Verizon Development Q&A - Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III

Hey guys,
So I know we all have questions about current Verizon development considering our phones are locked as of now, so I'm hoping this thread can be a place where we can ask some questions and hopefully find answers. If something like this already exists, I apologize.
Anyway, I am wondering about AOSP roms with a locked bootloader. I came from the DROID bionic, which was locked but still got liquid AOSP on an ics leak. So, as far as I know it only takes an ril crack to run AOSP rather than a custom kernel. From what I've heard ril has been cracked on the vzw s3, so does this open the door to development or am I incorrect in thinking we don't need a custom kernel (while it would certainly be nice to have one regardless).
Also, just note that I'm not asking for an eta or trying to seem impatient. Just curious about what's going on with this device since I'm a relatively new user.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Related

Seperate subforum for Nexus S 4G

So looking through the development subforum I noticed that there's a lot of roms there that will probably not work completely for the NS4G. Should there be a separate development subforum for the NS4g? This would make it easier to determine at a glance if the rom is compatible with the phone. It may at the very least help reduce questions from people new to rooting.
(Update) I'd like to make it clear that this thread is based on the assumption that NS roms do not work on NS4G phones. This has been reported on some roms(mainly, data doesn't work). If they end up being compatible with a minor tweak or something, then by all means discard this. (/update)
+1.
would also help to alleviate the sprint vs. t-mobile/cdma vs. gsm arguments that i'm starting to sense...
That's true...and those flamewars can be quite annoying. I'm sure people would appreciate not having to deal with those as often.
bump +1million.
Bump + 2,000,000
StormCell said:
Bump + 2,000,000
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Click to collapse
that's a pretty legit bump
we for sure need this now that we know the gsm roms may not work.
+1 for adding a CDMA development area so that things will remain less cluttered
OP should add a poll or make another post with a poll so people can vote
And remove [Q] from title it will only get your thread moved to q/a section
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
BrianDigital said:
+1 for adding a CDMA development area so that things will remain less cluttered
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Click to collapse
+1 for this +1 bc i'm getting a headache trying to differentiate threads and posts through this clutter
fixxxer2008 said:
we for sure need this now that we know the gsm roms may not work.
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Click to collapse
I'm not so sure that is 100% certain yet.
Support for the Nexus 4G was just added into AOSP Gingerbread branch in 2.3.4. So far none of the custom ROMs like CyanogenMod or MIUI have fully merged 2.3.4 into their code base.
There is a chance we will see "universal" ROMs that will work.
Remember, there were three Nexus S devices even before the 4G: i9020T, i9020A, and i9023. And while those are all "GSM" phones, the radios do not work on each other's 3G networks.
I agree if there is danger of easily flashing something by mistake that will brick your phone, make them separate. And when I was first planning on getting a Nexus, I wanted the same thing. But the truth is, now that I've had a Nexus for almost a month, it would suck to have all the variants split up. The ideal solution would be to all stick together to keep the community of developers larger and to have ROMs and kernels that are easily compatible or at least easily compiled for multiple devices (then each dev thread could just link to each version).
Maybe that won't work, but so far, the 4G "dev" section would have a total of like two threads in it. So why not just wait and see what happens?
rougegoat said:
So looking through the development subforum I noticed that there's a lot of roms there that will probably not work completely for the NS4G. Should there be a separate development subforum for the NS4g? This would make it easier to determine at a glance if the rom is compatible with the phone. It may at the very least help reduce questions from people new to rooting.
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Click to collapse
this might be true, we may need a separate (sub)forum for the NS4G. this phone is still very new and the developers haven't completely dissected the phones software differences yet. Netarchy has already put out a kernel that is compatible for both phones, who's to say that once the differences get sorted out that a rom can't be universal. it would be nice to have one big NS development scene instead of splitting it in two.
just my two cents
I have to agree with joeB on that one
All, just FTR I started this after seeing several ROMs reported as not working with the NS4G. This is assuming that there is some reason why the two aren't completely compatible. If they are, then by all means we should keep the layout the same as it is. I literally just got mine so I haven't had a chance to root or test it, so I'm not a good judge of that fact.
I'll update the first post with the suggestions posted in previous comments.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but there's separate boards for the gsm hero/ cdma hero :/ seems like we need different forums
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
I agree, all these NS4G'ers walking in like they own the place, laying down their threads and disrupting the nice order of things!
matt2053 said:
I'm not so sure that is 100% certain yet.
Support for the Nexus 4G was just added into AOSP Gingerbread branch in 2.3.4. So far none of the custom ROMs like CyanogenMod or MIUI have fully merged 2.3.4 into their code base.
There is a chance we will see "universal" ROMs that will work.
Remember, there were three Nexus S devices even before the 4G: i9020T, i9020A, and i9023. And while those are all "GSM" phones, the radios do not work on each other's 3G networks.
I agree if there is danger of easily flashing something by mistake that will brick your phone, make them separate. And when I was first planning on getting a Nexus, I wanted the same thing. But the truth is, now that I've had a Nexus for almost a month, it would suck to have all the variants split up. The ideal solution would be to all stick together to keep the community of developers larger and to have ROMs and kernels that are easily compatible or at least easily compiled for multiple devices (then each dev thread could just link to each version).
Maybe that won't work, but so far, the 4G "dev" section would have a total of like two threads in it. So why not just wait and see what happens?
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Click to collapse
SuperAosp 8.0 is a complete 2.3.4 custom rom.
We need a NS4G user to extract their radio kernel (D720SPRKD8) So it can be tried out using a custom rom that is fully 2.3.4 such as SuperAosp 8.0
Here is the thread that it needs to be added to:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=975105
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App
I vote for 2 sub / sub forums i.e.
xda-developers > Samsung Nexus S > Nexus S Development
xda-developers > Samsung Nexus S > Nexus S 4G Development
Keeping everything else under the same hat. The roms will have to be different but not the kernels and the rest should be generally the same.
Yes. Sprint Nexus S 4G needs it's own subforum.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
Maybe instead of creating deeper and deeper branches of a forum that's already way too branched, people and mods could be smart and label things appropriately.

