Database Info

Please advise. Captivate issues galore...

Hi all. I just got a Captivate after using Mattc on my HD2 and I used an Aria for a couple weeks as well. I used Mattc on the HD2 for a couple months and really liked it. I understood it was running from the SD and lived with the other issues like slow wake up and occasional goofiness.
So when I got my Captivate I was thinking, wow, I'll have one of(if not the) fastest Android phone on it's native hardware. Everything should rock. I should be blown away... Not.
HELP!
The brightness settings. WTF! Why did they implement like 10 ways the brightness screws with your day. On my HD2 w/Mattc I set the brightness in settings to where I wanted and it stayed. Forever. Also when it hits 10% it kicks the brightness all the way down. 10%? Com on maybe 5%. But what is worse is when it does kick it down I kick it back up but it dims again at every percent it goes down. ANNOYING. Please let me control my phone... Oh and don't get me started on the Browser brightness. Huh? Even with the browser brightness set at max it's still dimmer than my regular brightness setting. Noticably. I only keep my brightness at like 75-80% too.
Also what the hell is with the lame Calendar notification settings? Are there any?
My question is this. Is there any ROM out there that will strip all that Samsung ideology and give me a stock Android experience. Especially without the brightness issues. Why do I need to slide my notification bar to change brightness? All it does for me is just cause my brightness to vary accidentally when I don't want it to.
Why must I add on programs for my Calendar alerts to function normally? Why?
So again. Is there a ROM out there that will strip all the Samsung goofiness? If I can't get this phone to work like I want I'm going to sell it and look for a Telus HTC Desire to use on ATT. HTC phones are the best man. IMHO
Thanks.

juiceppc said:
The brightness settings. WTF! Why did they implement like 10 ways the brightness screws with your day. On my HD2 w/Mattc I set the brightness in settings to where I wanted and it stayed. Forever. Also when it hits 10% it kicks the brightness all the way down. 10%? Com on maybe 5%. But what is worse is when it does kick it down I kick it back up but it dims again at every percent it goes down. ANNOYING. Please let me control my phone... Oh and don't get me started on the Browser brightness. Huh? Even with the browser brightness set at max it's still dimmer than my regular brightness setting. Noticably. I only keep my brightness at like 75-80% too.
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Click to collapse
Turn off auto brightness and pick a setting you like. Done.
Also what the hell is with the lame Calendar notification settings? Are there any?
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I don't know what lame is, but I use my Google calendar and I can set notifications. I get notified. Is there a specific problem you have?
My question is this. Is there any ROM out there that will strip all that Samsung ideology and give me a stock Android experience. Especially without the brightness issues. Why do I need to slide my notification bar to change brightness? All it does for me is just cause my brightness to vary accidentally when I don't want it to.
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Click to collapse
There is no stock Android experience. Android is just the core - Samsung, HTC, etc, they all add specific things in order for their specific hardware to function. If you don't want what comes on your AT&T Captivate, then you can root and uninstall the apps you don't like, flash one of the many, many cooked ROMs available on this forum (just look around - they are everywhere, and all with great pictures and descriptions and huge threads full of information), tweak settings to your heart's content, or anything else you want to do.
Why must I add on programs for my Calendar alerts to function normally? Why?
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I don't have any add-ons and I get my alerts. What exactly isn't working for you?

Auto brightness has been off. First thing I do-
I do not get audible alerts when a Calendar reminder goes off-(and there is no where in settings to change/check this)
I had to install "Calendar Snooze" to play an audible alert for a Calendar reminder-
Phone is at 10% now fully dimmed. Nice... Considering how bad the battery life is for this phone(for me) I'll be spending a lot of time with the screen fully dimmed.

juiceppc said:
Auto brightness has been off. First thing I do-
I do not get audible alerts when a Calendar reminder goes off-(and there is no where in settings to change/check this)
I had to install "Calendar Snooze" to play an audible alert for a Calendar reminder-
Phone is at 10% now fully dimmed. Nice... Considering how bad the battery life is for this phone(for me) I'll be spending a lot of time with the screen fully dimmed.
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Click to collapse
Try reading a little and you will see you can set the brightness at where you want it by un-checking the automatic brightness setting..Then you can swipe along the status bar to raise and lower the brightness..It will stay where you had it set IF the automatic brightness is unchecked..Where you have the slider at will be the brightest it will swipe to..
Set your alerts to something you can hear and turn up the volume..They work fine.
Battery life is not a issue provided you follow some advise..Bump charge it 1 time and then use it till it drains down to single digits before recharging...also make sure you back out of all programs and turn off wi-fi and gps and syncing when you don't need them. Loose any task killer program you have and run it stock..you will find your battery life is excellent..if not you may or may not have a bad battery..Lastly..if you are really dissatisfied with it..take it back..
Good Luck
Mac

In regards to the brightness, turn off auto brightness and the 'power saving option.', that should solve your issue.
As far as removing the AT&T bloatware goes, try Unleash the beast.
If you want to run Froyo try flashing a rom, I used the latest version of Cognition.

Run far away from this phone if you still have the chance.

MikeyMike01 said:
Run far away from this phone if you still have the chance.
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Click to collapse
Broad-brush damnations do nothing to help anyone.

Mac11700 said:
Try reading a little and you will see you can set the brightness at where you want it by un-checking the automatic brightness setting..Then you can swipe along the status bar to raise and lower the brightness..It will stay where you had it set IF the automatic brightness is unchecked..Where you have the slider at will be the brightest it will swipe to..
Set your alerts to something you can hear and turn up the volume..They work fine.
Battery life is not a issue provided you follow some advise..Bump charge it 1 time and then use it till it drains down to single digits before recharging...also make sure you back out of all programs and turn off wi-fi and gps and syncing when you don't need them. Loose any task killer program you have and run it stock..you will find your battery life is excellent..if not you may or may not have a bad battery..Lastly..if you are really dissatisfied with it..take it back..
Good Luck
Mac
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice. Although I have done all of those things. I'm kind of coming to one real main pain point that I can't seem to solve. The screen dimming at 10%. Does anyone know how to disable that? Even if I kick the brightness back up after it dims at 10% it will redim at 9% and so on...

Bitter. But hopeful.
Picsman said:
Broad-brush damnations do nothing to help anyone.
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Click to collapse
Unfortunately, running away from this phone does seem to be good advise. It doesn't mater how slick it is in theory. Uber display and kickass hardware are useless if the basic functionality suffers due to glitches most of the other options don't seem to exibit.
I decided to play the "mod and wait" game with this thing, and I'm regretting it. Broad-brush damnations would have helped me. At this point, enough issues have came up about this hardware that a "broad-brush" sticky may be warranted. The alert issues found by the OP, may be related to his speaker begining to fail. I had a similar issue. Calander and alarm notifications began failing in some apps, but not others. The phone would still ring. Some apps could still use the speaker. Within a week, nothing could use the speaker, and I had to do the "push-on-it" fix.
It's a forum. Posts are opinions. I've been impressed occasionally by the raw performance of this phone. Yet, I've also spent hours, hours, researching problems, applying fixes, flashing, pushing on the speaker, etc. And I've spent hours "waiting" for the thing to do something simple like send an email when it did fine the day before. With as much time and effort as I've put into researching and working on this phone, I feel like I (and others) have not gotten enough stability out of it.
I propose a broad brush damnation for this phone: "slick but intermittent".

fshalor said:
Unfortunately, running away from this phone does seem to be good advise. It doesn't mater how slick it is in theory. Uber display and kickass hardware are useless if the basic functionality suffers due to glitches most of the other options don't seem to exibit.
I decided to play the "mod and wait" game with this thing, and I'm regretting it. Broad-brush damnations would have helped me. At this point, enough issues have came up about this hardware that a "broad-brush" sticky may be warranted. The alert issues found by the OP, may be related to his speaker begining to fail. I had a similar issue. Calander and alarm notifications began failing in some apps, but not others. The phone would still ring. Some apps could still use the speaker. Within a week, nothing could use the speaker, and I had to do the "push-on-it" fix.
It's a forum. Posts are opinions. I've been impressed occasionally by the raw performance of this phone. Yet, I've also spent hours, hours, researching problems, applying fixes, flashing, pushing on the speaker, etc. And I've spent hours "waiting" for the thing to do something simple like send an email when it did fine the day before. With as much time and effort as I've put into researching and working on this phone, I feel like I (and others) have not gotten enough stability out of it.
I propose a broad brush damnation for this phone: "slick but intermittent".
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Click to collapse
haha. Thanks for the ,.. opinion. I'm starting to feel the same way about this phone. I had super high hopes. But I'm really going to stick with HTC. They just get it. IMHO.

