Performance benefits of baking programs in ROM - 8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam ROM Development

Hi all,
I tried searching for an answer to the above but couldn't find a direct answer to it:
Are there any performance benefits of baking a program into a custom ROM vs installing the program into ROM after a "lite" custom ROM is flashed?
Presently my preference is to use a "lite" ROM with very basic programs and maximum available ROM/RAM after install. I'm considering whether its worth the trouble to bake my own ROM with my frequently used custom programs (e.g. phonealarm, wisbar).
The obvious disbenefit of baking a 3rd party program into a custom ROM is that its a little "harder" to upgrade to a newer version of the program -- i'm assuming installing over an older version in ROM takes away any performance benefit which the ROM version would have (pls correct me if i'm wrong here).
thanks for any comments in advance!

Im planning a Custom ROM Bake Guide at some point, im planning on baking in my standard apps such as Coreplayer/Phonealarm and VJay Apps.

AFAIK, the only advantage of cooking in apps is to make them readily available after a hard reset. I believe that cooking in 3rd party apps that get refreshed often is counter-intuitive as the ROM based versions will always take up space. Essentially an upgrade will then take double the space (even if you can actually install it).
There may be something to do with program vs. storage memory utilization though that would make it advantageous. I've never actually played with it.

Sleuth255 said:
AFAIK, the only advantage of cooking in apps is to make them readily available after a hard reset. I believe that cooking in 3rd party apps that get refreshed often is counter-intuitive as the ROM based versions will always take up space. Essentially an upgrade will then take double the space (even if you can actually install it).
There may be something to do with program vs. storage memory utilization though that would make it advantageous. I've never actually played with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your insight.
From what I understand, all programs (WM5/6) needs to be loaded into RAM before execution and cannot be executed in place (XIP). So the only speed advantage i could imagine would be any 'addressing benefits' of programs pre-baked vs post-installed.
A somewhat related question would be whether there's a speed difference in installing a program in Storage ROM or Extended ROM.
cheers!

Just my 2 cents worth. In the Wizard forum, they mentioned that the lite version is much faster and responsive because the device\windows files are less. In the current cooking, everything needs to be in the \windows directory and then move to the different folders. as more files and application gets dump, it will generally move slower and affect the device response.
One way to check is whenever we access the \windows directory, we often has to wait a while before the contents gets display in the file explorer.
Now we are able to maximize the Storage Card space with a lite rom like Tazio . Hence, we can select our own cabs to install into different directory than \windows, oftenly \program files . eg: like JJ's Blacks etc....
However, if the cabs install back into the \windows directory, then there is no benefit as the no files in \windows directory increase slowing down the access.
Hence, most people will see a benefit with clean rom rather than application cooked into the rom.
cheers,

Related

Can I change properties for my windows folder????

My goal is to reach in too my windows folder and delete all the unnecessary file copied to my windows directory....I was just wondering if I could remove the rom and read only properties of the folder!!!
I guess no one wants to offer me any guidance then......If this is information u wish to not make publicaly available can someone please pm me to point me in the right direction
If the files are in the ROM, there is no way of deleting them. Else, you can try Total Commander to do the job you mentioned.
Your best bet is to edit the ROM before it goes onto your phone.
I'd suggest either Pandora (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=316881) or Core Pro (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=309701&highlight=core+pro) as your best starting points.
Anything with the propery of being 'in ROM' will still be uneditable though, so any files wich you can't avoid having to install will remain 'locked' (although, by definition, any files you absolutely can't avoid having shouldn't be deleted anyway, if you see what I mean).
The whole problem is that even after installing all my programs to my storage it places tons of unneeded file in my windows folder....I Keep a tidy file system but windows folder has 103mb of data in it.....I finally have my device setup the way I like it after flashing a different rom everyother day...What options will total commander give me over resco explorer???
Total Commander won't give you any extra options, it's just that it is free compared to Resco. If you're really deadset on cleaning up your windows folder and want to keep your same setup that you have now, you need to "dump" the ROM and edit it on your PC. Look in the wiki under "Research and Technical Stuff" to find out how to do all that.
okay I guess I can try that even though that seems excessive.....is there anyway that when I cook a rom that I can remove the in rom status????
just watch what u do. some files u think are not needed are. best thing is to take a current rom and figure out what file belongs to what and delete whats not needed or cook a rom without the things u need. again pandora is a great option.
Not really, not as far as I know anyway. I'm pretty sure that anything which is there on first boot at the last moment before the OS starts to set the phone up is unremovable except by flashing.
The only other option I can think of is to unlock the EXTROM in case you've got some unnecessary apps being popped into Windows from it on first boot, cabs like ClearVue or suchlike extraneous stuff. If that's still being used when your hard reset your phone there may be a fair few meg you can prevent being nicked.
Thanks alot guy for the advice!!! I love this place I spend quite a bit of my time at work on here!! I will try the things above and see if they do the trick.....

