As posted in the Title, I need a tablet to use for dev/test/demo purposes. Mostly B2B applications. I'm having a hard time finding one that meets my needs. Please help!
Preferences:
1. Would like to stay as close to stock android as possible.
2. Updates and Support. There are two routes in mind, a very cheap device that we would have to replace frequently, or preferably a more solid device that will get updates for years to come.
Side note: Root and custom rom might get approved with a device with a factory unlock-able bootloader. This would have to be from a company with a good track record like OnePlus for example.
In the past we've used Nexus devices for dev/test/demo purposes. Now that those are no longer made, we'll probably get a pixel 3a for a phone form factor. They've supported the original for over 3 years now. Correct me if that's not a good option.
Mods, feel free to move this if there is a better place for this question.
Related
I'm currently trying to choose my first smartphone, and am having real trouble narrowing it down. At the moment it's between an S3, One X+ or a Nexus 4. However this isn't a versus thread, I'm asking about the development communities for Samsung and HTC devices.
1. Which company (HTC and Samsung) is more supportive to developers, and which flagship phone has the best support from developers themselves?
I'm guessing since the S3 is more popular, it has better developer support, but I also hear that Samsung refuse to release an Exonys source code or something, whereas HTC allows bootloaders to be unlocked, but that doesn't mean it's particularly easy to install custom kernals or roms to HTC devices. Do either of those issues affect the S3 or One X?
2. Which device out of the S3 and One X currently has stable roms that have most original features working (like fully functioning GPS, wifi, camera and all that)?
If I were to get a non-Nexus device, ideally I'd like to flash it back to stock Android to have them as close as a Nexus device as possible, or with a custom rom based on stock android.
3. If you had to order all the manufacturers in terms of the quality and quantity of bug-free custom roms available, and ease of installing them, how would you order it?
For example, Nexus > Samsung > Motorola > HTC > Asus, or whatever.
Also for those asking why I don't simply go for the Nexus 4, it's because the build quality issues frighten me a bit.
Smeghead_ said:
I'm currently trying to choose my first smartphone, and am having real trouble narrowing it down. At the moment it's between an S3, One X+ or a Nexus 4. However this isn't a versus thread, I'm asking about the development communities for Samsung and HTC devices.
1. Which company (HTC and Samsung) is more supportive to developers, and which flagship phone has the best support from developers themselves?
I'm guessing since the S3 is more popular, it has better developer support, but I also hear that Samsung refuse to release an Exonys source code or something, whereas HTC allows bootloaders to be unlocked, but that doesn't mean it's particularly easy to install custom kernals or roms to HTC devices. Do either of those issues affect the S3 or One X?
2. Which device out of the S3 and One X currently has stable roms that have most original features working (like fully functioning GPS, wifi, camera and all that)?
If I were to get a non-Nexus device, ideally I'd like to flash it back to stock Android to have them as close as a Nexus device as possible, or with a custom rom based on stock android.
3. If you had to order all the manufacturers in terms of the quality and quantity of bug-free custom roms available, and ease of installing them, how would you order it?
For example, Nexus > Samsung > Motorola > HTC > Asus, or whatever.
Also for those asking why I don't simply go for the Nexus 4, it's because the build quality issues frighten me a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm gonna km this now before it turns into what we both know will happen.
I will put it to you this way. No ROM is bug free and never will be. To many personal options for the dev the test out. XDA is not about ROMs. It is about development. While you may think they are the same, they are not. Development is all about trying new things and making new stuff up as you go along. Not how stable you can make a ROM.
Each device has its followers and its fans. You will find most of the OG developers prefer HTC ad this is where we all started. Then enter the android devs they tend to lean to the nexus as it was built to use the open source drivers. Unlike the rest. Samsung makes good screens but the refusal to release the code or anything to help is an end game for most.
People will always jump to the newest thing. This is how they are programmed to be. Get a device that does what you need and the rest will follow
Thread closed
Batcom2
Hello,
So I accidentally dropped my Lenovo IdeaTab S2110A tablet today and the screen just shattered. So, I am on the market for a new tablet, and I need help finding the right one. As far as "need" goes, I will mostly use it for reading. So any tablet really should do. However, I need help deciding based on these factors:
Has to be running Android L or is Android L ready.
Quick to receive updates/upgrades from its manufacturer. My Lenovo was came with Android 4.0, and although it was 4.1 ready, that never happened. So I need a tablet from a manufacturer that keeps up with providing updates/upgrades.
It has to be one that captures developers interests. I am a flashing junkie, so I need one that I can get it rooted and actively flash new roms. If it is not for need, I will flash a rom just for the sake of it. I never flashed a rom with my Lenovo.
Not a kindle
I can do the research on the technical aspect of it on my own. I am crazy about speed, so I do not want my apps taking a long time to load, and I want it to allow MicroSD Card. A USB and HDMI port would be great, but not necessary.
