Hi all,
I have been testing android for the last couple of months and I wanted to share with those of you who did not dare or bother to try android or did so but some time ago. I do not pretend to discover anything, simply give some info to those curious as I was a few months ago...The post has not much to do with wm6.5 development so maybe should be moved elsewhere, I post here because it is where in the past I read questiosn and answers about this question.
Android Pros:
Wonderful interface and navigation concept: graphics, scrolling, effects, overall resolution and touch experience I think it is much much better, Multitasking but the UI acts more as an iPhone or Treo, when you leave an application you are exiting it, from a navigation point of view. Another thing I like is the fresh concept of the phone: the notification bar and slide-down courtain, the lock screen, the keyboard are much better. On the side of the sotware is a cloud2.0 phone, since lots of applications tend to connect to the itnernet to fetch contents, context or whatever. this means you do not need to configure or copy so many things each time you flash. It has changed a lot since the first time I tried it: wifi works perfectly, GPS and car kit works perfecly, music, etc. It is very thumb friendly, You can install it as the only OS of the phone ("nand" install) or to run it from wm ("haret") install. They work pretty well both. You can even find dual bootloaders so you can choose which OS to load each time
Android Cons:
Our beloved Polaris are old for this trip !! Android seems to have a high consumption of RAM compared to wm6.5. Regarding storage it has been solved using the sdcard as internal storage but it is not perfect since the sd card can become corrupt much more easily than in Windows. The kernels are ported from Vogue (dzo) and this means no front camera, as Vogue does not have it. BT files transfer to PC & music transfers to headsets have limitations also. Another limitation is for people like me, wanting to have installed dozens and dozens of programs, ready to use: in my experience it seems this takes a lot more of RAM and transit to the cache or sd than in Windows so this means with a 100 programs the device is almost ununsable (on the other hand, with 15 apps is 1.000 times more fluid than windows). Another con (or pro) is the learning curve of the lynux/android new environment. Seems quite easy to modify a rom, simply adding apks (cabs) to the tar file and signing it but scripting, customization, registry, programming seems to me much more complex (to make an analogy, wm6.5 is visual basic and android is java). Another big con is the shorter battery (it is shorter and the phone is more oriented to wireless connections) and the need to have a data plan. With the radio I have used for the last years, the signal is worst.
Not pros or cons but differences:
Android is great for you if you use google (I do): gmail and contact integration is great. Of course, the same goes for WM6.5 with Outlook. Android is great if you have a data plan. If you don't (I don't) you can still use it but you better be sure you now how to cut traffic to the internet. Android stock of apps are oriented to localitzation services (Gps, camera recognition of whatever is focusing, social networks, etc) while wm seems to have still a larger stock of apps, more oriented to productivity, PIM, etc. For example, wm has much better off-line navigation programs since android are all connected to gmaps or whatver.
From the point of view of people enjoying cooking roms, customizing, etc. Android+Polaris seems a step hill to climb but Polaris+wm6.5 has not a long horizon ahead. Well, I hope this helps some of you to decide it it is worth to test android or not and stik or not to the Polaris.
enjoy your devices !
Good but not a replacement POLA200
Hey cruzza i tried out near on all of the android NBHs and yes they are a joy to use on the polaris.. But and heres a big BUT it is not very stable to use as a day to day op system for phone. The cameras weird to use. After working nice for one day it started to force close with everything - there was always a surprise waiting for me when i woke my phone up. You are right bro very very nice to look at and use i cried when i had to go back to windows.. I am curious to know how does your android perform - day in day out..
