Hi! This is my first post on XDA.
As a user of CM for more than a year ago on my i9300, and after enduring a lot of bugs, I wonder: What happens to CM?
It's a known fact that the Exynos platform is a headache for developers because there is no documentation or open sources from Samsung. So, things like the camera, the sound system, the HDMI output and the GPU do not work as they should.
However, here are many good developers who have fixed these bugs, or at least improve them a bit. And most of these fixes are open source and accessible by everyone on Github.
So, what is waiting CM to implement them? Giving credit to their authors, obviously.
CyanogenMod announces itself as an alternative to the stock firmware that lets you take full advantage of your smartphone, making it better and more stable. Now they are also a company: Cyanogen Inc. As a reputable brand, it should offer a higher quality firmware. ROMs like Nameless (I'm using it right now) works better even being "not official".
This is just an opinion as a user. I'm not criticizing or forcing anyone to do anything. But if there are hundreds of people using a ROM with bugs that were fixed, why not implement them? I would be the first to help, but my skills are just about webdev.
Respect and thanks for i9300 developers on XDA, and sorry about my bad English. When I use my native language I express myself MUCH better. Trust me. lol
Thanks for reading.
There's no i9300 maintainer, and they accept pull requests (on gerrit) when somebody sends them.
Also, the fact that there's no i9300 maintainer is directly connected with what you already said - lack of proper documentation. Nobody wants to fix the mess that has been created since whole this time. The amount of hacks required to make AOSP work on i9300 is too damn high. I'm slowly fixing this mess, making i9300 a bit better supported, but it's still a long way until it's done. Take a look at ArchiKernel for example, why I had to create my own kernel? Because smdk4412 sources were so much outdated that they finished around update7, right after sudden death fix. XXELLA, 4.1.2 Android times, hello. So first thing was to cleanup the kernel mess, use up-to-date samsung sources (used for stocks) and make them work with AOSP. Now, if I commit my work to CM, they'll deny this instantly because new kernel supports only i9300 and this commit would break all other exynos4 variants from compiling. Yes, together we COULD fix it, make it work with other devices. But I have better things to do than trying to fix whole exynos4 family, I focus on i9300.
This is one of the reasons why we won't see any official cm12 nightly for i9300. Because nobody is going to maintain that. Even if we can fix something, nobody is going to commit that, unless we put serious effort for making it universal across all supported devices.
That's a real shame the device is in such a mess.
Actually, to be fair, using Omnirom 4.4.4, I'm finding that the only thing that doesn't work properly is the notification led (no one seems to know why it only works 3 times out of 4).
I'll probably end up buying a new phone next year, anyway, since buy this time next year the i9300 will be almost 4 years old. In smartphone terms, that means it's getting along a bit.
(oh, and thanks for all your work on it, JustArchi!)
JustArchi said:
There's no i9300 maintainer, and they accept pull requests (on gerrit) when somebody sends them.
Also, the fact that there's no i9300 maintainer is directly connected with what you already said - lack of proper documentation. Nobody wants to fix the mess that has been created since whole this time. The amount of hacks required to make AOSP work on i9300 is too damn high. I'm slowly fixing this mess, making i9300 a bit better supported, but it's still a long way until it's done. Take a look at ArchiKernel for example, why I had to create my own kernel? Because smdk4412 sources were so much outdated that they finished around update7, right after sudden death fix. XXELLA, 4.1.2 Android times, hello. So first thing was to cleanup the kernel mess, use up-to-date samsung sources (used for stocks) and make them work with AOSP. Now, if I commit my work to CM, they'll deny this instantly because new kernel supports only i9300 and this commit would break all other exynos4 variants from compiling. Yes, together we COULD fix it, make it work with other devices. But I have better things to do than trying to fix whole exynos4 family, I focus on i9300.
This is one of the reasons why we won't see any official cm12 nightly for i9300. Because nobody is going to maintain that. Even if we can fix something, nobody is going to commit that, unless we put serious effort for making it universal across all supported devices.
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Thanks for answering my topic. The opinion of a developer like you is very appreciated.
This situation only seems to give more reasons for not buy a Samsung phone again. This lack of support from the manufacturer is a disrespect to the user's investment. And fragmentation strikes again. Sad but true.
Thanks again for your great work of keeping this device alive for all of us.
StephenJSweeney said:
That's a real shame the device is in such a mess.