[Q] What ROM would you recomend?

Up until switching to Verizon recently I have only ever used Nexus Devices. I like the Stock Android that comes with a Nexus Device. Now I have an SCH-i535 Galaxy S3 and I hate it. I have rooted and installed custom bootloaders on this, I even tried using the root66 ROM for a while until VZW pushed an update that killed it, since then I have been completely stock.
I have used an AOSP ROM on my wifes Inspire 4G for a while and it wasn't very stable, kinda turned me off on custom ROMs.
Now I think I am ready to delve into custom ROMs again with my S3 and want some recommendations from the community on what would give me the closest experience to a the stock Nexus version of Android on my S3. It would also be awesome if I could get Google Wallet working on it too but that is not a requirement.
Thanks in advance and try not to flame me too hard as this is my first post and I really am too lazy to read every post on every ROM to find what I'm looking for.
RileyKA said:
Up until switching to Verizon recently I have only ever used Nexus Devices. I like the Stock Android that comes with a Nexus Device. Now I have an SCH-i535 Galaxy S3 and I hate it. I have rooted and installed custom bootloaders on this, I even tried using the root66 ROM for a while until VZW pushed an update that killed it, since then I have been completely stock.
I have used an AOSP ROM on my wifes Inspire 4G for a while and it wasn't very stable, kinda turned me off on custom ROMs.
Now I think I am ready to delve into custom ROMs again with my S3 and want some recommendations from the community on what would give me the closest experience to a the stock Nexus version of Android on my S3. It would also be awesome if I could get Google Wallet working on it too but that is not a requirement.
Thanks in advance and try not to flame me too hard as this is my first post and I really am too lazy to read every post on every ROM to find what I'm looking for.
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Click to collapse
if youre too lazy, youre going to run into issues.
the best thing you can do is read and try roms. wallet will work with any rom as far as i know. theres a thread in the themes and apps section you should look at.
youre thread will most likely be closed like others do of this nature.
every device runs differently so your results will vary.
some roms have smaller faetures that cause people to stay. theyre all kinda unique.
if you like youre stock features checkout touchwiz roms. if you want something closer to nexus check out the AOSP roms.
if you like stock and the look of AOSP checkout the touchwiz ones that have AOSP themes.
sorry for the vague answer, but figured id give some help before the thread is closed.
good luck.
ddurandSGS3 said:
if youre too lazy, youre going to run into issues.
the best thing you can do is read and try roms. wallet will work with any rom as far as i know. theres a thread in the themes and apps section you should look at.
youre thread will most likely be closed like others do of this nature.
every device runs differently so your results will vary.
some roms have smaller faetures that cause people to stay. theyre all kinda unique.
if you like youre stock features checkout touchwiz roms. if you want something closer to nexus check out the AOSP roms.
if you like stock and the look of AOSP checkout the touchwiz ones that have AOSP themes.
sorry for the vague answer, but figured id give some help before the thread is closed.
good luck.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. I see that someone posted pretty much the same question as I did . I think I'll watch that thread also to see what comes up.

