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Debloated Stock JB Rom v1.0

I've made a debloated JB 4.1.2 rom from the latest (and probably last ever) Samsung code drop, the T699UVBMC5 release.
It mostly serves as a failsafe to determine whether issues that come up in current development roms are also occurring in stock, without having to run the heavy handed Samsung stock rom with all its useless applications.
I've removed most but not all apks, though you will find that there are no Samsung or T-Mobile apps left. There is no Wifi Calling, but for those who want that, someone can probably come up with a zip and the 3 or 4 apks that are needed to get that working again (I won't as I'm not in the US to test it).
I've dumped Touchwiz for Nova launcher as I loathe the slow default launcher.
I've added custom init.d script support and added a tethering "fix" script there that skips the t-mobile checks; someone in the US will have to test whether that's enough to skip any paywall tethering nonsense.
I've added the simplest flashlight that you can add to the lockscreen as an easy accessible torch.
Feel free to leave comments but I make no promises to put any further effort into this; if someone wants to refine this, be my guest.
Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5bvupHweE3LcjFrU1ROUjBPeWs
Instructions:
- Wipe data if you are not currently on stock JB
- If you weren't on JB bootloader and modem, flash those first; get them here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2270769
- Flash attached zip
- Done. No Gapps flashing needed, supersu already included.
Note that if you are downgrading from KK, the mountpoint for /data/media/0 changes back to /data/media so you might want to move files around in order to prevent duplication of stuff on your internal sd. If you're worried, back up your stuff.

CHANGELOG
v1.0: initial release
- added simplest Flashlight app there is
- Nova launcher as default
- Tethering "fix" in /system/etc/init.d/
- Support for userinit.sh in /system/etc/init.d/
- Removed nearly all unneeded samsung and tmobile apps
- Removed wifi calling
- Added Google setupwizard
- Updated and integrated core Google apps into rom
- Added busybox, openvpn, sqlite3
- Supersu included
- Whatever I missed
Todo:
- Figure out if vold can be made to handle ext4 mmcblk1p1 (no - need to add mount attempt in init.qcom.post_fs.sh)
- Symlink /extSdCard to /storage/extSdCard in init.d script
- add ssh client (pull from cm10 or compile)
- add bash (pull from cm10 rom or compile)

Just flashed this, but I have no WiFi. I click it on but it doesn't turn on. I'm on TWRP 2.7.0.0, and everything flashed successfully. Any ideas?
Edit: no blue tooth either

You probably weren't on the JB bootloader and modem.
Get those from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2270769

Thanks! I'll try them when I get home.

Worked great. Thank you!

Seems stable, over the last 15 hours, or so, even compared to Cyanogen builds.
(Cyanogen's contacts (people) in blue&white with everything else a nice dark screen was terrible to look at and one of theirs actually rebooted at a "minimum of 1x" a day, while the other one wouldn't show all my contacts.)
My office is behind 3 concrete walls on the 3rd floor on top of a hill, and so I get about 1/2bars of signal, so I would like to have WiFi calling, can this be accomplished, maybe as a separate flashable pkg?

Bumpity-upity...
So this has been outstandingly-stable for a day and a half, but I would like to see this with WiFi calling enabled, or I cannot get phone calls or TEXT/SMS MSGS in my office...

One other thing I noticed in testing is there is no way to put in Exchange accounts (CORPERATE as it is called on some builds).
I would willingly drop a donation if these could be resolved, and I am sure that there are others with similar concerns?

LinuxAssailant said:
So this has been outstandingly-stable for a day and a half, but I would like to see this with WiFi calling enabled, or I cannot get phone calls or TEXT/SMS MSGS in my office...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IIRC, the bounty for getting T-Mobile's Wifi calling working on *any* custom ROM was pretty large. It's not gonna happen.

LinuxAssailant said:
One other thing I noticed in testing is there is no way to put in Exchange accounts (CORPERATE as it is called on some builds).
I would willingly drop a donation if these could be resolved, and I am sure that there are others with similar concerns?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try flashing a gapps package on it to get the exchange mail option, or use a 3rd party app from the store. k9 mail is supposed to be good?

yohan4ws said:
Try flashing a gapps package on it to get the exchange mail option, or use a 3rd party app from the store. k9 mail is supposed to be good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any chance you can debloat the stock rom and leave in wifi calling?

sev said:
any chance you can debloat the stock rom and leave in wifi calling?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://thedroidguy.com/2014/04/setup-wifi-calling-android-device/#rsHg5DkxvcwQThXD.01
Sent from my SGH-T699 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

If you download the full stock image and extract it, simply push the relevant apks in /system/app to your phone. If you google a bit (samsung tmobile wifi calling apk 4.1.2) i'm sure you can find the apks that are needed.
I'm not in the US so I couldn't even test if I would do this. When you have identified the needed apks I can probably turn that into an update.zip.

