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.
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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.
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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
Related
But I have been reading lots of things and am still not exactly sure what the benefit of installing a rom is. I am on t-mobile pre paid, so I am only getting EDGE for the moment. So speed is not going to be an issue, because I am limited by my network.
My battery has to be charged maybe 2 times a day. That is an annoyance, and that is one thing I think will be benefited by the rom.
I have never had a smartphone. So I am just learning what my phone is actually capable of doing. I am sure I do not even know a fraction of what my phone can do, but I am loving all the neat apps I have gotten. Living wallpapers, games, virtual guitars.....google sky map (which is amazing btw),
And I have been seeing all of these themes, and tweaks. The themes I think I understand, but can I even install a theme if I have stock system?
I know this is all preferences, but some suggestions and advice would be appreciated......
The benefit as I see it is basically getting a refined and more efficient OS onto your phone. Stock phones tend to come with a lot of bloatware that can both slow down the phone and take up space, not to mention that some items can also draw away the very limited amount of battery we already have to begin with.
Generally it also opens up the phone even more to being able to do additional things that require root access, etc. The way I think about it, in a very general and broad scope, is like buying a PC from a store and just using out of the box versus taking it home, formatting it, and then putting on a scaled down version of Windows (or other OS) that doesn't have all the added junk. Again, that's a rough example but hopefully you know what I mean.
Even when my phone was stock, I didn't have to charge it twice a day.
Consider removing some of the 'just for fun' apps and see if that makes a difference in battery life.
Chances are the OP needs to disable the H+ and only activate on E...... twice a day is nuts. I've only seen that on a HTC evo.... I use mine heavyly(spelling?) And only have to charge it when I get home.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
Debloating is one of the main things.
For example, one of the DRM services in the stock AT&T ROM is a known battery hog.
The stock Rogers ROM has Carrier IQ, which is basically spyware.
Go ahead and flash yourself a custom ROM, I'm sure that'll help your battery life, because I mean 2 times a day is CRAZY, even on the Inspire's 1230mAh battery, it'll live all day (albeit, it'll be close to dead by the end, heavy usage sucks).
If you need help, go ahead and ask, but it's not hard.
My Charge has seen decreasing performance. I'm running 2.3.6, the last TBH leak, and I was initially getting Quadrant scores as high as the 1400's. Now, I'm down around 700! Needless to say, the phone has gotten laggy.
I'm using OSMonitor to look at what processes are busy, and I keep seeing k3g_wq running, using anywhere from 20% to just under 40%. Never used to see it before. I figure it's a system process, as if I kill it, it starts back right away and always has the PID of 54.
I've searched here and with Google and I can't find anything about what this process is. From the name, I might guess it has something to do with 3g access, but it's running like that even when I go into airplane mode.
Thanks for any info.
just a suggestion but since GB has officially been released i would wipe cashe,dalvik and data. Then flash infinity, tweak stock or danalo's stock debloated/deoxided rom. Then flash imoseyon's repacked voodoo kernel. you will get a quadrant score of around 2000. Im currently running infinity ext4 without tsm, imoseyon's kernel and v6 script. its been pretty good for me so far. i have no complaints.
But if anybody else has a better setup. I myself would like to know as well
Wow, that's quite a prescription! For now, I'd just like to know what that process is and why it's running, so I can try to get it to back down.
Thanks for the tips. BTW, I was running voodoo lagfix back in the day, and it got me quadrant scores similar to what I was getting with this GB ROM (not 2K, but 1600 wasn't unusual); I'd like to get back to that point. Without necessarily starting over.
You're basically going to have to. The TBH leak is really old.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using xda premium
The TBH leak isn't that old (I downloaded it on Nov 7th), and the age of it doesn't make kernel processes run away. It's GB 2.3.6, basically the same as the latest OTA. And it only started doing this recently.
I'm afraid either something I've installed recently is triggering this (the better option, as I can start uninstalling stuff until the problem goes away), or there is something gone wonky with the hardware itself that the kernel is reacting to (obviously the worst case). That wouldn't surprise me, as this is my 3rd Charge, the first two having had lost their minds, running really hot and then rebooting every few minutes (this on the stock OS, rooted with the voodoo lagfix kernel).
