinion also, that's why they are called opinions (and just like assholes) we all have one. Fire away..
Staying with Froyo 2.2.1. Reason
- GPS
- Battery life
- Overall smoothness and ZERO bugs
- Netflix now on Froyo
- Great FFC support in most apps
- Dont use skype video chat much (thats actually the only one app I miss a little bit being on froyo)
The absolute ONLY reason to use froyo is for gps support. That said, the gps on this phone is crap anyway so there is really no reason for froyo. Gingerbread has been faster, smoother, and more stable for me.
I'm one of those that will keep using my Vibrant as long as possible. I'm currently on Bionix 1.3.1. Battery and GPS (the two biggest issues regarding the Vibrant) work great for me. I tried CM7 on my other Vibrant and I got to tell you its pretty smooth, responsive and stable but it did not beat my other Vibrant with Bionix on a overnight battery standby test. I made sure for both of them to have running just the necessary system apps for the test. CM7 GPS does work it seems but it took forever to lock inside my house compared to my Bionix with the s.gps.2 installed (5 sec.). I did not do a Navigation test on both so I can't call this a complete test. I will stay on Bionix because I need a ROM that is as close to 100% in stability and functionality and I feels it (Bionix) gives it to me.
On 2.3:
CRT Animation
Speed
Battery life is improving (almost on par with Froyo)
Overglow effect
Look
Customization (on MIUI or CM7)
duboi97 said:
On 2.3:
Overglow effect
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one thing that I'm jealous about 2.3.
My reasons for moving to CM7:
- Much smoother than even some of the nicer FY roms I used
- Little Details (battery graph, customization options, etc)
My reasons for moving back to Froyo from CM7:
- Battery life
- GPS
- Battery life
- Seriously: battery life (even with Bali's kernel, I'd have to charge at least 2x a day)
CM7 is ready for primetime. However, the Vibrant is not ready for CM7. The devs don't have source and don't (and IMHO, won't ever) have GPS drivers.
Speed and overall smoothness of whole phone an battery is ok an sometime excellent 12hrs is good enough really customization of themes
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA Premium App
@Mindaika try Neo redux 9 much better battery an GPS idk cuz I never used it since got phone
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA Premium App
I moved to cm7 cause of the mindblowing performance difference... just no lag or instability and i have desktop class browsing when i overclock thats even faster than the pentium 1.6ghz laptop i used to use o.o
Sent from a cell tower to the XDA server to you.
cm7, reasons (in no order):
i like having the newest version of android (fragmentation? i was running 2.3.5 like the day it came out), gps works (i ran it before gps worked, though because it is worth it) and gets to ~3m accuracy when the best i got on froyo was ~6m, crt effect, overall better performance, i've ran cm7 on other devices and it's always been good to me and provides a consistent experience.
basically, with the gps being fixed, the oc/uv built into the stock kernel (providing pretty good battery life even at 1.3Ghz), and it being extremely easy to flash i don't see why anyone would still be running froyo.
2.2 (Bionix NextGen V2)
Stability
Better GPS
Better Battery
No Random reboots
Swype (it does not work in Simply Honey but does work in CWM)
Faster with OC than 2.3.4
Better 3D rendering
Even with all this, It is very likely that I will move back to 2.3.x again if the GPS reboot issues are fixed. For those unknowing, The GPS works in 2.3.x but if you turn the radio off, it will not work again until you reboot the phone. This is the biggest issue for me.
Just flashed Biffmod 1.3 (GB 2.3.5) last Thursday and was actually very surprised at how well it runs.
-Battery life is actually better on this ROM than what it was on Bionix 1.3.1
-GPS is on par with what I had on froyo
-Runs smoother than a baby's bottom
-Web browsing is more responsive
All-in-all, I'm happy using this as my DD. Everything works as well, if not better than on bionix. But we all know, YMMV.
I tried MIUI and Simply Honey 5.0
Both were awesome and looked awesome.
However since then I have switched back to Trigger 3.2
The biggest reason for me is battery life.
Even though some of the stuff (battery graph, new market, animations) aren't as good as the GB roms it has great battery life.
I'll probably give it a couple months and try the GB roms again..
T-mobile screwed us over so we'll probably never get the source code for GB.
If the GB leak came out the GB Roms would take leaps over the FROYO roms.
i havent used froyo as my main rom for a few months the reason i changed to cm7: much more smoother for me
i prefer the newest
gps is not a must for me
great themes
good battery life
Miui 2.3.5 GB
Gingerbread performance
Stable & Smooth
Battery "Decent"
UI and Theme Customization
Weekly updates that improve overall user experience
and Honestly it's just a gorgeous UI.
rakeshchn said:
Staying with Froyo 2.2.1. Reason
- GPS
- Battery life
- Overall smoothness and ZERO bugs
- Netflix now on Froyo
- Great FFC support in most apps
- Dont use skype video chat much (thats actually the only one app I miss a little bit being on froyo)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
very true...
So it seems alot of you prefered moving up to a GB ROM. I tried CM7 and MIUI looks to iPhonish to me which is not bad but I dont want launcher icons on my screens (beside what is on my dock) which also brings the issue of it not having an app drawer and thats what I liked from Android when I moved from the Iphone. So besides those two which is the most stable GB ROM out there so I could install it on my second Vibrant?
Sent from my Blutiful-Bionix-Powered Vibrant [2ndIINoNe]
2 words.
TV out.
Other than that, gb is fantastic.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA Premium App
Raistline said:
Even with all this, It is very likely that I will move back to 2.3.x again if the GPS reboot issues are fixed. For those unknowing, The GPS works in 2.3.x but if you turn the radio off, it will not work again until you reboot the phone. This is the biggest issue for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i'm using cm7 with the newer gpsd file (i don't know if it's now included in cm7 or not, but it's pretty easy to find) and i just turned gps off then back on, then turned airplane mode on then back off and then opened gps status without rebooting and locked 10/11 sats with a 6m error and i'm inside.

