Develop Bugs

[Q] Poor graphics performance - normal?

Hello,
I´ve just bought a Galaxy Nexus and had great expectations about it being lag free. This was even my first impression but after 2 days of use I can see there are some actions that display a clear visual lag/frame drop.
- On the home screen, if I switch panels using my finger it goes great but if I press the center button to get back to the center panel the transition isn´t smooth (frame drop)
- The blue glow animations from pressing the buttons is not smooth, I can see clearly the transition from the strong glow to black again (stage by stage). It´s even stronger in the settings app, where I press any of the options (battery, app, display, ...) and it takes 1 second to open the new activity: during this time I can see 3 stages before the glow disappears.
- In the apps/widgets list, when I scroll left I can see the panel stops and quickly starts to run smooth again.
The phone came as a yakjuzs but I unlocked the bootloader and updated to yakju 4.0.2 (bootloader, radio and os).
I ran some benchmarks and got lower results than people posted on the internet:
- Quadrant: once 1419 and once 1881. Framerate on the graphics test were: 20/25 on the ladder, 7/8 on the planet and 10/20 on the dna
- Antutu: total score 6140, 2d graphics: 265, 3d graphics: 1184
Are those numbers and behaviors normal? I expected more from the device since it has 2d aceleration (activated for all the apps by the developers settings).
Any chance my upgrade to yakju 4.0.2 is the reason of this performance?
I hope you guys can help me
Gabriel Simões
ps: after upgrading I got stuck in an infinite loop so I did a factory reset and was finally able to use the phone.
(sorry for the double post on the general android forum)

Kill quadrant with fire please as it means nothing . A lot of your issues cleared up with 4.0.3.
Also don't run live walls unless they are meant for ics. That does not include all the stock ones. Phase beam and Galaxy are the only ones from Google that are ics ready. 3rd party I have no idea.

4.0.3 drastically improved my benchmarks and overall performance, went from around your scores up to 3100 with a 4.0.3 ROM and franco's nightly kernel and rid almost all lag in the UI
I specifically remember on the planet portion of the Quadrant Standard benchmark there was a whole chunk missing out of the larger planet while I was on stock 4.0.2...flashed 4.0.3 and it runs at 60 frames a second
I'm also not sure what effect ICS has on the benchmark's accuracy, if any
I'd suggest flashing a new ROM if you were planning on rooting anyway, if not hold out for the official OTA
Attached is my newest bench (franco's 13 with bixgie's 4.0.3 build 4, OC'd to 1350 on higher score and stock clocks lower score)

Its all fake.
Planets uses software rendering on sgx gpus.The renderer was removed from your rom. Its smoke and mirrors because no other apps use that like planets does. The quadrant scores arent translating to performance, and 4.0.3 on its own doesnt improve the scores. It does clear up some graphics and performance issues though.

Its nice to know I didn´t fVck my cellphone on it´s first day!
I´ve been thinking if I should upgrade to a non official 4.0.3 since I got the nexus to have a standard plataform to develop. Audio engine changed a lot from 2.2 to 4.0 and I have to update apps.
By the other side I´d like to lower voltage to improve even more my battery (I get to the end of the day with 50% left).
How is franco's 4.0.3 working for you? Is it too modded?
Also, any idea on when 4.0.3 official will come?
Last but not least, any improvements to screen quality (colors at least)?
tnx

adrynalyne said:
Its all fake.
Planets uses software rendering on sgx gpus.The renderer was removed from your rom. Its smoke and mirrors because no other apps use that like planets does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are there any more accurate benchmarks you'd recommend? (other than authentic usage of course) When I was looking Quadrant seemed to be the most popular (which I understand doesn't make it the best, but I figured it's a good starting point)
Also I've been using franco's nightly's since I got my phone and it's been excellent for me. Better battery life, performance, added features and patches are a nice touch too. Can't say it's too modded since I've yet to run into any issues with any of the changes he's made.
Link to franco's kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1422956

Remember - ICS is still new. Most apps/games still aren't "optimized" for it.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

Quadrant isn't ICS optimized and only uses one core I believe.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

adrynalyne said:
Kill quadrant with fire please as it means nothing . A lot of your issues cleared up with 4.0.3.
Also don't run live walls unless they are meant for ics. That does not include all the stock ones. Phase beam and Galaxy are the only ones from Google that are ics ready. 3rd party I have no idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain what you mean by "ics ready"? Do you mean that all the stock live wallpapers but 2 on the phone aren't optimized? Why would google release the phone like that?
I only ask because I was planning on using the nexus LWP