[Q] Question and Rant about getting custom recovery and flashing custom roms

So i'm well aware that the 4.3 ota has screwed over a lot of us galaxy sIII verizon users. I used to happily install custom roms over CWM Recovery. Trust me, I know this has been asked time and again but there is a twist to my post so bare with me if you are one of those people with the fame of suggesting a feeble search when searching for a post with a similar topic in this case (as in related to this particular topic) usually just causes more confusion with an assortment of vague answers from the same people who suggested the search. Anyway, I am another dummy who installed 4.3 ota after running into some problems that led me eventually to reflash stock and to my dismay I accidentally used the 4.3 rom. It goes without saying what kind of problems I had to deal with after that, especially trying to deal with the ugly touchwiz interface.
SO MY QUESTION. Is there any progress from any devs that would suggest a fix in the near future? I am highly doubtful of this, and am pretty much considering dumping this phone altogether. But if someone can at least humor me, or suggest an alternative phone on the verizon network that is worth the but, and doesn't bring with it the problems that I have now, that would be great, I'm all ears.
I know current solutions consist of safestrapping (touchwiz based only roms as far i've read), or just rooting and installing mods to ease the situation. I've also read about other possible exploits like lokis which as far I know went nowhere.
carlofabyss said:
So i'm well aware that the 4.3 ota has screwed over a lot of us galaxy sIII verizon users. I used to happily install custom roms over CWM Recovery. Trust me, I know this has been asked time and again but there is a twist to my post so bare with me if you are one of those people with the fame of suggesting a feeble search when searching for a post with a similar topic in this case (as in related to this particular topic) usually just causes more confusion with an assortment of vague answers from the same people who suggested the search. Anyway, I am another dummy who installed 4.3 ota after running into some problems that led me eventually to reflash stock and to my dismay I accidentally used the 4.3 rom. It goes without saying what kind of problems I had to deal with after that, especially trying to deal with the ugly touchwiz interface.
SO MY QUESTION. Is there any progress from any devs that would suggest a fix in the near future? I am highly doubtful of this, and am pretty much considering dumping this phone altogether. But if someone can at least humor me, or suggest an alternative phone on the verizon network that is worth the but, and doesn't bring with it the problems that I have now, that would be great, I'm all ears.
I know current solutions consist of safestrapping (touchwiz based only roms as far i've read), or just rooting and installing mods to ease the situation. I've also read about other possible exploits like lokis which as far I know went nowhere.
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Click to collapse
No known progress, could be some progress behind the scenes. Remember, if someone does find an exploit for the s5 the s3 will likely have the same vulnerability. Nobody is going to tell anybody they're working on it.
Only phones I know of that can be unlocked are the HTC m7 and m8. I think all other phones are locked, but maybe the LG phones can be unlocked.
carlofabyss said:
So i'm well aware that the 4.3 ota has screwed over a lot of us galaxy sIII verizon users. I used to happily install custom roms over CWM Recovery. Trust me, I know this has been asked time and again but there is a twist to my post so bare with me if you are one of those people with the fame of suggesting a feeble search when searching for a post with a similar topic in this case (as in related to this particular topic) usually just causes more confusion with an assortment of vague answers from the same people who suggested the search. Anyway, I am another dummy who installed 4.3 ota after running into some problems that led me eventually to reflash stock and to my dismay I accidentally used the 4.3 rom. It goes without saying what kind of problems I had to deal with after that, especially trying to deal with the ugly touchwiz interface.
SO MY QUESTION. Is there any progress from any devs that would suggest a fix in the near future? I am highly doubtful of this, and am pretty much considering dumping this phone altogether. But if someone can at least humor me, or suggest an alternative phone on the verizon network that is worth the but, and doesn't bring with it the problems that I have now, that would be great, I'm all ears.
I know current solutions consist of safestrapping (touchwiz based only roms as far i've read), or just rooting and installing mods to ease the situation. I've also read about other possible exploits like lokis which as far I know went nowhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most Motorola Droids are unlock able now! I had a Motorola RAZR m before this phone, and when the new kitkat update rolled out, the old bootloader came back in, allowing you to root with towelroot and unlock your bootloader with the motopocalypse app! Check them out. Droid RAZR m is pretty cheap. Definitely worth it if you like customizations.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using XDA Free mobile app