More data (if there's anyone out there who actually knows what that kernel process is): OS Monitor's "messages" list is flooded with this:
"k3g_work_func: fifo entries are less than we want"
I get dozens of these PER SECOND.
Again, if anyone has any insight on what that process is about, glad to hear from you. Those who say "Nuke and pave!", not so much.
Fifo is an io scheduler if I remember correctly. Try changing it and seeing what happens.
"Nuke and pave" still seems like the best option.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using xda premium
kvswim said:
Fifo is an io scheduler if I remember correctly. Try changing it and seeing what happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fifo is a general term for a queue -- "first in/first out". Many kernel processes live their lives managing queues. This one is complaining about it's queue being shorter (fewer entries) than it thinks it should have.
Did I see your name attached to a thread about trying to compile a kernel? If so, would you do me a favor, so I don't have to get all into git so I can get to the AOSP code, and grep for "k3g" and/or "k3g_wq" (still sounds to me like like "kernel 3g worker queue") and see if you can see what it does? Nothing in depth, just in general what it handles.
kvswim said:
"Nuke and pave" still seems like the best option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny thing happened today. It was getting worse and worse. Battery stats showed a shocking thing--for the first time ever, Display wasn't the biggest battery hog, it was Android OS!
So I decided to just reboot, to see if I could get it back to good enough to do backups and start the nuke-n-pave process. I had rebooted a few times over the last few days, and it didn't solve anything. Today it did! Back to normal, and I ran Quadrant twice and got a 16xx on the second run. Nice. A few hours later, and it's still good. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Oh, I had also uninstalled DropBox (which I wasn't using yet anyway) and this massive Gameloft game, "Tintin". Those didn't help, before reboot. But maybe those, coupled with the reboot, did.
I may still nuke and pave, but probably with the stock GB and just root after that. And keep hoping the CyanogenMod comes out with a ROM for it.
Thanks.
I'm gonna revive this thread because I have a similar problem. My dad's charge is fully stock. He has never messed with anything. It was fine the whole time he had it except today. He has not used it at all today (10m screen time in 12 hours, and half of that was me trying to fix it) and the battery drained down to 30% all by itself. Me being the tech guy, he gave it to me and I checked battery usage. Android OS was reported to be using 89%. Cell standby was at 3%, and display came in last at 2%.
Since "Android OS" is very generic, I used adb to put the xda version of betterbatterystats on his phone, and under process, there is this thing called "k3g_wq" with almost a full bar. Under other, it shows the phone being awake 98.2% of the time. This problem only arose today. As he has not used the phone at all, there would be no rogue apps unless something just turned up. I disabled automatic updates in the market since the stock tunewiki app updated its permissions to read SMS (spyware???).
Does anyone have a solution to this besides factory reset?
K3G is a sensor, specifically the level sensor. Not sure why it would take up system resources, but I would think turning off auto screen rotation may be one method to try and limit its use and battery drain.
See my posts on k3g_wq above. Note that I found error log message about it not having enough entries--thus my supposition that wq == worker queue. If imnuts says it's a level sensor, then that's got to be it; from the name, I figured k was for kernel and 3g was...well...3g.
In my case, I was able to see it using OS Monitor (free in the market), using consistently about 30% of the CPU, which resulted in the OS being the largest consumer of battery.
And, for me, it finally just stopped doing it, after one more reboot. Hasn't come back. But every time the phone gets a bit laggy, I go look at that process list.
On another note, we're using my Charge at work as a test phone for our Android app, as it makes it blow up like no other device we have.
I have noticed a sensor leak associated with google maps. Try opening maps in that phone, exit out of it and see if sensor usage persists. I hadn't mentioned it before assuming it was unique to my device.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
I also notice runaway usage of k3g_wq in the last week. I have stock OTA EP4 and it had been running fine for many weeks with no issue. So there has to be something that changed recently. My guesses are the new version of Google Maps, or new version of Tiny Flashlight with the "shake on lockscreen" feature. I don't see Tiny Flashlight running any services, but since I disabled the shake on lockscreen feature my k3g_wq usage seems to be OK.