Wi-Fi thetering?
Is you debloated ROM support wi-fi thetering? Does it work correctly on other carrriers (except T-Mobile)?
I know that in clean stock ROMs it is locked for working only with T-Mobile.

Same question here.
Can I use Wifi tethering with that rom.
I like lightweighted roms a lot because of the smooth handling and long lasting battery but I'd need Wifi tethering to use my tablet with the phone.
Thank you.
FSG
Update:
Unfortunately WIFI Tethering does not work. Whenever I start the program the phone reboots without warning.
Besides that the rom works well.

Plz help.....
I was on CM11 then I decided to go back on stock rom and found this......Now when every time I'm flashing this rom...everything goes smooth without any error but when I reboot into system after flashing ROM, Boot-loader and Modem my phone asks for device encryption password....!!!
Plz help...Thanks

fsg4u said:
Same question here.
Can I use Wifi tethering with that rom.
I like lightweighted roms a lot because of the smooth handling and long lasting battery but I'd need Wifi tethering to use my tablet with the phone.
Thank you.
FSG
Update:
Unfortunately WIFI Tethering does not work. Whenever I start the program the phone reboots without warning.
Besides that the rom works well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same issue. Is there a specific application I'm supposed to use?

chaosprodigy said:
I have the same issue. Is there a specific application I'm supposed to use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Same here.... its Wifi Tether not working. whenever press Save, it popsout "Hotspot Connecting" then it restarts the phone.
2. Is there a way to revert boot animation to Stock rather than Custom?
Thanks everyone

Hi! Is still anyone using this rom?
I need a lightweight one, and this looks great, but I need to be sure it works ok, and I really need tethering (from the last posts is not clear to me if that is working or not).
Wifi calling not really needed (but if someone made that work great

[ROM][OVATION][EMMC][UNOFFICIAL] Liquidsmooth KitKat v3.2

ROM:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/wkzcatpp7az4r5f/LS-KK-v3.2-2014-10-17-ovation.zip
MD5:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/piwirf8ee421dqv/LS-KK-v3.2-2014-10-17-ovation.zip.md5sum
A shoutout and thanks goes out to Rhyang for his help with the Slimkat rom, (to which this is somewhat similar).
Compiled with Sabermod toolchains. 4.8 for the rom and 4.7.4 for the kernel.
O3 optimized.
I made an attempt to fix 'OK Google'. Dunno if it's working or not (haven't tested). If it's still broken then it will be in the board files and will be a bear to try and find....
Dunno, it seems to work fairly well (ALMOST as good as Cyanogenmod 10.1 ) I kinda like it in a way (except it's KitKat).
I'll try and upload some source later. My internet connection has been giving me problems lately (took four hours or so to upload this). Even with source this is somewhat difficult to compile anyways (I fought with it some).
Cheers!

Great. I'll download now and try it out today :good::good:

Oh man I love LiquidSmooth! I am using it on my phone and have never looked back.
I guess I will have to give this a try. Thanks a lot for this. Is it also running on your yellow kernel or something different?

Which Gapps file is used with the rom please?

Yes it's using the same kernel as Slimkat except that /sound and /drivers/mfd folders have been swapped out with their CM11 kernel counterparts.
If you go into settings and 'about tablet', you will find download links to two types of gapps, full and minimal.

Things are running well. OK Google doors not appear to work too well

Jon Lee said:
Yes it's using the same kernel as Slimkat except that /sound and /drivers/mfd folders have been swapped out with their CM11 kernel counterparts.
If you go into settings and 'about tablet', you will find download links to two types of gapps, full and minimal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Jon, thanks for yet another new rom. :good: Looking pretty cool so far but as already mentioned, "Ok Google" is not working properly. I swapped out your yellow kernel with the stock CM11 kernel and Google Now is working as it should.
Since I lack the capability to compile a kernel, I simply replaced the yellow kernel boot image and the entire modules folder in /system/lib with the CM11 boot image and modules folder. I hated to lose the yellow kernel as I feel that it has better performance than stock CM11 but I love using OK Google. Btw, I did the same with your Slim rom with similar positive results.
Also, I see in the build prop that the density is set to 320DPI instead of the standard 240. I happen to prefer 320 but I would think that the masses might want the standard density and would be wondering why their desktop looks so big.
Anyway, thanks again for your contributions. It's appreciated.
Mike T

Ooh, nice!