I am thinking that a Galaxy or Nexus would be my best shot, but I am not entirely sure on the developer's interest part.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
what is your budget ? here i have some website which are better ,
i often bought some electronic devices online from them ,most of them
are china brand ,with good price and well-quality .but one shortcomings
it is a little long to get their parcels ,like two weeks .not matter what
i list them belowed ,you can choose them by yourself:
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-Android-Tablet-c-1759.html
http://www.kingsbuying.com/tablet-pc/android-tablets.html
http://www.dx.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aag/main?i...=ATVPDKIKX0DER&orderID=&seller=A1CHDTJ9IVXV2B
Albertoonline said:
what is your budget ? here i have some website which are better ,
i often bought some electronic devices online from them ,most of them
are china brand ,with good price and well-quality .but one shortcomings
it is a little long to get their parcels ,like two weeks .not matter what
i list them belowed ,you can choose them by yourself:
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-Android-Tablet-c-1759.html
http://www.kingsbuying.com/tablet-pc/android-tablets.html
http://www.dx.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aag/main?i...=ATVPDKIKX0DER&orderID=&seller=A1CHDTJ9IVXV2B
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Budget is not a factor.
These are some very cool sites. My only hesitation with a generic brand is it may not get any development.
Aloupha said:
Budget is not a factor.
These are some very cool sites. My only hesitation with a generic brand is it may not get any development.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you want to buy famous brand ,samsung and iphone will be
top list .
Aloupha said:
Hello,
So I accidentally dropped my Lenovo IdeaTab S2110A tablet today and the screen just shattered. So, I am on the market for a new tablet, and I need help finding the right one. As far as "need" goes, I will mostly use it for reading. So any tablet really should do. However, I need help deciding based on these factors:
Has to be running Android L or is Android L ready.
Quick to receive updates/upgrades from its manufacturer. My Lenovo was came with Android 4.0, and although it was 4.1 ready, that never happened. So I need a tablet from a manufacturer that keeps up with providing updates/upgrades.
It has to be one that captures developers interests. I am a flashing junkie, so I need one that I can get it rooted and actively flash new roms. If it is not for need, I will flash a rom just for the sake of it. I never flashed a rom with my Lenovo.
Not a kindle
I can do the research on the technical aspect of it on my own. I am crazy about speed, so I do not want my apps taking a long time to load, and I want it to allow MicroSD Card. A USB and HDMI port would be great, but not necessary.
I am thinking that a Galaxy or Nexus would be my best shot, but I am not entirely sure on the developer's interest part.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please use one of the many stickies!
Thread closd
Hi guys,
I have bought the phonebaby6s from amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Sudroid-SOYES-Smartphone-Android-Mtk6572/dp/B01M8LM868/
This phone is terrific. It fits easily in the palm of your hand, runs android 5.1 and does most of what I want from a mobile phone. I'm having some problems with the phone and would like to ask questions about it here. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a forum for this phone on XDA developers. The phone seems to be sold by several vendors ( sudroid, Soyes, hippipoo and possibly others. ). I am not able to find a support site. None of the vendors have web sites and there is no information available from google. There are at least two versions of the phone . Mine is LTE but some are 3G only.
On kickstarter right now is a project for the Jelly phone. The Jelly is both larger and has a smaller battery than the phonebaby6s. The PhoneBaby is a terrific device and needs it's own forum.
I want to find info on rooting the phone. The phone is hanging on updates at the moment. I also have not been able to use USB transfer due to unknown device error.
yahoodimenuin said:
Hi guys,
I have bought the phonebaby6s from amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Sudroid-SOYES-Smartphone-Android-Mtk6572/dp/B01M8LM868/
This phone is terrific. It fits easily in the palm of your hand, runs android 5.1 and does most of what I want from a mobile phone. I'm having some problems with the phone and would like to ask questions about it here. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a forum for this phone on XDA developers. The phone seems to be sold by several vendors ( sudroid, Soyes, hippipoo and possibly others. ). I am not able to find a support site. None of the vendors have web sites and there is no information available from google. There are at least two versions of the phone . Mine is LTE but some are 3G only.
On kickstarter right now is a project for the Jelly phone. The Jelly is both larger and has a smaller battery than the phonebaby6s. The PhoneBaby is a terrific device and needs it's own forum.
I want to find info on rooting the phone. The phone is hanging on updates at the moment. I also have not been able to use USB transfer due to unknown device error.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your phone is not an actual supported device made by a real company/manufacturer. Your device is one of the devices known as a "clone". There are a lot of so-called "companies" that use various pieces of cheap Chinese hardware components that were originally designed for other devices, they put all these components together even though they weren't designed to work with each other(similar to building a car from parts of other cars) then they "hack" together an operating system for the device, usually the OS on a clone is unstable.
They do not have an actual company to support the device, they have no stock source code to release and no stock firmware to make available to the public. This is because the devices they make are not all made of the same combination of components and this makes it impossible for them to have a stock source code or stock firmware because each of the devices would not be able to use it even though the devices all "look" the same and have the same "name".