I factory reset the phone and the problem disappeared.
Sent from my pocket-sized, Linux-based computer using electromagnetic radiation.
Ooooh, I just had the k3g_wq high usage issue while actively using my phone. OS Monitor showed it using 40% of processor all the time. So I tried the following:
1) disable auto-rotation. No impact.
2) started and exited maps. No impact.
3) Unistalled maps update and tiny flashlight. No impact.
3) Turned off wifi, GPS, data, BT. No impact.
4) Killed every running service that would stay killed. No impact.
5) Rebooted. This fixed it for now.
This makes me think back to the flash destroying early leak of GB for the Fascinate. This ROM would also have a similar process that got stuck using lots of CPU. On that dirty ROM, auto rotation needed to be enabled to see the issue. However once you had the problem, it wouldn't go away until reboot. The only safe thing was to disable auto rotation, reboot, and never reenable. Perhaps the Charge is now the same.
My opinion of Android and Samsung is not improving. In fact I do have some anger issues.
Give me a freaking iPhone at this point, I'll do anything for a quality engineered and tested device that actually works out of the box. Android and Google are sloppy if nothing else. Open sloppy mind you.
Scrappy1 said:
Ooooh, I just had the k3g_wq high usage issue while actively using my phone. OS Monitor showed it using 40% of processor all the time. So I tried the following:
1) disable auto-rotation. No impact.
2) started and exited maps. No impact.
3) Unistalled maps update and tiny flashlight. No impact.
3) Turned off wifi, GPS, data, BT. No impact.
4) Killed every running service that would stay killed. No impact.
5) Rebooted. This fixed it for now.
This makes me think back to the flash destroying early leak of GB for the Fascinate. This ROM would also have a similar process that got stuck using lots of CPU. On that dirty ROM, auto rotation needed to be enabled to see the issue. However once you had the problem, it wouldn't go away until reboot. The only safe thing was to disable auto rotation, reboot, and never reenable. Perhaps the Charge is now the same.
My opinion of Android and Samsung is not improving. In fact I do have some anger issues.
Give me a freaking iPhone at this point, I'll do anything for a quality engineered and tested device that actually works out of the box. Android and Google are sloppy if nothing else. Open sloppy mind you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Must resist urge to flame... Seriously though, I think it's just good practice to get used to flashing ROMs, making backups, and learning to mod your phone. I've had some curious problems that only a reflash would solve. In any case, the only thing worth a damn on the iPhone 4S is the camera. The internals are fast, but what's the point?
xdadevnube said:
Must resist urge to flame... Seriously though, I think it's just good practice to get used to flashing ROMs, making backups, and learning to mod your phone. I've had some curious problems that only a reflash would solve. In any case, the only thing worth a damn on the iPhone 4S is the camera. The internals are fast, but what's the point?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're a geek and have time to flash and mod, that's great for you. I used to be in this camp. Now I just want my phone to work without contanstaintly modifying it, babysitting process and battery life. I want a phone I could recommended to ANY friend or parent without worrying. The Charge definately isn't it.
My brief history in Android:
Samsung Fascinate: got tired of poor battery life and runaway processes.
Samsung Charge: got tired of poor battery life and runaway processed. Also, voice quality is horrendous.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Tons of reviews of runaway "Android OS" proccessed during idle. Voice quality is bad and outbound audio drops.
With each generation, problems weren't fixed and Google/Samsung continue their careless ways. To me its just sloppy, sloppy, execution.
Scrappy1 said:
I'll do anything for a quality engineered and tested device that actually works out of the box. Android and Google are sloppy if nothing else. Open sloppy mind you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're running a leaked, unofficial build that was part of the testing process, not the result of the testing process. If it's a software related problem (either due to a rogue app or to a bug with the leaked build), there's no one to blame but yourself for installing it. If it's a hardware related issue on the other hand, there's probably warranty coverage that would cover the problem.
Go back to stock, OTA, unrooted. See if the problem persists. Reinstall your apps. See if the problem persists. If it does, your phone will be "stock" and you can pursue a warranty claim.
charlie_c said:
You're running a leaked, unofficial build that was part of the testing process, not the result of the testing process. If it's a software related problem (either due to a rogue app or to a bug with the leaked build), there's no one to blame but yourself for installing it. If it's a hardware related issue on the other hand, there's probably warranty coverage that would cover the problem.
