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so I currently have an HTC One, and i love it, EXCEPT for one thing... the placement of the power button.
My hands arent that big, and the placement of the power button is horrible, at least for me it is.
So, if anyone has an LG G2 or has used one, Id just like to know from your experiences, is that single button on the back as cool as I think it is? or not. thanks!
kine42 said:
so I currently have an HTC One, and i love it, EXCEPT for one thing... the placement of the power button.
My hands arent that big, and the placement of the power button is horrible, at least for me it is.
So, if anyone has an LG G2 or has used one, Id just like to know from your experiences, is that single button on the back as cool as I think it is? or not. thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The back buttons are pretty cool I've gotten used to them. But I mostly just use the knock on feature which is amazing! My brother has the HTC one it's a great phone as well. But my g2 is better in just about every way not sure if it's worth upgrading though the next HTC one is about to come out soon
Sent from my LG-D800 using xda app-developers app
Right on bro, I appreciate the info.
I still might go with the LG G2. Cuz looking at the specs for the m8 makes me a sad panda.
O ya, forgot to ask in op but, the battery life on the LG is supposed to be awesome, is this true?
Thanks again bud
Battery life is ridiculous. Destroys any other android I've had. Even custom roms designed to save battery aren't as good as this. It's down to the 3000Mah beast inside it can go for ages. Also charges extremely quickly too!
And u can reorganize the menu buttons to your liking! (I prefer home button in the middle, menu on the left, back on the right)
Hope this helps
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
Sent from my LG-LS980 using xda app-developers app
I hate HTC one
kine42 said:
so I currently have an HTC One, and i love it, EXCEPT for one thing... the placement of the power button.
My hands arent that big, and the placement of the power button is horrible, at least for me it is.
So, if anyone has an LG G2 or has used one, Id just like to know from your experiences, is that single button on the back as cool as I think it is? or not. thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a review for you...
HTC one - It's a very stable device that has some time behind its belt and still has a big community of active devs and alot of users using the device in a STOCK FORM and ROOTED form and both love the device overall, and only flaws are things like you said, the button placement and the only other bad review i've seen about the HTC one is about the new way phone manufacturers are creating them, with a built-in battery and unable to add a external micro SD card.
My personal review of the two devices (as I have both).
HTC One M7 (AT&T Default Carrier)
If you might search around you would notice a thread by me where I messed my HTC one up and needed assistance to fix and get my device back to normal, and now it's running smooth and it is a great device to have, and has tons of options, customizations, and is a very good overall device via hardware, and software.
I am currently running Android 4.4.2 (KITKAT) on my HTC One (Stock Google Play Edition)...
My HTC One Device setup is...
DEVICE: HTC One M7 AT&T (Unlocked, Rooted, Bootloader Unlocked, S-OFF)
ROM: Android Revolution HD 61.0 by Mike1986 Google Play Edition.
MODS: Gravity Box [KK],
RECOVERY: TWRP v. 2.6.3.3
My overall thoughts of the device is, with the setup I'm running, I don't need any other phone... It's very fast, stable, and functional. Over any other devices I've been with or had none compare to the HTC One M7 that I'm currently running... I've had plenty of variety of devices from the Samsung galaxy S (2,3, and 4) devices, all of them rooted and non-rooted. I love the samsung S devices, but they don't even compare to the overall performance and comparison of the HTC One in my eyes, besides the fact that the S4 has a few things HTC dont with things such as Knox, and other different add-ons and features but then the Galaxy S devices dont have things the HTC one does like Beats Audio, and the speed hardware wise is much better with the HTC one then let's say the Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4.
Overall Rating:
Stock AT&T HTC One - 7.5/10.
(Not rooted, unlocked, Just brand new out the box coming from AT&T).
Rooted, Unlocked, S-OFF (mysetup): 9.2/10.
I rate the device out of 10 sections from software, performance, exterior, internals, speed, and build overall of the device, etc.
Now for my T-Mobile LG G2 (LG-D801) :
I purchased the T-Mobile LG G2 directly from T-Mobile about a month after it came out... When I first got the device, I knew it being brand new there was going to be some glitches and kinks in the device and software being that it was brand new and any new device that comes out, the first month or so always has some issues and has a updating coming shortly after, and I did receive some issues with the phone which I'll list and explain how to fix/and what temp fixes if your carrier hasnt sent out the fix yet.