Wow, is this fast!
So many ROMs, so little time.
I've been using CM 11 nightlies for a couple months now and didn't have many complaints. The usual CM 11 screen flicker problem when charging, some screen black outs (and crashes) on a certain screen in one of my aviation apps. That was about it. CM 11 was fairly fast and incrementally getting better all the time.
CM 11 doesn't have zRAM built in (yet), so I got a lot of app restarts when switching between my high memory aviation moving maps and other apps. But we're trying an experimental zRAM build that's helping with the HD+'s limited RAM.
But then I got a wild hair and decided to look around in the HD forum to see if perhaps Jon had an OC kernel for CM 11. Then I found his build of Liquidsmooth for the HD+. I didn't want to spend a half day wiping and installing a completely different ROM. But I'm glad I did. Wow.
I don't know if it's the overclocking or the other tweaks or all the above, but my AnTuTu score jumped from 17300 to 19100! Thanks, Jon!
(Hotplug governor seems to work best for me in both LS and CM 11. Too early to tell, but battery life doesn't seem any worse in LS.)
I assume that LS does not force the CPU to 100% when running AnTuTu, as CM 11 does. So the 19100 is probably a realistic reflection of performance.
(I haven't experimented with the I/O scheduler yet. I left it set at fiops for now. (Supposedly best for flash memory. Heretofore I've always used Deadline.) I lowered the SD cache to 512, which I found worked best in CM 11. (Using SD Booster to make that change.) FWIW, I enabled the GPU Acceleration and Super Tweaks in LS. )
[FWIW, the word "compiler" is misspelled (twice) in the "Just in Time Complier [sic]" setting.]
I'm happy to report that the screen flickering/crashes are gone when on that special page in my aviation moving map that always flickered - and sometimes crashed - in CM 11. (Requiring that I disabled HW overlays in Developer Options in CM11.) And since I set the "Low Memory Killer" to "Light" in LS, it doesn't kill my apps as aggressively as CM 11 did. (Not apples and oranges, because I was running ART in CM 11, whereas LS implies you shouldn't even try ART.) LS should be even better with zRAM. (And the boot animation is better than the frowning, scary CM alien face. )
(Speaking of zRAM, I noticed that someone in the Slimkat forum is running zRAM on Slimkat. I read here that Slim and LS are kinda the same. Is there a way to turn zRAM on it LS?)
I'd be curious to know what the major differences are between LiquidSmooth and Slimkat. Since Jon says LS is "similar" to Slimkat, why does LS exist?
Not much I could find on the web about it. I looked at the Slim home page. It's main advantage seems to be fancy interface stuff. (Although LS has PIE too.) Kinda like a toned down version of PAC? But the LS home page is silent about what makes it better/different.
Like I need to spend another half day wiping and flashing can customizing another ROM. (Titanium Backup is supposed to save data/settings. If it does, it doesn't seem to work for me. I have to reset the Settings on my apps when I restore from Titanium.)
---------- Post added at 10:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------
Every trying for that last bit of performance, some questions:
Q: On zip align apps on boot. Should I expect a toast or a notification if an app needed to be zip aligned?
Q: In CM 11, there's a Developer's Option to kill an app with a long press of the Back button. (Seems to be different from swiping "closed" in Recents, in that it completely shuts down the app.) Is there a similar trick in LS?
Q: I updated the host file for disable ads. I got a message that it worked, 0/4. Zero out of Four? That doesn't sound right. Is it?
Q: In CM's Launcher settings, you can disable transitions, stop scrolling wallpaper, etc. But I can't find a way to disable transitions - especially in the App drawer - in LS. (I see ways to change the transitions, but none of the options have "None.") Where are they or what's the trick to kill them?
Q: Last, and this is more of a Slimkat design element, but shouldn't there be a "Close All" button in the Slim Recent panel?

PMikeP said:
Q: Last, and this is more of a Slimkat design element, but shouldn't there be a "Close All" button in the Slim Recent panel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For a while SlimROMs said they wouldn't support this, but now you can close all apps in the recents panel with a two-finger pinch. I think they might even have a youtube video of this ...
I like Slim because it's minimalist -- no bloated theme engine and its associated bugs. That said, their drivers tend to be a little more out of date than CM. The framework source is also slightly different. This makes sharing code between the two a PIA sometimes. I have no familiarity with LS, so I'm not sure how applicable these comments are to it.
Looks like you've been busy Jon

rhyang said:
For a while SlimROMs said they wouldn't support this, but now you can close all apps in the recents panel with a two-finger pinch. I think they might even have a youtube video of this ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I found the pinch gesture serendipitously while trying to swipe away a running app in Recents. Still, it's problematic trying to get it to 'close all' all the time. I went back to stock Recents for now. (Favorites implementation in LS Recents might be nice, as they've implemented in Slim, but I haven't figured out how to invoke it in LS if it's there.)