Go back to stock, OTA, unrooted. See if the problem persists. Reinstall your apps. See if the problem persists. If it does, your phone will be "stock" and you can pursue a warranty claim.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No man, i already mentioned, I'm stock OTA EP4. I'm also unrooted.
Scrappy1 said:
No man, i already mentioned, I'm stock OTA EP4. I'm also unrooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, thought you were OP
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
k3g_wq ... it came back, and then I killed it, I think
OP here.
Today I was looking at my Charge and marveling at how I was getting pretty good performance but better battery life due to my latest tweaks in SetCPU, when I looked at battery usage: Android OS was creeping up on Display as juice-user No. 1.
Uh oh.
So back to OS Monitor, and sure enough, there's k3g_wq on a steady 25-30% of the CPU.
Opened and closed Maps--no luck.
Killed its process in the process list in OS Monitor (it appeared to be swapped out, but what the heck)--no luck.
Opened another cool app called Elixir that shows you sensors, and lets you enable/disable them. Hrm...gyroscope, rotation and orientation sensors. All were off; turned each on, then back off.
Looked in OS Monitor and...YES! k3g_wq is gone!
Wild guess time, but apparently the start-up/shut-down of whichever sensor it is doesn't always work right, and leaves that service looking for its momma (that's a highly technical description of the problem, sniff).
Anyway, if you're seeing k3g_wq running wild, give that a try. Next time I do, I'll try them one at a time, see which one does the trick (assuming it's only one).
LDog
PS -- Kudos again to imnuts for letting us know it's the level sensor. Or sensors.
Allright, i've owned my Sensation for several weeks now. Today, i sent a text, and as soon as i went back to the home menu, the phone turned itself off, and rebooted. It was a pi**-off, for sure, and now im worried.
I've done some research, and apparently (correct me if im wrong) it's because of too much RAM usage. However, i set the phone to notify me when free RAM is less than 50MB, and it never did. It just pulled an auto-reboot on me.
Should i worry about this? Is it normal; basically 100% guaranteed that it is because of low RAM?
Which leads me to this: I ALWAYS questioned all the things i had running at the same time. That's probably the only thing i don't like about the phone. Things start automatically. I have an EQ program, Groove IP, and the Music Player running at the same time. I don't understand why the phone won't just close apps if they aren't in use... Or at least if there was a more streamlined way of closing apps. Not going into Settings,Apps,Manage Apps, Running... That's pretty stupid, if you ask me... If there are alternate/better methods, i'd like to know them.
Back to the point, though. Should i worry about this reboot? And, what exactly is the cause/is it RAM usage?
Do not worry unless it becomes a persistant problem.
And even then do not worry because it can probably be fixed as long as its a software issue and not a hardware problem.
And free ram isnt a big deal with android. If you use it, you will use up all your ram quickly. But android will kick things not in active use out of ram when apps in use need more ram. Having free ram is actually a waste.
Sent from a rebel ship by storing the message in an R2 unit. (Help me, XDA. You're my only hope)
Oh, ok...If it's a one-time thing, then i won't worry about it. However, i'd still like to know the cause of it.
Why does this happen?
Did your phone feel warm or hot when it switched off?
Okay, this thing about RAM is one of the biggest misconceptions I think a lot of people have regarding Android. Android doesn't use RAM like Windows. On Android, RAM usage is a good thing. It means that when you want to reload an application, it does it quickly. In other words, RAM unused is just RAM wasted on Android. And the other thing is, apps running in the background do not consume resources unless they also have background processes running as well. The other thing is that Android will automatically kill off certain processes when your RAM is low. So yea. You don't have to worry about RAM.
If you're worried about the crap that comes preinstalled with the phone, you might want to consider rooting and removing all those apps though.
Prenihility said:
Oh, ok...If it's a one-time thing, then i won't worry about it. However, i'd still like to know the cause of it.
Why does this happen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using an app killer to monitor your free ram?