The Galaxy Nexus laggs with every Livewallpaper I've tried even with firmware 4.0.3 ...
Just don't use them

OJ in Compton said:
Can you explain what you mean by "ics ready"? Do you mean that all the stock live wallpapers but 2 on the phone aren't optimized? Why would google release the phone like that?
I only ask because I was planning on using the nexus LWP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nobody knows why but google goofed because only 1 LWP works on the new nexus. every other one lags horribly. they must have completely overlooked it i guess.

Why do these retarded threads keep popping up, there is already tons of info on this.
Use the search son
sent from my googletron

Using static wallpapers since day one.
Things I do like a lot right now: battery and 3g speed. For a guy that used to use a milestone + cm6, this thing flies and handles 1 day of job with spare juice.
I´d like to know what changed so much from stock 4.0.2 kernel and franco's 4.0.3

Shakes head. Goes back to superb nexus experience.
Sent from my Nexus in Texas.

@rbiter said:
Shakes head. Goes back to superb nexus experience.
Sent from my Nexus in Texas.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That different?

Colemak said:
Are there any more accurate benchmarks you'd recommend? (other than authentic usage of course) When I was looking Quadrant seemed to be the most popular (which I understand doesn't make it the best, but I figured it's a good starting point)
Also I've been using franco's nightly's since I got my phone and it's been excellent for me. Better battery life, performance, added features and patches are a nice touch too. Can't say it's too modded since I've yet to run into any issues with any of the changes he's made.
Link to franco's kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1422956
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Antutu is better but as for how accurate, I know not.

ChongoDroid said:
Why do these retarded threads keep popping up, there is already tons of info on this.
Use the search son
sent from my googletron
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So retarded that people still come here with doubts ...
I will try to improve my search skills, improve your invisibility ones ...

Gabriel Simões said:
I will try to improve my search skills, improve your invisibility ones ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL....sorry that was funny

deezid said:
The Galaxy Nexus laggs with every Livewallpaper I've tried even with firmware 4.0.3 ...
Just don't use them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of the lag in ICS is caused by the animated soft keys. This is fixed in cm9 by having the softkeys have no animation and simply just light up instead of lighting up and fading like before.

blackhand1001 said:
A lot of the lag in ICS is caused by the animated soft keys. This is fixed in cm9 by having the softkeys have no animation and simply just light up instead of lighting up and fading like before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those animatios are really instable in 4.0.2 std:
- If I open the notification bar and press home only once the animation looks great ... if I keep pressing it will lag on the 3rd or 4th time and on...
- The animation in settings menu is terrible and lags a lot ... it takes like 1 second to open the battery activity and while that I can see clearly 3 stages of animation fading out...

Delay in menu selection?

I'm runnin stock Nexus with Nova launcher, just noticed that there's a slight delay upon selecting a menu option.
Here's what i mean....
Say you're in the SETTINGS menu, when i select one of the sub menus e.g Sound/Display/Storage/Battery. When i click on it, it highlights it in blue while i press it, but when i let go it kind of fades out slowly, like theres a transition on it, meaning there is a slight delay in opening the menu. It's really annoying, because the phone is lightning quick, but then this happens, it's like the GPU can't cope with the transition/fade effect when you select the sub menu option.
I've turned all transition effects off in Nova Launcher to see if that's what was affecting it, but it's not. Is this meant to happen?
Thanks

mps83 said:
I'm runnin stock Nexus with Nova launcher, just noticed that there's a slight delay upon selecting a menu option.
Here's what i mean....
Say you're in the SETTINGS menu, when i select one of the sub menus e.g Sound/Display/Storage/Battery. When i click on it, it highlights it in blue while i press it, but when i let go it kind of fades out slowly, like theres a transition on it, meaning there is a slight delay in opening the menu. It's really annoying, because the phone is lightning quick, but then this happens, it's like the GPU can't cope with the transition/fade effect when you select the sub menu option.
I've turned all transition effects off in Nova Launcher to see if that's what was affecting it, but it's not. Is this meant to happen?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah everybody has that. doesn't matter what rom/kernel you run.
google kinda ****ed up here.