I think most people regret buying this phone. Or they will, when FroYo never arrives, the lag gets worse and worse, the phone dies on them, and the GPS never come close to working, the market decides not to intall your app, this, that, or the other thing force closes, etc. etc. etc.

MikeyMike01 said:
I think most people regret buying this phone. Or they will, when FroYo never arrives, the lag gets worse and worse, the phone dies on them, and the GPS never come close to working, the market decides not to intall your app, this, that, or the other thing force closes, etc. etc. etc.
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Umm froyo is already leaked and OTA is on its way.
Lag has never been an issue.
And GPS is a software fix... proven on these boards over and over.
SHEESH... I'd say go tell somewhere else.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

yeah, 5 million people are completely dissatisfied because one guy managed to not know how to operate his phone.....

MikeyMike01 said:
I think most people regret buying this phone. Or they will, when FroYo never arrives, the lag gets worse and worse, the phone dies on them, and the GPS never come close to working, the market decides not to intall your app, this, that, or the other thing force closes, etc. etc. etc.
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Click to collapse
I think your wrong. I think quite a few people got defective phones and haven't bothered returning them,thinking that if they root it and flash a different rom that would magically fix a broken phone. This is XDA and folks here mostly do this..thus the reason for most of the complaints. Problem is..it won't change much of anything to reflash if the phone is defective..If it is broken to begin with..it will be broken no matter what you do to it.. If yours is defective..quite *****ing about it and get one that isn't..or a different phone entirely. The working ones are great..just like they are supposed to be.
I have 2 of them built in September..both work and neither is defective.This tells me many of those built prior have some issues..perhaps not all of them..but some of them certainly. This certainly doesn't make it right by anyones account..just saying if yours is defective..return it and get one that isn't.
I honestly don't understand people who have the option of doing this,not doing it.The folks at my AT&T store opened 7 different boxes and checked every one of them for any blue tint on the screen and having the 3 button recovery option..for my second one bought at the same time,so I do know there are many out there that ain't working properly..The OP of this thread..is unhappy with it..damn..loose it and be done with it if you are that unhappy..or take that one back and get them to open up the boxes and show you one that works properly...If it was bought mail order..then you should just return it as defective and get your money back..and buy where you can see it first..It's your choice...and your money.
Mac

Security storage app? Consumes 98% battery

I have the app android booster to monitor battery use. When I go to applications everything is at 1% and 2% but the android process "security storage" is consuming 98% battery? Does anyone know what this is? Is there a way to minimize it or can I freeze it with Titanium Backup?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App

I wish I knew as it's killing my battery also, I'm thinking I'll have to reflash or even odin back to stock before I'll get rd of the battery drain caused by secure storage, I found out it's com.android.providers.security that started secure storage but not much else

I see nobody is addressing this issue, or even explaining it. Too bad, as I'm having the same issue. The annoying part is, no matter what kernel I run, the same thing happens: The phone will sit sedately idle until I want to use it, then the minute I try to do something "Security Storage" starts running and the phone becomes non-responsive for 30 seconds to a minute or two while that stupid app is running.
Why can't this app do its maintenance while the phone is idle, rather than the minute the user wants to do something, or be forced into "nice" mode (don't know if Android has such a setting, but it's based on linux and linux does have such a setting) so that it's only allowed to hog the CPU when the phone is idling.

change build prop ro.securestorage to false

ElwOOd_CbGp said:
change build prop ro.securestorage to false
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I just registered to say THANK YOU to this man. :good:

did it work?
mikim1 said:
I just registered to say THANK YOU to this man. :good:
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I've noticed a lot of system resources get wasted even after removing the knox apps and enterprise and container agent stuff that comes on samsung phones. I mean, I guess its good as an option to have if you have use for it. Problem is tho, for ppl like me, its also built into the system in order to make those implementations effective and when you install a custom ROM and or kernel it causes errors. I think thats why some people dont like touchwiz ROMs and think theyre laggy. When the kernel and system are not synced anymore, crap goes on in the background that is just a waste. I still dont know much really, but I spent some time trying to fugure out how to disable some loggers and errors that were going on and were pissing me off. Here is a link to a post I ran across that helped shed some light on some stuff. Be careful tho, and if you don't know what your doing, spend some time to learn about what all that stuff does, because it's system stuff and you could find yourself in a bootloop or with an expensive azz brick http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2599266

ElwOOd_CbGp said:
change build prop ro.securestorage to false
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Click to collapse
interestingly using icyfusion rom and terrasilent kernel, I cannot find this line in my build.prop. anyone else not seeing it there? secure storage is eating up at least 20% constantly of battery/cpu accord to elixir2. My battery drain continues to plague the device and I can only get about 1-2 hours of light use out of it while it continues to drain when screen is off. All I want to do is use it to listen to some tunes and I'm regretting rooting the device now. Refreshing to stock, wiping everything...formatting etc. has no effect. Has anyone solved this problem (presumably related to secure storage?) with another method?
(yp-g1 us version, currently on GB 2.3.5 stock, rooted with terrasilent kernel).

klemmaniac said:
interestingly using icyfusion rom and terrasilent kernel, I cannot find this line in my build.prop..... currently on GB 2.3.5 stock, rooted with terrasilent kernel).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
have you tried any current builds?

ElwOOd_CbGp said:
have you tried any current builds?
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I tried CM11 which worked fine for a week or so and then all of the sudden the battery drain problem appeared. I didn't check the build.prop when on that because I decided to reflash to stock and start from scratch trying different roms/kernels. I can't shake the battery drain now no matter what I do - factory reset full wipe, you name it. I guess I could try installing cm11 again and see if it is in the build.prop then?? I just don't know how to proceed at this point.

My suggestion would be to go into developer options and take a look at process stats to see if there are any rogue processes running that you don't need. You can also download and install BetterBatteryStats app from here on XDA or purchase the paid version from the play store so that you can specifically pinpoint what is causing your device problems. Also, older devices often need batteries replaced because they wear out. I don't think the secure storage bug affects AOSP based ROMs since it is related to Samsung's Knox. Another tip would be to use a build prop editor app that has a search function to make finding things easier.