LG G2 Issues I've faced.
- Screen Jump/Glitching:
My screen would jump around/glitch when I opened the app drawer with the home screen having the default background and the app drawer having mode set to Transparent background, when this is set the screen will jump and glitch around when you move to Page 2 of the App Drawer with these two settings set, LG already knows of the issue and it is suppose to be fixed in the next software update (which TMobile just got the update to 4.3 which did resolve some of the issues). But a fix for this issue to prevent it from happening is by changing the setting of the App Drawer background to a custom one or one of the default ones they provide and get it off of transparent, it seems that causes the glitch and it fixed after I did do this temp fix after goofing around with the device.
- Camera Lens:
The camera lens on the back of the LG G2, is very thin and not strong. A medium power flick with your finger will crack the glass. Be very careful with using the device to not drop or allow a pressure to be placed against the camera lens or the actual screen. It is not strong at all.
- Bloatware Apps (by Carrier & LG):
The bloatware that LG alone loaded this device up with is unreal. There is plenty pointless apps and features LG added with this device that I can promise you, you will never use it, unless your just looking around with the phone and want to learn about some of the things that it can do. LG did a good one with loading this device up to compete with other provide providers like Samsung coming out with Knox and Samsung Apps Center, etc... LG doesn't allow you to remove it either, but only Disable it, but even with disabling it, some still run due to other features require it. Then the carrier also loads up their known apps they include with devices as every carrier does (Besides if you purchased yours directly from Google Play Store).
- Knock On
There's been plenty of complaints that the knock on feature which is a feature I LOVE of the phone, is touchy where it doesn't want to work as they say it should with 2 knocks to turn on, and 2 knocks to turn back off, sometimes it takes alot more then two, and the pressure isnt always good that you need to use to turn it on.
- Sound Quality;
With headphones it sounds good but the playback speakers on the device are not that good. It isn't very loud at all even turned all the way up.
Now remember all this above is running a T-Mobile LG G2 (LG-D801) stock, out of the box device (Non-rooted, modified, etc).
My overall rating of the device...
Now because I said all this doesn't mean it's not a good phone... The phone is a EXCELLENT and a new device in the market that competes with the big guy's now like Galaxy S devices and iPhone.... The rear-key buttons, is a LOVE of mine when I thought I would hate it, but I LOVED IT, but it is actually amazing. Also some really cool features is the Multi-background feature, 3-Finger Slideaway, Multi-Window Tasking (best one I seen on a stock-device so far), etc.
The performance is a 7.5 because of the BLOATWARE and Pointless features installed that are not needed or even useful/helpful, You be better off without half the stuff. I say this because it sucks down the memory of the phone with all this crap, maybe leaving you 980MB of Memory left from the moment you power the device on the first time stock. If you disable all the features and uninstall the updates for them, it improves for about a additional +256MB of more Memory.
The camera on the device is very good, one of the best I've seen, Very Clear, with plenty of features to take the best shot of you doing anything you want, or need a photo of, and some cool little tweak features you can use to maake a badass photo shot, or others. Same goes for the Front Facing Camera, one of the best I've seen on a mobile device for clarity and overall status it's a good camera.
LGHome which is the G2's "home setup", as where Samsung Galaxy S device's have TouchWiz, The G2 has LGHome which is cool for people who don't want to root their phone but want to customize their device from the style of the phone, icons, app drawer, fonts, keyboards, messaging display and all. It comes with a Default Theme, and 2 other additional themes preinstalled. Which is very easy to manage and use and don't need no skills to know how, it's right under the phone settings options under Theme; You can download the Theme's directly from Google Play Store, or LG's Store (A Copy-Cat (not a very good one) version of LG's own Google Play Store and Samsung's "Samsung App Center" app) called LG Store which has a small-app store but just LG apps, includes sections: Keyboard, LG Home Themes, FontPacks, Messaging Themes, and more... (But you actually have to download this LGStore App from LG's website, It isn't available on Playstore and doesn't come with the LG G2).