Experiences, Thoughts, and Advice on ROMs

Hey guys,
First off, I don't post much on here, but have been doing alot of reading to stay "up-to-date". Yesterday, I just got the Nexus S 4G through Sprint cuz my Epic 4G took a crap and they were backordered so I said sure to the Nexus S.
I spent most the day yesterday looking for ROMs for it and found out about ICS and got all excited for that. So, after looking around I decided on Crossbones 0.1.3 ICS. Overall, I'm liking it but after using it for about a day now, I am noticing the battery life (in comparison to my Epic, which ran the current Legendary ROM with the Samurai Kernel) is HORRIBLE. I don't want to be quick to say it's the phone, ROM, or ICS though. Maybe there's a different way of closing out unused apps that I don't know about? I did just find that you can swipe away unused recent apps. Will that help?
Basically, for a ROM, I look for stability, battery life, speed, and looks. In that order. In GB, I always used Launcher Pro, btw.
So, my question is for those that use or used Crossbones, what are your experiences so far? Also, if it's recommended that I go back to GB for awhile until things get a lil better on ICS (I heard its coming OTA soon), which ROM are people liking? With ICS out now, searching for a good GB ROM has become a lil difficult. So far I read about MUIU (or whatever it is) and CM7, which my gf has on her Dinc2 and her Nook Color. I'm kinda "eh" about CM7. It "just works" imo and I think that's what they are going for. Def not a fan of the looks though. I also miss my power options in my notification pull down too.
PS-
That and I can't get Facebook to add to my account sync. When I go to add it, it does it, goes back to the accounts screen, but its not there. Very strange. Ok, gonna shut up now. this is long enough. lol Thanks in advance.
I've had my Nexus S for a couple of weeks now, I put the stock ICS ROM on the first day and during this time my battery has significantly improved. There are probably three reasons for this, but perhaps not all will apply to you?
1) I've stopped turning everything on, all of the time and constantly tweaking / fiddling / admiring the AMOLED.
2) I've refined how the device uses battery (logged out of Google+).
3) The battery has matured a little.
There's another side effect...
4) I've stopped worrying about the battery so much as I get a day of use from it.
Ice Cream Sandwich and ROMs using it are gonna improve in time. Gingerbread has been out for a year or so and has all this development. So from this there's a lot of potential from ICS...
I'm going to keep my device running the standard ROM for the time being as it's my daily driver, but wanting a device to potentially brick and hack. Thinking about the Galaxy S.
davidsteele1975 said:
I've had my Nexus S for a couple of weeks now, I put the stock ICS ROM on the first day and during this time my battery has significantly improved. There are probably three reasons for this, but perhaps not all will apply to you?
1) I've stopped turning everything on, all of the time and constantly tweaking / fiddling / admiring the AMOLED.
2) I've refined how the device uses battery (logged out of Google+).
3) The battery has matured a little.
There's another side effect...
4) I've stopped worrying about the battery so much as I get a day of use from it.
Ice Cream Sandwich and ROMs using it are gonna improve in time. Gingerbread has been out for a year or so and has all this development. So from this there's a lot of potential from ICS...
I'm going to keep my device running the standard ROM for the time being as it's my daily driver, but wanting a device to potentially brick and hack. Thinking about the Galaxy S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. So far in terms of battery saving tricks, I've disabled animations, the screen is set to about 1/4 brightness, only thing that constantly does anything is k9
mail to check my inbox every 15 mins (that I'm aware of lol). So it could be that my battery needs to "mature"? Btw, are there any good themes out yet? I miss my transparent text msg threads and I really miss my power controls on the notification pull down. I'm def not digging the white on the contacts and SMS screens. Lol
::BUMP:: Seriously? No one else?
Well is was getting bad battery and weird force closes on cross bones, i'm on vhgomex(thinks that's right), it's been a lot better for me and it has the notification power widget in it
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
BrianDigital said:
Well is was getting bad battery and weird force closes on cross bones, i'm on vhgomex(thinks that's right), it's been a lot better for me and it has the notification power widget in it
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I havent had any issues with the rom running or any FCs... Took a look at gomez. Gonna do a nandroid and give it try. Looks promising, and FB sync is supposed to work. lol
infamshxr said:
::BUMP:: Seriously? No one else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you're not getting many answers because your issues have already been addressed. A simple search will find many (most) ROMs with notification toggles and Facebook sync. I personally recommend AOKP.
I'd say it's just the rom. I'm on an ICS rom, everything works great and I have significantly better battery life than before.
I'm on AndroidME with Eugene's speedy-3 kernel. I don't have Facebook sync and power toggles in notification though, but I don't really care for those two features anyway.
Well I'm on Gomez now. Things already seem to be better. Absolutely no issues so far. I'll know for sure in a day or so.
Well I uninstall bloat.sys apps I don't use with root uninstaller
As for Bette battery life. Honestly think. What could someone do to the phone to put out better battery life. Almost nothing but SBC kernels and the CPU speed and goveners. That's it.
Most of you guys don't have battery issues you just play with your phone all day instead of doing your work.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Shark_On_Land said:
Well I uninstall bloat.sys apps I don't use with root uninstaller
As for Bette battery life. Honestly think. What could someone do to the phone to put out better battery life. Almost nothing but SBC kernels and the CPU speed and goveners. That's it.
Most of you guys don't have battery issues you just play with your phone all day instead of doing your work.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A: that was fairly rude. I'm legitimately asking for help and advice. I didn't make the thread to be judged or ridiculed on my phone usage. I don't judge others on how they use they're phone, so why should I be?
B: I'm comparing this all with my epic. I don't over clock or mess with the CPU settings cuz that's beyond my knowledge atm. Like I said, battery seems MUCH better now with this rom . Now my only gripe is volume. Way quieter on this phone which seems to be a known issue. Trying out volume+ soon. Also, at the end of my day, I'll post my battery stats and see what you guys think. But like I said, I think its OK now.