Can I flash a differnt devices ext rom to my BA

Hey ya'll, I have a simple question.
I want to know if I can flash the ext rom from another HTC device onto my BA ext rom?
I just installed the 142 Tmo Uk rom, and was curious if I can grab the ext rom off of another Tmo USA device, so I have all the right settings and stuff?
TIA!
i wouldn't think so. may be able to do it, i wouldn't attempt it. i stripped my extrom, they don't actually have anything useful in them. just horrible themes and bad software.
you however could probably extract the extended rom from another device and copy the files and manually install them. that'd be easy enough i think.
yeah, flashing a rom from another device is not such a good idea, but since you are using wm2003, you can visit -=this tutorial=- and gain another 16mb of storage space and then just copy cabs that you want to the device or maybe even build you own extrom, to be copied to the sd card and installed automatically. to find out how that is done (actually pretty easy!) just use forum search and look for "cfg.txt" and Chef_Tony. i wrote some pretty long tutorials about that.
basicly it is just making an automated install routine for your most commonly used programs, so whenever you hard reset your device, the programs YOU want are installed, not those ridiculous t-mobile customizations, their pink dialer skin and things like that.
EDIT: btw. you should never take an entire extrom of another device. you never know, if maybe some of the things installed by the extrom are dependant of the display resolution or use device specific interfaces or mess around with device specific hardware buttons or drivers, you should extract the cabs and google their names, if you are not sure, what that actually does, so you can be sure, it will work on your blueangel!
have fun with that.
and @cerjam: don't be offended, your answer is completely right, i agree, just wanted to add a few little things
Perfect answers!
So, chef_tony, your telling me that it's ok to merge my extrom and storage in wm2003se? and then copy my cabs and write a cfg.txt of my own for an sd card?
I realize that I should do all the reading, but I'm the kinda guy who needs a generalized big picture before I start ripping apart all the details, so I'm looking for **** and jane/oversimplified answers.
Thanks, guys (and gals, if you are one)