The battery life is great, It lasts me all day long from 9AM-12MIDNIGHT for me is when and how long I use the phone for from disconnecting it from charger to plugging it back up when going to bed. I haven't noticed any issues but for those that don't know this, The battery life will BLOW, unless you do the correct way when first getting your LG G2 Device. Once you open your device and power it on for the first time (if brand new, out of the box) should come with about 50% battery, let it RUN and use the device until it completely DIES, 100% dead and powers off on it's own, do not turn the device back on, just plug the device onto your charger, and leave the device powered off and allow it to charge to 100% (I suggest a full 8 hours), once done, unplug the device and then power the device on again, and use it. I also suggest doing it one more time after the first initial charge, after you unplug it and power it back on after letting it charge for the first time for 8 hours (100%) let it completely die out again and power off on it's own, then do it one more time. This ensures the safety of your battery and the life of it. I know a friend of mine purchased the same exact device as I did, and his battery wouldnt last longer then 5 hours (4.5 hours to be exact) before hitting under 5% battery charge, because when he first got his device and instead of doing what I said, he powered it up, used it, once died, plugged it up, turned device back on, and left it on and used it while on charger instead of letting it actually powerup and charge 100% your battery, and overall his battery sucked ass. Where my battery last around 10-12 hours on a full-charge.
The HD Screen is Awesome also, Great GFX setup on the device... Photos are beautiful, Games are amazing, and overall is just good.
Overall Rating: 7.5-8 (STOCK OUT OF THE BOX EDITION)
Now if you ROOT your LG G2 and load it up with a Stock Google Play Edition ROM, or a Stock LG G2 Rom (4.3 or 4.4) LG/Carrier which there is plenty of options to choose, so that basically, your phone is a STOCK LG G2 without the bloatware and crappy apps provided by them, itll just have the features needed and overall (My recommendation, I rooted mine and ran a stock G2 ROM (without the extra LG apps, and Carrier Bloatware) to where it succeed well, and performance was AMAZING, much more RAM, less CPU usage, etc.
Rating: 9.5
I hope this helps.
djay1127 said:
Here's a review for you...
Overall Rating:
Stock AT&T HTC One - 7.5/10.
(Not rooted, unlocked, Just brand new out the box coming from AT&T).
Rooted, Unlocked, S-OFF (mysetup): 9.2/10.
Overall Rating: 7.5-8 (STOCK OUT OF THE BOX EDITION)
Now if you ROOT your LG G2 and load it up with a Stock Google Play Edition ROM, or a Stock LG G2 Rom (4.3 or 4.4) LG/Carrier which there is plenty of options to choose, so that basically, your phone is a STOCK LG G2 without the bloatware and crappy apps provided by them, itll just have the features needed and overall (My recommendation, I rooted mine and ran a stock G2 ROM (without the extra LG apps, and Carrier Bloatware) to where it succeed well, and performance was AMAZING, much more RAM, less CPU usage, etc.
Rating: 9.5
I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wow, yes, that was some GREAT information, thank you very much!
other than the camera lens being kinda iffy, I dont really even take many photos at all to begin with, I think Im going to wait for the g3, or the G Pro 2.
thanks again for the very informative reply though, much appreciated!
kine42 said:
wow, yes, that was some GREAT information, thank you very much!
other than the camera lens being kinda iffy, I dont really even take many photos at all to begin with, I think Im going to wait for the g3, or the G Pro 2.
thanks again for the very informative reply though, much appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I sugest taking a look at the LG G Flex ( I Currently Have One w/ T-Mobile ) stock, non-rooted, out of the box brand new. I currently love it too, my top fav phones are:
1st. LG G2
2nd. LG G Flex -- tied with first, i just received it yesterday in the mail.
3rd. Samsung Galaxy S4
4th. HTC One.
tekneekz said:
Here's a review for you...
Overall Rating: 7.5-8 (STOCK OUT OF THE BOX EDITION)
Now if you ROOT your LG G2 and load it up with a Stock Google Play Edition ROM, or a Stock LG G2 Rom (4.3 or 4.4) LG/Carrier which there is plenty of options to choose, so that basically, your phone is a STOCK LG G2 without the bloatware and crappy apps provided by them, itll just have the features needed and overall (My recommendation, I rooted mine and ran a stock G2 ROM (without the extra LG apps, and Carrier Bloatware) to where it succeed well, and performance was AMAZING, much more RAM, less CPU usage, etc.