Im on bigxie's rom and icup kernel im getting great battery life with this but thats just me.i dont know whats great for you.try this rom its somewhat minimalist or pure stock with just statusbar widgets and other features.no 'omg' tweaks that cause more harm than good.and it has trebuchet which is perfectly put into the mix.im satisfied with this .been with this rom since build 1 and ive been happy with its consistency.no bugs encountered
Sent from a Nexus S
dark06 said:
Im on bigxie's rom and icup kernel im getting great battery life with this but thats just me.i dont know whats great for you.try this rom its somewhat minimalist or pure stock with just statusbar widgets and other features.no 'omg' tweaks that cause more harm than good.and it has trebuchet which is perfectly put into the mix.im satisfied with this .been with this rom since build 1 and ive been happy with its consistency.no bugs encountered
Sent from a Nexus S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the opinion. I'll keep that one in mind if this doesn't work out. Sounds a lot like Gomez. Gomez has basically just what you listed. I'd def take stability over extra crap. Lol
Sry for the double post,but to report back, totally forgot to post my battery stats, but they were definitely better. By far. Still not much luck on the sound tho. Got an app the boosts my media volume but my ringer wasn't affected, which sucks. Anything on this that I haven't possibly found?
I'm going back to CM7. 7.2 is out and honesty its just more optimized for this device. CM optimizes their ROMs to very fast high standards and do stuff a lot of you newbies can't even think of. (Yes, these will be implemented in BESTROM.)
So I'm going back. To smoothness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Shark_On_Land said:
I'm going back to CM7. 7.2 is out and honesty its just more optimized for this device. CM optimizes their ROMs to very fast high standards and do stuff a lot of you newbies can't even think of. (Yes, these will be implemented in BESTROM.)
So I'm going back. To smoothness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App. Developer of brickROM, and OP of XDA Thread of The Year 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You really shouldn't be so rude and demean other members of this forum like that. Frankly, no one cares if you're going back to CM7 or not. But thank you for your belittling feedback.
To the original poster, I'm running Pete Alfonso's nightlies along with Mathkid's Matrix CFS kernel. With a bit of overclock and tweaking of the kernel settings, I get great smoothness, stability, and decent battery life. To me, any battery life that gets me from "up in the morning" to "home at night" is fine, because I have my charger at my desk. But typically, I can survive a full 24 hours on one charge.
Who knows, though. Maybe I'm just too much of a newbie to realize the full potential of what my device can do and therefore it's my fault that the battery life is as good as it is.
Hey! I've just recently switched to my Galaxy Nexus, but was a Crespo owner since it came out. Been reading your post but I would agree that you should try out the AOKP rom along with a custom undervolted kernel for longer battery life.
I haven't really tinkered with my Nexus S in awhile (I gave it to my gf when I got the Galaxy Nexus) but the last thing I remembered was either installing aokp or cm9. In due time the custom ics roms will improve and the power widgets in the notification bar will be brought back, but they usually want to focus on stability then add new features little by little. Hope you are having fun your Crespo!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
So far I'm still rocking gomez's. Really loving the battery life. Only issue I've had is 3g doesn't always come back after using wifi. Not a big deal tho I guess. Really stable too. I was thinking of using mathkidskernel but don't wanna possibly screw up what I got now. I'm backed up so maybe one of these days. Heard alotof good things about mathkids kernel. Heard good things about aopk too, so that's my other go to. Lol
kto_matchu said:
You really shouldn't be so rude and demean other members of this forum like that. Frankly, no one cares if you're going back to CM7 or not. But thank you for your belittling feedback.
To the original poster, I'm running Pete Alfonso's nightlies along with Mathkid's Matrix CFS kernel. With a bit of overclock and tweaking of the kernel settings, I get great smoothness, stability, and decent battery life. To me, any battery life that gets me from "up in the morning" to "home at night" is fine, because I have my charger at my desk. But typically, I can survive a full 24 hours on one charge.
Who knows, though. Maybe I'm just too much of a newbie to realize the full potential of what my device can do and therefore it's my fault that the battery life is as good as it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry if that was rude but you have to take in count that
I myself is using modified CM7.1RC0AOSP2.3.7GB as base. But far as CM9AOSP4.0.3ICS goes its still not ready for folks like me for DD yet.
As I described below how extensively its optimized and most of it is outside the scope of current XDA.
What you have to understand is performance is not measured via synthetic benchmarks (ex: Quadrant). The biggest issue with people is that they don't know enough to know that they don't know, so they compare it with silly numbers (ex: score) they can't comprehend what they see, much less put numbers behind real life activities that's not applicable in controlled environment.
OS development which eliminates most of it but on software level custom base rom (ex: CyanogenMod) is highly optimized and tweaked to run on optimal performance. Mostly, but not all. But does it mean it can't be tweaked any further? (Rhetorical) No. How do I know? We (scope outside of XDA) tweaked it to the next level. How you ask?
1) Optimized ext4fs: reduced r/w rate (healthy NAND lifespan), improved journaling (corrupted data writeback integrity) = Which improves the IOPs and performance access rate.
2) HC3.x fugu binaries, patched sqlite libraries, mSD read ahead buffer fix.
3) Modified VM: OOM (Out Of Memory), LMK (Low Memory Killer), VM heap (Virtual Machine), DRA (Dirty Ratio), DBR (Dirty Background Ratio), DWC (Dirty Writeback Centisecs), DEC (Dirty Expired Centisecs), SWP (Swap), VCP (VFS Cache Pressure).
4) Increased minfree value: Background, Foreground, Empty, Hidden, Visible, Secondary, Content.
5) Optimized cache: File and Drop cache, Forced cache (resident loop).
6) Custom kernel: OC/UC, UV/SVS/VDD, BFS/CFS, RSU/NP/VR/SP supported.
7) Custom ROM: Optimized Rom script and props (ex: CyanogenMod).
this as its tweaked to THE next level. I'll stick with AOSP2.3.7GB until ICS4.X is more stable and we understand more as most memory grouping and adjustments might be changed.