ElwOOd_CbGp said:
My suggestion would be to go into developer options and take a look at process stats to see if there are any rogue processes running that you don't need. You can also download and install BetterBatteryStats app from here on XDA or purchase the paid version from the play store so that you can specifically pinpoint what is causing your device problems. Also, older devices often need batteries replaced because they wear out. I don't think the secure storage bug affects AOSP based ROMs since it is related to Samsung's Knox. Another tip would be to use a build prop editor app that has a search function to make finding things easier.
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Click to collapse
thanks for the suggestions, but it's all similar to what I've already tried. I did use Elixir2 and another battery status app to monitor things, and I have also gone through running process and disabled everything that I don't need. I did order a new battery just to check, but I don't think that's the problem. The top part of the case (where the CPU is running I presume, not the battery) is getting very hot, so there is some problem with a program or service overheating the CPU which in turn drains the battery. I just charged to full today and turned the screen off so that the device will sleep. 2 hours later, it is dead. I checked battery stats in settings and there is no indication that the device wakes while screen is off...I'm just totally at a loss. It's almost like it's a hardware issue maybe caused by a kernel or something like that, rather than an app or service. I just have no idea. Someone in another forum advised me to flash to stock and run a logcat app and post results..so I guess I'll do that. I'm worried though, because I was googling prices for ipod touches earlier today....I don't want to go back to the dark side...but I just want a device that works and I can listen to music for more than 30 minutes too.

klemmaniac said:
thanks for the suggestions, but it's all similar to what I've already tried. I did use Elixir2 and another battery status app to monitor things, and I have also gone through running process and disabled everything that I don't need. I did order a new battery just to check, but I don't think that's the problem. The top part of the case (where the CPU is running I presume, not the battery) is getting very hot, so there is some problem with a program or service overheating the CPU which in turn drains the battery. I just charged to full today and turned the screen off so that the device will sleep. 2 hours later, it is dead. I checked battery stats in settings and there is no indication that the device wakes while screen is off...I'm just totally at a loss. It's almost like it's a hardware issue maybe caused by a kernel or something like that, rather than an app or service. I just have no idea. Someone in another forum advised me to flash to stock and run a logcat app and post results..so I guess I'll do that. I'm worried though, because I was googling prices for ipod touches earlier today....I don't want to go back to the dark side...but I just want a device that works and I can listen to music for more than 30 minutes too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
turn gps off

ElwOOd_CbGp said:
turn gps off
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thanks, but that was one of the first things I turned off. I only want to use the device for music listening and quick browsing/email. I shut off wifi when not using and leave it in airplane mode as well....definitely something internally wrong with the device somewhere that goes beyong changing the usual battery draining settings. Still have the logcat running and the device is making very strange noises I've never heard before...popping, screeching scratchy sounds....very strange...things just seem to be getting worse and I'm worried I'm quickly heading to an expensive paper weight situation... Battery continues to drain at 20% or more/hour with screen off. I think after this if no progress is made,...I may try to unroot the device, but I don't know if that will solve the problem and will undo the damage already done.

[Q] Should I consider a custom ROM yet?

So I'm looking over the current options and right now it's not really looking like it's promising. I have my Galaxy S3 rooted and with the help of tools like TitantiumBackup I've managed to clean up the stock ROM pretty well. Another thing of note is I actually get some surprisingly good sound quality out of my SGS3. I realize the US models aren't supposed to have the Wolfson DAC, but somehow mine sounds absolutely incredible with no noise that I can hear or anything (it's enough that I've been wondering if Samsung might have slipped the Wolfson into this one and perhaps there is variance in the DACs actually being used.) It even drives my headphones (modified HD555s -- basically you can consider them to be like the HD595s since of course I did the foam mod, but with the soundstage mod and a custom cable they're actually a bit better possibly) extremely well. It's worth noting that I have frozen the built in equalizer or whatever it was that I thought seemed like it was meant to mess with the sound (I like my devices to produce a relatively neutral sound.) Despite some complaints out there, I actually like the sound out from my US model SGS3 better than things like my Cowon D2 (which, btw, has a Wolfson DAC) and don't even use my CMoy (which has an AD8620 OPAMP that makes it sound far better than a typical OPA2132 CMoy IMO at only the cost of a bit of battery life) which I love the sound of because to me it sounds amazing on its own.
I only mention all of this because while I'm not a true audiophile per se, quality is of extreme importance to me all the same and I'm reading of issues with sound in the current custom ROMs which is not something I'm ok with. I want it to continue to sound this amazing. The idea of losing sound quality with a custom ROM bothers me. I like the idea of a few of the updates like Project Butter (though it's worth noting that mine does run fairly smoothly since I keep the number of programs running all the time as minimal as I can) and I really like the idea of having a custom ROM where I could maybe tweak more things (perhaps including better battery life options like maybe a better CPU governor built in? It drives me crazy how much my phone can run down over just a few hours while the screen is off even with SetCPU set to set the CPU to 384MHz and switch to the powersave governer with WiFi and mobile data both disabled and me not receiving any calls or texts.) For that matter, even while on it's not helping as much as it seems like it should, but I can't help but to notice that there are some more advanced CPU governors that I don't seem to have as an option and I wonder if perhaps a custom ROM could even help there as well. Plus I just plain like being able to tweak more things to my exact preferences instead and again a custom ROM helps. But, if I have to give up that sound quality that's a big problem. I think also it might be a problem to lose the camera. I don't use it a lot, but every now and then I really do kind of want to have it. Especially it would absolutely suck to lose the ability to scan QR codes or to have to do so via the front camera, but every now and then I do take some actual photos to share.
So my question is, have any of the custom ROM options out there reached that level of stability and quality to actually be worth updating and without losing those two things? The SGS3 has been out a fair while now, so it's hard for me to believe that there hasn't been a bit more progress along these lines, but I realize that it's no simple process to create a custom ROM all the same. (In fact, I only think more progress would have been made than what I've read thus far because the SGS3 is just so very popular. If it had been a less popular phone I wouldn't necessarily expect that much, but between its features, hardware, and etc, it's a pretty popular phone.) I want all the benefits of a custom ROM, but what I've read so far of them says to me that it's just not worth the trouble. Once I find one that really works I kind of want to stick to it as much as I can as I have a lot of apps installed and configured just so for my preferences. It sounds like I'm going to have to wait a good while yet though. Or have any of the custom ROMs finally "gotten there yet"?

ive been using CM10 roms for daily use and tehy do everything i need them to do without any limitations.
i suggest you make a nandroid of all your current setup and play with some custom roms. you can always revert back if you dont liek it or cant configure them match your usage. it made my S3 experience much better, btu everyone is dfferent.
---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 PM ----------
there are also sound mods and stuff that are accessible with ROMs. ive never tried them but some people swear by them

You don't have any sound issues of any kind? Does the rear camera work perfectly?
BTW, I don't want any sound mod that actually changes the sound. I want it to basically leave the sound alone and produce it as well as it can without modification. None of that Beats or whatever like some do (I think that was what HTC was pushing?)

beats is a sound thing, yeah. it hink its just an equalizer though. i have used audio through headphone jack and over bluetooth to my headphones and the quality is fine for me. im not an audiophile though. it all kinda sounds the same to me lol
the only sound issues i have with my ROM are after flash some sounds do not function until you slide the volume slider from 100 to 0 then to 100 again. Its these types of quirks that come with custom rom sometimes.
my camera is working perfectly. its not as good as the touchwiz one however.
edit: heres a sound mod that might/might not interest you
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1883262
long as you do a nandroid you can always revvert back to your preferred current setup. you should also backup your IMEI

There are roms that are optimized stock. Maybe CleanRom. Don't think he adds sound mods but may be wrong. You may have used app to underclock CPU and it shows UC but probably not actually working on stock kernel as clocking must be enabled on kernel. Know this is true with overclocking.

I actually prefer to avoid all sound modifications whatsoever. Even equalizer. I like the results of a relatively neutral sound being fed to these headphones, it comes out just perfect for me. That's part of what I was worried about as some of the custom ROMs sometimes try to have stuff like that built in (and I guess that equalizer or whatever it was was Samsung or Verizon kind of doing that in the stock ROM even.)
About the camera, I actually have a commercial camera app anyway. If the only problem people have been having was the built-in app, that's a non-issue.
What's this about sounds not working until you go to zero and back though? Does this interfere with anything such as receiving phone calls (eg does it sometimes not ring because the sound isn't playing?)
BTW, where do I actually find the "official" CM10 for this phone?

no the sound works all the time after the adjustment. it takes 2 secodns to do. open volume, slide them all to 100, then all to 0, then all to 100 again.
http://get.cm/?device=d2vzw&type=snapshot
i think that these M builds are the monthyl most stable ones.