Rating: 9.5
I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there GPE rom for G2?
I haven't had to flash a rom since my Galaxy Nexus! I am only considering flashing to get lollipop.
I do have a few questions. I know there are no xposed modules. I see that CM has the hotspot hack already built in.# 1. Do all the other verizon g3 roms have this baked in as well?
What about the screen redraw fix,# 2. is that issue fixed on 5.0?
Also, #3. would anyone care to chime in as far as a comparison between the few 5.0+ roms that are available?
G3 tweaks box will no longer be usable. That is sad to me. However I wont need to worry about nav/status bar tinting as its built into 5.0. I am worried about battery life though. Right now with greenify, cf lumen, and amplify, I get 4 hrs of screen on time with the stock battery. And less than 1%/hr idle drain.
I downloaded bump'd TWRP, extracted the recovery.img and flashed it using flashify. I am currently on rooted 4.4.2 10b.
Lastly, #4 here's an important question. If i use SoftCard (formerly ISIS), how will I be able to use something like RootCloak to prevent it from knowing my phone is rooted? If after December 31st SoftCard still offers $1 off per transaction, I will definitely need to use this.
EDIT: I have discovered a similar alternative called Cydia Substrate and Root Cloak Plus. But upon further investigation I have not seen any support for android after kitkat.
Thank you all for your time. Merry Christmas + Happy Holidays
I loaded up liquid smooth and it was pretty sweet. My one word of warning. The camera gets nuked. Deal breaker for me. Back to stick rooted with g3tweaksbox.
jfriend33 said:
I haven't had to flash a rom since my Galaxy Nexus! I am only considering flashing to get lollipop.
I do have a few questions. I know there are no xposed modules. I see that CM has the hotspot hack already built in.# 1. Do all the other verizon g3 roms have this baked in as well?
What about the screen redraw fix,# 2. is that issue fixed on 5.0?
Also, #3. would anyone care to chime in as far as a comparison between the few 5.0+ roms that are available?
G3 tweaks box will no longer be usable. That is sad to me. However I wont need to worry about nav/status bar tinting as its built into 5.0. I am worried about battery life though. Right now with greenify, cf lumen, and amplify, I get 4 hrs of screen on time with the stock battery. And less than 1%/hr idle drain.
I downloaded bump'd TWRP, extracted the recovery.img and flashed it using flashify. I am currently on rooted 4.4.2 10b.
Lastly, #4 here's an important question. If i use SoftCard (formerly ISIS), how will I be able to use something like RootCloak to prevent it from knowing my phone is rooted? If after December 31st SoftCard still offers $1 off per transaction, I will definitely need to use this.
EDIT: I have discovered a similar alternative called Cydia Substrate and Root Cloak Plus. But upon further investigation I have not seen any support for android after kitkat.
Thank you all for your time. Merry Christmas + Happy Holidays
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Most have it baked in, but stability varies. Some have a tendency to cause a kernel crash every so often....at least they used to. Stability is getting better and better. Simple reboot fixed any potential crash.
2. I don't know what screen redraw fix you're referring to
3. I've tried quite a few different ones, and so far the slimlp beta has been the best as far as stability, with the new illusion rom following close behind and not being quite as stabile or oddity-free, but having a TON more features, so that's currently my dd. All others I either haven't tried for a while, had issues shortly after install, or couldn't stand the poor taste in boot animation (lol) and proceeded to uninstall haha
4. As you mentioned before, xposed is not compatible with the art runtime (aka the runtime 5.0 and beyond use). So, no art compatibility = no xposed. No xposed = no root cloak. No root cloak = no soft card. I fix the whole issue by using Google wallet, if for nothing other than the fact that I refuse to support Verizon any more than I already am forced to (coverage wise) as my hatred for them is sincere Lol
Edit: Referring to the above post - camera, wifi hotspot, mobile data, and bluetooth have been big sticking points for aosp on the vs985....however the current 5.0 roms have kicked about 90 percent (or more) of all the big rom breaking issues, so stability is definitely to dd status if you can live with occasional quirks, IMHO.