Compatible ROMs from AT&T forum?

I didn't see a thread for this (unless I'm blind, which is partially true). I saw a post somewhere linking to the Dirty Unicorn ROM in the ATT gs3 section and saw that they had loads of roms. I simply wondered how compatible some of these were with the vzwS3 before I just started flashing away... Or maybe there is a list somewhere I failed to see?
That reminds me...
On my samsung galaxy nexus I used to use a script called rom switcher (or something like that) that allowed you to flash lets say a sprint rom on a gsm phone or a verizon rom on sprint and so on. Without the need for porting.
However I'm not sure if something like this would be applicable to the s3 because of bootloader differences (nexus is unlocked ofc) and other possible hardware issues. Samsung uses unified architecture on gnexus (kernel level at least) across all three platforms. So I'm guessing the same applies to the s3 and if so that wouldn't be a problem in itself so I think the only real major issues would come from the bootloader.
If there are any devs or someone with more knowldge than i who want to see the script just let me know and I'll see if I can get a link to the thread it's in the galaxy nexus apps and themes section.
Anyway just an idea that may be helpful to at least those who are not locked down.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
Thanks for the response! Luckily I'm not locked which is exactly why I was curious. My friend just got a Galaxy S4 i337 and I rooted/safestrapped it for him but in the process noticed lots of Verizon and Sprint roms floating around which got me curious. There's gotta be someone here with said experience right?
Perhaps you could enlist the aid of mohammed.afaneh, shapesblue, prdog or mikeman?
All those guys are good people and always helping around the forums.
I've only had the s3 for a couple months (coming from a Galaxy Nexus r.i.p.) and locked on 4.3 when I got it so not really comfortable experimenting with things just yet. But basically the script just changes some very basic things like build.prop and updater script for example but it worked very well in my experience.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
47th_Ronin said:
Perhaps you could enlist the aid of mohammed.afaneh, shapesblue, prdog or mikeman?
All those guys are good people and always helping around the forums.
I've only had the s3 for a couple months (coming from a Galaxy Nexus r.i.p.) and locked on 4.3 when I got it so not really comfortable experimenting with things just yet. But basically the script just changes some very basic things like build.prop and updater script for example but it worked very well in my experience.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
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I messaged prdog. Even if I can't get a specific answer I'll gladly accept any information on the topic. I'll even test out a lot of the roms if it isn't too "unsafe" and put together a compatibility list for other VZW users.
pyrite123 said:
I messaged prdog. Even if I can't get a specific answer I'll gladly accept any information on the topic. I'll even test out a lot of the roms if it isn't too "unsafe" and put together a compatibility list for other VZW users.
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Ports are usually only problamatic with calls and messaging. You have to use Verizon modem and maybe even RIL cause ATT don't have CDMA. Biggest problem is you need Verizon kernel which we don't have.
prdog1 said:
Ports are usually only problamatic with calls and messaging. You have to use Verizon modem and maybe even RIL cause ATT don't have CDMA. Biggest problem is you need Verizon kernel which we don't have.
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So you're saying there is no way to flash any of the roms and get them fully functioning without a supported kernel? :sadface:
I have an Aroma addiction >;O
pyrite123 said:
So you're saying there is no way to flash any of the roms and get them fully functioning without a supported kernel? :sadface:
I have an Aroma addiction >;O
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No matter what we do we need a Kernel. Only option for now is AOSP.
prdog1 said:
No matter what we do we need a Kernel. Only option for now is AOSP.
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Click to collapse