I think its something that google can tweak in an update...hopefully.

Same
Same, I didn't notice this on a SGS2 video running ICS though...
Except this problem isn't just Nova Launcher its just the settings and menu in general

Seriously??? It takes 1/2 a second! Is that really toooooo slow?!!
Sent from my GALAXY NEXUS using Tapatalk

mps83 said:
I'm runnin stock Nexus with Nova launcher, just noticed that there's a slight delay upon selecting a menu option.
Here's what i mean....
Say you're in the SETTINGS menu, when i select one of the sub menus e.g Sound/Display/Storage/Battery. When i click on it, it highlights it in blue while i press it, but when i let go it kind of fades out slowly, like theres a transition on it, meaning there is a slight delay in opening the menu. It's really annoying, because the phone is lightning quick, but then this happens, it's like the GPU can't cope with the transition/fade effect when you select the sub menu option.
I've turned all transition effects off in Nova Launcher to see if that's what was affecting it, but it's not. Is this meant to happen?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In Settings -> Developer options, enable "force GPU rendering". It does increase graphics benchmarks by about 20%, and removes some of the UI sluggishness even with stock images. I'd also recommend you to use foxhound beta 0.1 of 4.0.4 android along with leankernel - no delays whatsoever

YEah this kinda bothers me too. Seems like Android can't really handle serveral 2D transitions at the same time...
I really hate the fact that the Android team at Google doesn't an eye for the small details, which are a big deal. This little transition in the settings meny gives away a huuge part of the experience. Some may say im overreacting, but hey just my thoughts..

retskrad said:
I really hate the fact that the Android team at Google doesn't an eye for the small details, which are a big deal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could not concur with this more. ICS is nice, but it is VERY unpolished. There are little annoying bugs/quirks everywhere and, while I know early adopters tend to pay the price for doing so, all these little issues are mostly unacceptable for a 4.0-level release on a flagship device.

retskrad said:
I really hate the fact that the Android team at Google doesn't an eye for the small details, which are a big deal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can definitely tell they're moving in this direction with the changes from 2.3 to 4.0 though. They're clearly trying to push towards a cleaner, thought-out experience across the device. Its just going to take some time for the old habits to die.

I truly think its just something google could fix in an update to the settings activities. Hopefully google doesnt ignore it though. The hardware is easily capable.

martonikaj said:
You can definitely tell they're moving in this direction with the changes from 2.3 to 4.0 though. They're clearly trying to push towards a cleaner, thought-out experience across the device. Its just going to take some time for the old habits to die.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah exactly, people often forget how new Android is.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

anterus said:
In Settings -> Developer options, enable "force GPU rendering". It does increase graphics benchmarks by about 20%, and removes some of the UI sluggishness even with stock images. I'd also recommend you to use foxhound beta 0.1 of 4.0.4 android along with leankernel - no delays whatsoever
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the same options, disable the transitions. this in aokp b27, gives no sluggishness at all!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

anterus said:
In Settings -> Developer options, enable "force GPU rendering". It does increase graphics benchmarks by about 20%, and removes some of the UI sluggishness even with stock images. I'd also recommend you to use foxhound beta 0.1 of 4.0.4 android along with leankernel - no delays whatsoever
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
your first advice is completely pointless imho. That option is there to force third party apps that don't explicitly ask for 2d acceleration. All of the ics menus and all google apps already use gpu acceleration.
I think the problem is with the gpu. Menus and nav button transitions are MUCH smoother on my HP touchpad running cm9.
I agree with trying out 4.0.4 though. People say it's much improved in this regard. Paul's 4.0.4 is very popular.

grumphy said:
In the same options, disable the transitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for this. My phone feels much faster now.

