Hi,
Anyone out there with experience of Android updates to older phones and how well they handled it.
I ask because I want to know about the Galaxy S2 and how well we expect Android 4.0 (ICS) to be implemented.
Of course, it will come out at some point, but my primary concerns are whether it will add to the battery power needed burden to make things run smoothly as it will retrofit the S2 hardware.
I also want to know how easy it is likely to be to replace the on screen buttons with the S2 hardware buttons, as this will be a waste of screen space on the S2 if it is still to pop up there above the hardware buttons.
Any help and other thoughts on the matter will be much appreciated.
wyase9 said:
Hi,
Anyone out there with experience of Android updates to older phones and how well they handled it.
I ask because I want to know about the Galaxy S2 and how well we expect Android 4.0 (ICS) to be implemented.
Of course, it will come out at some point, but my primary concerns are whether it will add to the battery power needed burden to make things run smoothly as it will retrofit the S2 hardware.
I also want to know how easy it is likely to be to replace the on screen buttons with the S2 hardware buttons, as this will be a waste of screen space on the S2 if it is still to pop up there above the hardware buttons.
Any help and other thoughts on the matter will be much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To say anything on how it will be implemented on the S2 would be pure conjecture. No one knows yet.
Its still in the middle of being ported/hacked over to our device, with no official Samsung ICS Roms released/leaked yet.
Regarding the 'on screen button' query, it would seem that ICS would detect capacitative buttons, and thus hide the on-screen buttons.
Hi,
First of all i wouldnt class a Galaxy S2 as an older phone, samsung have made a point of holding back on the Galaxy Nexus hardware so it doesnt outdo there own flagship model.
Yesterday, I compared a Galaxy Nexus to my Galaxy S2 running the ICS alpha and was slightly disappointed that the Galaxy Nexus screen didnt look any different to my GS2 both in screen real estate and screen clarity.
I doubt very much ICS will reduce battery life as the hardware acceleration should help matters as there will be less reliance on the phone CPU to draw things the GPU can draw easily.
The onscreen buttons can be easily disabled and dont offer anything that the GS2 hardware buttons dont. If anything the GS2 has the advantage of a menu button which you dont get on the Nexus and until the majority of apps put a software menu button on their apps it's going to cause issues, i thought that the software buttons would be more intellegent and add a menu button for legacy apps but they just seem to stay the same buttons all the time. I know paul o'brian has done a custom mod for this so hopefully google with do the same.
I personnally am happy with my GS2 hardware, the issue for me is software and whether i can wait for 4.0 either official or unofficial.
graemefaulkner said:
i thought that the software buttons would be more intellegent and add a menu button for legacy apps but they just seem to stay the same buttons all the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There actually IS a "virtual menu button" for those apps who use the menu.
But it's rather small and easy to miss.
It's on the far right, looks like three dots above each other, I could use all "old" apps I tried so far with it and effectively not using the "real" buttons at all.
I hope if ROM cooks tend to remove the on-screen buttons, they keep an option to re-enable them, 'cause I really like them
(and they are NOT showing up in the SDK emulator, so it does seem to have some kind of detection.)
ICS does not show the Virtual Buttons on devices with HW Keys.
Thats an absolute, 100% given, please stop discussing about it.
The Galaxy S II has a better GPU and a CPU I'd call Equal with the one of the Galaxy Nexus, also the screen has a way lower resolution, so it might even run smoother than on the Galaxy Nexus,
But what about future apps.....if they are built to a standard 720p resolution, then will the Samsung galaxy S2 suffer then compared to the Nexus which has similar spec - ie do you think we will get new apps that will run better on a 720p screen which looks likely to be more standard in all future high spec phones ?
In my opinion, Galaxy S2 will perform much better on ICS than Gingerbread, considering ICS will actually utilize DUAL-CORE efficiently, rather than just burning battery on two-cores just to work one-core...