That could easily be the cause. Sometimes those app killers will kill the wrong things and force a reboot.
You're better off dumping apps killers altogether. They work counter productively to the way Linux operates.
Yeah, i kill processes/apps in the settings menu, don't use any downloaded/third party apps for that purpose.
I guess i'll stop doing that...
HOWEVER, i still don't like how, for example, once i sign into Groove IP for the first time, it will stay signed in. Every consecutive time i go to use the phone again, it signs in automatically... After it wakes up from sleep mode, it will sign into Groove IP, and load things like the EQ program i use. I won't worry too much about the EQ, but other apps like Groove IP that are connected to some sort of signal, i don't want automatically running... Is it really not safe to just terminate a process in task manager?
Finally, on to the subject of reboots...Since owning the phone for...I don't know...A few weeks now? I've only actually turned it off/rebooted once...
Did that contribute to the random reboot? Was that not a good move, on my part, to pretty much always keep the phone on (although in sleep mode when not in use, of course...) ?
Prenihility said:
Finally, on to the subject of reboots...Since owning the phone for...I don't know...A few weeks now? I've only actually turned it off/rebooted once...
Did that contribute to the random reboot? Was that not a good move, on my part, to pretty much always keep the phone on (although in sleep mode when not in use, of course...) ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it could have. Try reboot the day every week at the bare minimum. Ideally, I'd suggest rebooting every 4 days or so.
Prenihility said:
Yeah, i kill processes/apps in the settings menu, don't use any downloaded/third party apps for that purpose.
I guess i'll stop doing that...
HOWEVER, i still don't like how, for example, once i sign into Groove IP for the first time, it will stay signed in. Every consecutive time i go to use the phone again, it signs in automatically... After it wakes up from sleep mode, it will sign into Groove IP, and load things like the EQ program i use. I won't worry too much about the EQ, but other apps like Groove IP that are connected to some sort of signal, i don't want automatically running... Is it really not safe to just terminate a process in task manager?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are manually killing an app that's causing problems / pissing you off / or because you just don't like it's face, then no. That's okay. It's the automated app killers that kill everything as soon as you close them and then keep killing and killing like battle droids gone berserk that you want to avoid. It's that constant killing, which means an app restart and power usage, that will drain battery. And being unmonitored they can kill the wrong things that cause system instability.
But if you have 1 app that's bothering you you can kill it through the apps menu. That's normal.
The bigger problem is an app that constantly turns itself on like that. I hate those. There should be an option in the app settings to prevent that from happening. If there isn't, it's a bad app no matter how well it does what it's supposed to do.
You can use gemini app manager to change autorun settings for each app individually and autokiller memory optimizer to change the preset android memory limits so your phone automatically closes apps itself a little bit sooner.
Both are free apps but require root.
Gemini is really good. Certain apps start just because you received a text or plugged your usb in. Or your signal changed. I put a stop to that straight away!! Just don't change the settings for system apps.
sent from my Sensation XE
Happened again... Alright, im being irritated by this restarting problem... My phone was just idle, i haven't touched it for hours. It was next to me on my desk, and i heard/felt the vibration upon restart.
Should i call my service provider for a replacement? This is ridiculous... I didn't get this thing expecting it to restart on me.
Prenihility said:
Happened again... Alright, im being irritated by this restarting problem... My phone was just idle, i haven't touched it for hours. It was next to me on my desk, and i heard/felt the vibration upon restart.
Should i call my service provider for a replacement? This is ridiculous... I didn't get this thing expecting it to restart on me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are going to make you go through a lot of TS steps that you can do prior to calling them.
Have you downloaded any apps recently, say just before you had the problem the first time. It could be the fault of a buggy app, (Usually not likely, but is possible). Are you rooted or fully stock?
As for the Groove ID - look in settings, there may be a way to stop the auto sign in. Just an idea, I don't use it.
I'm not having anymore problems with Groove IP auto sign in. The "lite" version of the app doesn't have the option to disable it, anyway. I just don't run it, unless i need to use it.
This is the second or third time it's restarted. I believe it's the second time, since the 23rd of April, when i created this thread.