Actually, to be fair, using Omnirom 4.4.4, I'm finding that the only thing that doesn't work properly is the notification led (no one seems to know why it only works 3 times out of 4).
I'll probably end up buying a new phone next year, anyway, since buy this time next year the i9300 will be almost 4 years old. In smartphone terms, that means it's getting along a bit.
(oh, and thanks for all your work on it, JustArchi!)
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I tried OmniROM few months ago, but it had some annoying bugs (like camera crashes) and I missed some customizations of CyanogenMod. Anyway, I'll try it again. My next buy might be a Motorola phone. The AOSP support is priceless.
ouch01 said:
I tried OmniROM few months ago, but it had some annoying bugs (like camera crashes) and I missed some customizations of CyanogenMod. Anyway, I'll try it again. My next buy might be a Motorola phone. The AOSP support is priceless.
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I had the camera crash on CM11 M11, and switched over to Omnirom shortly after that. I'm using Google Camera with an Omnirom nightly from November, and I've never had a camera crash.
Agree with you about getting a Motorola. I'd love it if the next Moto G refresh (if there is one) came with some more RAM, increased storage (16GB instead of 8), 4G, and a multicolour led. Being able to customize the colours to suit the category of app is something I love about custom ROMs. That should be baked into Android, to be honest (but at least there's LightFlow).
JustArchi said:
There's no i9300 maintainer, and they accept pull requests (on gerrit) when somebody sends them.
Also, the fact that there's no i9300 maintainer is directly connected with what you already said - lack of proper documentation. Nobody wants to fix the mess that has been created since whole this time. The amount of hacks required to make AOSP work on i9300 is too damn high. I'm slowly fixing this mess, making i9300 a bit better supported, but it's still a long way until it's done. Take a look at ArchiKernel for example, why I had to create my own kernel? Because smdk4412 sources were so much outdated that they finished around update7, right after sudden death fix. XXELLA, 4.1.2 Android times, hello. So first thing was to cleanup the kernel mess, use up-to-date samsung sources (used for stocks) and make them work with AOSP. Now, if I commit my work to CM, they'll deny this instantly because new kernel supports only i9300 and this commit would break all other exynos4 variants from compiling. Yes, together we COULD fix it, make it work with other devices. But I have better things to do than trying to fix whole exynos4 family, I focus on i9300.
This is one of the reasons why we won't see any official cm12 nightly for i9300. Because nobody is going to maintain that. Even if we can fix something, nobody is going to commit that, unless we put serious effort for making it universal across all supported devices.
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i feel you
SlimRoms is the answer
unlike CM, Slim has a I9300 maintainer, has support, every weekly update works properly.
Devs should really take a look at Slim's Gerrit and Freenode/#SlimDev
StephenJSweeney said:
I had the camera crash on CM11 M11, and switched over to Omnirom shortly after that. I'm using Google Camera with an Omnirom nightly from November, and I've never had a camera crash.
Agree with you about getting a Motorola. I'd love it if the next Moto G refresh (if there is one) came with some more RAM, increased storage (16GB instead of 8), 4G, and a multicolour led. Being able to customize the colours to suit the category of app is something I love about custom ROMs. That should be baked into Android, to be honest (but at least there's LightFlow).
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The thing with Motorola is that their stock roms are basically just stock android. No laggy touchwiz skins, just a google launcher. Bloatware is at a minimum. A low spec phone like the moto G still is great because of how vanilla its experience is.
Rumours have it that the galaxy S6 international variant will have an exynos processor. I found a thread comparing the leaked info of the snapdragon 810 vs the next exynos processor and it seems that the exynos is getting a lot of popularity from users on the thread and it ain't no slouch. As it is now, phone's are so fast, that it's very hard to find a way of improving them. Like who compares app opening times nowadays? That will be much the case for 2015's flagships as well. I doubt I'd be disappointed if I had the next Samsung release if I thought I'd be in for a laggy UI, it's just whether I can tolerate the touchwiz experience or if I wanna switch to a vanilla aosp rom. That's where the problem arises.
arashvenus said:
SlimRoms is the answer
unlike CM, Slim has a I9300 maintainer, has support, every weekly update works properly.
Devs should really take a look at Slim's Gerrit and Freenode/#SlimDev
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But only in your imagination. There is noone at slimrom. Just check their gerrit.
whatsgood said:
Rumours have it that the galaxy S6 international variant will have an exynos processor .... I found a thread comparing the leaked info of the snapdragon 810 vs the next exynos processor and it seems that the exynos is getting a lot of popularity from users on the thread and it ain't no slouch.