It's like XP before & after SP2
wyase9 said:
But what about future apps.....if they are built to a standard 720p resolution, then will the Samsung galaxy S2 suffer then compared to the Nexus which has similar spec - ie do you think we will get new apps that will run better on a 720p screen which looks likely to be more standard in all future high spec phones ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are trying to find a future-proof a device. Well - it ain't gonna work. Technology moves at a quick pace. At most - I can say GSII may work super well with all apps (and games) until a point when it has become the standard for all screen resolutions to be 720p or 1080p or 9040p. This may be in 2 or 3 years.
Besides, an app developer would make their app compatible with all devices UNLESS they intended it to run purely on a certain resolution.
Nexus phone isn't better than the GSII by the way. It just has ICS on it. =/
Thanks for all of you inputs guys.
Sounds like the GS2 will work as well with ICS if not better.
It also comes across that although the screen size if the GS2 is smaller than the GNex, it is more or less cancelled out seeing as the GNex has to use some screen for the virtual buttons at the bottom, wheras the GS2 will not have to use any screen on this.......therefore negating the screen real-estate difference.......right ?
Then it only comes down to resolution between the two.
For a much lower resolution, the GS2 still looks amazing to the eye, which makes me wonder what the real worls advantages will be of the higher resolution screen on the GNex.
Could it be the web page layout or looks when they load up ?
Could it be noticed when playing media ?
I am not sure anymore.
Ideally the resolution advantage comes into play during
1. Browsing, especially while reading small text as very small letters can be drawn accurately.
2. Pictures will be more clearer, especially some wallpapers do ask for more resolution.
3. Video playback
Altogether everything will appear more smooth and clear. So a welcome thing this resolution is. But nexus has pentile display and there are chances this might offset the resolution advantage mainly during text diaplays
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
I agree with the last comment to an extent. But we are talking about a phone screen with hundreds of pixels already.
To the normal user in the real world, do you still think that applies ? Ie the text might be a little clearer, but is it not darn clear already on the lower GS2 resolution ?
And wallpapers - even if it was origianlly a 720p picture and the GS2 resizes it, would the average guy out there be able to distingush ?
wyase9 said:
Hi,
Anyone out there with experience of Android updates to older phones and how well they handled it.
I ask because I want to know about the Galaxy S2 and how well we expect Android 4.0 (ICS) to be implemented.
Of course, it will come out at some point, but my primary concerns are whether it will add to the battery power needed burden to make things run smoothly as it will retrofit the S2 hardware.
I also want to know how easy it is likely to be to replace the on screen buttons with the S2 hardware buttons, as this will be a waste of screen space on the S2 if it is still to pop up there above the hardware buttons.
Any help and other thoughts on the matter will be much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here http://t.co/RzNWJWcQ , Have a look how stock ICS looks and works on GSII. And all this is done without any driver source code. Imagine how quick it would be when samsung does ICS with proper drivers.
At least Samsung confirmed they will release ICS to S2. When? That's a different story... Probably late next year.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
Related
Hello everyone,
For like 2 year now I still have iPhone 3G which was very relaxing (but now slow) so when I thought of update I thought about getting Android
So I got the Galaxy S2, It's a great phone with great hardware but I really guys dont know what exactly to tell you or what to say
but I find iPhone way more relaxing than Android and I really can't tell why
maybe the colors maybe the design of the android it self I really dont know
even though a lot of apps are available and everything is customizable but still
something is wrong for me and I dont know what it is, the motion and effects of the iphone are smoother or just better and gives you this great feeling and its not what it is on android
Also the keyboard, even though my screen is 4.3 inches and the keyboard is larger but I find that iPhone's keyboard is better it just feels good
My hope is very high with ICS 4 that Google would take care of UI and UX better than that, also organizing everything to make it easier or something
I know I'm not accurate but I just wanted to tell you guys to tell me what you really think and if its me only or everyone and also if you have a solution for this
Thanks
medorpg said:
maybe the colors maybe the design of the android it self I really dont know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Iphone uses a very high resolution IPS LCD screen ("retina" is just a fancy marketing word for that), not AMOLED based like the Samsung phones (thus color reproduction will not be the same). If you don't like the default colors, try another theme (system themes require root to change, launcher themes do not).
medorpg said:
the motion and effects of the iphone are smoother or just better and gives you this great feeling and its not what it is on android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try a different launcher. Something like Go Launcher is pretty close the iphone. If that's not enough, try the MIUI ROM (requires root) for your phone if you haven't. MIUI is as close as you will get period to having an iphone while still having an android phone.
medorpg said:
Also the keyboard, even though my screen is 4.3 inches and the keyboard is larger but I find that iPhone's keyboard is better it just feels good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try another keyboard than the one the phone comes with (such a swype or swiftkey)? Generally the stock keyboard sucks.
