Hi!
I have been a heavy user of custom ROMs for more than three years now on all my Android devices. Lately, although I have a phone that not so long ago was still Samsung's flagship (the galaxy S4, I9505), the pictures I get with it really suck. A couple weeks ago, the phone could not detect my SIM card (pure hardware issue), so I re-installed the stock firmware and took it to the repair shop to get the warranty repair. They fixed it and I got my phone back. Just to make sure it was working fine, I decided to use the stock ROM for a while, and oh surprise: the camera takes much better pics in low light conditions or indoor than the same camera with any custom ROM app (usually AOSP-based, AOKP or CM-based). I tried to download the Google camera, and the low light pictures really suck. Then I tried a bunch of camera apps from the Play store, but I invariably got similar results to what I got with my custom ROMs.
That got me thinking. I'm no dev nor programmer, so I won't get technical, but it seems to me that there can be two reasons for the samsung app to work better:
- Either it has access to (proprietary) hardware drivers that other camera apps cannot access, and therefore it can get everything out of the camera hardware
- Or Samsung (which is not known to be great for its software) has developed a great camera software.
I would think it's something along the lines of the first reason. So does that mean I am either stuck with a ROM I cannot stand (Touchwiz is awful, has always been, and may always be) and a decent camera, or a decent ROM but a camera that is kind of useless when I'm indoor?
If so, how are the cameras on other similar phones (I'm thinking Nexus 5, Sony Xperia, etc.), running on custom ROMs compared to the stock camera apps? Is there also a noticeable difference, or is it just with Samsung?
I understood that you cannot run the Samsung camera apk on a custom ROM (even one on a Samsung phone), because the camera relies on some kind of Samsung proprietary framework.
Does this mean I should be looking for a phone that is running not only on open source software, but also open source hardware, does that even exist?
Anyone has noticed something similar? Am I the only one to be bothered by this?
I'll post here a couple pics taken in the same ambient light conditions. One with the Samsung camera (Auto setting), one with Google camera, and one with another camera app from the market (don't remember which one, but I tested about 15 of them and their results were quite similar).
Anyway, even if you don' have a solution to the problem but can point me to information that could help me understand how to choose my next phone, I would really appreciate. Thanks!
Cheers,
Fa
fabecoool said:
Hi!
I have been a heavy user of custom ROMs for more than three years now on all my Android devices. Lately, although I have a phone that not so long ago was still Samsung's flagship (the galaxy S4, I9505), the pictures I get with it really suck. A couple weeks ago, the phone could not detect my SIM card (pure hardware issue), so I re-installed the stock firmware and took it to the repair shop to get the warranty repair. They fixed it and I got my phone back. Just to make sure it was working fine, I decided to use the stock ROM for a while, and oh surprise: the camera takes much better pics in low light conditions or indoor than the same camera with any custom ROM app (usually AOSP-based, AOKP or CM-based). I tried to download the Google camera, and the low light pictures really suck. Then I tried a bunch of camera apps from the Play store, but I invariably got similar results to what I got with my custom ROMs.
That got me thinking. I'm no dev nor programmer, so I won't get technical, but it seems to me that there can be two reasons for the samsung app to work better:
- Either it has access to (proprietary) hardware drivers that other camera apps cannot access, and therefore it can get everything out of the camera hardware
- Or Samsung (which is not known to be great for its software) has developed a great camera software.
I would think it's something along the lines of the first reason. So does that mean I am either stuck with a ROM I cannot stand (Touchwiz is awful, has always been, and may always be) and a decent camera, or a decent ROM but a camera that is kind of useless when I'm indoor?
If so, how are the cameras on other similar phones (I'm thinking Nexus 5, Sony Xperia, etc.), running on custom ROMs compared to the stock camera apps? Is there also a noticeable difference, or is it just with Samsung?
I understood that you cannot run the Samsung camera apk on a custom ROM (even one on a Samsung phone), because the camera relies on some kind of Samsung proprietary framework.
Does this mean I should be looking for a phone that is running not only on open source software, but also open source hardware, does that even exist?
Anyone has noticed something similar? Am I the only one to be bothered by this?
I'll post here a couple pics taken in the same ambient light conditions. One with the Samsung camera (Auto setting), one with Google camera, and one with another camera app from the market (don't remember which one, but I tested about 15 of them and their results were quite similar).