As far as rooted or not rooted, i'm not sure what that means. I think it's in regards to the SD card. No, i haven't messed around with it. It's stock. Other than adding some music to the phone. Nothing has been messed around with.
I'm really annoyed by the fact that this happened AGAIN during idle/sleep mode. I wasn't even using the phone. It was just sitting there. It's quite irritating.
Anyhow. What are all the possibilities of the reboots? I'm starting to think it's not lack of memory. Supposedly the RAM-related issue is Sense restarting because of lack of RAM.
The phone vibrates, and the HTC logo comes up, and finally comes to the Home screen.
The only good news, really, in the end, is that it's only happened a couple of times in such a long span of time... I seriously hope i get this figured out, and it never happens again. Or else i'm getting a replacement, for piece of mind, and as a solution.
Prenihility said:
I'm not having anymore problems with Groove IP auto sign in. The "lite" version of the app doesn't have the option to disable it, anyway. I just don't run it, unless i need to use it.
This is the second or third time it's restarted. I believe it's the second time, since the 23rd of April, when i created this thread.
As far as rooted or not rooted, i'm not sure what that means. I think it's in regards to the SD card. No, i haven't messed around with it. It's stock. Other than adding some music to the phone. Nothing has been messed around with.
I'm really annoyed by the fact that this happened AGAIN during idle/sleep mode. I wasn't even using the phone. It was just sitting there. It's quite irritating.
Anyhow. What are all the possibilities of the reboots? I'm starting to think it's not lack of memory. Supposedly the RAM-related issue is Sense restarting because of lack of RAM.
The phone vibrates, and the HTC logo comes up, and finally comes to the Home screen.
The only good news, really, in the end, is that it's only happened a couple of times in such a long span of time... I seriously hope i get this figured out, and it never happens again. Or else i'm getting a replacement, for piece of mind, and as a solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Referring back to my previous question, did you install any apps prior to the first reboot?
l2icky said:
Referring back to my previous question, did you install any apps prior to the first reboot?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oops. Forgot, sorry... Uuuummmm... Either the Equalizer App, or Groove IP. The only ones i've downloaded. Although im leaning more towards Groove IP (doesn't start up anymore though; because i don't want it to. Never launched it).
Regardless, are you saying i should uninstall it?
Also, one thing i want to add, that i find a bit strange. If i restart the phone, the display brightness will be noticeably brighter than what i actually set it to. It's almost as if i have to remind the phone of the brightness level i set in display options. All i have to do is go to the brightness setting, and touch the slider.
Is this normal behaviour? For it to be brighter upon startup? (even when reaching the home screen/whilst the main UI, past HTC logo screen)
Prenihility said:
Oops. Forgot, sorry... Uuuummmm... Either the Equalizer App, or Groove IP. The only ones i've downloaded. Although im leaning more towards Groove IP (doesn't start up anymore though; because i don't want it to. Never launched it).
Regardless, are you saying i should uninstall it?
Also, one thing i want to add, that i find a bit strange. If i restart the phone, the display brightness will be noticeably brighter than what i actually set it to. It's almost as if i have to remind the phone of the brightness level i set in display options. All i have to do is go to the brightness setting, and touch the slider.
Is this normal behaviour? For it to be brighter upon startup? (even when reaching the home screen/whilst the main UI, past HTC logo screen)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a possibility that the app is causing the problem, though it is a small one. You might uninstall it and try it for a while, see if the device continues to reboot.
As far as your quirky brightness issue... It's technology. No two devices are the same, even if they have the "same" hardware/software. That almost seems like a fluke happenstance. Just a minor bug in your software.
You might want to read into S-Offing your phone and rooting it. Do some research into it. There are a lot of perks of rooting your device and going with custom ROMs. And if you ever have issues and have to get a replacement, as long as you can turn the device on and it's functional, you can always set it back to S-On with no root.
I've learned over the years, and this is just my personal opinion, stock ROMs are more likely and it seems as if they are meant to have more problems, however it's like anything else in the tech world, it's bound to deteriorate over time. It's how they keep you buying their product.