Here's the device and vendor source as promised:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/z3llb4mauxo8m16/liquidsmooth.tar.gz
Let me know if you need help or any other source to build.
I kept this one very much "original"/plain, meaning I didn't add the zram script (or anything else extra).
To add zram to it, just extract the attached 60ZRM script to /system/etc/init.d
(make sure it is executable & root:shell owned), and reboot.
I believe as far as 'ok google' is concerned, the next step would be to compile with the normal vanilla Cyanogenmod defconfig (sorry, but I refuse to install Gapps just to test). Microphone works, mixer values are the same, so... There's a reason I disabled some of that IPv6 stuff...
Behind the scenes I've been (rather unsuccessfully) attempting a port of ION CMA Heap.
http://pastebin.com/J1Ptxz3W
(Which is why I shared the first build without adding any extras, because I knew I was going to break it immediately following).
BTW, I'm still very new at compiling android and it will take me some time to become better acquainted with the build process.

A hack to fix auditd error "protocol not supported"
Jon Lee said:
To add zram to it, just extract the attached 60ZRM script to /system/etc/init.d (make sure it is executable & root:shell owned), and reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks again Jon! The Permissions for your script file were correct from the start. I don't know how to make sure it was root:shell owned, but it worked nevertheless.
Now, a hack to stop auditd errors:
After I got my apps reinstalled and set late last night, I decided to run catlog, just to see what I could see.
LiquidSmooth is definitely quieter than CM 11. (In the sense of less processes starting and stopping.) To be fair, not quite apples to apples because I'm back to running Dalvik on LS and was running ART on CM 11. (ART comes alive frequently to trim memory.)
But there was one process in LS, that I didn't notice in CM 11, auditd, that just kept starting and stopping with an Error, "Protocol not supported."
Despite that fact that auditd is constantly trying to run, it doesn't stop one of the CPU cores from shutting down (with Hotplug governor), nor does it prevent the CPU from dropping to its lowest freq. So, in practice, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Still, it can't be good to have this one thread constantly starting and stopping and it bugged me.
Now, maybe I caused the problem, because I typically uninstall a lot of Google junk and I disable a lot of Google services in the junk I can't remove. (Boy, Google just keeps pinging and pinging you!) And I hadn't run catlog with a virgin build of LS to see if the auditd Error was there at first.
Having said that, I did find a few other people on Google asking about the same auditd Error. (Apparently, auditd is a process from Sun.)
On the assumption you all get the same Error too, the best way to stop this would be to find out why it's trying to start. And to stop it. (Duh.) But that's WAY beyond me. So instead, I simply renamed the auditd file in /system/bin (it's a binary) to auditd.old.
I cringe when I think about it, but it worked anyway. (Worked in the sense that I don't get the auditd Error anymore.)
(As I write this, I wonder if the "d" at the end of audit is Unix convention to signal a daemon? If so, the I suppose there's probably a start up folder or file somewhere in Linux that's trying to start it? Or do daemons start themselves?)

When streaming video on any room using yellow kernel I get occasional freezes that require powering off my nook

Can I use Yellow Kernel in CM 11?
webdroidmt said:
I swapped out your yellow kernel with the stock CM11 kernel and Google Now is working as it should.
Since I lack the capability to compile a kernel, I simply replaced the yellow kernel boot image and the entire modules folder in /system/lib with the CM11 boot image and modules folder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Clever! So, then, can I do this in reverse and swap Jon' s OC kernel into a CM 11 build?

PMikeP said:
Clever! So, then, can I do this in reverse and swap Jon' s OC kernel into a CM 11 build?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never tried but in theory, it should work. Best way to find out is to make a nandroid and try it.
Mike T

webdroidmt said:
Never tried but in theory, it should work. Best way to find out is to make a nandroid and try it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried it. Unfortunately on first boot, after immediately getting the CM set up screen, I got the message "Unfortunately, the process com.android.phone has stopped." (It didn't even go thru the process of updating apps like it normally does after a clean wipe, so something seems wrong. I re-did a second Factory Resent and /system wipe. Still no joy.)
So let's make sure I'm doing what you did. I downloaded the latest CM Nightly zip. I have Jon's LS zip. I opened both archives in 7zip.
I took Jon's boot.img from the LS zip and copied over (and replaced) CM's boot.img. I did the same with the modules folder in /system/lib. Then I closed up 7zip and tried installing the new hybrid CM 11 zip file.
But, since you said that you found that "Ok Google" didn't work for you on LS with Jon's kernel, it occurs to me that maybe you made these changes in a running install? That is, I would first install a "stock" CM 11 Nightly and then, after it's running, go in and change boot.img and modules? (I think changing the boot img in the partition would be a challenge for me.)