Anyway, even if you don' have a solution to the problem but can point me to information that could help me understand how to choose my next phone, I would really appreciate. Thanks!
Cheers,
Fa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So here come the pics. Of course XDA compresses them, but you'll get the idea.
Fa
That is the example difference between things that are built for the device over using open-source options. Software will always be better from the OEM. You see the same thing with HTC and Sony devices. Take the m7 and m8. They have great cameras as long as you use HTC Sense. Other wise all you get is a basic 4 mpx camera that sucks. If you want one that works the same no matter the rom then get a nexus. This is something OEM are doing to make people want to use their software
Thanks @zelendel,
A Nexus could be an option, but the screen size of the Nexus 5 was already too large for me (and so is my current phone, the Galaxy S4), so there's no way I'm getting a Nexus 6 (plus it's prohibitively expensive, at least here in Europe). When will Google make a Nexus mini or compact? That would rock, especially if they go the Sony way (not compromising too much on hardware features). The only downside of Nexus phone is their lack of MicroSD card slot, but that's off topic.
Anyway, what about the Google Edition phones? As I understand, they have the same hardware as their OEM counterpart (don't they?), but instead of running on proprietary stock ROMs, they ship with a pure Vanilla Android. Does this mean they ship with a camera that sucks, or is there some kind of tweak included to get the most of the camera with those editions, too? If so, would flashing that ROM help (if I can get my hands on it)? Unfortunately it seems the whole Google Edition concept has not gained a lot of traction (maybe because of the unavailability of the handsets in many places, maybe thanks to the OEM who did not play fair game and rather managed to get their crappy proprietary stock versions in the hands of customers), so I'm trying not to get too excited about this either.
I guess I will have to go to my local phone shop, spend time there with different devices and see if some of them have less heavily customized skins than TouchWiz. That means I'll no longer go for a Samsung, which have been my only devices so far. The end of an era...
fabecoool said:
Thanks @zelendel,
A Nexus could be an option, but the screen size of the Nexus 5 was already too large for me (and so is my current phone, the Galaxy S4), so there's no way I'm getting a Nexus 6 (plus it's prohibitively expensive, at least here in Europe). When will Google make a Nexus mini or compact? That would rock, especially if they go the Sony way (not compromising too much on hardware features). The only downside of Nexus phone is their lack of MicroSD card slot, but that's off topic.
Anyway, what about the Google Edition phones? As I understand, they have the same hardware as their OEM counterpart (don't they?), but instead of running on proprietary stock ROMs, they ship with a pure Vanilla Android. Does this mean they ship with a camera that sucks, or is there some kind of tweak included to get the most of the camera with those editions, too? If so, would flashing that ROM help (if I can get my hands on it)? Unfortunately it seems the whole Google Edition concept has not gained a lot of traction (maybe because of the unavailability of the handsets in many places, maybe thanks to the OEM who did not play fair game and rather managed to get their crappy proprietary stock versions in the hands of customers), so I'm trying not to get too excited about this either.
I guess I will have to go to my local phone shop, spend time there with different devices and see if some of them have less heavily customized skins than TouchWiz. That means I'll no longer go for a Samsung, which have been my only devices so far. The end of an era...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The GPE device dont come with stock android completely. I have a GPE HTC M7 and the gpe software has some of the closed sourced drivers and such for things like Beats audio and the camera. As I run pure AOSP I wind up with a 4mpx camera that really sucks. While i agree alot of the newer devices have huge screens that make it almost pointless for me. The m7 is not bad at about 5in. But then again it doesnt have an SD card slot but comes with 32gb of storage which I think is plenty for my use. Part of me misses my old samsung devices but I made the mistake once of getting the one with the Samsungs chip and not the snapdragon which killed development.
zelendel said:
The GPE device dont come with stock android completely. I have a GPE HTC M7 and the gpe software has some of the closed sourced drivers and such for things like Beats audio and the camera. As I run pure AOSP I wind up with a 4mpx camera that really sucks. While i agree alot of the newer devices have huge screens that make it almost pointless for me. The m7 is not bad at about 5in. But then again it doesnt have an SD card slot but comes with 32gb of storage which I think is plenty for my use. Part of me misses my old samsung devices but I made the mistake once of getting the one with the Samsungs chip and not the snapdragon which killed development.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright! Well, if I could find the GPE edition for my phone (I9505), then I would get all the camera features and none of the TouchWiz crap, which would already be quite an improvement over what I have now (complete TW stock). I guess another possibility would be to flash a stock based ROM that is rooted and from which I could remove all the bloatware...