Deleting Stock WinMo 6.1 ROM Files

Is there any way to Remove some Stock WinMo 6.1 ROM Files ? There are a few Pictures that I don't need in the Windows Folder (Album Sample) and they range between 412k ~ 842k each so there is a couple Megs of Storage Space that could be gained by Removing them any Info is appreciated.
Thanks
LGK1 said:
Is there any way to Remove some Stock WinMo 6.1 ROM Files ? There are a few Pictures that I don't need in the Windows Folder (Album Sample) and they range between 412k ~ 842k each so there is a couple Megs of Storage Space that could be gained by Removing them any Info is appreciated.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those pictures are save to remove or relocate (backup/save on your PC or whatever)...when you're looking at them in file explorer in the phone, just press+hold on any of the file names, and a menu will pop up with the option to delete.
sirphunkee said:
Those pictures are save to remove or relocate (backup/save on your PC or whatever)...when you're looking at them in file explorer in the phone, just press+hold on any of the file names, and a menu will pop up with the option to delete.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But that's where I run into the Problem I have Resco Explorer installed and get a Message that says:
File '\Windows\Album Sample_01.jpg'
is in ROM memory!
You cannot delete it.
I tried thru regular File Explorer and the Delete Option is grayed out......
Yeah you know what, I had deleted all those pics right when I first got the phone, via the album view I think...but obviously (now) it retains a copy of them in that odd protected status you discovered. Looking at the pics in the /windows folder now, there's even some of those "album sample" ones that I've never seen before.
Sorry, I thought I'd already removed them from my phone cuz I didn't see them anywhere I'd expect to Some of the chefs around here will probably know if there's a way to trim that fat out of the windows folder, that's the kind of thing they're good at when assembling ROMs.
It's very simple people.
ROM stands for Read ONLY Memory. Think about what that means.
The only way to change what is on your ROM is by flashing, or I suppose you could use a hammer.
That's it.
dik23 said:
It's very simple people.
ROM stands for Read ONLY Memory. Think about what that means.
The only way to change what is on your ROM is by flashing, or I suppose you could use a hammer.
That's it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And besides, removing these files from ROM would not free up space in RAM! Short answer, they're not taking up space that would be useful to you otherwise.
Ok then, I understand if the files in there are just unable to be deleted, but...
-If it's truly "ROM" (read-ONLY memory) on the phone, then how can it be flashed to a different one? In other words...the ROM image may indeed be read-only, but the physical memory it sits on isn't, correct?
-Doesn't the ROM image occupy a set amount of the on-board storage memory, that would otherwise be free for local storage? Therefore, some cooked ROM's eat up more/less space than others, affecting how much room is left for the user to store files etc, n'est pas? I think the OP's purpose was to try to free up storage space if possible, not just RAM overhead.
Again, I get it if the files baked into a ROM image can't be deleted once it's cooked...I'm just thinking that a ROM without unneccessary files in it WILL save usable space on the phone.
Read Only Memory
ROM is "usually" only ever read. In the day to day use of the device you are reading data from it. Kind of like a printed page from a laser printer
When you flash the ROM, you are actually writing to it, like when the laser printer prints the page. To get a new page, you need a laser printer. To get a new rom, you have to have a program to flash it.
After it is done printing, nothing changes on the page and it can only be read.
Same thing with a ROM, the amount of space will not change until it is flashed.
"-If it's truly "ROM" (read-ONLY memory) on the phone, then how can it be flashed to a different one? In other words...the ROM image may indeed be read-only, but the physical memory it sits on isn't, correct?"
Yes and no
A more accurate term would be Read Only Memory That Can Still Be Written To, But Isn't Very Often.
ROM has a better feng shui
"-Doesn't the ROM image occupy a set amount of the on-board storage memory, that would otherwise be free for local storage? Therefore, some cooked ROM's eat up more/less space than others, affecting how much room is left for the user to store files etc, n'est pas? I think the OP's purpose was to try to free up storage space if possible, not just RAM overhead."
No, there is RAM and ROM, these are separate, and have different functions.
"Again, I get it if the files baked into a ROM image can't be deleted once it's cooked...I'm just thinking that a ROM without unneccessary files in it WILL save usable space on the phone."
No, a ROM without unneccessary files in it WILL save usable ROM storage space.
I hate to say it, but hit the wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory
Once you understand the types of ram, and how and more importantly WHY they are used, this will make sense.
Cingularly Twisted said:
A more accurate term would be Read Only Memory That Can Still Be Written To, But Isn't Very Often.
ROM has a better feng shui
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL great analogy, thanks
That's what I suspected, but just wanted to be sure!