Personally I'm waiting for something built on the official VZW JB release. And yes I know I have months to wait... :-\
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

There is no DAC from Wolfson but yes it sounds kick ass! Qualcom is a beast! There S4 chip is there pride and joy so they didn't want to lag behind when it comes to quality audio! God does it sound so much better then my galaxy nexus. Qualcom is making the best arm chips right now. Can't wait to see how insane the 4 core S4 is!
I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH MY FELLOW MEMBERS WHEN IT COMES TO AVOIDING ALL THOSE STUPID AUDIO MODS LIKE BEATS AND SOME OTHERS OUT THERE. THEY SUCK AND DISTORT THE AUDIO!
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

ddurandSGS3 said:
no the sound works all the time after the adjustment. it takes 2 secodns to do. open volume, slide them all to 100, then all to 0, then all to 100 again.
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Ah, have I misunderstood? Do you just mean it only needs this to be done after the initial flash of the custom firmware itself? That's definitely no big deal at all...
prdog1 said:
There are roms that are optimized stock. Maybe CleanRom. Don't think he adds sound mods but may be wrong. You may have used app to underclock CPU and it shows UC but probably not actually working on stock kernel as clocking must be enabled on kernel. Know this is true with overclocking.
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Well, I want to try to do this just once or at least no more than minor updates after this hopefully, so if I'm going to go ahead I want to go ahead and go straight to Jelly Bean.
I think SetCPU wouldn't be sold as only requiring root access to do its work if it required a custom kernel. It probably just works with the internal power management features that should be built in more or less by default.
mike216 said:
There is no DAC from Wolfson but yes it sounds kick ass! Qualcom is a beast! There S4 chip is there pride and joy so they didn't want to lag behind when it comes to quality audio! God does it sound so much better then my galaxy nexus.
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Interesting... I do definitely wonder why some people have complained about hearing noise and such then. Perhaps a bad setting and/or that MusicFX app (finally had time to dig through the list to find out what exactly it was called and that's the one that I just assumed was probably an equalizer/effects processing thing that would modify the sound, but honestly I never had any use for it even if it's not and never bothered to try it.) I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks that the US SGS3 actually sounds good. I was beginning to wonder if my ears were maybe just getting that bad somehow even though I'm still far pickier than everyone I personally know, lol.
Let me ask you this, is the so called "Voodoo Mod" any good at least? I was never clear on exactly what it was supposed to do for audio. I know things like Beats probably mostly rely on a bit of processing to increase bass and probably play with things like stereo separation or something, but I've never been clear on what that one was trying to do exactly other than that people claim it's actually an improvement for many devices.
Anyway, back on the topic at hand, I think I'm more or less convinced to at least go ahead and give CM10 a shot. I'll use that newer monthly build from earlier this month after clearing enough space to make a full backup. (Besides CWM's backup option I've already backed up my apps and settings using TitaniumBackup, so in a worst case scenario it shouldn't be too painful if things go wrong and I have to go all the way back to a stock image with a factory reset or something. Is that option in CWM the correct thing, or must I use something separate for a Nandroid backup?) Also, it may sound silly, but how exactly do I backup my IMEI? I was looking for that already upon digging through a large tutorial thread a while back and it seemed to require something I couldn't get to work (when I try the numbers mentioned in the dialer I don't get any hidden menus, just a dialtone. Other than that I could only find something about manually restoring it if it has been completely damaged or lost which wasn't a fun looking process.)

Nazo said:
I think SetCPU wouldn't be sold as only requiring root access to do its work if it required a custom kernel. It probably just works with the internal power management features that should be built in more or less by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is sold that way. Depends on the manufacturer of the device. On stock HTC kernel it will lock 2nd core at max speed, kill battery life and cause heating problems. That is why I said it may not work correctly and without another app to monitor CPU you don't know what it is doing. How it works with Samsung I wouldn't know as I run custom kernels when possible and don't worry about clocking on stock kernels as they are under performing already.

Don't restore system apps with titanium backup! Only data apps (apps from the market)
CM is great good choice. I love the theme engine CM10 has and all CM10 based roms.
I'll tell you a super easy way to backup your IMEI! Need Root!
Download (terminal emulator)
Enter these commands. su (hit enter)
reboot nvbackup (hit enter)
It will reboot and create the backup on a built in backup partition on your SD card. The only way you could delete the backup is if you formated your SD. Super easy I just hope it works lol....
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

Two quick questions before I take the final plunge.
1. Is the CWM backup to external flash function sufficient, or do I need something further for a true backup? (It says "Nandroid" in one part, but otherwise I'm not sure if it's truly "Nandroid." It seems like it just backs up each individual file or something and I get the impression that Nandroid is more of an image of the firmware? If it isn't sufficient, what should I use?
EDIT: Found this tutorial. Basically that's what I've done except instead of bothering with Odin I used the EZ-Recovery app to flash CWM directly from the phone itself (along with EZ-Unlock 1.2 from here to unlock the bootloader) as per another tutorial. The other tutorial just didn't call it a "Nandroid" backup, so I wasn't sure.
2. If anything goes wrong, is there a stock ROM image I can use for the Verizon SCH-I535 with Odin? So far my searching has taken me to a site that practically has every stock ROM for the SGS3 but that one... (Or at least if it has that one I couldn't find it on there, which isn't saying much since every single region was listed separately...)

The best way to get recovery is to get the latest recovery from the man who's created them all from the very beginning.
Get rom manager and flash the latest straight from that app. You must make sure your bootloader is unlocked. If you took the latest OTA from Verizon it locked your bootloader.
As long as your unlocked and rooted you can go straight in rom manager and flash touch recovery especially for your Verizon galaxy s3.
I've been using the latest touch recovery on my D2tmo, nexus 7,galaxy nexus and Asus infinity and it's worked perfect.
Make a backup of your current rom for safety before flashing. You can create a backup and rename it to whatever you want straight from rom manager!
I personally wouldn't back up to the external. It might work fine but when it comes to backups I just go straight to the internal
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
---------- Post added at 08:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 AM ----------
I soft bricked my phone because after taking the latest OTA it locked my bootloader! Recovered it fully from here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1840030
I seen the take to your local Verizon store bla bla bla.
Got in download mode at 4am and recovered in 15 minutes.
I wish I had someone that knew what I now know and that's why I'm here to help my fellow members!
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

Hehe, funny thing about that. It tried to automatically update without bothering to ask. I presume because I had the FWupdate app frozen (for I guess fairly obvious reasons) it utterly failed and then complained, then demanded that I update again after a while, giving me an option to defer it. (I never did figure out how to get it to stop pestering, but I guess that's a non-issue.) So I didn't ever get a locked bootloader simply because it failed to do what it was trying to do.
Anyway, I've installed CM10 and so far so good. Well, I gave myself a good scare by forgetting to do a factory reset (*sigh* I wish I didn't have to do that, but, after all, it's a significant change going from a highly modified VZW infested ICS to a cleaner custom Jelly Bean) and it sat there stuck on the boot logo until I reread the instructions and rebooted to fix it (at least CM doesn't wipe out the CWM recovery like the stock ROM does...) I still have a LOT to do to get everything all reinstalled and reconfigured. I'm not going to be able to finish it all tonight, so won't really be able to comment about the results of the switch until tomorrow I guess. It's not helping that it's taking absolutely forever to download the Google Play package and all (and then I get to redownload a lot of the apps, though hopefully TitaniumBackup can safely restore a lot of it.)
EDIT: BTW, is it just me or do they really REALLY need to provide basic info on how to do simple tasks like the actual installation process itself, installing Google Play, and etc? I'm no stranger to googling for info, but wow what a pain to figure this all out (especially it never occurred to me that the gapps zip would have to be installed using CWM. I thought it was for the firmwares themselves only, not them and apps...)
EDIT2: Oh wow. I had no idea how much work this was really going to be! I said before that a full ROM install is something I wanted to do once. Well, I definitely want to never do this again. I'm having to fight all sorts of things. Google didn't even want to recognize my phone at first despite successfully connecting my accounts and registered apps such as, oh, I don't know, Titanium Backup Pro just for instance weren't showing up as already purchased... -.- I think I finally got it all restored and they now properly show up as owned, but I've lost hours just fighting with all of these various things...
It also seems to have serious issues with my WiFi. I haven't figured out what is going on exactly, but it seems like I'm having to turn wifi off and on a bit to get it to properly connect again -- I've put in my password so many times I'm about to go absolutely insane (unfortunately, for various reasons I'm still stuck on WEP 128-bit, so I have to type in a large hexidecimal encryption key and I'm just about ready to go postal.) Hopefully once everything is finally all setup and configured all will be well, but at the moment I've lost a pretty good bit of sleep while fighting this and barely have it up and running. I probably should have waited for an off day to do this.