Most iphone users that just start on android are not aware of the many replacement options (or if they are, they're not aware of specific ones that would solve their issues).
There's a saying that goes something like "If one is given infinite choices, some people will never be happy (since that they will forever think there is something better than what they currently have), but if one is told what choices they have, then they just grin and bear it, because that's all there is."
First thanks for your reply
but I already have Go Launcher and its okay for now
but actually I would like to install MIUI but I have a problem, I dont have a SD Card on my Galaxy S2 its just the internal memory so is there's anyway to install it without SD Card just using the internal memory ?
in both ways I will wait for android 4 I read about it and its really interesting that Google noticed that they have issues with their UI and I hope they solved this issue
I have tried a lot of latest roms based on XXDLIB JB. For some instance if you open your settings and open a field in your settings, you can sense that when opening that menu, opening takes swiftly a sense of lag, slowness...Not always though, sometimes I open the menus in the settings and the run perfectly smooth. And just trying after a minute, it kinda slows.
I even tried using Custom kernels with that, yet same result. Is it a kind of defect from Samsung's touchwiz rom? Any solution?
Does turning off animations help at all?
Settings - Developer Options, set window animation scale, animator duration scale and transition animation scale to off.
This happens to ma, and is much more noticeable when i open up the dialer, with a second or two pause, with just the bluish bar at the top (where your keypad, logs, favourites and contacts are). I have animations down to .5, but the problem still persists when i have animations off...
The Samsung based DLIB ROMs that I tried all had crap performance compared to earlier ones, so I went back to a DLI4 I think it was (before moving on to AOKP).
Then its with everyone, this is probably my last samsung device. Im moving back to the Nexus line, I bought it for the sake of a better hardware, and here is ? Nothing that special. As well as that we're not capable of running AOSP roms smoothly because of their Exynos close-sourcing thing....What a shame....I have owned S1, S2, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Nexus, and now the S III. Never used Their Touchwiz Rom anyway, always with AOSP; and now with the devs unable to do anything with Samsung's policy, it's better to own a Nexus.
Ensifolk said:
I have tried a lot of latest roms based on XXDLIB JB. For some instance if you open your settings and open a field in your settings, you can sense that when opening that menu, opening takes swiftly a sense of lag, slowness...Not always though, sometimes I open the menus in the settings and the run perfectly smooth. And just trying after a minute, it kinda slows.
I even tried using Custom kernels with that, yet same result. Is it a kind of defect from Samsung's touchwiz rom? Any solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel you man. I feel you. On every single XXDLIB rom! No amount of flashing of kernels, mods, etc. fixes this! I also bought the S3 because of the wonderful hardware it offers, only to know after having bought it, that it's lacking proper support by Samsung.
I'm hearing a lot of gossip about an upcoming nexus. I to am feeling switchy-switchy I think? =\
But if it's LG, as the rumors suggest, I don't think I'll feel so 'switchy' anymore.
dark_polok said:
I feel you man. I feel you. On every single XXDLIB rom! No amount of flashing of kernels, mods, etc. fixes this! I also bought the S3 because of the wonderful hardware it offers, only to know after having bought it, that it's lacking proper support by Samsung.
I'm hearing a lot of gossip about an upcoming nexus. I to am feeling switchy-switchy I think? =\
But if it's LG, as the rumors suggest, I don't think I'll feel so 'switchy' anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My bets are on HTC Nexus 5 A 5 inch rocking screen ! And a NEXUS ! That would amazing ! Purely amazing. Especially that I still suffer today from screen sizes ever since I held a Note, my S III 's 4.8 is average for me hehe ! I would SO LOVE a 5 Inch screen Phone!