[Review] Sense4a - The joys and gripes of running HTC made software

So now I am running the TSM UltimateKangBang made possible by Nitsuj17 and the deluge of other people whose work is ingrained into the 0's and 1's that is currently making my phone's MSM8255 chip brim with life! Previously I ran the stuff from the good people behind TeamKang and their AOKP - essentially Android 4.0 as Google envisioned it with a little spice and Unicorn Porn! (Trust me, there is an app called that on AOKP, but it isn't what you may think it is ) Since this is a review, expect a fair share of biased opinion being present and categorical truths about Sense4a and the AOSP design! You've been warned.
I am not all in for the Spartan and frankly "cold" and unfriendly feel that Google went for on the ICS.. It seems too clinical, too sterile. Nevertheless, I do like it over previous iterations and I love the fact that there seems to be a level of consistency in the UI.
On the other hand, I love the feel of Sense4. It is cheerful and friendly-looking AND at the same time looks smart and professional, a feeling that I didn't get during my brief experience with a Honeycomb Samsung Tablet. On the flip side, the Sense4 apps seem to lack the same ease of use and simplicity that Google's vanilla version has. For instance, even though it has been sometime since I used the Email app on AOKP, I know exactly where each button is and how to go about the app. The Email app on Sense4, not so much.
The Good:
Let us get down to it. Things that are nice about Sense4 are the animations. Many are subtle, but the best is the most conspicuous animation of them all - the screen unlock. The little metallic ring zooms out of the screen in a magnificent way. Also, if you randomly touch the lock screen, the ring jitters with a forceful smash on the ground-like effect, causing ripples to emanate from it. I say, cool
The whole ensemble of animations makes the phone super smooth and slick. I had issues with animations and screen transitions on AOKP, on a regular basis. But on this ROM, I have yet to experience one, and I have installed ALL my apps to the point where I ran out of internal space to install apps! And still, the OS is smooth. At one point, I was contemplating the possibility of buying a new phone as my DInc2 with AOKP was not smooth enough, leading me to believe that it must be the poor hardware. Well, with Nit's Sense4a ROM, I am happy to note that that is simply NOT the case. Well, for once I am pleased with the outcome of a skin made by a manufacturer. It means a lot when a not-so-average Android phone user, like me, says "Well, HTC, your skin is *not* the worst!"
HTC also did a pretty good job with the lockscreen. The missed calls, messages, calendar events, etc. appear prominently on screen. I like the alarm and timer events too. And then to activate any app or action icon, you need to drop it into the ring. Neato! A constant issue I had with AOKP and I believe CM9 was that after locking the device with the power button, when I turn on the screen with the power button, the phone momentarily displays the app/homescreen I was viewing before realizing that the phone is actually "locked" and then showing the lockscreen. No matter what setting I changed, this issue didn't go. Thankfully, however, this is not a problem on the Sense4's lockscreen which does what it should and not reveal my secrets unauthorized, even for a moment!
The widgets are nice as well. I've been dying to find a Calendar widget that works as well as the one on Sense, and now I have it. The email, music and weather widgets are great too. However, I am a bit disappointed that the homescreen is a 4x4 grid. That is a waste of screen real estate, but unfortunately I was unable to use HTC widgets on a third party launcher (bummer). I also do not like Google's decision OR HTC's to make the app drawer have horizontal pagination. That is a major PITA and slow. A vertical scroll is so much faster to make you reach the last app... On the plus side, it has tabs for frequent and downloaded and you can sort apps alphabetically or date used or installed (I didn't figure that out).
The annoying:
However, it is not all rosy, even for rosie. My main gripe is with the design decisions that HTC made with their apps. Many of those decisions seem to add to the time needed to use the app and makes it cumbersome.
Let's start with Music. To go from Now Playing to the music on the phone, I need to press the back arrow (on the top) and choose "My phone". And then to flip through songs/albums/artists etc., I have to use a drop down menu. Meanwhile, Google Music lets you swipe the lists horizontally to change them. And it always seems to take a moment to load the song list or album list etc.
Next offender, the Email app. Its faults include needing to use a drop-down menu to choose folders that in turn brings up a list of folders to choose from. Google's email app does it better. Also, I need two button presses to go from an email to the next or previous compared to one button on Google's email app, though the AOSP Email app should have been made consistent with the Gmail app where you can swipe to the next or previous email . Nevertheless, it has the ability to show emails in threads, good support for Exchange email.
The phone app also hits a nerve. I believe Google's implementation is pretty much perfect and HTC's doesn't add anything new, excepting annoyances. All you get when you open the app is a dial pad and a list of names. I need to go to a menu to see call history and my phone book. Well, why not just add tabs like Google? The "People" app is basically what I am talking about. If you simply added a 4th tab in that app with the dial pad, that would be a perfect phone app. :disapprove:
Now the camera app is good except for one teeny problem (and I am nitpicking here) which is I need to go to settings to change the camera from back to front. But otherwise, that is well laid out. In fact it is better than Google's in terms of looks (I was always of the opinion that Google's ICS Camera app was made by someone who couldn't make small graphics and so chose plain colors to make the UI. Something I would've done) and also because you can either take a photo or video by just changing the button you press unlike in AOSP where you need to go through some button presses before that happens.
At this juncture, I'd like to note that I <3 the Camera on TSM ROM! It works! 720p video and panorama mode and the many other modes (except slow motion capture, which recorded at normal pace)! And no tearing in Camera360 or other apps! There are still some glitches with the app and the framerate of the 720p doesn't seem smooth, but that is understandable given that we are working with leaks only! So you heard me folks! If you want a proper camera on ICS, this Sense4 ROM should do the trick...​
Back to taking a swing at Sense4!
Now comes the notification panel. There are way too many icons on the top bar, especially when I listen to music. There are a total of 3 icons telling me I am listening to music: The headphone icon (thanks, but I jolly well know there are headphones attached to the phone, mainly because I put it there!), the beats audio icon (I believe this is a product placement decision. It is obvious that HTC is making a ton of money simply due to that software redundancy...) and of course the "play" icon of the music player. I also don't like that there are no notification toggles that can be hidden/shown as one pleases like on CM9 or AOKP (activating it in the tweaks causes it to show ONLY the toggles and no other notification when I have no notifications that can be cleared, even if I have notifications that CAN'T be cleared... )
Frankly I don't care for the "Beats audio". It may work better with some beats audio hardware in the phone and may be the actual earphones themselves, which I can't be bothered to buy. But I liked Google's MusicFX app... It gave me a nicer sound. At times I feel the beats audio sounds richer and more even, but the volume is low to appreciate the whole dynamic range... I heard louder sound at the same volume on AOKP.
So there you have it. My impressions on Sense4. The central theme behind the shortcomings of the HTC apps seems to be the usage of the drop down menu rather than using the more accessible tabs available on most default google apps.
But still, I must admit I like how the whole interface feels. I find myself unlocking my phone, swiping through screens and then simply relocking it as I have nothing to do! I can't take my eyes off of that gorgeous interface... As and when more tweaks become available, rectifying the shortcomings of Sense4, I'll be deeper in love with it.