Yeah but the camera still hasn't been addressed. Stock camera takes ok pictures but laser auto focus doesn't seem to work. The OPO camera adds a few more features but still doesn't use laser focus. Both are slow to focus, featureless, and perform fairly poorly in low light. At least from my experience. The other past sticking points were non issues for me. I didn't try hotspot though.
Schaweet said:
Yeah but the camera still hasn't been addressed. Stock camera takes ok pictures but laser auto focus doesn't seem to work. The OPO camera adds a few more features but still doesn't use laser focus. Both are slow to focus, featureless, and perform fairly poorly in low light. At least from my experience. The other past sticking points were non issues for me. I didn't try hotspot though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, those points are true....camera definitely leaves a bit to still be desired. However, it does seems to at least fc and/or give me the "can't connect to camera" error much less, if at all currently. That's more what I was making....basic stability, not true usability lol
ohlin5 said:
1. Most have it baked in, but stability varies. Some have a tendency to cause a kernel crash every so often....at least they used to. Stability is getting better and better. Simple reboot fixed any potential crash.
2. I don't know what screen redraw fix you're referring to
3. I've tried quite a few different ones, and so far the slimlp beta has been the best as far as stability, with the new illusion rom following close behind and not being quite as stabile or oddity-free, but having a TON more features, so that's currently my dd. All others I either haven't tried for a while, had issues shortly after install, or couldn't stand the poor taste in boot animation (lol) and proceeded to uninstall haha
4. As you mentioned before, xposed is not compatible with the art runtime (aka the runtime 5.0 and beyond use). So, no art compatibility = no xposed. No xposed = no root cloak. No root cloak = no soft card. I fix the whole issue by using Google wallet, if for nothing other than the fact that I refuse to support Verizon any more than I already am forced to (coverage wise) as my hatred for them is sincere Lol
Edit: Referring to the above post - camera, wifi hotspot, mobile data, and bluetooth have been big sticking points for aosp on the vs985....however the current 5.0 roms have kicked about 90 percent (or more) of all the big rom breaking issues, so stability is definitely to dd status if you can live with occasional quirks, IMHO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the fast reply. I really don't use my camera all that much. So the camera isn't a huge deal breaker for me permanently. Bluetooth would need to work most of the time for my lg g watch though. How has your battery life been?
This Cydia Substrate has me hopeful. Maybe there's a chance it will support 5.0+ sooner rather than later.
Schaweet said:
Yeah but the camera still hasn't been addressed. Stock camera takes ok pictures but laser auto focus doesn't seem to work. The OPO camera adds a few more features but still doesn't use laser focus. Both are slow to focus, featureless, and perform fairly poorly in low light. At least from my experience. The other past sticking points were non issues for me. I didn't try hotspot though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am almost wondering what the camera would be like using Focal (from play store) with a 5.0 rom. I always use focal for more tricky shots that require more manual adjustments. You could give it a try.
Yes, yes, it's possible to love a phone. Heck, you sleep next to it, don't you? Rate this thread to indicate your love for the Lenovo Zuk Z2 Pro, all things considered. A higher rating indicates that the Lenovo Zuk Z2 Pro is an incredible phone that you enjoy tremendously. You love it.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
Overclocking it makes everything even more considerable keeping up with newer phones but still so beautiful
IP certification would be perfect
I'm gonna post this here; I sent this originally as a private message since someone was asking about buying a Z2 Pro, and I figured a "here's kinda how it is as of September 2017" roundup might be useful for others looking at buying one, or trying to decide between the Pro and Plus.
So I own a Z2 Pro, and after several months of trying various options for custom and factory ROMs for it, and then getting a regular Z2 Plus for my wife, and setting THAT up...
Frankly, if I were going to get one now, I'd get the Z2 Plus Z2132 instead. Bigger battery, MUCH better custom ROM community with more stable & official builds, official TWRP, better-supported camera... to me, the extra $150 for the Pro has only meant more headaches trying to get something stable to work as a daily driver with regular security updates - and the AMOLED screen, UFS vs eMMC internal storage speed, and supposedly better camera haven't really ended up being as much of a difference as I thought. Yeah there's more storage & RAM, but... for daily use, at least on Nougat, 4GB RAM / 64GB storage is still plenty.