So I've seen this word thrown around a lot since switching to Android from my old iPhail 3G (yes, I actually lived with that horrible laggy device for ~4 years) and in comparisons between Android and iOS (which I'm not trying to get into here). I've also read lots of people saying Jelly Bean was supposed to be 'snappier' compared to ICS. I wasn't sure if they were referring to lag as in fps or a delay in reaction. My Note II is currently stock 4.1.1, but I'm definitely noticing some delay in games, such as Air Hockey, between moving my finger on the screen and the paddle moving in the game, for example. It's quite noticeable in apps like Maps too. I had the Galaxy S III for a short time before I decided I wanted the bigger (and better specs) Note II, but not long enough to make any comparisons. My question is, is there a way to increase the snappyness without doing anything too dramatic, such as flashing a different ROM, etc. Or will a ROM like beanstown106's Jelly Beans help? Or is this a problem that is inherently part of Android operating system/devices? Thanks in advance.
marcmy said:
will a ROM like beanstown106's Jelly Beans help? .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can tell you that flashing beans ROM made absolutely no speed difference whatever over my previous debloated/rooted stock ROM (and I didn't really expect it to)
One thing is, it is noticeably laggy when running the inferno galaxy live wallpaper, but pretty much instant response with regular WP.
The "snappieness" in individual apps is really down to the app itself combined with phone specs.
Poorly coded apps may have lag.
High end apps may push the hardware harder and cause lag.
I would bet its mostly the former when it comes to the Note 2.
Samsung also put touchwiz on these phones, which does affect overall performance to some degree. If we get the ability to remove much of it in favor of AOSP versions, then it should perform a little better overall.
The differences between iPhones and Android... is that Apple focuses on user interaction over all other things. So this means they will sacrifice performance in other areas to ensure that user interactions are kept smooth, or at least keep the appearance of smoothness. For example, iOS will stop loading web pages when you start to scroll the screen, so the CPU can focus on smooth scrolling. This means that the page will never finish loading if you keep scrolling around on the screen. Android does not do this or these kind of things. The new "project butter" implemented in JB is designed to help smooth out the interface and user interactions, without sacrificing performance in other areas. Its not perfect though, and it requires good specs and more power than the iOS way of "one thing at a time".
Great response ty very much. I guess next question is will we be able to get those AOSP versions later on or are we SOL in that department?
Sent from my SCH-I605 using xda app-developers app
Depends on which version you have.
I am on Verizon, so my device is locked down, other versions are not.
This device is also unique in the fact it has a Wacom stylus and functionality, so that must be considered.
Often times, you can swap things out without too much issue. AOSP lockscreen instead of touchwiz lockscreen... AOSP launcher instead of touchwiz launcher... without too much trouble. Problem is, underneath the ROM is still touchwiz... or at least that is how it worked on HTC Sense phones. (this is my first touchwiz device) HTC do a lot of work to the underlying framework which meant wholesale replacement of everything wasn't possible, so it depends on how much Samsung changed Android to put touchwiz on it.
Basically they "DE-Touchwiz" the phone and do some background tweaks for added performance, plus they "de-bloat the ROM. (they remove all the unnecessary crap that the carriers and Samsung put in, that served them some benefit, but not benefit the users) The advantage of this method is that you can keep much of the functionality of the stylus.
Another method is to use a ROM based on stock, but tweaked and de-bloated. This usually retains all the functionality of the device as it came out of the box... but the performance is usually only a little better than stock, and less than one where the AOSP stuff has been put in. This method does allow you to keep most of the stylus functionality.
As far as straight up custom ROMs based on AOSP...
They usually offer the best performance for a given device, having no extra crap, and being tweaked for performance... But you will lose most if not all the stylus functionality. Some ROMs may have limited stylus functionality, but they have to put that in themselves, meaning more work on their part.