I've been using Android for six month first on haret then on nand and what i can say is that a lot of concession has to be made, and some are very important regarding stability, battery life and phone functionality
You have a great ease of use and a better feeling on android but general performance and memory management are not as good as on windows mobile
I was a flashing addict and i missed a lot of phone call, gps data due to bugs, flashing time, bad battery life so i decided to turn back to windows mobile (3LIT3 VIII) and i'm very pleased with it
Well, I do agree with most of what you replied. The current release and setup I am using is quite stable for a "light" use: no front camera, no videocall (never used in wm6.5 btw), no native T9 dialer, no native birthdays notifications, limited bt file transfer are a pain but you can live with it. The rest works pretty well: bt car kit, wifi, GPS, UI navigation, phone...In terms of apps I miss lots of things: an app to filter contacts to be sync'd with bt car kit, not so good nav programs (igo, compemaps have no equivalent...). However, you can live without it and the UI is so nice to handle, that it is difficult to go back to the blurry 6.5 or 6.1 screen and I love sync with google calendar and mail. I also love the navigation and buttons concept, the courtain with the notifications and many other things. I also love the open concept behind linux and android. Remember Da_G being warned by lawyers for posting the 6.5 releases? that can not happen in Android. Some brands even support officially roms made by users !!!
The problem is that we certainly have a device old to cope with it all since Android seems to eat more RAM: this means the RAM is eaten only by having installed let's say 100 programs (in wm6.5 It performs better in my experience with so many programs). The performance of the device drops exponentially as you eat resources. Then you may want to try some more advanced setup like installing the NAND to the SD card either to a separate partition or to an enlarged data file, but then my experience so far is that the SD Card becomes unreliable (you may loose all) so yo need to transfer the backup to the pc...and that is difficult to live with for me. Another thing that wm6.5 beats android is about scripting: with mortscript it is so easy in wm6.5 !! but with Android you need a heavy pc platform and you need to learn new languages and tools, far more complex and advanced than windows equivalents.
How do I look at it? I have stopped working on my wm6.5 roms since I do not think I will last much more time on wm6.5; I will probably gift me a data plan (I never had one) and a super android terminal with a good battery, screen, accelerometer and ROM (+ all I have in the Polaris). Until then I have decided to be again a (almost) end user.
The other reason, probably the most important, to change device is that the Polaris forums (both android and polaris) have little posts, new ideas, knowledge sharing... since most people already upgraded the device, and xda developers was in my case the driver to get curious about how these devices work.
So I think wm6.5 works better in our Polaris for a heavy use thanks (thanks to all who made it posible) but Android works pretty well in our Polaris for a basic use and for evaluating wich one you like more. The easiest thing to do is test a haret installation (this means you load wm6.5 as OS, and then run haret = linux as a program that executes android) and if you like it, test nand installation with a different sd card.
pinkstuff said:
Hey cruzza i tried out near on all of the android NBHs and yes they are a joy to use on the polaris.. But and heres a big BUT it is not very stable to use as a day to day op system for phone. The cameras weird to use. After working nice for one day it started to force close with everything - there was always a surprise waiting for me when i woke my phone up. You are right bro very very nice to look at and use i cried when i had to go back to windows.. I am curious to know how does your android perform - day in day out..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the difficult part with Android is to now what to flash: if the camera or wifi do not work well these means your android kernel does not like your "rom" release. In wm6.5 we only had two kernels the old kernel and recently a "native" wm6.5 kernel.
In Android you have more kernels basically programmed by a few expert cookers and developers, mostly DZO. You have a good post by l1q1d listing setups that should work on all devices. Try and ask for help. the newest kernel is 2.6.32 I think but has no good camera drivers. The previous kernel 2.6.25 supports camera but it is quite useless in my opinion (yes, the "horrible" camera we have can perform even worse than in wm!!). These are the kernels I have been testing but probably there are others. These kernels can not be combined with any release, the cooker must adapt the rom release to the kernel. So you need to locate a working combination so you must use the combinations tested by others (or experiment yourself). You also need to become familiar with modding the NBH to suit your device screen (the way to is atools again by l1q1d) Android has several major releases (eclair, froyo, ...) froyo 2.1 is like wm6.5 more experimental so many peopple stick to android 1.5, not so nice, but they say it works in a more stable way in the Polaris. Hope this helps.