One thing I have to say about the dialer is that full sense 4 is more like the sense 3.5 dialer where it has the people app included in the dialer. Sense 4a is more based on sense 2.1 where it didn't have this feature.
Sent from my KangBang'd out vivow

Thanks for the review. I was running MIUI weeklies from about July 2011 until a couple weeks ago. If we didn't get stuck with no new stable builds after 1.12.09, I probably would still be running it. But I wanted to go back and try something else anyway. MIUI customization is second to none, so maybe I'll go back to ICS MIUI as Nits does amazing work.
As of a week ago, I'm running TSM Sense 5.01 M. It runs incredibly smooth and stable on my phone, and everything works.
With the increasing stability of ICS roms, I'm thinking of trying one out. TSM UKB seems to be the ICS rom of choice for many. I appreciate your feedback, and may jump to UKB in the next couple weeks. One thing you didn't mention was battery life. How does it compare to stock, or other roms you've tried? I've been through the rom thread, but since you gave a thorough review of the rom, I thought I'd ask.

ttupa said:
Thanks for the review. I was running MIUI weeklies from about July 2011 until a couple weeks ago. If we didn't get stuck with no new stable builds after 1.12.09, I probably would still be running it. But I wanted to go back and try something else anyway. MIUI customization is second to none, so maybe I'll go back to ICS MIUI as Nits does amazing work.
As of a week ago, I'm running TSM Sense 5.01 M. It runs incredibly smooth and stable on my phone, and everything works.
With the increasing stability of ICS roms, I'm thinking of trying one out. TSM UKB seems to be the ICS rom of choice for many. I appreciate your feedback, and may jump to UKB in the next couple weeks. One thing you didn't mention was battery life. How does it compare to stock, or other roms you've tried? I've been through the rom thread, but since you gave a thorough review of the rom, I thought I'd ask.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh battery life is superb.. refer to this post I made: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27465676
That is the battery life with just stock battery!!!
Sent from my vivow using XDA

litetaker said:
Oh battery life is superb.. refer to this post I made: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27465676
That is the battery life with just stock battery!!!
Sent from my vivow using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Excellent! This one sounds very promising, and I will probably make the leap when I've got some time.