As far as performance gains... I can only speak of HTC Sense devices with sureness. Where pure AOSP usually had significant improvements to performance/battery life. (mostly due to how extensive Sense is, touchwiz may be better in this regaurd) "De-sensed" ROMs where they removed all of the Sense stuff they could and replaced with AOSP equivalents, had good performance increases. "De-bloated" and tweaked but otherwise stock ROMs had some improvement.
But as was said, the stylus functionality is something that must be considered when looking at ROMs
After using AOSP ROMs quite extensively in both of my two Galaxy 3s, I have no desire whatever to run those type ROMs in my Note 2 (and lose things like pen functionality).
I could never see any performance difference whatever (except maybe in useless benchmarks) between a completely debloated TW ROM with all the features working perfectly and a buggy AOSP ROM in my G3s (and I tried every G3 ROM available at least twice).
Posters where constantly claiming this ROM is PERFECT when discussing any AOSP ROM but two posts later someone else would post "can anybody get NFL Mobile to work??" The next post would say "that has never worked in AOSP but I never use it anyway so who cares........"
Good call. I'd rather keep most functionality
Sent from my SCH-I605 using xda app-developers app
You could go into a store and try some of those games out on a DNA. Hopefully some are free so you don't have to put your google account in the play store and then clear the data. The DNA's gpu is much faster. It sounds like it's the app coding though. I don't have any input lag with on screen buttons playing GTA or N64oid, and emulators are pretty heavy on the processor.
Are you still feeling happy with that device? What would be your pros and cons of this device? For how much time you're thinking to keep it?
My pros:
Good camera quality
Quite fast (only Sammy's sh*ts makes it slow
Big devs support
Good audio quality
Cons:
Very,very boring UI but luckily we can customize it
It's very hard to use it with one hand, and sometimes I am feeling too lazy to use it with two hands
Design looks cheap
Hardware buttons could be more sensitive
Missing camera button
Power button might stuck, so I am avoiding to use as often as possible
Cons
Lack of Exynos sources - Devs have hard time with AOSP
Touchwiz UI is childish - Looks like something from "The Early Learning Centre"
Casing chips easily and cracks with no effort
Poor multi tasking in Touchwiz roms.
Quicky dated, aesthetically
SDS
Poor warranty handling in the above case
Dodgy EFS problems
Camera not great with AOSP roms. Toss up between performance and UI vs camera.
Pros
Nice thin "slate" feel in the hand
Not Pink in colour
Still reasonably quick with AOSP
Negative for me is lack of true development .
Cut and paste sammy roms .#
Same old same old Android roms .
Lack of fluidity in much of the design and apps its still nowhere near as user friendly as it could be .
SDS and poor warranty from Samsung is not a recommend and likewise the multiple modems .
Samsung / network upgrade path is far to complicated .
Kies is a bad piece of software .
Saying that i shall keep until a significantly better phone forces me to change or even go back to non smart for the phone part .
Dumb phone + 7inch Tablet + 12inch Tablet for home use .
Well, to be honests i'm pretty happy with my S3.
Only cons i can find is the really, really poor (for a 700 euros device) materials quality.
The UI is quite user friendly (in my opinion), well it suffer some lag here and there but (for me) it's really rare (and i'm on no root, stock device).
Plus we will get soon the 4.3 upgrade, and here we will see more improvements for our "baby"... most of all the REAL multicore support, that must "kill" once and for all the lags.
The camera is so good (i'm not a photographer or photo professional user), i find the pictures i snap of good quality and with sammy apps i can modify them however i like. I repeat, i'm not a pro but i love to take a huge number of picture when i'm around with my friends or girl, and my S3 is the best for that job (i don't have to carry around extra weight as other cameras).
There comes now another pro that most of other devices haven't: external SD card.
That's something that any device must have in 2013 becouse of the better cameras (that mean huge dimension for each snapped pic), "consolle like" games (someone is 1-2gb ....) etc. etc....
Now for the "comparison" with a newer phone, my girl have a S4 and i tell you i would never chenge my S3 for it or ever for a HTC one (that anyone is crazy for at the moment)... don't get me wrong, S4 and HTC One are really great devices, but i find useless to drain out your poket of all your moneys, for a slightly better upgrade... Plus with 4.3, S3 will get a lot of S4 features too.