Hi there,
I'm using a different device but I thought I'd comment anyways I cannot agree more to the statement of our devices being old. I think Android is a truly magnificent OS chained to our limited resources, however it is an amazing performer.
I am still on Donut (1.6) exactly because of the same reasons, battery life, reliability and speed. I have tried and messed with a lot of Android builds ported to our devices and I couldn't get the feeling off me that with Eclair and Froyo my poor Kaiser was struggling to operate.
I chose Android because no matter what I did to Winmo I was never completely satisfied. The closest I got to it was when I got PointUI and made myself a few custom things for it. In the end the performance with video and games was not so good due to the graphics driver issue from long ago. Once I got Android I had all that I needed, a good graphics performer, didn't need to find too many extra apps to satisfy my needs, and a GUI that I truly enjoy. I am also a very heavy gmail user and I do not even have outlook installed in my computer.
I love linux and terminal, another point for Android at least in my case.
On the development side of things my heart is with C++ and C# so I still prefer the .NET side of things. Java which thankfully is similar enough to C# as to grab it and start working on it for the first time is a very interesting experience, still getting used to a new environment though.
I use this as my everyday phone and after months of continued use I can't complain. I messed with Winmo so much that it was sluggish and needed to do a hard reset every now and then anyways.
Thanks for your info. I am sure it will help other users decide to give this a try. This is the only way to know for sure what your next device will be. As for me, I don't think I can live without Android anymore.
With great respect to all developers that contribute to this forum:
WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO HACK CAMERA DRIVERS IN G TABLET HONEYCOMB ROM SO THAT WE CAN USE SKYPE AND OTHER APPS THAT NEED CAMERA FUNCTION WITHOUT DOWNGRADING ROM??
We want it...
THANK YOU.
Also i would like to say that GtabComb ROM 1.6 (now at 3.3 version) is report by many to have fully functional camera. The latest versions though do not have a working one. So what is it that made it function at that version? I personally use the Flashback 10.0 ROM.
some more remarks
Since no developer has replied i would like to ask some more things in regards to the honeycomb port camera drivers and if still noone answers then let them be....
Why don't use drivers from earlier versions with some kind of fix?
Why don't try to fetch drivers inside already installed systems that have working cameras and then make some kind of fix for g tablet?
Why does the HONEYCOMB PORT GtabComb v1.6 has a WORKING camera?
Why nobody doesn't have the slightest idea on how to make camera work on a honeycomb system?
I am not a developer myself but with all the respect i cannot understand why is it so hard to make a micro camera work at least...
Thank you.
Camera Drivers
I must personally say after trying the "Bottle of Smoke" and "Flashback" ROMs... the developers have done an amazing work. Thanks and congrats to the developers and ROM cooks.
Honeycomb has improved significantly over previous versions of Android and it is heavily comparable to other tablet (i)OSs.
In this particular case I can only miss the Camera and some flash functionality. But I can live without it considering the other improvements.
Now I ask:
Ins't it a matter of maybe getting the camera driver for say Linux and recompiling it for android?... Most manufacturers already make drivers for other OS's like android.
Cant we load the previous driver/module that worked?, the original Tap 'n Tap ROM had a working driver. Which is the filename?
Has anybody opened up the gTab and looked at the camera chip on the board, the brand, and model so we can do some research?...
Im sure we can find a solution for this issue, after all the beauty of this whole ROM thing is the amounts of flexibilty there is
If anybody has any answers to this maybe we can tray and find some solutions.
Hi All,
I have been a long time XDA user, and follow and utilize a number of threads for my android devices!
(
For the first time ever i have not been able to find what I'm looking for and so I send out a plea for help (or lay out a challenge if people prefer them) !!
I have a lenovo yoga 13 and can run a live version of android 4.2 however i do not want to complete a hard drive install due to the lack of support for the wifi and BT.
