Low budget phone with great developers community support - General Questions and Answers

I'm looking for a phone to use with my secondary number. I like to install custom roms and kernel on my phones, and most of all I like to have the latest Android version installed as long as possible, with custom roms (Cyanogenmod, etc).
What would you buy? I live in Europe and I can spend about 100€ (~$100).
Thanks.

Related

[Q] Writing a Custom Rom

I bought a new android phone from a less known company in the market. The support for tweaking and customizing rom for that device is almost equal to none which can be expected for a device of a new company.
Jelly bean hasn't been released for this device yet and I want to release jelly bean rom for this device. Therefore, I want to know about how to tweak android rom/kernel for squeezing out more performance and releasing it for unsupported devices and that's the reason for buying this device. I want to learn this stuff .
I want help from the developers of this community in learning this stuff. I know the pre-requisite for this is to know how to program, and fortunatly I fulfill this criteria. I am a C++ and Java developer for almost 3 years now .
So how can I tweak android kernel and mod it for certain devices?

Looking for Android computer suggestions

Hi everyone!
So I'm in the market for an ARM-based box running Android, but unlike most users here, I'm not looking to use it as a media streaming device for my TV. Instead, I plan to use it for a development project, and I'd like something that can provide me with as "stock" of an Android experience as possible.
My requirements are:
2GB of RAM
16GB flash
Support for custom community ROMs of Android 5.1 or newer that provide an AOSP-like experience
Stable ROMs (hopefully)...
Also, I know that with phones, you have lots of custom ROM developers like Evervolv, Cyanogen, MIUI, and so on... but is there community support for these Android boxes? And if so, are there some well-known ones I should consider to help narrow my search of supported devices?
Instead of ARM, I'd concentrate of AMLOGIC based Devices. Specifically S912 if not then S905 Based ones. Traditionally developer support has been better for Beelink Devices or Xiomi Devices along with the Manufacturer's own So Called "CM".
Since for a given Chip, the firmware is practically same across the manufacturers, you can start with those that have TWRP available and go from there. Lastly Finless Rom is one of the Developer group in this category that I know of.

Looking for cheap Android phone which is good for AOSP and custom Kernels

Hi guys,
I want to find a cheap Android phone (around $100) which is good for AOSP and kernel development.
I need it cheap because I want to buy a lot of them for my classes in University (about 50 phones).
There are tons of cheap phones, but I am not sure that it will be easy to find Android and kernel sources for them.
I would prefer a vendor that open-sources all stuff, so I do not have to waste too much time for searching sources.
What would you suggest?
Max88888 said:
Hi guys,
I want to find a cheap Android phone (around $100) which is good for AOSP and kernel development.
I need it cheap because I want to buy a lot of them for my classes in University (about 50 phones).
There are tons of cheap phones, but I am not sure that it will be easy to find Android and kernel sources for them.
I would prefer a vendor that open-sources all stuff, so I do not have to waste too much time for searching sources.
What would you suggest?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe Samsung Galaxy Trend Plus (if you can find many of them)
Sent from my GT-S7580 using Tapatalk
Cheap Phones
The FIGO Virtue 2 is about as cheap as you are going to get (50 bucks) for a phone running Android 5.1 out of the box. Not exactly a fire breather but it is complete. 512MB RAM 8GB ROM MT 6580 chipset. SMALL display. Feels like a toy when you pick it up.
Just got a first partially successful attempt at TWRP to at least not bring the whole thing down when booting to recovery but at this point all it will do is show me what I need to eventually fix and let me re-boot normally, but it is a start :good:
UPDATE 18 November 2016 - TWRP now appears to be fully functional (hacked a different one into it) so looking to create or find a CM 12 ROM for it.
The 5.1 implementation is delightfully devoid of bloatware although not quite the "pico" GApps option I would prefer with CM.
Easy to root with Kingo Root (use the APK rather than the PC version) and the standard MTK tools you can find online will work with it as well.
Their web site is figoglobal.com
They have some reasonable support staff as well. People who actually respond intelligently to e-mails and offer useful replies. Rarely if ever life telephone support but it is, after all, the 21st century and these are all rather inexpensive mass produced in China devices
TRY the redmi 3s

Less custom ROMS nowadays?