OK, the hunt is on for a new ROM!
Cheers!
Fa
fabecoool said:
Alright! Well, if I could find the GPE edition for my phone (I9505), then I would get all the camera features and none of the TouchWiz crap, which would already be quite an improvement over what I have now (complete TW stock). I guess another possibility would be to flash a stock based ROM that is rooted and from which I could remove all the bloatware...
OK, the hunt is on for a new ROM!
Cheers!
Fa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want all the features of the camera then yes I would run a stock de bloated rom. I used to run Samsung devices and you can remove most things which will give you the camera app which has all the best features.
Hello dear people, I hope I can be forgiven for asking a potentially stupid question.
With my 850F batteries failing, I am hoping to get some more months out of this once expensive phone. So I've been looking at some custom ROMs to see if they make a difference. But it seems like the fingerprint reader never works. People tell me it's because the driver source isn't available.
So, is this a question of legality (the driver cannot legally be included with roms) or of possibility (the driver is deeply dug in)? Because if it's the former, I was wondering if there's some file I can take out of the stock firmware and put onto my phone to make the fingerprint reader work with any rom?
Also, I would like to express my dissatisfaction with the terrible support Samsung has given for this phone. We got one late update from Kit Kat to Lollipop. It looks so vanilla it makes one wonder why it took so long. The black background colors from Kit Kat changed to white, a terrible choice for an OLED screen. So with regard to the already meager battery, this update has been a regression.
I'm trying to get as many months out of this phone as I can until the next generation of phones comes out. I love the Samsung hardware but I might look for brands that are either more frequent with updates or open source enough so that custom firmware development is not hindered by unsupported hardware.
I'm thinking the next phone should just be under 5 inch and powerful enough to be a desktop computer running full Linux, like Ubuntu OTA 11 (if someone introduces Android compatibility) or Maru OS, so I don't have to carry around a laptop anymore.
Fingerprint scanner works fine with all Samsung based ROMs (OzcanROM and EpsilROM) only CM ROMs (CM and ResurrectionRemix) don't support it (aswell as heart rate monitor)
93drago said:
Fingerprint scanner works fine with all Samsung based ROMs (OzcanROM and EpsilROM) only CM ROMs (CM and ResurrectionRemix) don't support it (aswell as heart rate monitor)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hadn't even thought of the heartrate monitor yet!
Yes, I tried those non-Samsung ROMs. I thought if I use the Samsung-based ROMs, I might as well use the Samsung ROM.
Because they use proprietary drivers, and samsung does not disponibilize them, well, when marshmallow launch, its is POSSIBLE that Samsung bundle the source code with a generic fingerprint driver, as fingerprints reader support is a generic and system wide thing in MM, just like when hardware acceleration via GPU was an propietary thing in android 2.3 and being default on android 4.0
Hi
I was figuring buying a Spark X. I see the Spark series have no entry here, so I wander I had a good idea. Although, following various links here I think I found the man Porridgek3 works on this X model from a somewhat old COS13.0.2 (comparing to COS13.1.4 for others, e.g. Swift series).
Not being a coder myself I can't read the code at github, so I'd like if this is not stupid question/request to read a thread about what are the changes from stock COS13 to the Porridge custom CM13.
Thank you and happy new year to everyboby at XDA.
The Spark devices are pretty poor. They all have Mediatek processors and updates are much slower than for other Wileyfox devices.
flibblesan said:
The Spark devices are pretty poor. They all have Mediatek processors and updates are much slower than for other Wileyfox devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My aim is not to have a speed daemon. I search something with good and removable battery (Spark X has one and as about same hardware than Spark/Spark+, I guess the autonomy would be better), and I could easily remove the bloatware (stock CN13 would help, I believe, to switch to CMod if exists).
I currently have a Liquid-MT (my first smartphone) for which by chance there was a custom ROM available based on GB-2.3.6, and it was so difficult for me to jailbreak it that I decided to keep it as is until now when mechanical problems with the internal microphone make replacement nearly mandatory.