I bet most of you only do 2 of those thing (6&7)
i suggest you try androiduser aosp rom with icup kernel. you dont have to do anything else and with normal usage you'll get 24+ hours

GB to ICS and back - mini review

My month with a factory unlocked Galaxy S2​
Bought this in mint condition from a friend for about half price with only 1 hour of use, an unwanted upgrade. Came with 2.3.4 as expected, so hooked up to Kies; no update at the time. As is my wont, I used the phone for a few days to get to grips with TouchWiz (TW) and the phone generally. All quite reasonable, no stability issues and TW is not bad by any means.
My thoughts and trials so far then:
Hardware
Well made, light and thin. Slippery, so a black rubbery skin bought and fitted and I popped a spare 8GB microSD card in, not that the phone needs it for my purposes.
Only criticism is the OLED screen, I'm used to higher resolution (Moto and Sony) and 800x480 looks rather "cheapo" in terms of detail on a screen this large, but no deal breaker. What I do find somewhat at odds with the price of the phone is the slight but noticeable shading and colour tints across the screen at low brightness levels and on some backgrounds. Plus, the screen's legibility outside on a bright day is no better than more run of the mill LCD screens. (I mean cheaper!)
My first GB update
I generally root phones straight after flashing a new firmware version, if it isn't already. I had already successfully rooted the original stock 2.3.4 firmware with Zergrush 4 and debloated that ROM.
I was keen to try a later GB version before trying ICS, and I found 2.3.6 for "Open Europe" on Sammobile and downloaded it. I had already tried Kies, so the USB drivers were present and working. I uninstalled Kies on the PC but left the USB drivers alone. Kies and Odin are not good bedfellows. I did a full factory reset on the phone and erased everything, allowed it to reboot and then powered off, got in to download mode and flashed XXKL1 (which is an engineering version and deodexed it seems). Rooted it via Zergrush 4, deleted known bloat and renamed possible bloat to xxx.bak to clean the ROM for my own usage, and deleted that very annoying start-up sound. Downloaded all the apps I normally use (about 22 of them), including the excellent CPU Spy to check for deep sleep.
I used/charged the phone over the next couple of days to let the OS bed in. No problems encountered at all, and a very pleasing battery life of 30+ hours of light use, with syncing and GPS, 3G, WiFi always on and occasional BT. Magic! Only thing I did is change the Modem to LPR - the KI3 Modem that came with the ROM is not quite as good at holding weak signals. Only just though...
My first ICS update
So, good phone, stable and very usable ROM in 2.3.6. Time had come to try this new ICS thing. Downloaded the LPQ version and installed it, after a full wipe, via Odin. Not impressed by all the automatic installation rubbish at first boot... Rooted via a hot boot CWM and SU/Busybox successfully and did all the same debloating and app installation as GB 2.3.6. Spent some time getting orientated and used to the new menus and so on.
Over the next day or so, I let the ROM settle and began using the ROM - I changed the Modem to LPR as LPQ was not as good, perception wise. ROM was stable and usable, didn't really look or feel much different from 2.3.6 and was worse on battery - I would say 18 hours at best with the same usage pattern.
Absolutely hate the new Exchange thing for live.com email.... real pain usability wise and battery unfriendly.
My second ICS update
So, not overly impressed with LPQ, although it was usable, I decided to try LP7, the UK generic one. Went through the same process as above, and again swapped the Modem from LPS (awful!) to LPR.
No obvious differences at all. Battery life was as poor, but it was usable.
My first CM trial - CM9
So, somewhat disillusioned by Samsung's ICS implementation, I decide to look around for another "mature" ROM. CM9 fitted the bill (I have used CM6 before on another phone) and was smack bang up to date in terms of kernel, AOSP and G Apps. After my usual clean deck start, installed fine, 23/04 build.
At first, I was quite impressed as I could configure more and to my liking. The ROM was stable and I set the phone up with the usual Apps and deleted some useless stuff (like GenieWidget).
Swapped Modem out to LPR - bit of a theme going on here...
I liked the fact that the Spirit FM radio worked (so bought the Pro version as it is that good). The ROM is very usable and never got bogged down, BUT, for reasons I never fully determined, the battery life would start OK and then decline faster during the day. I never saw more than 12 hours life, again using as per my normal pattern and after a few days to settle. There appeared to be various background activities going on that were preventing deep sleep sometimes, but BBS was not really showing me what. Note that I only use BBS as a last resort as it can increase battery use...
No other real problems, but the soft key backlights wouldn't play with NoLED and were somewhat counter-intuitive. A bit trivial, but a mess.
My second CM trial - CM7
I like GB, it is mature and well understood, so CM7 RC 2 was therefore of some appeal. It had been developed over months and must therefore be fairly sorted. Surely.
Installed without issue on a cleaned platform as usual, including G Apps. Did the usual debloat and installed the usual Apps from the Market/Play, and some that were missing, like GMail. LPR modem was already there, Hooray! Spent rather longer fiddling with the settings in CM7 than CM9 since they were less obvious at first, to me anyway.
Switched off and put the phone on wall charge overnight and was rather shocked to find the phone was noticeably warm and displaying "Kernel Panic" in the morning. The phone had only charged by about 5% in total (to 64%). Worry Worry. I put the phone on USB charge until 100% without incident.
Started to use the phone as normal, the phone UI and operation was very good, fluid even. But, first problem I had was in the car. I paired BT fine, as usual, and made a phone call. After the call, I couldn't end the call on the car or phone - it had locked up. Oh dear.
Later, I tried the FM Radio during my daily walk - doesn't work, so why is it there? I tried Spirit FM - no way would it work. Oh dear.
The following day, I noticed that the battery life was amazing! I had never seen this phone sip juice like this. Deep sleep was always easily achieved. That was until the afternoon. I noticed that the battery level was declining at a much higher rate than earlier. I hadn't done anything different, so BBS was called in again. Nothing obvious shown but I kept seeing the GPS icon winking at me from the Notification bar, and continually. I always keep GPS on, but for some reason on this ROM, no GPS signal meant the ROM just kept trying. I played with various settings like Location etc. and managed to stop this odd behaviour, but this was too silly. I use a Smartphone for all the smart features. This wasn't very smart at all.