PMikeP said:
I tried it. Unfortunately on first boot, after immediately getting the CM set up screen, I got the message "Unfortunately, the process com.android.phone has stopped." (It didn't even go thru the process of updating apps like it normally does after a clean wipe, so something seems wrong. I re-did a Factory Resent and /system wipe. Still no joy.)
So let's make sure I'm doing what you did. I downloaded the latest CM Nightly zip. I have Jon's LS zip. I opened both archives in 7zip.
I took Jon's boot.img from the LS zip and copied over (and replaced) CM's boot.img. I did the same with the modules folder in /system/lib. Then I closed up 7zip and tried installing the new hybrid CM 11 zip file.
But, since you said that you found that "Ok Google" didn't work for you on LS with Jon's kernel, it occurs to me that maybe you made these changes in a running install? That is, I would first install a "stock" CM 11 Nightly and then, after it's running, go in and change boot.img and modules? (I think changing the boot img in the partition would be a challenge for me.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You did it right. I did a total clean install of the Liquid rom with the newly "implanted" CM11 kernel. I wouldn't mess around with the partitions, dangerous territory. :laugh:
There's possibly some "hook" that Yellow is looking for that is not contained in CM11.
After reading your post, I just decided to see if it would work in reverse. I also got the same process phone has stopped error. With the ease of making nandroid backups, stuff like this is always worth a try when it's something you want or need. I'm thrilled that it works the other way, as I do use "Ok Google" a lot on all my devices and this Liquid rom runs nicely on the Nook.
In addition, with the introduction of Lollipop, Google has revamped GN and it's even better to use than before.
Mike T

webdroidmt said:
You did it right. . . .
After reading your post, I just decided to see if it would work in reverse. I also got the same process phone has stopped error.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know I'm not alone then. Oh well, it was a promising experiment.
(Last night I tried experimenting (hacking) to get zRAM to point to a swap file on /cache. Not really a LS thing, but I might write about it later.)

I tried installing this today and it ran really nice and smoothly, but it doesnt seem to have the full HD+ screen resolution. Seemed more like 720p than 1080, large fonts and icons, just a lower resolution. Am I missing a setting or is it not working at full resolution?

Need help finding a ROM for my OPO (maybe)

I've spent literally days and days reading through threads about various ROMs, I'm hoping someone who has more experience with OPO ROMs than me can point me in the right direction - looking for a solid ROM with these features baked in:
Good ad blocker
Privacy guard
Best or close to best battery life
Can set system font
Solid : doesn't crash or have nasty wakelocks / memory leaks - want a phone that spends most of it's time nicely SLEEPING when it's in my pocket
Most of the ROMs I've looked at seem to be missing one or more of those basic features? I was thinking CM 12S will be good, but then was reading about layers and they were saying the CM theme engine is not so good in terms of security or efficiency compared to the layers theming system?
I like CM 11S pretty well at this point, but I realy want to get behind (support/use) a great ROM that comes with something like AdAway pre-installed because I want to see good ad blockers included (built into) more ROMs and I want to support that. It's deeply discouraging to me when I can't find a great ROM with ad blocking baked in. Same with Privacy Guard - I don't think any ROM should come without Privacy Guard or equivalent baked in!!!
Thank you so much for your help/advice - believe me, I HAVE searched and read many threads, but I expect there are thousands of other people who have had their OPOs for weeks or months longer than me and can give me some solid advices!
Please resist the urge to simply tell me "Just try ROMs for yourself bro!" - I have done that before (on my Galaxy S3) I probably tried about 30 - 40 diff ROMs on that phone. At the moment, I look and read when I can, but before I flash I'd like to know if there are least a couple that at least have those basic features, and if not, I wonder why?
My best guess at this point is, I will need to stay with CM 11S and ad Xposed? I used Xposed a couple different times, but most recently it broke - the device still works, just Xposed was no longer compatible once it got an OTA update... I haven't put Xposed on my OPO yet as I didn't have much time for making backups/restoring re-flashing the phone in case it gets messed up because I have my kids over spring break for the next week and a half.
The only issues/missing features I'm currently experiencing with 11S are: haven't figured out how to set my system font (or perhaps my old type of font file is no longer compatible?), don't have adds blocked in apps yet, and I want to change the color of my clock in the status bar. I will go ahead and read through threads about putting Xposed on OPO - hopefully it can be added on 11S without causing any glitches?
Oh, and my [stock/unlocked/rooted CM11s] phone is not yet working for LTE - I have Walmart Family Mobile and I recently read that they have begun supported LTE. Sometimes it's just 3G and sometimes it's H+. I will call their support sometime over the next couple days because so far all I did was move the SIM card from my S3 to the OPO and perhaps it's not properly "provisioned(?)" for LTE yet? I say that because I watched one video on Youtube where a guy had to take his OPO to the AT&T store and put his SIM card in another LTE phone, then when he put the SIM back in the OPO, LTE started working on it.