You probably won't find any kind of information about the device and I can almost guarantee that the device will not be supported at XDA unless you do it yourself. There are no developers that would ever own or work on that device because it's not something that any of them would be interested in, they all have much better devices than that and they only work on the devices they personally own. If you want root and custom recoveries or ROMs then you'll have to figure all that out and put it all together for yourself. And even if you do all of that and build your own recovery and your own ROMs and post them on XDA, it still won't get its own forum because I can guarantee that there are not enough people that own that device, XDA only creates forums for devices that have a large community of users that own the device.
Your device is just too "unknown"
Get a better device and stop buying generic Chinese devices.
Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk
Hello,
after struggling with Samsung S2 Kernels in the past i made a switch to Apple. Basically i did not like iphone, but i fell in love with two points:
1. ROM updates without fatal crash of the whole system
2. No Bloadware/Adware
Are there any Android phones who satisfy both points? I googled around and found a couple of interesting phones with certain weakness.
1. Google Pixel 2 (Very expensive, thats one reason not to simply buy iphone 8)
2. Oneplus 5 (Too big)
3. Xiaomi (Missing band 20, MUI stable/maintained/bloadwarefree?)
4. Huawei p10 (low end phone, bloadwarefree?)
Are there more options? Could you extend the information about the ones i found?
It's been a long time since I've been dealing with ROM's. Are there stable, maintained and easy to install options for Samsung s8 available?
As a student i loved to play around, tweak stuff and have my phone flashed every other day. Today i have to work a lot and need my phone to work properly, yet its no big deal to flash once every two years.
If those questions are already answered or you got other things that might help please send me the link, i will read everything carefully.
Thank you
Hi All,
While I was searching for a new device to purchase, this question popped into my head: how do ROM developers decide which devices to support? Admittedly, this question arose because I wanted to find a phone that would be compatible with the most ROMs and is currently still under active development. But I also am genuinely curious as well.
I'm new to the custom ROM scene and just started researching but from what I can understand, most, if not all, developers are doing this on their own free time without any sort of payment. In that case, I would assume, they would only support devices that they have access to, in other words, devices that are currently using and have used. Additionally, developers are probably tech-savvy so I am also assuming that most developers will choose a phone that they think is best. Although what is best is subjective, I believe that there are a common set of desired features which will lead to a couple of devices being more popular than others. As a result, some phones will see support from a wide variety of ROMs while others will see a few or none at all.
I went through a couple of the ROMs I was interested in from this list (https://www.xda-developers.com/the-most-popular-custom-roms-on-xda/), and found that Nexus 5x was common between them all. I can't recall what phone was popular during 2015 but was this phone really so popular/desired that all ROM developers seems to have one lying around in 2019/2020? Its been past 4 years since its launch and I assume that its specs are very outdated compared to what we have now but it is still being supported by many ROMs. What lead to this phone to become such a commonly supported phone by ROM developers?
The Nexus line was at a good price point, good hardware for the time and fully supported factory images from Google with regular updates, next to impossible to hard brick, worked across multiple carriers worldwide, easy to unlock bootloader, custom recoveries available, and popular following. I'm sure I've missed something [emoji846]
Device's that are only available in a limited market, or are unable to be bootloader unlocked, don't have factory images are difficult to support and have a limited following reduces the likelihood that a person interested in developing will buy that phone.
ktmom said:
The Nexus line was at a good price point, good hardware for the time and fully supported factory images from Google with regular updates, next to impossible to hard brick, worked across multiple carriers worldwide, easy to unlock bootloader, custom recoveries available, and popular following. I'm sure I've missed something [emoji846]
Device's that are only available in a limited market, or are unable to be bootloader unlocked, don't have factory images are difficult to support and have a limited following reduces the likelihood that a person interested in developing will buy that phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't mind, could I have your opinion on Moto G5 Plus in regards to ROM support? It appears to be supported by Pixel Experience, AOSP Extended, and ResurrectionRemix so it looks like it has a fair amount of support. However, when I view the top devices page on XDA (https://forum.xda-developers.com/top) I don't see the Moto G5 Plus. Would there be any relationship between the top devices on XDA and devices supported by the most ROMs?
No, there really is not a correlation between the top devices on XDA and ROM support.
The top devices reflects basically the activity within the forum. So new device releases will trigger people's curiosity so even though there may be zero ROM support, the device has activity.
A device like the Moto G5 plus that has been out for awhile, just doesn't have loads of activity in the forums. There is still activity on ROM threads, but it's more sporadic.
Got it, thanks for your help. Looks like I'll just have to keep digging through the forums and rom websites and try to make an educated guess about what device has and will continue having the most rom support.
The lineageOS support for the Nexus 6 is ongoing and that phone was released in 2014. There was a lot of passion surrounding that device, but as developers had their device fail (battery died, screen broken, ect), they moved onto other devices.
My point is, the best you can do is find a popular phone in your price range and hope. The OnePlus series may be worth looking at.