Alright, thanks. It's a shame that companies overcomplicate things and can't all just see eye to eye. Oh well such is life. Maybe one day, when the world is taken over by Google, the world will be a happier place and things will be more simple.
[emoji16][emoji184]
Assuming everything applies to Sprint and i9300 ROMs as well?
pyrite123 said:
I didn't see a thread for this (unless I'm blind, which is partially true). I saw a post somewhere linking to the Dirty Unicorn ROM in the ATT gs3 section and saw that they had loads of roms. I simply wondered how compatible some of these were with the vzwS3 before I just started flashing away... Or maybe there is a list somewhere I failed to see?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the AOSP ROMs for the S3 that are still being actively developed have moved to putting out one unified build that works on all US variants of the S3. They will use the tag [D2LTE] in the thread title to note that. [D2VZW] is the Verizon version of the phone. So you can use ROMs that advertise compatibility with either D2LTE or D2VZW. The only problem is that as you've seen, since development for the S3 was, for a long time, specific to each carrier's model, the various D2LTE ROMs are kind of spread around among the various forums for each individual S3 model. The LiquidSmooth thread in the AT&T forum, for example, seems to be the only one that gets updated anymore, even though that ROM is built for D2LTE now and works fine on the Verizon S3. Task650's AOKP build runs fine on our phones too and can be found in the AT&T S3 forum.
If you search all forums for the tag [D2LTE], that's a decent way to get an idea of what's out there now.
ETA: I left out something which I hope you know by now: your bootloader needs to be unlocked to use anything with a D2LTE tag. If you took either the Android 4.3 or 4.4.2 updates from Verizon and locked your bootloader, you're out of luck.
Jacquestrapp said:
Most of the AOSP ROMs for the S3 that are still being actively developed have moved to putting out one unified build that works on all US variants of the S3. They will use the tag [D2LTE] in the thread title to note that. [D2VZW] is the Verizon version of the phone. So you can use ROMs that advertise compatibility with either D2LTE or D2VZW. The only problem is that as you've seen, since development for the S3 was, for a long time, specific to each carrier's model, the various D2LTE ROMs are kind of spread around among the various forums for each individual S3 model. The LiquidSmooth thread in the AT&T forum, for example, seems to be the only one that gets updated anymore, even though that ROM is built for D2LTE now and works fine on the Verizon S3. Task650's AOKP build runs fine on our phones too and can be found in the AT&T S3 forum.
If you search all forums for the tag [D2LTE], that's a decent way to get an idea of what's out there now.
ETA: I left out something which I hope you know by now: your bootloader needs to be unlocked to use anything with a D2LTE tag. If you took either the Android 4.3 or 4.4.2 updates from Verizon and locked your bootloader, you're out of luck.
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Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the tips. From my time at this forum I had kind of put two and two together and assumed that was what the tags stood for. I hadn't thought of using those tags for searching, though. And luckily I got my S3 last year when I did because my bootloader wasn't locked. And just days later I believe they released that dirty OTA

Am I in the right place? So many SGS3 forums to choose from here...

Sorry, I looked around and there's a confusing array of SGS3 forums, and they're different everytime I come back. A couple years ago I'm pretty sure that the original ones were locked, and all development had been merged into a new one. Now I'm not seeing that and the Verizon one seems active again so I'm confused on where to go.
So here's my question, hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction. My daily driver is a rooted Verizon SGS3 running the stock ROM (Android 4.4.2) and I'm really interested in upgrading it to Nougat or even Oreo if possible. I have a fair amount of experience with unlocking the bootloader and flashing new ROMs to it but there's just so much info to dig thru here and most of it's outdated so I don't know where to start. Haven't been too active with this for the past 4 years and a lot has changed.
Thanks in advance!

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