Indeed battery is great. I took 29 photos today while at a job site and have been using my phone since 7:30am (now 6:33pm) and battery reads 58%. Skyraider hated when I took photos. It had great battery life, but camera would eat it up. UKB does not. Fantastic ROM. I do not foresee myself changing ROMs until I change phones at this point.
Sent from my Droid.

ttupa said:
Excellent! This one sounds very promising, and I will probably make the leap when I've got some time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery is great on ukb. I left for work this morning at 5am. I work in a poor reception building...the signal is constantly at 1 or no bars and switching between 3g and 1x. After 13 hours at work my battery is at 52%.
Sent from my vivow using XDA

I figured I'd ask here instead of the dev thread, but does the hot reboot option not work for anybody else on UKB 3.5?
Sent from my vivow using XDA

litetaker said:
So now I am running the TSM UltimateKangBang made possible by Nitsuj17 and the deluge of other people whose work is ingrained into the 0's and 1's that is currently making my phone's MSM8255 chip brim with life! Previously I ran the stuff from the good people behind TeamKang and their AOKP - essentially Android 4.0 as Google envisioned it with a little spice and Unicorn Porn! (Trust me, there is an app called that on AOKP, but it isn't what you may think it is ) Since this is a review, expect a fair share of biased opinion being present and categorical truths about Sense4a and the AOSP design! You've been warned.
I am not all in for the Spartan and frankly "cold" and unfriendly feel that Google went for on the ICS.. It seems too clinical, too sterile. Nevertheless, I do like it over previous iterations and I love the fact that there seems to be a level of consistency in the UI.
On the other hand, I love the feel of Sense4. It is cheerful and friendly-looking AND at the same time looks smart and professional, a feeling that I didn't get during my brief experience with a Honeycomb Samsung Tablet. On the flip side, the Sense4 apps seem to lack the same ease of use and simplicity that Google's vanilla version has. For instance, even though it has been sometime since I used the Email app on AOKP, I know exactly where each button is and how to go about the app. The Email app on Sense4, not so much.
The Good:
Let us get down to it. Things that are nice about Sense4 are the animations. Many are subtle, but the best is the most conspicuous animation of them all - the screen unlock. The little metallic ring zooms out of the screen in a magnificent way. Also, if you randomly touch the lock screen, the ring jitters with a forceful smash on the ground-like effect, causing ripples to emanate from it. I say, cool
The whole ensemble of animations makes the phone super smooth and slick. I had issues with animations and screen transitions on AOKP, on a regular basis. But on this ROM, I have yet to experience one, and I have installed ALL my apps to the point where I ran out of internal space to install apps! And still, the OS is smooth. At one point, I was contemplating the possibility of buying a new phone as my DInc2 with AOKP was not smooth enough, leading me to believe that it must be the poor hardware. Well, with Nit's Sense4a ROM, I am happy to note that that is simply NOT the case. Well, for once I am pleased with the outcome of a skin made by a manufacturer. It means a lot when a not-so-average Android phone user, like me, says "Well, HTC, your skin is *not* the worst!"
HTC also did a pretty good job with the lockscreen. The missed calls, messages, calendar events, etc. appear prominently on screen. I like the alarm and timer events too. And then to activate any app or action icon, you need to drop it into the ring. Neato! A constant issue I had with AOKP and I believe CM9 was that after locking the device with the power button, when I turn on the screen with the power button, the phone momentarily displays the app/homescreen I was viewing before realizing that the phone is actually "locked" and then showing the lockscreen. No matter what setting I changed, this issue didn't go. Thankfully, however, this is not a problem on the Sense4's lockscreen which does what it should and not reveal my secrets unauthorized, even for a moment!
The widgets are nice as well. I've been dying to find a Calendar widget that works as well as the one on Sense, and now I have it. The email, music and weather widgets are great too. However, I am a bit disappointed that the homescreen is a 4x4 grid. That is a waste of screen real estate, but unfortunately I was unable to use HTC widgets on a third party launcher (bummer). I also do not like Google's decision OR HTC's to make the app drawer have horizontal pagination. That is a major PITA and slow. A vertical scroll is so much faster to make you reach the last app... On the plus side, it has tabs for frequent and downloaded and you can sort apps alphabetically or date used or installed (I didn't figure that out).
The annoying:
However, it is not all rosy, even for rosie. My main gripe is with the design decisions that HTC made with their apps. Many of those decisions seem to add to the time needed to use the app and makes it cumbersome.