ASUS R600 GPS rom modification

Hi all,
I have an ASUS R600 GPS running WinCE 5.0 core. I unlocked it using AsusPocket (ASUS customized version of MioPocket to keep things such as bluetooth) and everything seemed fine.
However I'm running against a "low memory" errors when running certain navi software such as Navigon and iGo. The device has 64 Mb of RAM which should be plenty for these, as my cheap Omnitech has the same amount and has no problems.
With help of MioPocket guys, I traced it down to a massive \Windows in this device's ROM. It is like 25 Mb as they dumped not only every dll they could find there, but also eg a lot of big wav and bmp files. Couple wav files are close to 1Mg each! Since according to these folks \Windows just gets copied from ROM to RAM on startup, I end up with far less free memory to play with than I'd like.
I'm new to ROM cooking but with some help I'm sure I could do it. To keep things very simple I was thinking of just replacing these big wav files with a small one. This way the file count and names wouldn't change and I wouldn't run a risk of ever running into a "file not found" condition. I really don't care if on startup the device plays a simple "ding" as opposed to 20 sec sound. Since soft that I want actually runs and only gets into low memory condition on more complex route recalculation or reality view screens, I think this would be enough to get me over the hurdle. Of course, any checksums will need to be regenerated as needed.
So, at this point I have downloaded upgrade ROM images for this device. Is that something that can be disassembled, modified as described above, and put back together? I tired naively unleashing dumprom on one of these .bin files, but got back "unable to determine loading offsets" error. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as at this point I don't know what I'm doing...
Can anybody offer any help to me? With all the amazing things I read on this site people doing with ROM modifications, it looks like what I'm trying to do should be a walk in the park. Am I right trying to go from upgrade .bin file? Or should I get some tools to read off the device? Please help.
Btw. if anybody'd like to peek at this upgrade bin, it can be downloaded here: hxxp://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?modelname=R600&SLanguage=en-us, in the firmware section, version 4.3.0 and version 4.8.0 for NA users. Unfortunately no direct link.
Thanks in advance
mamon

[Q] System maintainance, SD card decluttering.

From what I've read Android pretty much looks after itself but just wondering if there's any system maintainance that should be done from time to time? (i.e is defraging the SD card OK? Any other things worth doing?)
I've stuck with the stock 2.21 ROM but after installing JIT/Deodexed, debloating, overclocking, and scaleing the phone is running along sweetly. Thing is, about 2 1/2gigs of my 16G card is taken up with various System Recovery backups and I've got .apk files in various places. Can the .apks all be put into the same directory and if so where? I've backed the goaprev folder up to my PC and was going to delete all but the last backup from the phone. Basically, I don't want to do anything stupid now the phones nicely sorted out! Thanks in advance.
Since the seeking time on flash memory is so close to instant that fragmentation does not cause any noticable delays, I see no reason to defragment internal memory or my microSD card.
Furthermore, defragmenting a flash disk/drive, a device with a limited amount of writes, may actually shorten its life-span. In that sense, it may actually be a bad idea.
Backing up is always a good recommendation, when working with any electronic system
Thanks. Any idea if it's ok to move the .apk files? (Could be my OCD but I like things tidy!!) Also, wondering what the situation with ota system updates now I've hacked the phone?...leave well alone or okay? Cheers.
Move apk files - from where to where? Out of /system/app? You could move apks you are certain of you will never need, but the only thing you will gain is - at most - a few megabytes of free space. There's no real performance gain to be had, that I've experienced, just the possibility of losing hair if you remove/rename something you need.
As for OTA updates, you can rename FOTA.apk - that's the package that takes care of those updates.
Got several .apks in the root of my sd card- quite happy to leave them there, I guess and I should avoid ota updates...also is it worth clearing out caches once in a while? Just looking to keep my phone as streamlined and snappy as pos without screwing anything up! I'm new to android so still learning the ropes ! Thanks again
Ah yes, apk files are just installation files. You can move them where-ever you wish, though I would not move them to internal storage.
I do not clear out cache, as I prefer features I use regularly, to be cached already, instead of having to load them from scratch. I have not noticed any performance degradation because of it.
And since I do not share my phone with others, there is no privacy issue to speak of. I do not mind sharing my browsing/twitter/market/auto-complete behaviour with myself.

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