Nazo said:
Hehe, funny thing about that. It tried to automatically update without bothering to ask. I presume because I had the FWupdate app frozen (for I guess fairly obvious reasons) it utterly failed and then complained, then demanded that I update again after a while, giving me an option to defer it. (I never did figure out how to get it to stop pestering, but I guess that's a non-issue.) So I didn't ever get a locked bootloader simply because it failed to do what it was trying to do.
Anyway, I've installed CM10 and so far so good. Well, I gave myself a good scare by forgetting to do a factory reset (*sigh* I wish I didn't have to do that, but, after all, it's a significant change going from a highly modified VZW infested ICS to a cleaner custom Jelly Bean) and it sat there stuck on the boot logo until I reread the instructions and rebooted to fix it (at least CM doesn't wipe out the CWM recovery like the stock ROM does...) I still have a LOT to do to get everything all reinstalled and reconfigured. I'm not going to be able to finish it all tonight, so won't really be able to comment about the results of the switch until tomorrow I guess. It's not helping that it's taking absolutely forever to download the Google Play package and all (and then I get to redownload a lot of the apps, though hopefully TitaniumBackup can safely restore a lot of it.)
EDIT: BTW, is it just me or do they really REALLY need to provide basic info on how to do simple tasks like the actual installation process itself, installing Google Play, and etc? I'm no stranger to googling for info, but wow what a pain to figure this all out (especially it never occurred to me that the gapps zip would have to be installed using CWM. I thought it was for the firmwares themselves only, not them and apps...)
EDIT2: Oh wow. I had no idea how much work this was really going to be! I said before that a full ROM install is something I wanted to do once. Well, I definitely want to never do this again. I'm having to fight all sorts of things. Google didn't even want to recognize my phone at first despite successfully connecting my accounts and registered apps such as, oh, I don't know, Titanium Backup Pro just for instance weren't showing up as already purchased... -.- I think I finally got it all restored and they now properly show up as owned, but I've lost hours just fighting with all of these various things...
It also seems to have serious issues with my WiFi. I haven't figured out what is going on exactly, but it seems like I'm having to turn wifi off and on a bit to get it to properly connect again -- I've put in my password so many times I'm about to go absolutely insane (unfortunately, for various reasons I'm still stuck on WEP 128-bit, so I have to type in a large hexidecimal encryption key and I'm just about ready to go postal.) Hopefully once everything is finally all setup and configured all will be well, but at the moment I've lost a pretty good bit of sleep while fighting this and barely have it up and running. I probably should have waited for an off day to do this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange that you are having so many issues. First off, when I flash a new ROM I put the ROM and the latest GApps on the sdcard. Do a factory reset, clear dalvik cache, install the ROM then the GApps. As far as wifi, I didn't have a problem when I ran CM10, but maybe there is something messed up in the latest version. Are you running the nightlies or the M versions?

The M version from the link above (the 2012 10-11 one.) At first I thought the issue I was having was the one from before where it would decide that my network with the hidden SSID was out of range automatically the moment it lost connection (either me leaving the area or turning off WiFi) but I not only tried to use the hidden SSID enabler, but also even went so far as to just re-enable the SSID broadcast on the router, so it's no longer hidden. It seems like it's having troubles initializing the WiFi. Maybe I somehow managed to freeze/remove an app that did something or other along these lines (though I just can't see how given that it can work, it just has issues.) I'm having to turn it off and on once or twice to get it to finally reconnect. I guess it's not bad since I have the power widget in the notifications tray that makes this a bit easier, but that doesn't make this any more fun at all to deal with. EDIT: In fact, whereas the hidden SSID issue I ran into previously had it just show up as being out of range after it lost the connection until I "forgot" the network setting and reconfigured it again, it looks like nothing shows up at all until I turn it off and on -- but I don't have to redo the network setting, so this is definitely a completely different issue. I think actually it's like it's just not correctly enabling the wifi on startup if it was left on when I rebooted so I have to turn it off and back on to get it to truly turn it on in the first place.
And yeah, I cleared the cache and did a factory reset before installing. Well, bear in mind that it naturally was showing up as a different device and all. So some initial configuration was definitely going to be required to even get started, and I was switching from ICS to JB (and completely different sorts of ROMs besides) so some initial fight was inevitable even if CM10 were the most established and stable build ever made just going from the one to the other. Actually, one interesting feature of Titanium Backup Pro (once I finally got it to recognize that I had the Pro version in the first place) is apparently the ability to change the device ID to seem to be the same as far as installed programs and such go, so now Google Play among other things thinks this is the same exact device as before now as opposed to being a new device. It's actually weird because the "new" one doesn't even show up on Google Play's settings anymore (and Google still hasn't gotten around to fixing it such that we can remove devices, so I still have my old Archos 43 PDA listed in there for instance.) Between everything, Google now is letting me once again access my software without re-buying or relying on backups (which is especially good because a few things seem to just get stuck when I try to restore them -- it just sits there forever, not ever really installing.)
BTW, I lost all the Verizon-specific special numbers such as *86 for voicemail. Apparently CM10 doesn't bother to list them (but then as they are vendor specific I guess that's not a big surprise.) Is there any sort of list of the numbers Verizon uses out there -- maybe even including whatever special numbers that might be more specific to this phone itself (such as that hidden menu or whatever)?
EDIT: Ok, so far things are starting to come together slowly but surely. One oddity though, I noticed at the end of my work shift that, rather than the usual 10% or so of battery time lost, it seemed to have lost about 20%. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's double -- it might be more like 15% many times -- but it is very odd all the same. I thought I was seeing a bad trend along these lines last night, so went ahead and put SetCPU back on there with the profile to do powersaving and serious underclocking when the screen is off and in both cases I used the "conservative" CPU governor for the normal use with the maximum CPU speed at about 1GHz (conservative is supposed to be like ondemand with a better tendency towards power saving at the expense of taking longer to scale the CPU upwards when needed.) As this is CM10, there should be no room for doubt that the CPU is being scaled down -- in fact in the performance menu I often see the CPU at a mere 384MHz (which is my minimum setting) -- so I'm just not sure what to think just yet. The settings menu for the battery life shows mostly just basic system processes like the screen, idle, and etc being the main culprits for battery usage, so again odd since the screen is the main thing yet is off during my working hours (with the very short exception of my breaks.) I don't think the automatic brightness setting is any higher or anything either and, in fact, configured it to use generally lower settings until the maximum brightness.
Guess more tweaking and testing is needed to be sure, but it's odd all the same. If anything CM10 is running LESS all the time by way of hidden services and such (though as far as things that actually show up in the likes of Android Assistant I'm having to fight far more things including an "analog clock" that isn't even in the app list so I'm hoping is just the normal clock despite the fact that "analog clock" in normal firmwares is actually a separate extra thing.) Guess I'll still have to wait and see to some extent.
Edit2: Haha, I just read that you have to recalibrate the battery meter after flashing, so it'd probably just not being very accurate is all. I grabbed an app to help do that so hopefully this is all that was going on (and if I go by Android Assistant's voltage status I'd say that it definitely is off.)
Edit3: (Just kind of adding as I go along here.) Now that all the basics are in place and I had some time and the desire to drain the battery more quickly (as part of the recalibrate process you're supposed to drain it until it automatically shuts down) so I plugged in my headphones and started listening. So far so good. I was really hoping that one of the advantages of a custom ROM would be a more precise volume control (Google really dropped the ball on that one! Sometimes you're trying to get it just right and end up stuck between either a bit painfully too loud or annoyingly too quiet with no in-between) but other than some dissapointed wishful thinking, it seems sound-wise this release of the SGS3 CM10 is just fine. I don't really hear any bloat or distortion in the bass and in general the usual modifications that they do to the sound just aren't there (or at least if they are they are subtle enough to fool my, let's say "bronze" ears since I'm definitely at the bottom of the audiophile chain, lol.) In one thread where someone asked how the Qualcom compared to the Wolfson sound-wise someone said it was a bit tinny, but if it is it's far too subtle for me to notice (and this is bearing mind that these are headphones with a slight bass roll-off, so it does seem like I'd notice any significant loss in the lower ranges pretty quickly. In this respect I'm happy or at least satisfied that nothing has gone wrong.
Also, one way or the other the wifi issue seems to have gone away. I'm guessing it was an app I had frozen that I reenabled, but that's just a guess. It's so hard to be 100% sure with these things unless you apply a long painful scientific process every single step of the way...
I'm STILL trying to figure out a way to configure the haptic feedback level. It seems to be all on or all off with no ability to reduce strength of feedback that I've found so far.