ZUI (factory firmware) issues:
Long story short, the official ZUI is an annoying mess for me, even with root (I use Magisk so I can have root utilities like Titanium Backup but still keep playing Pokemon Go with my wife)... the dialer and settings and built-in calendar app and lots of things still have Chinese showing up around the edges even when the system is set to English. Trying to disable built-in apps and use Google Dialer & Contacts doesn't quite work right, you can't actually install something like OpenGapps but have to piecemeal it together with packages from apkmirror or similar, and Google contact sync stops every week or two without warning - since I need contact, calendar, and email sync to work for business purposes, that's a show-stopper for me.
Seems like the Plus gets updates to ZUI before the Pro does, by a couple weeks.
Custom ROM issues:
The Pro camera really only looks & performs great under ZUI. It's not Camera2 HAL compatible and, unless Lenovo decides to pursue that with their own sources, never will support fancy HDR+ modes or zero shutter lag with Google Camera apps. AEX recent builds are starting to get really close to stock ZUI quality, since they imported & shimmed the ZUI camera blobs somehow, but some others like Mokee might still accidentally mechanically jam your camera trying to enable OIS. Ouch.
The U-Health app on stock ZUI is the only thing that can talk to the heart rate/blood-oxygen sensor on the back of the phone under the flash. Nobody has got U-Health working under a custom ROM since it requires the ZUI framework and integration with Lenovo's user login ecosystem. But the step sensor is apparently generic and supported by Google Fit, so if you just want to see if you're hitting 10K steps per day, you're all set. All the other sensors (gyro, orientation, proximity, magnetic, GPS/GLONASS, pressure, gravity, etc.) seem to work fine in custom ROMs.
You'll hear a lot about the "blue LED of death" - that's a hard freeze, the screen goes blank and the notification LED goes blue (with a 50% duty cycle, which looks different than just being "on"). You can restart from there by holding the power button for 8-10 seconds, so don't panic. Unfortunately, it seems to be reeeeeally easy to hard freeze the phone by doing some things with Bluetooth, or entering/exiting deep sleep (like if I have a clock alarm and a calendar reminder or two that would all go off simultaneously, and it's plugged in to charge, trying to wake itself up and play all those notifications at the same time has actually made it freeze instead and I've slept through an alarm that never went off) or other stuff that involves switching CPU states too much... I don't know. It seems like, at the end of the day, the stock (ZUI) thermal-engine.conf might have something to do with it... it sets super-low limits for temperatures, and the CPU ends up throttling, and it'll try to crash out perhaps as a safety measure instead of getting too hot... or maybe the constant state-switching leads to instability. Anyway, it's not too hot. They're just being super-conservative. Not sure. You can pull a different thermal config that'll ease up a lot, get you better benchmarks, and still isn't actually putting the hardware at risk.
Custom ROMs:
LineageOS 14 - there isn't a current build. I mean, there IS, and theoretically work is still being done on it, by a couple different people (long story and some drama involved there...) but there's no daily driver with working sound and no progress reports being made in XDA forums.
Mokee 7 - continues to be a thing (based on LineageOS sources), but... I don't know, it's all nightlies in terms of stability (at least when I tried it). Everything mostly works, it's just crashy. Wouldn't recommend. However, the maintainer is a guy whose name you'll see a lot: SY/Siyang. He's basically THE guy on the Lenovo Chinese forums responsible for building Z2 Pro ports of various custom/aftermarket ROMs like Resurrection Remix, AICP, Flyme, MIUI, HydrogenOS, etc. Apparently being a kernel developer means you know how to play around. But that's all it really is; playing around - he doesn't actively maintain any of them, just kinda builds them & throws them out there, but isn't in it to do active bug fixes. He also includes 3-4 packages of Chinese bloatware that involve some kind of adware/affiliate marketing to try and make some money - I don't begrudge him that, and you can disable/freeze them, but it's still not "clean".
MIUI/Flyme/HydrogenOS - I think they're all Android 6 (MM) based, so I haven't looked into them. Built by Siyang.
AICP - Built by Siyang. This was actually pretty good, but it crashed out on me with an alarm set twice and I was late for work. Ditched.