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Aren't the Exynos processors the cause of much grief in the open source community, though? Aren't Qualcomm processors, such as the Snapdragon, much more popular because they're easier to work with..?
StephenJSweeney said:
Aren't the Exynos processors the cause of much grief in the open source community, though? Aren't Qualcomm processors, such as the Snapdragon, much more popular because they're easier to work with..?
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Correct.
Eleve11 said:
Correct.
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Well then, no more Samsung phones for me, then. Not unless they use Qualcomm..!
StephenJSweeney said:
Aren't the Exynos processors the cause of much grief in the open source community, though? Aren't Qualcomm processors, such as the Snapdragon, much more popular because they're easier to work with..?
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Yes, that's what i thought but people are showing interests due to how powerful the processor is. I think they're saying it's more powerful than the snapdragon 810. I'm not that techy but they were mentioning that the new exynos will be smaller in size or something, whilst the snapdragon will be bigger. Apparently smaller is better, but yes the problem is open sourcing. If you want to install a stock android custom rom, it will be difficult for developers to build a rom that can push your phone to it's full potential. Snapdragon doesn't have this problem.
Basically if you love flashing different roms that are fully functional a snapdragon 810 phone is for you. If you like what Samsung offers in it's next flagship and won't be tempted to flash other roms then the exynos is for you
whatsgood said:
Yes, that's what i thought but people are showing interests due to how powerful the processor is. I think they're saying it's more powerful than the snapdragon 810. I'm not that techy but they were mentioning that the new exynos will be smaller in size or something, whilst the snapdragon will be bigger. Apparently smaller is better, but yes the problem is open sourcing. If you want to install a stock android custom rom, it will be difficult for developers to build a rom that can push your phone to it's full potential. Snapdragon doesn't have this problem.
Basically if you love flashing different roms that are fully functional a snapdragon 810 phone is for you. If you like what Samsung offers in it's next flagship and won't be tempted to flash other roms then the exynos is for you
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I prefer to have less powerful processor, with full documentation how it works, rather than exynos and big giant hackish black box, which noone understands.
The problem is not with the exynos, but with Samsung. Judging from Exynos4, their kernel sources and own experience, exynos may look like it works, but amount of hacks and dirty workarounds to make it work, is too damn high. This could all be solved if Samsung changed their policy from "respect GPL, f*ck the rest" to "respect developers, show them that our SoC can be developer-friendly, too".
The problem is that we're not even 0.01% of Samsung sales, so why should they care. I'm not going to buy Samsung phone again, regardless if it has Snapdragon inside or not. The problem is not with the Exynos, the problem is in Samsung's policy.
JustArchi said:
I prefer to have less powerful processor, with full documentation how it works, rather than exynos and big giant hackish black box, which noone understands.
The problem is not with the exynos, but with Samsung. Judging from Exynos4, their kernel sources and own experience, exynos may look like it works, but amount of hacks and dirty workarounds to make it work, is too damn high. This could all be solved if Samsung changed their policy from "respect GPL, f*ck the rest" to "respect developers, show them that our SoC can be developer-friendly, too".
The problem is that we're not even 0.01% of Samsung sales, so why should they care. I'm not going to buy Samsung phone again, regardless if it has Snapdragon inside or not. The problem is not with the Exynos, the problem is in Samsung's policy.
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Yeah +1 for that. My next Phone will be definitly a Sony or a One plus. I think both are the developer friendliest in android ...
what for get android with huge ram but still lag? i won't go for android for sure. just stick with ios better. with android 8gb & asop, cm etc still can't fix the bugs. android received update so slow than ios.
khanmein said:
what for get android with huge ram but still lag? i won't go for android for sure. just stick with ios better. with android 8gb & asop, cm etc still can't fix the bugs. android received update so slow than ios.
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Yeah you are right but i think the most decent phone is the htc one......i would buy a windows phone rather than an iPhone
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2qn8s4/new_impressive_lollipop_touchwiz_gives_nexus_line/
This is an interesting article on the new touchwiz that appears in android lollipop on the galaxy note 3. Surprisingly I can see nothing but praise from this person, apparently it seems to be running very well in comparison to touchwiz on KitKat. Is Samsung finally doing something good?
whatsgood said:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2qn8s4/new_impressive_lollipop_touchwiz_gives_nexus_line/
This is an interesting article on the new touchwiz that appears in android lollipop on the galaxy note 3. Surprisingly I can see nothing but praise from this person, apparently it seems to be running very well in comparison to touchwiz on KitKat. Is Samsung finally doing something good?