I'll buy a new phone when an amazing Nexus/Galaxy S will be released, but it must be something that will make me really "WOW".
rootSU said:
Cons
Lack of Exynos sources - Devs have hard time with AOSP
Touchwiz UI is childish - Looks like something from "The Early Learning Centre"
Casing chips easily and cracks with no effort
Poor multi tasking in Touchwiz roms.
Quicky dated, aesthetically
SDS
Poor warranty handling in the above case
Dodgy EFS problems
Camera not great with AOSP roms. Toss up between performance and UI vs camera.
Pros
Nice thin "slate" feel in the hand
Not Pink in colour
Still reasonably quick with AOSP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is that really true?
I feel both AOSP and Samsung based roms equally smooth... (Slimed Samsung roms of course)
beeeto said:
Is that really true?
I feel both AOSP and Samsung based roms equally smooth... (Slimed Samsung roms of course)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touchwiz ROMs lag instead of managing memory correctly in my experience. Multi Tasking is much smoother on AOSP
I find the phone OK I really like the amoled screen but I think it time to upgrade to 1080p
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
with the newest omni 4.4 nightly, i'm quite OK with the hardware.
however, i do not like samsung's "we are the centre of the world" behaviour, so most probably it will be my last samsung phone. on the other hand, other producers seem to act similarly (think of the sony z1 camera/unlocked desaster, which i do not expect to get fixed in reasonable time)...
I am about to change phones this week and I have this Gsmart in sights. I would like to know if it would be able to run Themer. According to specs it sports following:
MTK6572 chipset
Mali400 GPU
1GB RAM
4" IPS 800x480 screen at 220-something dpi
I have not held the phone in hand yet but from images online it looks like it has soft keys.
I wanted to try Themer from the start but alas my current phone is way out of the specs for it to run (poor old Samsung Galaxy mini at 3.2' 240x320 screen) so I would rather get a phone that is able to run it...
lockdalf said:
I am about to change phones this week and I have this Gsmart in sights. I would like to know if it would be able to run Themer. According to specs it sports following:
MTK6572 chipset
Mali400 GPU
1GB RAM
4" IPS 800x480 screen at 220-something dpi
I have not held the phone in hand yet but from images online it looks like it has soft keys.
I wanted to try Themer from the start but alas my current phone is way out of the specs for it to run (poor old Samsung Galaxy mini at 3.2' 240x320 screen) so I would rather get a phone that is able to run it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For now the Galaxy S2 is supported, and that has roughly the same specifications, however that doesn't have soft keys. So chances are Themer is not going to work. We are working on supporting more devices soon though. Sorry for the inconvenience.
ThemerSupport said:
For now the Galaxy S2 is supported, and that has roughly the same specifications, however that doesn't have soft keys. So chances are Themer is not going to work. We are working on supporting more devices soon though. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, according to this image ( http://www.mojandroid.sk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Recenzia_GSmart_Roma_R2_12.jpg) and unboxing videos on youtube, the keys are visible even if the phone is turned off. similar to Samsung's HW home button. So it seem that Gsmart has no HW button but has instead touch keys. But are those considered soft keys? As I understand it, soft keys are actually part of the devices screen? Am I right?
If so that it would mean the the phone has 'native" resolution of 480 x 800 without those additional 54 pixels of height reserved for keys and I should be able to run themer... Please say my understanding is correct... :fingers-crossed:
_____________
Edit:
Never mind, I just found the explanation for soft keys on the support site. These are definitely not what is considered soft keys... So I am looking forward to trying themer on my new phone next week... :good:
Thread can be considered solved and it can be closed...
I have just returned with the new phone and guess what was the first app I needed to try... Yes, Themer and it is running so far without a problem so I will keep on playing around and see if I find any issues.
So at least some good news for guys with phones with similar specs..:good:
lockdalf said:
I have just returned with the new phone and guess what was the first app I needed to try... Yes, Themer and it is running so far without a problem so I will keep on playing around and see if I find any issues.
So at least some good news for guys with phones with similar specs..:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's great to hear! Thanks lockdalf!