CM7 was my biggest disappointment of all the above ROM trials. It was the lightest and most promising, and yet the least reliable or functional. Which is a huge shame...
Today...
I'm now back on KL1 2.3.6, and it just works fine - day after day.
The future for me?
I would really like to use CM9 (or CM7 for that matter). They represent a number of ideals for me, including the open nature of development, the collaboration, a pioneering spirit and giving users a choice and a superb base to build on. I am no developer - I can split and modify kernels to a point, I can rehash ROMs with or without adb, I can amend frameworks. But little more.
Reserved for "tips and hints"
Avoiding problems
Always data reset and wipe before doing anything major from one ROM to another, or follow the installation guide for any specific differences in approach.
Avoid Titanium Backup like the plague - it invariably leads to functional issues later if you cross flash. Use Google and/or airdroid for everything, it all just works. So many friends and other forums I contribute to have had too many backup issues to count. Go clean. Forget about Google paranoia.
ES File Explorer is very useful and recommended.
Don't bother "calibrating" the battery - it's an outdated practice and useless. Just use the phone normally, and anyone who claims the battery life is "great" 1 hour after flashing a newly announced ROM is a fool. Likewise NEVER fully discharge a Li-Ion battery. Just keep topping it up. See here: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_charge_when_to_charge_table
Thoughts
Newer ROMs are rarely better ROMs. Better means different things to different folk of course.
ICS ROM core LPQ to LP8 are largely all the same, just variants of the same thing for different markets. Some users believe they perform differently.
Custom kernels and ROMs are always work in progress and should be treated as such. Check out the number of revisions. Some kernel cookers are (welcome) enthusiastic amateurs that assume more is better and cram "fixes" in that the professional salaried software engineers have mysteriously missed. If you only need your stock kernel to be insecure, learn how to make it so. You are running Linux on your box, right?
Deodexing is not a means to improve performance, on the contrary.
Undervolting is a mythical beast
I bought a phone with an FM radio because I want to use it!
And I totally agree. to all of it. Tried all iterations of almost all roms available. For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Except CM9, I don't really think there is any real development going on. Most are just cooked up roms OR stuff taken from the CM9 tree and implemented OR so called fixes that have actually broken something else OR just debloated rooted official firmware (that AFAIK is pretty easy to do with the fantastic dsixda's kitchen or on a rooted rom).
Now fanboy's may flame as much as they wish to, but seriously a stable CM9 (hopefully..!) or a VR 4.0 is all I am willing to wait for.
Till such time VR 3.0 it is.
LenAsh said:
Reserved for "tips and hints"
Newer ROMs are rarely better ROMs. Better means different things to different folk of course.
ICS ROM core LPQ to LP8 are largely all the same, just variants of the same thing for different markets. Some users believe they perform differently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't agree with your final thought. Different ics rooms have really different feels. E.g. Look at scrolling from lpq to lp7.....and there are numerous others as well. If u want more specific thoughts and feedback, just browse through different ics threads in this section..
omeryounos said:
I don't agree with your final thought. Different ics rooms have really different feels. E.g. Look at scrolling from lpq to lp7.....and there are numerous others as well. If u want more specific thoughts and feedback, just browse through different ics threads in this section..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... I have browsed through the sections, and tried various "revisions" or versions of Samsung ICS today while jotting this lot down, and my view, honestly, is there is no real difference. That isn't to say there isn't, I just can't see or feel it. I do accept that playing with 3 ROMs in a few hours is less than ideal. And a drag!
I suppose if someone could deconstruct the ROMs properly and thoroughly...
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, appreciated.
Very nice review! +1
Keep up the good work
I broadly agree with the OP.
ICS/AOSP/AOKP/CM9 have improved over the last few weeks, but I'm back on GB, and will probably stay with it until I get the SGS3.
May be subjective, but for me the GB stock browser, camera and dialler are streets ahead of what the rest can offer. Scrolling is smoother too. And I like/need a radio.
B3311 said:
I broadly agree with the OP.
ICS/AOSP/AOKP/CM9 have improved over the last few weeks, but I'm back on GB, and will probably stay with it until I get the SGS3.
May be subjective, but for me the GB stock browser, camera and dialler are streets ahead of what the rest can offer. Scrolling is smoother too. And I like/need a radio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.
Sigurd02 said:
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I agree that in terms of loading websites, ics default browser is a little bit faster, scrolling and pinch and zooming is much smoother with stock gb browser. Also the dialer is worse on ics as it has removed the contacts section which means I have to put both the dialer and contacts shortcut on the dock.
I'm using Wanamlite v11.1, Siyahkernel v3.1, and Apex Launcher.
A winning combination in my opinion, that is now at least as good as the best GB ROMs in terms of battery life. 7 hours standby with 30 minutes screen time and i'm still on 87%.
In terms of fluidity and performance I think ICS /w Apex beats GB handsdown.
Thanks for the recommendation, but I avoid ROM mix ups, I can do that myself. The ones I have looked at have had some very dubious scripts and additions. I usually look at build.prop first, and generally find all sorts of hybrid attempts at adding stuff that is completely wrong. Lines taken from websites, other phones and so on.
LenAsh said:
Thanks for the recommendation, but I avoid ROM mix ups, I can do that myself. The ones I have looked at have had some very dubious scripts and additions. I usually look at build.prop first, and generally find all sorts of hybrid attempts at adding stuff that is completely wrong. Lines taken from websites, other phones and so on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends, it was like you say in Gingerbread days, not with ICS WanamLite nor Dynamic, only tried these + CM9
I am using Dynamic 1.4 LP9, it is as smooth and fast as CM9, but everything working because it is Samsung based
I tried the included NEAK and Speedmod kernels, similar performance and very good battery life, only 3% drain overnight, I dont play with processor tweaking
Sigurd02 said:
Seems like you and the OP only tried the AOSP/AOKP roms? Give the roms based on the latest official a try.