Try Vanir-Exodus, there's a link to it in my signature. It has all those features except setting the system font (which I think you'll have a hard time finding as a stock feature in a ROM anyway), and the battery life is fantastic. Plus, it's mostly original development unlike a lot of the other ROMs out there which just cherry pick commits.
Transmitted via Bacon

Thank you for responding timmaaa,
timmaaa said:
Try Vanir-Exodus, there's a link to it in my signature. It has all those features except setting the system font (which I think you'll have a hard time finding as a stock feature in a ROM anyway), and the battery life is fantastic. Plus, it's mostly original development unlike a lot of the other ROMs out there which just cherry pick commits.
Transmitted via Bacon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was all set to try Exodus - but then I read some users mentioning some problems, and I think there was some important feature(s?) I wanted missing, so then I thought - oh, well I'm actually mostly happy with 11s.
The only things missing from 11s for me ATM are 1)haven't found how to change the system font yet,Adaway doesn't seem to block all the in app ads, and it doesn't come with Xposed "baked in".
If Exodus comes with Xposed pre-installed, then wouldn't that let me change the system font?
Basically I want to: set different system font, make the status bar clock green, and not give up Privacy Guard or Profiles - and of course not have to use a ROM with poor stability or poor battery life. My purpose is for the phone to be most enjoyable and useful to use, not to try a different ROM each week and find lots of bugs/glitches/wakelocks/missing features. I went through that with the S3...

critofur said:
Thank you for responding timmaaa,
I was all set to try Exodus - but then I read some users mentioning some problems, and I think there was some important feature(s?) I wanted missing, so then I thought - oh, well I'm actually mostly happy with 11s.
The only things missing from 11s for me ATM are 1)haven't found how to change the system font yet,Adaway doesn't seem to block all the in app ads, and it doesn't come with Xposed "baked in".
If Exodus comes with Xposed pre-installed, then wouldn't that let me change the system font?
Basically I want to: set different system font, make the status bar clock green, and not give up Privacy Guard or Profiles - and of course not have to use a ROM with poor stability or poor battery life. My purpose is for the phone to be most enjoyable and useful to use, not to try a different ROM each week and find lots of bugs/glitches/wakelocks/missing features. I went through that with the S3...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly, I haven't had a single issue on Exodus. It doesn't come with Xposed pre-installed, but I'm not sure any ROM actually does. It has Privacy Guard, and it has Profiles. Battery life is excellent and it's as stable as they get.

Blisspop, or basically any ROM with CM themes do let you change the system font (it's part of themes).

like Team Nocturnal's latest ROM. Smooth, no bugs other for me. Never tried to set the font as of yet.

Every 5.1 or higher ROM I've tried had been buggier than EVERY 5.0.2 or 4.4.4 ROM I've tried.
I'm really hoping that some 5.1.x ROM comes out soon without apps crashing, graphics glitches, or wakelock problems.

critofur said:
Every 5.1 or higher ROM I've tried had been buggier than EVERY 5.0.2 or 4.4.4 ROM I've tried.
I'm really hoping that some 5.1.x ROM comes out soon without apps crashing, graphics glitches, or wakelock problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried several 5.1 ROMs that are completely bug free, you might need to look at your setup.
Transmitted via Bacon

timmaaa said:
I've tried several 5.1 ROMs that are completely bug free, you might need to look at your setup.
Transmitted via Bacon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which ROMs?
"Setup"? You're not suggesting that I should try without choosing a more reasonable DPI or give up on using the system font that I always use, or put up with ads or wakelocks, are you? Those are what I see as "basic and essential features".
I do "clean" installs and the only app I restore using Titanium Backup is "A Better Camera Unlocked". I use features such as Profiles, Users, and (hopefully) the ROM's built-in AdBlock (otherwise I use AdAway).
If a ROM requires that a third party patch be used to fix wakelock problems, then I'd consider it an "Alpha" at best?

critofur said:
Which ROMs?
"Setup"? You're not suggesting that I should try without choosing a more reasonable DPI or give up on using the system font that I always use, or put up with ads or wakelocks, are you? Those are what I see as "basic and essential features".
I do "clean" installs and the only app I restore using Titanium Backup is "A Better Camera Unlocked". I use features such as Profiles, Users, and (hopefully) the ROM's built-in AdBlock (otherwise I use AdAway).
If a ROM requires that a third party patch be used to fix wakelock problems, then I'd consider it an "Alpha" at best?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I'm not suggesting that at all. I use a custom DPI (370). I use Adaway. I don't use a custom font though. Keep in mind that certain DPI's can and do cause major issues, so you might need to tweak that a little. As far as wakelocks go, no, I wouldn't consider them an Alpha at all. Wakelocks can be found in stock ROMs from the major OEM's, and isn't always caused by the system, quite often they can be caused by third party apps, and apps from within the gapps package.

