Android + Custom = What do you use?

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Matt
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Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Matt » Tue Jul 03, 2012 10:54 am

I've still got my HTC Desire until my next contract runs out. I started out debranding my phone to get the Orange custom stuff off there, since it was shit (stuff like Orange Maps instead of Google Maps? Ergh) and it kind of snowballed. I let myself into slowly as it turns out, firstly using stock ROM's and then going for stuff like the Senstation XE type software (Sense 3.0. etc). Then I messed with HBOOTs and such. Now I'm running an Oxygen 2.3.2 based mod with a custom Kernel, because smartass V2 > ondemand... I mean, who limits the CPU govenors to just powersave (always the lowest set CPU frequency), ondemand (either the lowest set, or the highest set and never any inbetween) and performance (always the highest)? Smartass (and smartass V2) cycle inbetween all available frequencies as demanded which ends up saving a lot of battery life.

I'm also having a lot of run adding new bootanimations as I fancy a change and creating splash screens (boot screens, before boot animation). I did one for my friend, who keeps losing his phone(s), that had his name and address on there which only the craftiest of phone people would know how to remove =D

James, what do you run on your device? I'm hoping being the biggest Linux nerd I know that you have some sort of super experimental awesome stuff running on it?
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Chewi » Tue Jul 03, 2012 8:08 pm

Nothing too crazy, I do want my phone to actually work. :P As soon as I got my ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco), I stuck CyanogenMod 7 on it and that's done me just fine. It certainly is a lot more responsive than the shitty stock ROM. CM9 seems to be working well enough for me to try it now so it's on my TODO list. The camera's panoramic mode and hardware video decoding is broken. I think I can live without those.

On the more experimental side, my lift share gave me his el cheapo tablet to play around with. It's a Binatone Homesurf 7 that he got broken on eBay for £10 and had warranty repaired. It's only a year old but for some stupid reason, it shipped with 1.6. I did some digging around and found out it could take 2.1 but it took a hell of a lot of tinkering to get it to work. In fact, I had to compile the whole system from source. No sweat for this seasoned Gentoo user. :wink: I couldn't believe it when it actually booted up though. DNS wasn't working and I was going to look into that but I really wanted to see if I could try something even more recent. The trouble is that it would mean replacing the kernel and that's stored on some special memory rather than on the SD card like everything else. Even the bootloader is stored on the SD card, which is very bizarre, but the kernel isn't. Even if I could write to this memory, if I fuck it up, which I almost certainly will, that would brick the device. I need to tell the bootloader to load the kernel from the SD card instead. I'm not sure if they built that functionality into it. I tried to build my own version but all I got was blackness. There's still a couple of things I could try but I'll probably end up going back to 2.1. All this effort probably isn't worth it because it's a crap piece of kit but having said that, it's taught me a hell of a lot about Android.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Matt » Wed Jul 04, 2012 10:37 am

Yeah, this Oxygen ROM is the fastest I've used so far. I think it's AOSP too, but I've been extremely limited with Kernels to choose from. I may try the CM7 flavour of the ROM I'm using.

I was reading/watching a vid of some guy working on CM talking about the next version. They've managed to get it running super, super quickk. Older devices like ours can run the latest ICS software now instead of it being super slow. Damn I wish I could find the link :(
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Chewi » Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:56 pm

ICS is fast because it uses hardware acceleration to render the interface. I'm looking forward to seeing that first hand. I'd skip CM7 now, go for CM9 if it's available.

Regarding the CPU governor, I haven't heard of smartass before because regular Linux only has the basic four. I'm not sure which one my phone uses and I'm not sure why the others haven't been ported but I use ondemand on my desktop.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Matt » Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:11 pm

I don't even look into them on my desktop. I let EIST do it's thing. But Smartass V2 cycles between them. If I'm, right, ondemand will use whatever the lowest setting is or the highest setting. Nothing ever inbetween. If I use SetCPU on ym phone to monitor this, with all ym background services (like dropbox, facebook, etc) my phone spends most of it's time on 1152Mhz, occasionally dropping to 245Mhz (for a mere second or so). Whereas with smartass V2, it's mostly on 384Mhz and 576Mhz, swapping between them. Occasionally jumping towards 700+mhz. Makes sense to me that it saves battery that way.


And it wasn't quite that. I'm looking for the link and I'll post it ASAP. But I think it was some dude at E3 showing ICS on two identical older devices (the first nexus, I believe) running benchmarks, One was going super fast, the other was sucky. The fast one was something new they'd done to the mod (probably H/W accelleration lol) that helped it work. It mean I was super interested in CM9!
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Matt » Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:23 pm

Found it:

http://blog.gsmarena.com/android-ice-cr ... -brighter/

Linaro, that's what it was called =D
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by kaos » Sun Jul 15, 2012 9:56 pm

any thoughts on Ouya?
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Masteroftheweb » Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:56 pm

People are going to be disappointed with what it turns out to be, me thinks.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Matt » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:47 am

If it's Cloud based, it can take a hike.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Chewi » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:58 pm

I dunno, I suspect it may be too niche and geeky for mass market but still too commercial for the real geeks who might actually develop for it. Some indie studios may cater for it, especially if they already have Android titles, but I'd rather buy these titles for my desktop. I have my desktop hooked up to my TV anyway. On the other hand, the desktop is dead, according to some.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Masteroftheweb » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:10 pm

Chewi wrote:On the other hand, the desktop is dead, according to some.

Stop quoting retards.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Mik » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:36 pm

The desktop is a declining marketplace, but I don't see the work station going anywhere fast and the gaming sector isn't going away any time soon, consoles shift more units probably but the hardcore tournament level games are nearly all PC based.


CounterStrike, Call of Duty, League of legends, DotA, WoW, the list is fairly e
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by kaos » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:36 pm

PC gaming is in decline.
but I keep consistently hearing evidence that developers have outgrown current gen consoles. and so a few of the major titles ahead are PC exclusive. I think if that tend continues things will level out. especially by the time a new console generations arrives, and devs have take time familiarize themselves with them.

Ouya I'm unsure of. I think the openness of the platform while billed as a main attraction could be what hinders it from real success.

things can get real complicated and messy really fast.
like an ongoing comic seriel...or like Blender.
to many hands in the pot.

I see the appeal though. people want a dedicated game machine with no BS.(but i dont think Ouya is it.)

anyway...
I wonder why they chose Android as the OS.
I think they might have done better with...Linux.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by Mik » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:25 pm

Android is linux, in a round about way.
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Re: Android + Custom = What do you use?

Post by EchoPark » Tue Jul 17, 2012 2:05 am

Won't Ouya being andriod suffer from the same flaws tho. Yea its easy to download and pirate on alot devices but for me Andriod is the dreamcast of privacy, u download the file, stick it in a file manager and install. From what i know u got to jailbreak a ios which when it updates its just nasty. WP7 ... i really never looked. Even some consoles take a wee bit of effort. So wont this discourage developers?

Plus developers make the games for andriod is most like using tilt features or touch screen now they got to redesign it for a controller?

I dont know i got excited hearing about it as i hate mobile devices for games and touch screen annoys me for certain games
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