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its useless even if they port it to our i9300..1gb of ram..maybe its time to upgrade to more stronger phone..
Xiaomi doesn't want to give us kernel sources because it would be possible to overclock CPU to match the Mi5 Pro level and have similar performance.
Rasputlix said:
Xiaomi doesn't want to give us kernel sources because it would be possible to overclock CPU to match the Mi5 Pro level and have similar performance.
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Absolutely right.
Yeah, theoretically. But I think the processors of the MI5 32gb aren't the same like the ones in the MI5 Pro. They have some errors so they can't handle such CPU clocks.
Learning from the past, the kernel source won't be released at least 1 year after the device released. I guess this is to maintain MIUI users, because after kernel sources are released, custom ROMs are coming and they start leaving MIUI. Even I just flash RR on my fresh Mi5
If they really wanted their users engaged with MIUI, they should probably focus and release a MIUI version that actually works. Or to release a MIUI version in general, because as of past few weeks, even that is debatable. Not to mention about MM support (or lack thereof) in PCSuite... Or bugs in local backups. The list goes on,... I will stop here.
I feel the hardware is on par with what I, or any average user expected, but I feel there is no software for that phone.
deusxx said:
If they really wanted their users engaged with MIUI, they should probably focus and release a MIUI version that actually works. Or to release a MIUI version in general, because as of past few weeks, even that is debatable. Not to mention about MM support (or lack thereof) in PCSuite... Or bugs in local backups. The list goes on,... I will stop here.
I feel the hardware is on par with what I, or any average user expected, but I feel there is no software for that phone.
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+1
That's why I regret buying the MI5. I should have waited one more month for the oneplus 3. Maybe I'll sell my MI5. The battery life on miui global beta is just bad.
Sent from my Mi 5 using XDA Labs
MIUI is getting better, but can't keep the pace with other custom ROMs. Xiaomi devices are good by specs, so consider buying it for the sake of the specs, then flash some other custom ROM instead. FYI, from the POV of iOS users (my apple-fanboy friends), MIUI is considered more friendly than AOSP based ROMs. Don't ask why
I'd like to get to as close to vanilla as possible. Not a fan of Samsung's ui or bloat. I'm coming from the tab s1 which had some pretty good roms. There are none for this device and it's almost 6 months old. I would make one myself but lack the necessary skills
Most of the newer top end Samsung Tablets get very little developer support since they cost so much. Happens with every new tablet having people asking where the developer support is for it. Samsung newer UI much nicer and any vanilla roms would take away most of the functionality that makes the tablets great. Apparently the S5e has some dev support.
Problem is Samsung seems to be super slow with there updates for the S7.
I've owned the S7+ SM-T970 for like just a week and I'm already feeling impatient waiting still running off the Oct. update while I keep hearing about about UI 3.0 update hitting there flagship phones.
Do you think at some point down the road when or before OEM support ends we can look forward to some working roms or Treble GSI options ?
Markeee said:
Problem is Samsung seems to be super slow with there updates for the S7.
I've owned the S7+ SM-T970 for like just a week and I'm already feeling impatient waiting still running off the Oct. update while I keep hearing about about UI 3.0 update hitting there flagship phones.
Do you think at some point down the road when or before OEM support ends we can look forward to some working roms or Treble GSI options ?
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Not everyone gets the update at the same time (don't know how they handle when and who should receive the update). I only got a November update a few days ago (though some claimed to have already gotten it) and it offered few improvements. The tablet still feels the same as usual.
As one must choose between custom ROMs and Knox (especially warranty), I'm currently at a loss myself, and for the time being I haven't heard of anyone trying (or succeeded in) booting a GSI on S7/S7+ probably because of this, although it's theoretically possible (again thanks to Treble). At least we now have TWRP... it might be better if one day custom kernels become available.
So far this is the only tablet I know that can offer 120Hz display. My current phone (Razer Phone 2 which is also 120Hz-capable) still doesn't have a specialized ROM but I can already run GSIs on it with adequate performance. For new devices, going for GSI might be easier, but performance-wise it still has a way to go compared to specialized ROMs.
Think it has to do with the fact that snapdragon is locked on samsung