Resurrection Remix - Built by Siyang. This was also pretty good, but the 5.8.4 builds have problems. 5.8.3 was best, but got blue LED a couple times and ditched it too, not interested in moving backward in security patches.
...which brings us to AEX (AOSP Extended) - this is the only working Nougat ROM being actively developed & maintained for the Z2 Pro as of this writing that's stable for daily driver use, but it's REALLY good. @davidevinavil has done a fantastic job and is very responsive on the XDA forums. Since he's just using the same thermal-engine.conf as ZUI it doesn't score as high as possible on benchmarks, but you can grab the one from void23's kernel and use that (void hasn't updated his kernel for AEX 4.6 yet and doesn't seem to plan to with the release of Oreo "real soon now", so I don't recommend actually using his kernel anymore).
Works well with Magisk (for root, root hiding, and making Google Play Store like your weird-ass Chinese OEM phone, etc.), supports OMS/substratum themes, has current security patches, generally non-crashy, and camera quality is pretty good (both the built-in camera app, and with Open Camera and CameraNextModV7). F2FS support for /data & /cache might work, but the dev doesn't use those (even though, in theory, it makes a notable difference since the Pro has UFS instead of eMMC 5.2 storage) so plan on using ext4 for everything. Haven't tried device encryption yet, but if I were going to, it would be on this one.
Custom Kernels:
Void kernel - Void23 did some nice work based on AEX 4.5, and some people successfully use it with other ROMs as well. It works best with most current AEX 4.5, but from the reading I've done I wouldn't use it with 4.6. However, you can grab his thermal-engine.conf file from his installer package, and put it into /system/etc/ of a clean AEX 4.6 install and that'll give you a little more headroom before CPU/GPU/chipset throttling occurs.
TWRP:
There's a few, but @davidevinavil has the only 3.1.1 release, and it works the best as far as I can tell. There's a 3.1.0 release on the zukfans.eu German language forum (reasons...) that mostly works well but sometimes can't install some ROMs, and a Chinese release of 3.1.0 by wzsx150 that seems to work best for installing all the Lenovo forum ports by Siyang plus has a few extra goodies (like rebooting directly to EDL/port 9008 mode for QPST/QFIL flashing). As much as I'd love to have my /data partition encrypted, I haven't bothered testing lately. I'm guessing best compatibility would be using AEX and @davidevinavil's TWRP, but haven't actually tested. Again, F2FS is hit or miss.
But you know what's even better about @davidevinavil and AEX for the Z2 Pro? It's essentially a port of his work on AEX for the Z2 Plus! And on the Z2 Plus, it's only one of many actively supported and maintained custom ROMs! And there's an unofficial EAS-enabled version of AEX on that phone, so that bigger battery will go even farther!
So yeah. I like being able to quickly run a nandroid backup & restore and all, and have more room for video files & music, but as far as actual daily driver quality of life... not sure if the extra $150+ is worth it for the Pro, especially when you have the same CPU/GPU and bigger battery on the Plus. The every-so-slightly nicer camera seems to actually be a problem that delays getting working custom ROMs, and the other differences don't translate into noticeable daily quality of life improvements for me - I mean it's not like the plus is SLOW by any stretch. But it's got more RAM & storage, and USB 3 transfer speed, so if you use it as a glorified thumb drive a lot, or tend to load up lots of movies/music, then maybe it's worth it. And the AMOLED screen is pretty.
Oh, and there's a LOT more protective cases for the Z2 (plus) than the Z2 Pro.
So there you go. If you have any other questions about daily life with a Z2 Pro, feel free to ask me!
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It's fast, and it's working pretty well for me, but it took a LOT to get to where it's actually a reliable daily driver for work.
I have owned mine for 15 months and paid $400. If I broke it right now I would buy another one for the $260 it is selling at.
Got it 25 months so far, since October '17, bought 215€. In my eyes, it is like a the OnePlus 3 6/128 of its time, except the silly multilanguage chinese "stock" rom in which I have stucked yet (a modified MM version). I was about buying a new phone and change battery, root-rom-kernel etc at this one, and just change battery, root-rom-kernel etc this one. Decided to stay because even at 50€ more , it's impossible to find anything else equipped with just OIS, 6 GB ram, amoled, UFS, though I'd expected to be able to buy much more, such as >=8 ram, cooling, macro & wide, as we are two years after.