Also, I'm focused to keep as far away as possible from google and GAFAs I have no confidence in Samsung so I don't even try to know if their devices are easy to make free. That's why I was so happy to discover my target from a single European manufacturer (at least designer) that ships his own with CN, and I easily accept to have a poor camera inside, only 802.11bg and basic 4G. I also know that the Spark X has poor dpi compared to other Sparks because of larger screen, and accept this as a consequence of my decision on battery... an so on...
Not being very much aware in ROMs, I don't know by which tail to catch the beast. I don't really choose for a model, instead I exclude others: GAFA, big Broth, God keeps me away! High end... for tainted kids (or their backward parents), out! Chinese, let's them make phones for ... themselves. So what does remain? Here is my way.
SparkX continued
Hi, how did things go with the sparkx ? I have one here and after no updates for a long time the updates arrived and bumped to nougat and I began to feel like i was signing my life away.
A while back I found an old release of sailfish for my ZTE open C so ive been making steps towards porting sailfish to the sparkx. still in early stages but i am confident it is possible.
1stStep said:
My aim is not to have a speed daemon. I search something with good and removable battery (Spark X has one and as about same hardware than Spark/Spark+, I guess the autonomy would be better), and I could easily remove the bloatware (stock CN13 would help, I believe, to switch to CMod if exists).
I currently have a Liquid-MT (my first smartphone) for which by chance there was a custom ROM available based on GB-2.3.6, and it was so difficult for me to jailbreak it that I decided to keep it as is until now when mechanical problems with the internal microphone make replacement nearly mandatory.
Also, I'm focused to keep as far away as possible from google and GAFAs I have no confidence in Samsung so I don't even try to know if their devices are easy to make free. That's why I was so happy to discover my target from a single European manufacturer (at least designer) that ships his own with CN, and I easily accept to have a poor camera inside, only 802.11bg and basic 4G. I also know that the Spark X has poor dpi compared to other Sparks because of larger screen, and accept this as a consequence of my decision on battery... an so on...
Not being very much aware in ROMs, I don't know by which tail to catch the beast. I don't really choose for a model, instead I exclude others: GAFA, big Broth, God keeps me away! High end... for tainted kids (or their backward parents), out! Chinese, let's them make phones for ... themselves. So what does remain? Here is my way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Greetings! My current phone plan is ending (finally!) and I'm looking to get a new phone. I am not an Android developer (though I am keen on getting into that at some point) but I most certainly will root it and install a custom ROM, etc, as I have always done. I need advice on which phone is best for that: has the most extensible developer support and biggest number of custom ROMs (that are not just debloated version of stock). Also, what's the status on Android Pay+root, does it work on any phone? Finally, I need it to have a powerful hardware. I read my options come down pretty much to Nexus 6P, Pixel, HTC 10 and OnePlus 3T (I think all of them, but Pixel, come with Marshmallow but have Nougat updates released.) Their prices are vastly different and most are not available as a phone plan in my country (Australia). I may end up having to buy them as a pre-paid phone from eBay or wherever. What are your thoughts on them when it comes to rooting/modding, hardware prowess and price?
P.S. I use Linux on my PC and laptops, so it would be great if the bootloader unlocking, rooting and flashing of recovery can be done via fastboot and adb. I've only owned Samsung Galaxies so far and had to go through the trouble of installing Windows just to use Odin.
Hi,
For your smartphones choice, I vote for Oneplus.
I have OP3 and tried OOS (stock), ResurrectionRemix and PhoenixExtended ROMS.
OP3 is really well supported by devs and hardware quality is really good for the privé.
With the release of Android 10, we have yet to realize the state one ui will be in when Samsung gets around to the update, however my question being is one where porting might be an option from tab s4 to tab s3, or is it just custom roms until developmentally impossible? (the developmentally impossible part being unlikely)
I want to start a real conversation about advance compatibility porting, as is the issue with dex, if we could get a bare bones port started until we could make our own variants stable, just like we did with the google lens.
I understand the issues with infringements, and hard bricks, but I believe if we could make a port just like the one ui/pixel experience rom. [see thread(https://forum.xda-developers.com/note-fe/development/rom-team-pixel-pie-1-0-t3934106) for details] We could maybe port oem updates to different devices ((minding scaling and resizing issues) not the best example, I know).
Now I'm not too keen on porting whole oem updates from proprietary device to proprietary device, or even from oem apps, but maybe we could come up with a solution.
Any response will be appreciative.