[SOLVED] Conversations and DAVx⁵ not registering on PIE/LOS 16.0

Update: Issue has been solved; however, don't ask me how. I simply don't know; all I know is all is working fine now!
Thread is going to be closed.
I'm pinging my post that I've made in a specific ROM thread here three days ago, because I haven't received any response (besides 5 thanks ).
*******************************
Two weeks ago, I purchased a used SM-G955F to become my daily used device. However, it came with stock Pie on a BL v5 i.e. I immediately knew that it will be impossible to downgrade to Oreo or even better to Nougat. For personal reasons, I rather use Nougat and all of our devices are currently running Resurrection Remix Nougat. But anyhow, no reason to lock back and I tried to make the best out of the current situation. And initially, it looked very promising. I discovered this great ROM, for which I'm very grateful to Stricted. So the current configuration of my SM-G955F is as follows:
lineage-16.0-20190922-UNOFFICIAL-dream2lte, unchanged kernel, rooted with Magisk v20.0
Magisk module as shown in screenshots but including EdXposed
as all of our devices, GApps free running with microG (powered by NanoDroid v22.4), signature spoofing patched by SmaliPatcher
Two EdXposed modules as shown in screenshot
Firewall (AFWall+), Adaway and XPrivacyLua not (yet) enabled
ROM is working really well, no issues except the below described ones but definitely no issues with root, Magisk, signature spoofing or EdXposed.
I'm not using and never will use anything of Google (only exception is the Google Play Store modified by Setialpha), Facebook etc. i.e. no Whatsapp, Google contacts or calendar etc. As messenger I use Conversations, a Jabber/XMPP client; in order to synchronise my contacts and calendar DAVx⁵.
And here are the issues that don't allow me to become the SM-G955F my daily used device:
Conversations doesn't connect to my existing Jabber account with the notification "server not found" (same applies when I try to create a new jabber account) but I can assure the server is working as I see on my other devices.
About the same applies to DAVx⁵, which is unable to connect to my email provider (posteo.de) for the synchronisation of contacts and calendar.
As far as I know the first one uses ports 8443 and 8843, the latter ports 5222 and 5269.
And I believe, very important: After I initially had the issues on LOS, I reverted back to stock Pie (i.e. bloated with all Google things and services as well as a lot of Samsung crap) but both issues are also existing on stock. First, I can clearly state they are not LOS issues or ones of this wonderful ROM.
However, as initially stated I've always been on (maximum) Nougat and don't know what Google additionally implemented or changed on the way via Oreo to Pie.
Can it be that the above mentioned ports are blocked?
Any means (e.g. via ADB) to open these ports?
Or any other idea that would allow me to become the SM-G955F with this LOS 16.0 my daily driver.
I'm happy and ready to provide any further information and logs...

try to completely disable af firewall by removing root permission and unchecking xposed and freezing it and then reboot and then try again ...sonetimes you block stuff in af that actually includes other dependencies under a general description like "system" ** only an example
also sometimes if you restore af firewall rules it might seem like you are allowing connections but af is blocking in background ...

KevMetal said:
try to completely disable af firewall by removing root permission and unchecking xposed and freezing it and then reboot and then try again ...sonetimes you block stuff in af that actually includes other dependencies under a general description like "system" ** only an example
also sometimes if you restore af firewall rules it might seem like you are allowing connections but af is blocking in background ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice but see what I also stated above:
...
And I believe, very important: After I initially had the issues on LOS, I reverted back to stock Pie (i.e. bloated with all Google things and services as well as a lot of Samsung crap) but both issues are also existing on stock. First, I can clearly state they are not LOS issues or ones of this wonderful ROM.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
During the attempt with stock Pie no firewall or Xposed was installed. The issue must be somewhere else. By the way, on the Samsung SM-G935F that I just set up a few days ago with lineage-15.1-20191016-UNOFFICIAL-microG-signed-hero2lte, everything is working as advertised. That device is currently my daily playground.