Let's start with Music. To go from Now Playing to the music on the phone, I need to press the back arrow (on the top) and choose "My phone". And then to flip through songs/albums/artists etc., I have to use a drop down menu. Meanwhile, Google Music lets you swipe the lists horizontally to change them. And it always seems to take a moment to load the song list or album list etc.
Next offender, the Email app. Its faults include needing to use a drop-down menu to choose folders that in turn brings up a list of folders to choose from. Google's email app does it better. Also, I need two button presses to go from an email to the next or previous compared to one button on Google's email app, though the AOSP Email app should have been made consistent with the Gmail app where you can swipe to the next or previous email . Nevertheless, it has the ability to show emails in threads, good support for Exchange email.
The phone app also hits a nerve. I believe Google's implementation is pretty much perfect and HTC's doesn't add anything new, excepting annoyances. All you get when you open the app is a dial pad and a list of names. I need to go to a menu to see call history and my phone book. Well, why not just add tabs like Google? The "People" app is basically what I am talking about. If you simply added a 4th tab in that app with the dial pad, that would be a perfect phone app. :disapprove:
Now the camera app is good except for one teeny problem (and I am nitpicking here) which is I need to go to settings to change the camera from back to front. But otherwise, that is well laid out. In fact it is better than Google's in terms of looks (I was always of the opinion that Google's ICS Camera app was made by someone who couldn't make small graphics and so chose plain colors to make the UI. Something I would've done) and also because you can either take a photo or video by just changing the button you press unlike in AOSP where you need to go through some button presses before that happens.
At this juncture, I'd like to note that I <3 the Camera on TSM ROM! It works! 720p video and panorama mode and the many other modes (except slow motion capture, which recorded at normal pace)! And no tearing in Camera360 or other apps! There are still some glitches with the app and the framerate of the 720p doesn't seem smooth, but that is understandable given that we are working with leaks only! So you heard me folks! If you want a proper camera on ICS, this Sense4 ROM should do the trick...​
Back to taking a swing at Sense4!
Now comes the notification panel. There are way too many icons on the top bar, especially when I listen to music. There are a total of 3 icons telling me I am listening to music: The headphone icon (thanks, but I jolly well know there are headphones attached to the phone, mainly because I put it there!), the beats audio icon (I believe this is a product placement decision. It is obvious that HTC is making a ton of money simply due to that software redundancy...) and of course the "play" icon of the music player. I also don't like that there are no notification toggles that can be hidden/shown as one pleases like on CM9 or AOKP (activating it in the tweaks causes it to show ONLY the toggles and no other notification when I have no notifications that can be cleared, even if I have notifications that CAN'T be cleared... )
Frankly I don't care for the "Beats audio". It may work better with some beats audio hardware in the phone and may be the actual earphones themselves, which I can't be bothered to buy. But I liked Google's MusicFX app... It gave me a nicer sound. At times I feel the beats audio sounds richer and more even, but the volume is low to appreciate the whole dynamic range... I heard louder sound at the same volume on AOKP.
So there you have it. My impressions on Sense4. The central theme behind the shortcomings of the HTC apps seems to be the usage of the drop down menu rather than using the more accessible tabs available on most default google apps.
But still, I must admit I like how the whole interface feels. I find myself unlocking my phone, swiping through screens and then simply relocking it as I have nothing to do! I can't take my eyes off of that gorgeous interface... As and when more tweaks become available, rectifying the shortcomings of Sense4, I'll be deeper in love with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This rom really is awesome. Nits has given a gift to the dinc2 community and I still can't help but feel satisfied with this rom (havent switched roms after I used ukb 3.5!!!
But you have an error. The droid incredible 2 has an MSM8655 chip (same as the HTC Thunderbolt)
Also, my only gripe with the rom is the music when you're using headphones, earphones, etc. The volume goes to its max when you raise or lower the volume once. Raise and lower it again and the volume becomes either lower or a little quieter. That's pretty much it. Doesn't bother me too much, but it can get tiring at times. Doesn't change how much I enjoy using this rom as my DD. I'd give this rom a 10/10 for its awesomeness.
AJGO23 said:
I figured I'd ask here instead of the dev thread, but does the hot reboot option not work for anybody else on UKB 3.5?
Sent from my vivow using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hot reboot doesn't work in the rom. Hope this helped.
Sent from my Galaxified ICS phone!!! Don't be hating bro!!!