The dialer is still as good as always (unchanged), camera is actually improved with higher bitrate recording and the ics stock browser...is untouchable at the moment in my opinion. (Granted I use "ICS Browser+" from the market which uses the best ui in a browser I've encountered)
I currently use Dynamic's ICS rom and it would be extremely difficult for me to go back to GB at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dialer is laggy if you compare it with GB. CM9 variants have slightly more response dialers but overall, GB dialer is way more responsive. There is a small but noticeable lag when pressing a key and the time it takes to register on ICS (CM9 & stock).
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Browser is a definitive improvement yes, and the desktop mode is welcome but browser mods have been available on GB since long.
It is not that ICS is bad. It is actually very good, but the way it has been implemented on S2 is downright ridiculous...! And not one stable vanilla build isn't really helping..
kranti2064 said:
For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is something I have been contemplating for quite some time now, quite possibly the last month. The only real thing stopping me is that for some reason alot of games (eg dead space and modern combat 3) don't seem to like it when i change roms, and even though all the ingame data is there, sometimes it decides I have to re-download.
I do miss it alot though.. and also red pill kernel
I might end up doing a backup of current my CM9 and take the plunge sometime soon. I've been using CM9 since around feb and lately I think my interest has plateaued and now I'm just beginning to get frustrated with little lags that are popping up more frequently (probably due for a wipe mind you!). The only thing about villiam rom is the bloody touch wiz launcher.. I just don't like messing with the launcher roms were made for either.
kranti2064 said:
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mass lols to be had at the fact that a majority of the time they would be played on the device through the mono loudspeaker too
I also go back for GB..becoz i feel that ics so laggy at dialer,and PES2012 freeze and cant play on ics..but in GB all working great..
Daripada galaxy s2 non-G
melorib said:
Depends, it was like you say in Gingerbread days, not with ICS WanamLite nor Dynamic, only tried these + CM9
I am using Dynamic 1.4 LP9, it is as smooth and fast as CM9, but everything working because it is Samsung based
I tried the included NEAK and Speedmod kernels, similar performance and very good battery life, only 3% drain overnight, I dont play with processor tweaking
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
kranti2064 said:
And I totally agree. to all of it. Tried all iterations of almost all roms available. For some reason keep going to my VR 3.0 nandroid back up.
Except CM9, I don't really think there is any real development going on. Most are just cooked up roms OR stuff taken from the CM9 tree and implemented OR so called fixes that have actually broken something else OR just debloated rooted official firmware (that AFAIK is pretty easy to do with the fantastic dsixda's kitchen or on a rooted rom).
Now fanboy's may flame as much as they wish to, but seriously a stable CM9 (hopefully..!) or a VR 4.0 is all I am willing to wait for.
Till such time VR 3.0 it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Currently trying ninphetamine kernel (as per VR3 - thanks for the heads up) on my fave stock KL1 more for interest than anything. Seems OK, no obvious difference from stock running as is apart from it being insecure, need a couple of days to evaluate in real life use.
Bloody good post. I've been using CM9 since the video recording bug was solved, and thats probably the longest I've used any ROM on the SGS2, I really like AOSP but the problem is it does still have quite a few bugs, and isn't quite as fast or as battery friendly as I remember the likes of Hyperdroid v6 being.
This makes me tempted to go back to GB. For me, it is still the ultimate for a daily driver. But I'm lazy so I'll probably stick with CM9.
kranti2064 said:
Dialer is laggy if you compare it with GB. CM9 variants have slightly more response dialers but overall, GB dialer is way more responsive. There is a small but noticeable lag when pressing a key and the time it takes to register on ICS (CM9 & stock).
Camera recording with stereo voice recording...! Seriously how many people do shoot video with a phone's camera? For facebook uploads mono audio is just fine..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ICS dialer laggy , doesn't happen to me on stock LP9 or Dynamic based on LP9 and CM9 is as smooth as they come. Whilst mono audio is fine for you I quite like having stereo audio. Choice, not limitations my friend
tameracingdriver said:
Bloody good post. I've been using CM9 since the video recording bug was solved, and thats probably the longest I've used any ROM on the SGS2, I really like AOSP but the problem is it does still have quite a few bugs, and isn't quite as fast or as battery friendly as I remember the likes of Hyperdroid v6 being.
This makes me tempted to go back to GB. For me, it is still the ultimate for a daily driver. But I'm lazy so I'll probably stick with CM9.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cheers for that - I would definitely recommend the 2.3.6 KL1 off Sammobile if you want a solid GB.
Dude, if you have not tried CheckRom RevoHD V6, then you have not tried the BEST gingerbread rom for sgs2.
This is why I can not use ICS (yet). Checkrom is just too perfect of a Rom.
Try it, tweak it to your liking, use it for a week or 3 then try and go back to stock.
CheckRom XDA thread

Going back to Gingerbread - my experiences

So a few days ago I realized I just can't use JB as a daily driver. I *love* 4.x and am a big fan of almost every change introduced, so I've been using ICS and later JB builds as soon as builds were available (thanks, devs!). But on the DZ it just ain't cutting it. I haven't had a single day without freezes, spontaneous reboots, unbearable slowdowns, graphic glitches etc.
Well I'm back to ILWT CM7, which I haven't used for about 11 months. I've frozen almost every stock app, and have found a usable Holo-style replacement for almost all of them, except for the Browser and the hideous pre-ICS Calendar (any suggestions?). Also every 3rd party SMS app is so bloated.
So far, what I miss:
- I really miss pulling down the status bar in the lockscreen! But that requires a 3rd-party lockscreen replacement which is a huge PITA. Also no 4.x unified lockscreen music controls.
- 4.x Rich Notifications. I added music controls in the CM7 notification power widget, but it's a pretty crappy solution (reminds me of iOS)
- JB makes scrolling in apps (among other things) smoother, and some things were considerably more "fluid". JB wasn't *that* smooth anyhow, at least on the DZ.
- 2.x interface is hideous, "fixed" with ICS Mixer theme, Holo-styled apps and a font change.