I was wandering if anyone would be able to create a yoga 13 ROM including the driver for the realtek RTL8723a wifi/bt chip.
This has been working on Ubuntu elsewhere.
My knowledge does not extend passed installing ROMs so the process to learn this is beyond my grasp. I am happy to donate to developers should this help!!
I would love to do this myself but would not even know where to begin.
I have managed to install the relevant version of android and touchscreen etc works brilliantly, i just need the ability to connect to the internet.
I guess there are two options and some advise would be great:
1 - could i use a usb wifi adaptor that would be supported by Android rather than the built in realtex card.
2 - where should i begin to look or research if i wanted to learn how to modify the install in order to include the correct kernal or support for this version (I am assuming using the working ubuntu drivers in some way). Any recommended reference materials to get me started. I appreciate this option may require quite some time to fully understand android development.
Thanks
ussasx said:
I would love to do this myself but would not even know where to begin.
I have managed to install the relevant version of android and touchscreen etc works brilliantly, i just need the ability to connect to the internet.
I guess there are two options and some advise would be great:
1 - could i use a usb wifi adaptor that would be supported by Android rather than the built in realtex card.
2 - where should i begin to look or research if i wanted to learn how to modify the install in order to include the correct kernal or support for this version (I am assuming using the working ubuntu drivers in some way). Any recommended reference materials to get me started. I appreciate this option may require quite some time to fully understand android development.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am still really struggling with this and some help would be massively appreciated :/
For those interested
ussasx said:
I am still really struggling with this and some help would be massively appreciated :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For anyone that is interested in android on the Lenovo yoga 13 check out console os
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmv/console-os-dual-boot-android-remastered-for-the-pc
I am a backer and it looks like it will be funded.
Hey guys,
first of all I wanna clarify that I'm not that kind of android user you usually meet. I owned a lot of different android phones and tried hundreds of custom roms, kernels etc.
In the last 2 years I spent much time in securing my phone. I started using roms without any Gapps. I usually used CM nightlies as a daily driver in connection with F-Droid and just installed open source apps. Whatsapp, Facebook, games and other popular roms are not important in my eyes.
Then a while back a few Ubuntu Phones were released. I use ubuntu on my PC aswell and am happy with it.
Now I think about switching from android to ubuntu to go a more secure way. I dont want to use any closed source software (OS and apps).
Im now searching for opinions from experienced developers or users who have more knowledge than me.
Please don't call me paranoid .
Greetz, Kingz
Hey Guys!
I'm new to the forum and didn't know where to post this, so if this isn't the right section to post this please put the thread in the right part. Thanks!
I bought a sony xperia pro mk16i to have a Smartphone with physical keyboard. I want to make it run fast on simple tasks like whatsapp, Web browsing, email etc. and perform OK on simple video editing and multi track audio recording. Nothing too fancy.
I have some experience in programming (Java, Actionscrip. And C++) but I never modded a phone and know absolute nothing about it. . I don't want to experiment further after modding the phone so I don't want to dive into the subject too far. I've searched for step by step instructions and tutorials but the problem is that some of them are years old (some 2011) and I don't know what today is the best way to do it.
The Phone is second hand and was already rooted and has custom recovery. The bootloader is unlockable, but i dont know if unlocked yet. I've installed SDK development kit on my pc.
Please give me up to date instructions (threads) beginning with the very basic stuff an understandable by a newbie. I Think a start to finish instruction from one source would be best, that everything fits together. Some flash the Kernel multiple times, some not at all etc bla bla. Im a bit confused and need Structure. My main questions are:
-Which Kernel should I choose (I want to overclock it to about 1,5 Ghz
-Which system runs fastest? (there is a modified OS based on Android 6)
-HOW? I know there a threads for all of this, but I dont have enough experience to choose the right sources, so links and hints would be great!
Thank you for helping!
Cheers,
Megaloadon