I have always used custom roms since my Xperia X10. The current phone I am running is a Samsung S8 but I have had several Sony's and always there has been choice in roms. I especially used to like modified stock roms for Sony's. I am looking at a new phone and am interested in the Xperia 5 II. To my surprise there are no custom roms, but the phone hasn't been on the market for that long. So I decided to see what custom roms are available for the Xperia 1 II. By coincidence, today a version of LineageOS has been released for the 1 II but before yesterday there was nothing...Not even anything about rooting. Then I went on to look at what is available for the Galaxy S20 only to find there is relatively little to choose from compared to a few years ago for the then latest or previous flagship model. So what's happened? Is there just a lot less want for custom roms? Have other ways been found to reach the same goals? For me, one of the most important things is that I want Xprivacy Lua installed. Besides that the Xposed repo had some nice modules, for which EdXposed should be used now. Also, I liked choosing a rom with nice custom functionality added and all bull**** stripped. Are there any ways to achieve these things? Or am I simply not able to find the information because of the new board?
_JT said:
Is there just a lot less want for custom roms? Have other ways been found to reach the same goals?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lack of device trees for the new devices.
Developers have to own the device to create them.
New file structures and layouts(?)
Maybe other stuff..
Plus Android/OEM Stock OS includes about every feature, setting, options you could need....
Yeah but for example there were overclocks, choices in odexed or deodexed, debloated roms with installer etc. And now that's all gone?
I also travelled the whole custom ROM journey by Sony (Ericsson) Xperia devices. Starting with X8 and ending with XZ1 compact. And it was fun to choose between different features, custom layouts, rooting and even go the overclocking route.
At the beginning of Android era features like overclocking have been essential on non flagship phones to get decent performance. Also there have been mods like fake multitouch for single-touch Xperia X8.
But nowadays with mature Android most of this stuff is not required any longer. My XZ1c was still rooted through Magisk but the only proper use for it was AdAway. Today there are even non-root DNS ad blockers, so that is not an argument for me anymore.
Regarding custom ROMs I think it's getting more complex with every new stock android feature to maintain compatibility. Also with the introduction of SafetyNet many of the modern phones are useless with regard to safety critical apps like banking ones as soon as you switch to inoffical builds.
In my opinion the interest might have decreased for these reasons. I don't want to spend hours on getting my phone SafetyNet compliant after rooting just to enable a feature thats available without rooting (ad block in my case). Neither do I want to loose certificates for DRM stuff (which got erased in Sony devices while unlocking BL). Finally I am happy with stock ROMs by now. And for R&D purposes I still have old phones lying around which are easier to maintain with regard to SafetyNet because the hardware does not support deep attestation.
Personally I switched to Samsung S10e because Sony decided to ditch compact phones and rather releases strange 9000:1 aspect ratio devices.

Tablet custom Roms

Hi there,
I noticed that there isn't as much activity for custom Roms for tablets as there are for smartphones. I wonder why. Is it because there aren't as many tablets as smartphones and therefore there is less interest in building custom roms?
I wanted to buy a tablet for my mother ( Chuwi HiPad Max) and noticed that the manufacturer doesn't have a good reputation for updating their devices (just few security patches and that's it), so I looked here on XDA with the hope of some custom roms but couldn't find any (not only for this device which is fairly new, but for most tablets even of other brands).
Should I buy a specific tablet (not more expensive than 200€/$) that is known to have more roms? Do you have any recommendation? The tablet will be used for watching Netflix/Prime Videos/YouTube, emailing and internet surfing.
Thank you
Purchase the 8-inch Amazon Fire HD 10 ( 2021 ) tablet ( cheapest one ) or the 10-inch Lenovo Smart Tab P10 tablet: you can get both on Amazon.
JustIceForSake said:
Hi there,
I noticed that there isn't as much activity for custom Roms for tablets as there are for smartphones. I wonder why. Is it because there aren't as many tablets as smartphones and therefore there is less interest in building custom roms?
I wanted to buy a tablet for my mother ( Chuwi HiPad Max) and noticed that the manufacturer doesn't have a good reputation for updating their devices (just few security patches and that's it), so I looked here on XDA with the hope of some custom roms but couldn't find any (not only for this device which is fairly new, but for most tablets even of other brands).
Should I buy a specific tablet (not more expensive than 200€/$) that is known to have more roms? Do you have any recommendation? The tablet will be used for watching Netflix/Prime Videos/YouTube, emailing and internet surfing.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Custom rom development is based on people using the tablet and being interested in making other custom roms for their tablet. Either those who are developers don't have a need for a tablet or there are developers without an incentive (money) to develop a custom rom. Developing a custom rom takes time, even months. Why should someone invest months without pay? Thus the lack of custom roms. Now you could try your luck with generic system images. Those are kind of a custom rom. Made to run on an unlimited number of devices, smartphones and tablets included.
Fytdyh said:
Custom rom development is based on people using the tablet and being interested in making other custom roms for their tablet. Either those who are developers don't have a need for a tablet or there are developers without an incentive (money) to develop a custom rom. Developing a custom rom takes time, even months. Why should someone invest months without pay? Thus the lack of custom roms. Now you could try your luck with generic system images. Those are kind of a custom rom. Made to run on an unlimited number of devices, smartphones and tablets included.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting, thank you
Where I can find chuwi hipad max roms, how to root device and recover
hello i have the same problem ,i need the firmware !!

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