There are some really good guides that lead through the process step for step if you decide to S-off and root. And there are a lot of helpful people on XDA that will answer any of your questions.
l2icky said:
It's a possibility that the app is causing the problem, though it is a small one. You might uninstall it and try it for a while, see if the device continues to reboot.
As far as your quirky brightness issue... It's technology. No two devices are the same, even if they have the "same" hardware/software. That almost seems like a fluke happenstance. Just a minor bug in your software.
You might want to read into S-Offing your phone and rooting it. Do some research into it. There are a lot of perks of rooting your device and going with custom ROMs. And if you ever have issues and have to get a replacement, as long as you can turn the device on and it's functional, you can always set it back to S-On with no root.
I've learned over the years, and this is just my personal opinion, stock ROMs are more likely and it seems as if they are meant to have more problems, however it's like anything else in the tech world, it's bound to deteriorate over time. It's how they keep you buying their product.
There are some really good guides that lead through the process step for step if you decide to S-off and root. And there are a lot of helpful people on XDA that will answer any of your questions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Allright. Went to grab my phone just now, and saw the error notification. The old "abnormal reset" notification.
I'm going to assume it reset on its own once again. So....
Any insight into this? Why's is reseting itself? Hasn't happened in a while... but... still.
It was just sitting there, idling.
I've searched around, but all the threads I've found for wifi-disabling solutions floating around seem to not be doing the trick(to be fair, I haven't tried eleting system/etc as I'm still unsure if that solution was specific to that phone). Basically, I bought my G2x secondhand and the previous owner made it very clear that he dropped it a few times and, after one of the drops, wifi and bluetooth would endlessly try to connect if switched on, but never actually connect and, after testing various roms and fixes, I confirmed he was telling the truth. It seemed that the portion of the SOC responsible for these functions had fried or become dislodged. Of course, for $50, coming from a Sidekick 4g(RIP) and only needing a good device until income tax returns when I can get a decent future-proof upgrade, I couldn't have cared less. I'm running Benee's cm10 hackfest, so you see this is a problem for me. Is there any way to completely remove these two functions from the system? All they're able to do is idly waste battery life. The phone and ROM run great otherwise and I've gone into the secret menu and set it to WCDMA/GSM Auto, so I am 99 percent certain the wifi is the issue. Also, please don't suggest downgrading to an ICS or GB ROM as I've become quite spoiled by JB's extra little frills to the point that, if nobody can help me, I'll just be content to go for a 3500mah fat battery. Thanks!
shadow2by4 said:
I've searched around, but all the threads I've found for wifi-disabling solutions floating around seem to not be doing the trick(to be fair, I haven't tried eleting system/etc as I'm still unsure if that solution was specific to that phone). Basically, I bought my G2x secondhand and the previous owner made it very clear that he dropped it a few times and, after one of the drops, wifi and bluetooth would endlessly try to connect if switched on, but never actually connect and, after testing various roms and fixes, I confirmed he was telling the truth. It seemed that the portion of the SOC responsible for these functions had fried or become dislodged. Of course, for $50, coming from a Sidekick 4g(RIP) and only needing a good device until income tax returns when I can get a decent future-proof upgrade, I couldn't have cared less. I'm running Benee's cm10 hackfest, so you see this is a problem for me. Is there any way to completely remove these two functions from the system? All they're able to do is idly waste battery life. The phone and ROM run great otherwise and I've gone into the secret menu and set it to WCDMA/GSM Auto, so I am 99 percent certain the wifi is the issue. Also, please don't suggest downgrading to an ICS or GB ROM as I've become quite spoiled by JB's extra little frills to the point that, if nobody can help me, I'll just be content to go for a 3500mah fat battery. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2242278
^^^This thread said this, "Certificate installer com.android.certinstaller CertInstaller.apk /No/ (Web?) Certificate Installer. When removed, the WIFI will not be turned on (Automatically turned off)."
I would try removing CertInstaller.apk from the System/App directory. Everything in android is controlled by an app (apk). I am fairly confident you will be able to figure out how to completely shut down, remove or disable wifi capabilities with the removal or editing of a certain apk. Before fiddling around and removing things in the System folder PLEASE make a back up of your current setup in case you delete something IMPORTANT and your phone goes into boot loop or something worse.
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