Another word to the wise, backup your imei. Not sure if that was mentioned yet
Also, your ROM will work better after a charging cycle or two. It will initially scam for media and such I believe which maybe part if the reason you're seeing slightly higher usage at first. Also, in general you'll get slightly less battery life on aosp. I don't find much use in most battery stats though. They're easily manipulated.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app

Well, I had a small accident. I was replacing some fonts and manually selecting which ones to replace with what when I threw in Arial Unicode and another font that was still slightly large. I'm assuming because the font files were so big, but it completely stopped booting. After fighting with it for hours upon hours (and I have since found what might be a font zip file for CWM now that it's far too late to do me any good -- though of course it would have had to replace those particular fonts and it seems like most of my attempts to replace them ended up replacing everything but them.) I just couldn't get a driver to install for the phone while CWM was running (I don't know if you can maybe get an adb shell or what, but without the driver you obviously can't.) In the end, I ended up having to reformat and reinstall CM10 from scratch. So far (knock on wood) none of the real problems I was having before have really repeated. (And this time around I just kept my font changes minor and no gigantic overkill fonts.) Sadly, TitaniumBackup can't restore all apps it seems (it just sort of freezes on some) but overall I've managed to restore most of it. I was waiting to make a backup in CWM until I had fully gotten everything configured and running the way I wanted it. Guess I should have done one sooner, but now I'm close to the original goal of having it basically right where I want it before making the backup (thank goodness TitaniumBackup at least was able to get the bulk of the work. And I love how it can even restore the device ID so that as far as everything is concerned this is the same phone I've always been using.)
It does still have a worse battery life compared to the stock ROM, but I guess it's not too bad. Still better than most phones no matter how you look at it. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't the battery being somewhat at fault though. I was using a third party battery by Anker. By the feel of it, it actually is surprisingly dense for a third party battery -- it weighs about the same amount as the stock battery -- so it might actually have a pretty good capacity, but at the same time I'm not 100% sure it truly is every bit as good. At first it certainly seemed to be, but maybe it's starting to wear down more quickly overall. For now I guess I'll switch back to stock (my original plan was to just store it at some 70% or so capacity so it should last and then punish these two third party batteries, but now I guess I'll consider them to be the backups instead. I don't like that the charge goes as high as 4.33V or so though. 4.2V is supposed to be considered pushing things pretty hard as it is, so I have a bad feeling about the overall lifetime of these batteries...) Again I have SetCPU hopefully helping out a bit (I like that CM10 has options for this that it can set on boot, but it doesn't have any other options than that and I like how I can have SetCPU actually lower things much further while the screen is off. I don't care if some processes take longer to, well, process while the screen is off after all, so there's no reason not to use a lower CPU setting IMO.) Actually, I was beginning to become quite concerned because the battery was actually going down just doing a few basic things like restoring backups while plugged into the charger despite having the governor on conservative, the maximum CPU frequency at 1066MHz, and the I/O set to SIO (which at least one person claims is better, though I wasn't 100% convinced from what little I could tell -- if anyone has any suggestions for the best balance between battery life and performance in this respect I'm curious. I try to keep it on something that kind of scales so that games and such still work fine without me having to change it specifically for each or something while it could still at least not kill the battery when it's not being pushed as hard.)
Interesting thing about the whole WiFi thing. I read on one thread where someone suggested changing the device name (in the developer options) to no longer have a dash in it to stop the intermittent WiFi dropouts. It's kind of ridiculous and should have absolutely no effect whatsoever on this, but so far it actually seems like it might have worked. Again, knock on wood... It's odd though because I never had that trouble with the stock firmware (then again, for all I know it didn't have a dash in its default device name and I doubt I ever changed it if it was even an option though I can't really remember one way or the other if I could have.) I won't know for sure for a while as it was kind of random before, but so far it's looking promising at least. And I haven't had any trouble with it picking up my network yet either.
BTW, I forgot to do the IMEI backup before somehow. Is it too late to for it to be any good now? I know, I know, but I was a bit excited about the prospect of going to CyanogenMod 10 in the first place and just forgot along the way I guess. I went ahead and ran it ("reboot nvbackup" from the terminal anyway -- it sure would be nice if it actually properly shut down first instead of doing a cold reboot -- but other than some tiny blue text in the corner that might or might not have said something to the effect of that it was making a backup it just flashed by and booted up normally. I was expecting a recovery menu or something.) But I don't know if it's going to do any good to have run it now. Is there anything other than the IMEI itself contained in that data that I should be concerned about? I think the IMEI is correct still (I checked the numbers in the settings at least and they seem to correspond to what I wrote down from under the battery) but I'm not sure about anything beyond the numbers themselves.

Nazo said:
Well, I had a small accident. I was replacing some fonts and manually selecting which ones to replace with what when I threw in Arial Unicode and another font that was still slightly large. I'm assuming because the font files were so big, but it completely stopped booting. After fighting with it for hours upon hours (and I have since found what might be a font zip file for CWM now that it's far too late to do me any good -- though of course it would have had to replace those particular fonts and it seems like most of my attempts to replace them ended up replacing everything but them.) I just couldn't get a driver to install for the phone while CWM was running (I don't know if you can maybe get an adb shell or what, but without the driver you obviously can't.) In the end, I ended up having to reformat and reinstall CM10 from scratch. So far (knock on wood) none of the real problems I was having before have really repeated. (And this time around I just kept my font changes minor and no gigantic overkill fonts.) Sadly, TitaniumBackup can't restore all apps it seems (it just sort of freezes on some) but overall I've managed to restore most of it. I was waiting to make a backup in CWM until I had fully gotten everything configured and running the way I wanted it. Guess I should have done one sooner, but now I'm close to the original goal of having it basically right where I want it before making the backup (thank goodness TitaniumBackup at least was able to get the bulk of the work. And I love how it can even restore the device ID so that as far as everything is concerned this is the same phone I've always been using.)
It does still have a worse battery life compared to the stock ROM, but I guess it's not too bad. Still better than most phones no matter how you look at it. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't the battery being somewhat at fault though. I was using a third party battery by Anker. By the feel of it, it actually is surprisingly dense for a third party battery -- it weighs about the same amount as the stock battery -- so it might actually have a pretty good capacity, but at the same time I'm not 100% sure it truly is every bit as good. At first it certainly seemed to be, but maybe it's starting to wear down more quickly overall. For now I guess I'll switch back to stock (my original plan was to just store it at some 70% or so capacity so it should last and then punish these two third party batteries, but now I guess I'll consider them to be the backups instead. I don't like that the charge goes as high as 4.33V or so though. 4.2V is supposed to be considered pushing things pretty hard as it is, so I have a bad feeling about the overall lifetime of these batteries...) Again I have SetCPU hopefully helping out a bit (I like that CM10 has options for this that it can set on boot, but it doesn't have any other options than that and I like how I can have SetCPU actually lower things much further while the screen is off. I don't care if some processes take longer to, well, process while the screen is off after all, so there's no reason not to use a lower CPU setting IMO.)
Interesting thing about the whole WiFi thing. I read on one thread where someone suggested changing the device name (in the developer options) to no longer have a dash in it to stop the intermittent WiFi dropouts. It's kind of ridiculous and should have absolutely no effect whatsoever on this, but so far it actually seems like it might have worked. Again, knock on wood... It's odd though because I never had that trouble with the stock firmware (then again, for all I know it didn't have a dash in its default device name and I doubt I ever changed it if it was even an option though I can't really remember one way or the other if I could have.) I won't know for sure for a while as it was kind of random before, but so far it's looking promising at least. And I haven't had any trouble with it picking up my network yet either.
BTW, I forgot to do the IMEI backup before somehow. Is it too late to for it to be any good now? I know, I know, but I was a bit excited about the prospect of going to CyanogenMod 10 in the first place and just forgot along the way I guess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No your OK you can get your IMEI underneath where your battery is. There's a tutorial on YouTube
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