Sooo no. One more year will be good enough with it. That's the only (main) device I have kept for more than 10 months What more could I want? :angel: :highfive: :victory:
Been an owner of SGP 621 for almost 4 years now. Device still runs good though battery has been noticeably not as good already. I just want your thoughts about your preference if whether you use stock or custom rom as daily driver. Your thoughts about the battery life and smoothness of either and the pros and cons you found out. Are you planning to change tablets soon?
I had it for some years now, still like it. Looked around to see what options are out there, but the Android market for tablet are not very big unfortunately. I'm not very fond of huge TV sized phones (always used compact versions), so a tablet is nice to have to. I bought a Lenovo Tab4 for my mom, and actually like it when I was configuring it. Maybe it will be the next one when my Xperia Tab's life runs out.
Don't think I have noticed any huge drop on battery life, recharge it a couple of times a week at most. Think I get a fair amount of hours from it, bit hard to tell depending how I use it. But for most times I get about 2-4 days. I have used a couple of custom roms on it, but had some trouble with the WiFi connection just dropped on those, so I'm on the latest firmware (rooted and debloated 6.0 which feels a bit old, but works). Maybe I'll try another round with some roms in a while.
Do you feel laggy using it as stock right now? Are you attracted to upgrade to ipad mini?
Always modded stock! I've just tried AICP Oreo on my Z3TC and hated it so just about to reflash 291. Custom ROMs generally have issues which tend to frustrate.
I am running AICP, 9.0 Pie. Really great and smooth ROM, even better with a custom launcher. Would never go back to stock again. It's amazing how well our old Z3 Tablets run Pie.
So, being the phone nerd that I am, I have no idea how I never knew about this phone till now. So! Id like to ask all of you, who have the phone, is it still worth it? Are you happy with your purchase? Did you switch to the ROG Phone 3 or the Note 20 Ultra? Hows the OS? I like to customize my phone alot so, remove any and all bloatware, root the phone and perhaps install a custom rom, etc. Is any of that possible on this phone? Ill be honest! I really just want this phone for its 7.1 inch screen. I previously had the Huawei Mate 20 X so, this looks like a very welcome upgrade. So what are your thoughts on this phone, please share?
I have BS3Pro china device. flash to global rom and this is my opinions.
What I like about this phone :
- Huge display for read cartoon/ watch some video
- beautiful 90hz screen that make my cartoon reading feel great when scroll down to next page
- Great gaming experience here
- Battery is great (if not do a "lot" of gaming) (pubg 90fps can do around 4hr before phone died)
- Fast battery charging from 0% to 100% with around 1hr
What I'm not impressive about this phone:
- Camera focusing(not autofocus) is not done they work. miss focus 80% of time
- Speaker is not loud enough. if you need to race a sound with noisy place, You will hear little sound of your phone.
- Speaker quality is decent. Not great but not worse either
- fingerprint scanner will not work if your screen have a little dirty or oily
The worst part of this phone:
- Software update(Global rom) is very slow. This phone still have miui11 and the last update is probably 2 month ago(if i'm not wrong)
- Lack of community.
- No hope for custom rom.
Summary. this is a good phone that used by few people(I assum). That's make the manufacturer lower the priority in term of software update. and blackshark company didn't have space for custom rom for their phone.
You can still unlock bootloader and install custom recovery for rooting your phone. But no custom rom were made for this phone here.
If you don't mind about custom rom, frequent software update, lack of community to discuss. this is a good phone if your prefer big one.
Phone would be worth it $400 now. ZERO updates coming, xiaomi has abandoned the BS3pro, especially the global model
I love it. If you're rooted you can customise it using swift installer, and a few other apps that work like the audio headquarters, viper, and superstatus bar, CustoMiuizer, etc. I use the Samsung notifications shade etc.
Though I wish there were ways to update the phone since I can't get update to install since I'm rooted.
Other than that. I love it. Just wish it had 120hz
tried any GSIs?
like Mitku01 said, the phone is great. You don't find a better phone with a big screen.
Global support is bad. My Black Shark 3 Pro is still on security patch 2020-06-05.