- Overall UI polish degradations and papercuts, like the power menu, the loss of holo action bar and the ugly old icons of app menu options.
- Some newer apps don't support 2.x which sucks.
- Tons of 4.x improvements I didn't mention. ICS and JB are such vast improvements from GB. JB is so much more consistent, and it sucks that htc are assholes and dropped support for DZ and DHD.
What's better:
- Much more stable.
- Faster!
- Can actually multitask now because there's no need for the OS to constantly kill things in the background. lol at Titanium constantly getting killed in the background on JB.
- Better battery life.
- The proper drivers mean some apps work here but not in 4.x. For example, any app that uses the phone as a webcam.
So anyone else back on Gingerbread and can share their experience?
Most of the time im running a gingerbread rom. Never get the freezes you are talking about on any 4.x rom in 6 months or so, are you sure you had all partitions in ext4?
I do agree battery life is much lower than in 2.3.x and thats one of the main reasons i tend to stick with them. The ui is much better with 4.x but id rather have an ugly ui then a phone that isnt 100%
Overall ics and somewhat jb has been proven to be running almost perfect on the vision and right now im on an ics (a sense rom which i usualy hate!) But there are just too many things dragging me back to gingerbread, battery life being the biggest issue as im a heavy user
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
demkantor said:
Most of the time im running a gingerbread rom. Never get the freezes you are talking about on any 4.x rom in 6 months or so, are you sure you had all partitions in ext4?
I do agree battery life is much lower than in 2.3.x and thats one of the main reasons i tend to stick with them. The ui is much better with 4.x but id rather have an ugly ui then a phone that isnt 100%
Overall ics and somewhat jb has been proven to be running almost perfect on the vision and right now im on an ics (a sense rom which i usualy hate!) But there are just too many things dragging me back to gingerbread, battery life being the biggest issue as im a heavy user
Sent from my Desire Z using xda premium
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I have to say the battery life on the newest Andromadous JB test builds are amazing and much better than GB. I even have the CPU governor set the minimum to 800 MHz with maximum to 1500 Mhz and I can still run a full day without recharging (I do quite a bit of web browsing on my G2 and occasional calls).
Possibly between some gb roms it is better but the best battery life that i consistantly get is with elitemodcm7 and ilwtcm7, with heavy use i can get through a full day 18+ hours every time. If i use a little less on some of the ics roms i can get close but not always (elitemod cm9 kernel with mimicry seems to be the best battery life) i poor life on old jb test builds that slowy got a little better, have tried a build since around 90 something but im sure ill test again soon.
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demkantor said:
Possibly between some gb roms it is better but the best battery life that i consistantly get is with elitemodcm7 and ilwtcm7, with heavy use i can get through a full day 18+ hours every time. If i use a little less on some of the ics roms i can get close but not always (elitemod cm9 kernel with mimicry seems to be the best battery life) i poor life on old jb test builds that slowy got a little better, have tried a build since around 90 something but im sure ill test again soon.
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Yeah, definitely try the new test builds, I was really amazed at the big difference in battery life in the newest builds.
euhh, its not beacause of your DZ.
- On the galaxy sII, MOST of the ICS and JB roms are not smooth at all. Lot of crashes , etc. Even on the official update.
- on galaxy note, same thing. Looks like stock JB run better anyway, good thing.
- on nexus S it is the worst since the last JB update.
- on desire ( one of the most supported device) , lot of crashes with ICS.
- And I dont tell you about the milestone (very old device)...
^^^
All the phones mentionned above, are running GB right now.
They not all mine, most of them are my friends phone, they ask me to root it to try new roms. All of them complaining about ICS/JB stability.
I didnt try the big ass phones like the sIII, but they are so powerfull that you can't feel any slowdown.
Thanks for that info, overdose. I've been wondering how other phones with more dev support were handling JB. Here's hoping with the new Nexus phones soon we can finally have a device that handles stock Android decently.
I've ran into an old CM7 bug with the Lense lockscreen... basically what happens is that, for some reason, the software thinks pulling down the Lense should launch a custom app instead of unlocking the device. Since I didn't have any custom app defined, pulling down does nothing and there is no way to unlock the device
So I have to fix it with adb which is pretty pathetic. Ironically I'm typing this from a restored Jelly Bean ROM.
edit: I got it fixed, and in the process dropped my phone and severely cracked the screen. Hahaha. Oh well DZ we had a good run.
Pickx said:
Thanks for that info, overdose. I've been wondering how other phones with more dev support were handling JB. Here's hoping with the new Nexus phones soon we can finally have a device that handles stock Android decently.
I've ran into an old CM7 bug with the Lense lockscreen... basically what happens is that, for some reason, the software thinks pulling down the Lense should launch a custom app instead of unlocking the device. Since I didn't have any custom app defined, pulling down does nothing and there is no way to unlock the device
So I have to fix it with adb which is pretty pathetic. Ironically I'm typing this from a restored Jelly Bean ROM.
edit: I got it fixed, and in the process dropped my phone and severely cracked the screen. Hahaha. Oh well DZ we had a good run.
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DZ screen are cheap.
I have 2 in stock just in case, with the HTC logo. I paid them 30 $ ea. a year ago .
I don't have a desire z but a nexus one and did have 2 regular desires before (my ex gf had ICS spazedog ROM - working pretty good) now I'm running spazedog jellybean rom on the n1 and its smooth than cm was maybe a bit slower to open apps but no real lag or freeze or reboots after a couple weeks. Only problem is no video camera and had to install an app from play store to take pictures without a soft reboot and still the pictures don't look great. That and can't play YouTube videos in app or browser or its reboots. Other than that its pretty reliable and the desire z should be a slightly better phone. Maybe something else causing the issues?
Sent from my Nexus One using xda app-developers app
@createpassword...