[RANT] - Lollipop is not great, but tolerable

I was very excited to see this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/ver...w-to-update-to-g900voc4-5-0-keeproot-t3068546
So, I pushed ahead thinking that Lollipop has already been in the wild long enough, surely the initial kinks like WiFi drops and battery hogging have been resolved. No such luck, and after doing it, it looks like I'm going to have to do this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2784880
Lollipop is horrible. My phone no longer does one of the most basic things that's been around since the G1: Go (the F) to sleep! Seriously?!?!
Here are my other problems:
-Phone doesn't sleep on its own if timeout set for longer than 30 seconds (and even then, it's not reliable)
-WiFi doesn't reconnect after sleep (when sleep even happens, which is only when I push the button to force it). I have to toggle WiFi off/on to reconnect.
-Battery drain is pretty bad. My first month with the S5 had me barely even thinking about charging. Now, with Lollipop, I feel like I'm back on my old HTC MyTouch!
-The silly way they implemented the lockscreen. Here's my problem: I can ONLY use Settings > Sound and Notification > While locked with the option "Do not show notifications". Why? Any other setting blocks the Owner Information (Settings > Lock screen > Owner Information). If I don't, and if I'm unfortunate enough to have lost my phone, yet fortunate enough to have it found by a good samaritan, I better hope I haven't miss any calls or received any messages in the meantime. This one REALLY GRINDS MY GEARS because it's a horribly-implemented Feature ... at least the others are unintended bugs, but somebody had to give this one the green light.
-I can't adjust the icon sizes anymore. There used to be a choice of large or small icons.
-Oh, and for some bonehead reason, Samsung decided their stock ROM wouldn't have the Lollipop built-in flashlight icon.
-Another intentional feature that I can't disable: the phone keeps a history of recent activity that persists through reboots. YUCK! Why can I not disable this?!?! Again, another bonehead call that somebody had to green-light, without even considering the possibility that I might want to turn it off!
-All the UI "polishing" and improvements don't mean a thing to me, I want it to work.
I found all of the above in less than 24 hours on Lollipop! I might lose my s**t entirely if I keep it for much longer.
Here is my take on why:
Google and Apple are in a heated race to the top. They wrongly assume that what will set each apart from one another is almost entirely dependent on what a few bloggers say about some hot new feature. The paradigm appears to be something like: "Who cares if millions of loyal subscribers lose functionality when we want 100 people to have this one obscure and half-baked feature?"
Latest != Greatest
-----
EDIT:
I've had a change of heart on this. It's not too bad, I just needed to adjust a few settings and live with the other issues.

I too do not like the lolli. Bad battery life, and for some reason the Heart rate monitor led turns on whenever anything is within a half inch of it. I just can't figure that out, but it sucks the battery like a red led vampire!
Sent from my SM-G900V using XDA Premium HD app

Tldnr
Don't start a thread just to complain

Lmfao when I saw that link and clicked it, I actually had that same thread opened moments before opening this thread because I, too, am having to go back to KitKat. I laughed for a good 20 seconds. Lollipop is freaking terrible at the moment. Zero customization and Google + Samsung are forcing too much garbage on us without giving any bit of customization.

mygraine said:
I too do not like the lolli. Bad battery life, and for some reason the Heart rate monitor led turns on whenever anything is within a half inch of it. I just can't figure that out, but it sucks the battery like a red led vampire!
Sent from my SM-G900V using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heart rate monitor thing was fixed in OC4 I think, but if it still goes off a factory reset will fix it.

Agree
OP, I agree with you. It probably is the first version without the definitely improvement overall for users. It is risky to upgrade and troublesome if it didn't work out well on your devices. Wish Android 5.1 could be better than Kitkat overall.

I have absolutely no problems with the lollipop. I always had it stock from the start and just let the OTAs take over on their own. Have you tried even rebooting into recovery and wipe cache? Even though it's not a custom recovery you can still do that, also even when you dirty flash nightlies that's something that's good practice. My wife's phone had similar issues that I wasn't experiencing, until I did that to her phone and now she's having no problems. Now the general annoyances of how Samsung implemented ****, I understand, it's stupid with not having native flashlight, tethering is annoying having to use foxfi, and the lockscreen.. bleh. But other than that, everything is actually working like it is supposed to

Chiming in, Yes it's bad.
I have two lines with Verizon, both with S5 phones on them. Great device, its actually the first Android phone I've had that I did not do anything with beyond the out of the box experience. That changed when Lollipop was pushed via OTA, the most prominent issue I experienced on both of my S5s is general responsiveness issues, simple things like switching apps or launching apps sometimes would leave me with a white screen for between 5-10 seconds, an eternity especially when the device was lighting fast on 4.4.4 Kitkat. I followed every suggestion from wiping the device in Android, Wiping in recovery, wiping cache, all of these with only marginal improvements. It really is a shame that Google / Samsung did not do a bit better quality assurance on this build before it was pushed out to carriers and ultimately peoples devices. It says something that other carriers skipped 5.0 and that very rapidly 5.1 surfaced on Newer devices / Nexus devices.
As of last night both of my phones are Odin'd back to 4.4.4 and its like having a brand new phone. Sure, there might not be as much polish, but there are no features I will die without having. The only one that I can say I do miss is the feature where the device will disable the lock screen when your smart watch or home WiFi is connected.
Here's to hoping that Google eventually gets Android 5 right in the optimization department and that Samsung picks it up for the S5, and that Verizon gets it ready for OTA before I am ready to move on to a new device. Not interested in the S6 at all for its sealed nature for storage and battery, but that's for another thread on a different day.
-Nate

I Have to agree. I've given it several chances to perform to expectations but it just fails.... ( insert sad puppy face here ) no matter what I have tried it just under-performs and the biggest thing is the horrible battery life. Sooooo yeah like most of the other commentators in this thread, I'm moving back to 4.4.4......

Unfortunately/fortunately, I have found most of my battery issues were solved with a factory reset. I'm more frustrated that Samsung seems to having issues with Android Auto.

ldeveraux said:
Tldnr
Don't start a thread just to complain
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Observations, not complaints. Getting these points out in the open is an essential stepping stone to getting them fixed. Maybe, just maybe, a Producteer or architect at Google has read this by now so they know what to improve next time. Problems cannot be solved until they are defined.
---
UPDATE:
The issue with the screen not sleeping was actually related to the "Show CPU Usage" setting in the app "OS Monitor". I've used that for years on previous Android version with no problems. In Lollipop, it must be disabled.