Westfalenpfeil said:
Thanks for the advice but see what I also stated above:
During the attempt with stock Pie no firewall or Xposed was installed. The issue must be somewhere else. By the way, on the Samsung SM-G935F that I just set up a few days ago with lineage-15.1-20191016-UNOFFICIAL-microG-signed-hero2lte, everything is working as advertised. That device is currently my daily playground.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok i understand . im also using a Samsung S7 as my daily driver. its still a good device despite its age .
is it possible that you have flashed a custom kernel along the way and when you returned to stock , you didnt return to stock kernel and that it is messing with the ip tables ..
have you tried looking into flashing kernel ?

KevMetal said:
ok i understand . im also using a Samsung S7 as my daily driver. its still a good device despite its age .
is it possible that you have flashed a custom kernel along the way and when you returned to stock , you didnt return to stock kernel and that it is messing with the ip tables ..
have you tried looking into flashing kernel ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No custom kernel has been flashed yet. And currently no time available to dig deeper and/or to search for suitable ROM's and kernel. The S8+ sits on its case. I'll update this thread if situation changes.
Anyhow, I appreciate the advices and ideas.

Thread closed as per request of OP

Is it worth rooting

I wanted to root my Nord, but I started to wonder is it worth it? What benefits I can aquire by rooting my phone? It has a lot of space anyway (I own 12/256 variant) so I don't care about additional space I can aquire by debloating.
Also I'm pretty happy with Oxygen OS, so I don't care about other ROMs, which can be bugged even more than OOS.
I was thinking about degoogling, but can we do a real degoogling, or it's just some kind of placebo, because they're everywhere
Other thing I was thinking was a proper call recording, can we do that with root access?
What's more there are some issues from banking apps etc.
Any other benefits? What do you guys think?

Well, that's up to you
Perhaps this similar thread helps:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/rooting-worth-it-or-hassle.4364757/
Personally, I'd say yes.
And as for google: Better to be touched inappropriately in one spot once then gang-raped for years and left to die on the harbor's bottom, eh?
Sounds harsh? Well, a googly friend did request his data some time ago - unzipped it was some 30GB and, among other things, contained his location ever since 2013 and just that meant roughly 2 location fixes every minute...
But, please, don't believe me, check their data on you for yourself:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

But can you really get rid Google from your phone? It's I was thinking about some time ago. Except flashig a LineageOS rom-like...

Alas, not really... but it does make a huge difference to not have your device bound by an account.
(BTW, Aurora is a nice replacement for the playstore!)
Even LineageOS has some hardwired G-crap... after all, android is google's child. For example, every single time you log on to your wifi, android tries to verify internet.
Still, I do prefer to minimize such bad behavior than to give up entirely.

I still prefer to root for using
- AdAway
- AFWall+
- Titanium Backup
- Clocksync
- Automate lots of things with Tasker
Even without a proper TWRP available so far the root process is not that much of a hassle if you read the instructions properly and as long as you know how to unpack the boot.img from a full OTA.

Ramihyn said:
I still prefer to root for using
- AdAway
- AFWall+
- Titanium Backup
- Clocksync
- Automate lots of things with Tasker
Even without a proper TWRP available so far the root process is not that much of a hassle if you read the instructions properly and as long as you know how to unpack the boot.img from a full OTA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For the first and second I use AdGuard. I find it way more better than Adaway in terms of blocking ads, trackers etc. Also, you can firewall apps with it too.
To be honest it's only TB and its mighty backup/restore/root/debloat abilities makes me still considering rooting my device.
I have a patched boot.img ready to flash since about two weeks. I'm sure I can manage this, but still not sure if I really want/need to.

AdAway and AFWall+ have the huge advantage compared to Adguard (Blokada would be another alternative) that they do not consume the VPN "slot" and thus almost no battery at all.
I am using my phone regularly to dial home using my own OpenVPN server (e.g. to access my music on my NAS instead of using Spotify and co.), so I cannot use VPN based ad-removal services.

wonsky21 said:
I wanted to root my Nord, but I started to wonder is it worth it? What benefits I can aquire by rooting my phone? It has a lot of space anyway (I own 12/256 variant) so I don't care about additional space I can aquire by debloating.
Also I'm pretty happy with Oxygen OS, so I don't care about other ROMs, which can be bugged even more than OOS.
I was thinking about degoogling, but can we do a real degoogling, or it's just some kind of placebo, because they're everywhere
Other thing I was thinking was a proper call recording, can we do that with root access?
What's more there are some issues from banking apps etc.
Any other benefits? What do you guys think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Degoogle....
I tried /e/Os and hope half of their marketing is true.
3/4 banking apps are running (because banks are less evil than google).
The only disappointment is not to get 48mp frontcam (like (all?) custom roms for nord).