Everyone use their phone differently, I agree with much of what you are saying but I highly disagree with bettery battery life on 4.x compared with 2.x, no matter how much you tweak or change things the best roms (for battery life) on 4.x have never been able to compete with the best 2.x in that regard. I will say that the improvment have been incredible over the past 6 months or so, but I'm a heavy user, and maybe its the way I use my phone that runs the battery fast but I easily can get a day with 2.x (about 6hours screen on) and I'm always struggling even with the best 4.x to do the same, (max maybe 4~4.5hrs screen up)
But again, we all use our phones differently. Right now I'm on an ics Rom, about 6hours up, 56% left of battery with just under 2hrs screen on. Granted this is not the best ics rom for battery life but let's I was using say mimicry or elitemod ics, I would be @ maybe 65 @ most, with certain 2.x is be well over 70 right now
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Fair enough, but like I said we all use phones differently, and I will disagree that screen on time is meaningless being the most power is being used when screen is on. I'm sure I could have my phone on, with screen off, put it in airplane mode and let it sit for 3days to see it still has 30% (or whatever) juice left, no matter the os. But that dosent matter to me as I want my phone to last when I'm using it
Listen, you may get the best life out of ics or jb on your phone, I get better life on 2.x, I'm not saying these newer roms are inferior, I'm saying that one of the most important features is battery life to me and I have always gotten the best life in older operating systems. Having said that, I'm a flashaholic and I try nearly every Rom available for any phone I have. Mimicry is amazing, fast, stable, and pretty good battery life. If I absolutely need to be sure I have power left by the end of the day I'm not running mimicry (im a heavy user and the ways I use my phone it just isn't going to happen) and don't say I have bad apps with memory leaks and wake locks because I've been around long enough to know to test for all this. I don't use Many different apps and the ones I do use I know are good (and the same ones I use not matter the os)
Let's just agree you have different experiences with your phone as I have with mine, I'm not steering anyone away from using
Ics or jb, and ill continue to use thenm too. But I (not you) get bettery life with 2.x
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demkantor said:
Fair enough, but like I said we all use phones differently, and I will disagree that screen on time is meaningless being the most power is being used when screen is on. I'm sure I could have my phone on, with screen off, put it in airplane mode and let it sit for 3days to see it still has 30% (or whatever) juice left, no matter the os. But that dosent matter to me as I want my phone to last when I'm using it
Listen, you may get the best life out of ics or jb on your phone, I get better life on 2.x, I'm not saying these newer roms are inferior, I'm saying that one of the most important features is battery life to me and I have always gotten the best life in older operating systems. Having said that, I'm a flashaholic and I try nearly every Rom available for any phone I have. Mimicry is amazing, fast, stable, and pretty good battery life. If I absolutely need to be sure I have power left by the end of the day I'm not running mimicry (im a heavy user and the ways I use my phone it just isn't going to happen) and don't say I have bad apps with memory leaks and wake locks because I've been around long enough to know to test for all this. I don't use Many different apps and the ones I do use I know are good (and the same ones I use not matter the os)
Let's just agree you have different experiences with your phone as I have with mine, I'm not steering anyone away from using
Ics or jb, and ill continue to use thenm too. But I (not you) get bettery life with 2.x
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Obviously battery life varies with the way you use your phone. If you're ever interested in trying JB again, definitely give the test builds a shot. Remember to do a full wipe though, I assume you do anyways. I was shocked at how much the JB test builds improved battery life and responsiveness compared to the Virtuous G-lite I was using for a while.
well thats somewhat a relative point. you see when i consistently get (im picking #s here) 24hrs of battery use with 6 of those hours being screen on time with 2.x. then i compare the use of 4.x where i consistently get 18hrs of use with 4hrs screen on.
this compares not only the screen on time but also the overall time the phone lasts between charges. i feel most people comparing batteries understand that this is over a course of time and that the first day they flash a new rom will not give the best overall picture of what the battery consumption level is.
true the most power consumption is happening when the screen is on, but noting the amount of screen on time along with how long the battery lasts (consistently) will give anyone a good idea of whats going on. see if there is a day that i use my phone less, the battery tends to last longer (you get that) noting how long screen on time is gives a general picture of how frequently the phone is used that day.
also comparing what operating systems do in deep sleep is useful, again that hopefully is not the best way in determining battery life as you are lacking realworld use of the phone. yes its important to note, but like i said if i stuck the phone in a sock drawer for three days with the sim pulled and wifi off, i couldnt care much the results because my use of my phone will never be compared to it sitting in a sock drawer for any period of time.
so one of us is not getting the other, or there is some **** comparing going on over battery life testing. either way i say its best not to waste time and electronic ink over this. lets just say your right for the sake of i dont really care.
I've been in somewhat the same boat having gone back to CM7 many times for speed and stability. Mimicry was very nice but Skype would crash in it and it was an app that I always used. Now that Skype has made some major updates, I'm considering either installing Mimicry again or Jelly Baby. The latter is going to be updated soon from what I've been reading so I'll likely wait and try that.
rizzers said:
I've been in somewhat the same boat having gone back to CM7 many times for speed and stability. Mimicry was very nice but Skype would crash in it and it was an app that I always used. Now that Skype has made some major updates, I'm considering either installing Mimicry again or Jelly Baby. The latter is going to be updated soon from what I've been reading so I'll likely wait and try that.
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Honestly scrolling in cm7 looks laggish to me compared to flinnys don't know why . how is jelly baby compared to flinnys in terms of performance?
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Just my 2 pence but, frankly, any and every CM9.x/CM10.x rom I've ever tried on my DZ has been laggy/buggy after some time. On the other hand, the AOSP counterparts have ALWAYS been faster in general and didn't slow down, unlike CM. Hell, it was the same even with CM7 (with some exceptions, primarily ILWT CM7). This is obviously logical since CM has more things going on unlike AOSP which is pretty light on the feature side (nothing you can't take care of with a couple of apps, mind you). From my experience, CM9+ roms just don't work on the DZ. Whatever I do, they always end up slowing down to the point where I can't even use the phone. As for battery life...I don't have much to say in particular, it has always been below average whatever rom I was running (again with a few exceptions, like G-Lite).
Just as I said though, just my opinion so don't take my word for it.

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