CaptainRewind said:
Observations, not complaints. Getting these points out in the open is an essential stepping stone to getting them fixed. Maybe, just maybe, a Producteer or architect at Google has read this by now so they know what to improve next time. Problems cannot be solved until they are defined.
---
UPDATE:
The issue with the screen not sleeping was actually related to the "Show CPU Usage" setting in the app "OS Monitor". I've used that for years on previous Android version with no problems. In Lollipop, it must be disabled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, go start a petition, just like the bootloader guys, see how far it got them? No one from google reads your complaint threads and regrets their work...

ldeveraux said:
Yeah, go start a petition, just like the bootloader guys, see how far it got them? No one from google reads your complaint threads and regrets their work...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I guess that was wishful thinking.
In any case, it seems this thread was a complete waste of time. It made me feel better at the time, but looking back on it and the purpose of this site, it doesn't add any value or help anyone modify their phone. Not only that, one of my primary reasons for the OP was the screen lock issues which turned out to be an app, not the Android version.
So, I stand corrected. Live and learn. Enough said.

My wife would never let me root her phone ever. After this update either I find a way to go back a few with root or it goes against the wall. Looks like I have to start reading and figure out how to do this.

Lol I love how you described it. Sometimes you have to vent. Lol

CaptainRewind said:
UPDATE:
The issue with the screen not sleeping was actually related to the "Show CPU Usage" setting in the app "OS Monitor". I've used that for years on previous Android version with no problems. In Lollipop, it must be disabled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Care to share where this app is?
Sent from my SM-G900V using XDA Free mobile app

dk-v1 said:
Care to share where this app is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the one:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eolwral.osmonitor&hl=en
It's a great app, but something about it staying active in the Notification Bar keeps the screen awake. I still use the app, just can't keep the notification active in Lollipop.
And in case it isn't obvious, even though I still have my concerns about Lollipop, I never did go about the procedure of downgrading. It looks like a risky procedure, and I don't want to trip Knox, or worse, have a brick.

CaptainRewind said:
This is the one:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eolwral.osmonitor&hl=en
It's a great app, but something about it staying active in the Notification Bar keeps the screen awake. I still use the app, just can't keep the notification active in Lollipop.
And in case it isn't obvious, even though I still have my concerns about Lollipop, I never did go about the procedure of downgrading. It looks like a risky procedure, and I don't want to trip Knox, or worse, have a brick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, so it's not a stock app. I am still having poor battery life and overheating issues.
Sent from my SM-G900V using XDA Free mobile app

android phones seem to lag right after warranty expires. 3 phones did it already

so my galaxy s7 phone did it recently
exactly after one year warranty just expired the phone became painfully slow
it was a brand new phone sent from samsung as a replacement for my broken phone replaced under warranty
had zero problems for a whole year and i mean zero like no issues with speed or freezing at all
never dropped or dipped in the water to test the water resistance
always in a case since day one. no crazy apps. actually same exact apps that i have on all my phones.
no new apps were installed before slowdown
i already deleted some apps. cleaned up app cache individually and reset cache from boot screen
tested in safe mode and still slow
im not sure if the update was installed recently or not but the slowdown happened about 2 months ago. was there a tmobile update at that time?
im not really sure.
but this is the third phone that did this.
galaxy s5 that i also bought brand new for a year was well maintained and had no problems
that phone actually started lagging really bad and shutting down multiple times a week or restarting....
before that galaxy s3 did same thing. after exactly a year it became ridiculously slow for absolutely no reason
i install all the apps i use right out of the box. change all the settings to what i want and dont really make any changes after and it usually very stable for about a year
is there an app that i can use to troubleshoot?
or an app that will show me what component is slowing down the system in real time?
obviously something is slowing down the OS, theres gotta be an app that can trace the faulty app or file or component

i cant be the only one who noticed that

is there really no way to pinpoint what is slowing down the phone?
why do i have to reset everything every time it gets slow
isnt there an app that can diagnose what is loading up the system?
this phone is painfully slow suddenly with no apparent reason

Have you been able to view the CPU activity and the RAM allocation?
I am not sure how to do this, but if possible, it might reveal what is happening.
I would try disabling some of the applications one by one. First suspects would be:
1. Facebook
2. Google Play Store.
3. Youtube.
Disable one, then try the phone. If still the same, disable second and try etc.
Jim.

How is your device storage. Once you use more then 50% device storage android starts to lag. It's an issue with the OS.

device storage has always been about the same since brand new. which is about 80% on average.
doesnt safe mode disable all non stock apps? i tried safe mode with same result
windows has a resource monitor that helps alot but i dont know if android has any monitoring app that could help troubleshoot this

Samsung devices are known for getting laggy over time, try a different phone next time, in the meantime, do a factory reset and start fresh.

fuzzysig said:
device storage .......................... about 80% on average.
............................................
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is very suspect to me, but I am only a beginner.
Given zelendel's post about (re 50%), I would investigate further. Did you note his credentials?
What does all that data consist of?
What is the total storage capacity of the phone?
Perhaps some of that storage capacity is used as "swap" memory? Just guessing...........I am extrapolating Linux terminology here.

about 10-15 gigs of that is music/videos for airplane or when i have no internet. its been there since i got the phone
other things come and go like downloads documents videos images
im surprised theres no apps to troubleshoot the phone lagging when theres so many people having that problem and the best solution is to just reset the phone. which should be the last resort
if resetting the phone works most of the time then there should be an app that could look for conflicts as it runs in the background.

fuzzysig said:
about 10-15 gigs of that is music/videos for airplane or when i have no internet. its been there since i got the phone
other things come and go like downloads documents videos images
im surprised theres no apps to troubleshoot the phone lagging when theres so many people having that problem and the best solution is to just reset the phone. which should be the last resort
if resetting the phone works most of the time then there should be an app that could look for conflicts as it runs in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depending on the amount of storage in your device that could be a lot.
Resetting the device wipes things. You really can't find an issue if the only issue is storage space. So here is a test. Remove stuff from your device. Give yourself a clean start and then go from there. Adding stuff slowly until it slows down.
I have had dozens of devices and the only time they ever got slow was due to getting low on phone storage.
This even encludes a 5 year old Samsung that I have that is as fast as the day I got it. Mind you there is nothing on it but some games for a kid. I even disabled all of Samsungs crap they install that slows a device down.
Could also be stuff acting up in the background
Run a log cat and see if anything is hanging.

cool thanks ill try that

got my internal memory to under 50%
reset cache again
deleted few apps and moved alot of them to SD card and cleared cache for those too
heres exactly whats happening
theres a delay for every action
2 wifi seems to drop in and out now since it got slow
3 facebook and browser wouldnt load anything on wifi
but as soon as i switch to data it works
i have to restart the phone alot now and close all apps multiple times a day to get them to work
also running safe mode had no effect on speed
i dont know when the last update was from tmobile but it might have been due to crappy update im not sure at this point
i got the phone last end of summer and it worked flawlessly every single day up until last 2 months exactly when warranty expired

how does samsung find faulty hardware when i send it in for service?
do they use an app?

ok this is getting ridiculous.
the phone wen to complete ****
facebook doesnt load posts unless i restert it by closing the app
phone just feels very slow overall.
constantly lags hangs. and in general just completely crappy performance slowly degrading.
i dont know why suddenly it started happening just like my last 3 phones
after about a year theres always a sudden decrease in performance and things start bugging and lagging etc

so theres no way to figure out why its slow?
isnt there some hardware tests or system scan or something that can help point to the problem?

Sorry to read that you are still having this problem Fuzzysig.
Did you try any of the suggestions in my post #4 and/or in Zelendel's post #10?
If so, which ones did you try and what resulted from those changes?

fuzzysig said:
so theres no way to figure out why its slow?
isnt there some hardware tests or system scan or something that can help point to the problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I was a Samsung user too and faced the same problem.
I went through various threads which gave me multiple solutions: rooting, removing bloatware, cpu monitoring and many more.
None of that worked. The phone was so slow that it was not usable.
Ultimately I had to throw it and buy another phone.
Then I noticed this is not just me, all Samsung users face the same problem even the flagship users.
I swear I'll never buy a Samsung phone and never let anyone buy one.