david_hume said:
This rom really is awesome. Nits has given a gift to the dinc2 community and I still can't help but feel satisfied with this rom (havent switched roms after I used ukb 3.5!!!
But you have an error. The droid incredible 2 has an MSM8655 chip (same as the HTC Thunderbolt)
Also, my only gripe with the rom is the music when you're using headphones, earphones, etc. The volume goes to its max when you raise or lower the volume once. Raise and lower it again and the volume becomes either lower or a little quieter. That's pretty much it. Doesn't bother me too much, but it can get tiring at times. Doesn't change how much I enjoy using this rom as my DD. I'd give this rom a 10/10 for its awesomeness.
Hot reboot doesn't work in the rom. Hope this helped.
Sent from my Galaxified ICS phone!!! Don't be hating bro!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh, I thought that Droid Incredible S and 2 had same processors... Whoops!

litetaker said:
Huh, I thought that Droid Incredible S and 2 had same processors... Whoops!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, the s has a different processor cuz it's GSM only.
Sent from my KangBang'd out vivow

Will We (The HTC One V) Community Definitely Get CM10.1/CM11?

I figured I can ask lol without harm, but with the announcement of JB 4.2 when the AOSP is released we will definitely get upgrades to CM10/11 or any other AOSP/AOKP build around here correct? Alot of the new features sounds kind of enticing lol.

yes we will surely get
Sent from my One V

Of course! No major thing changed in the way android works so not a reason to worry
Sent from my HTC One V using xda app-developers app

Learning from android's website, in 4.2 they improved the keyboard (now with swipe gestures) and made a new camera app from scratch. They also improved google now, they added the abillity to share a video or photo wirelessly, they added an idle screensaver and that's about it...
Of course, if there is something changed at its core, they will never put it on the website. But i don't think 4.2 will be so much different than 4.1...

Phone goes unresponsive sometimes with 4.0 AOSP ROMs?

Hello!
I have noticed a weird bug with my phone - phone will go unresponsive after day or so of work. Sometimes the screen will lit, but the phone will be VERY slow, to the state of being unusable. Sometimes the display will not even turno on when I press the power button. Anyway, I have to remove the battery to restart it.
Last time I saw such behaviour, it was my Kindle3, and it was weird power drain issue.
Has anyone had this issue before? I searched the ROM threads and nothing. The phone was bought and used in Europe (BG).This phone is more than 2 years old , hardware problem is a possibility, too
Please report if you know something. Advice me how to log these issues, too?

In general the phone becomes like that when free RAM goes below 80 MB. I've seen this on many AOSP ROMs like you said. I don't remember if it happens on Sense ROMs too, but Sense is quite slow anyway. I usually fix it by clearing out all apps in the Recent apps list.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium

Any automated solution to it, then?
I mean, something like close all running user apps, clear cash and RAM and so on. I know that task killers claim to do it, but they are more trouble than help!
Can anyone suggest something tired and working? I cant upgrade to 4.1 cos I need BT

Not that I know of. You can try enabling 'Don't keep activities' in Settings>Developer options. That will leave your RAM free, but it'll take longer for each app to open because it clears it from RAM each time you exit the app. So it'll affect multitasking too. Alternatively, you can try to reduce the number of background processes in the corresponding option. In my opinion none of these solutions are worth it. Just swipe away all the recent apps whenever your phone slows down.
You can use the codefireX 4.1.2 periodicals if you want a fully working 4.1 JB ROM. Development has stopped for it because the dev synergye is now developing 4.2.1, but the last SR5 version is very stable, and everything works including Bluetooth. You can even enable a 'kill all' button in the recent apps panel to clear all the apps at once.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium

sashank said:
Not that I know of. You can try enabling 'Don't keep activities' in Settings>Developer options. That will leave your RAM free, but it'll take longer for each app to open because it clears it from RAM each time you exit the app. So it'll affect multitasking too. Alternatively, you can try to reduce the number of background processes in the corresponding option. In my opinion none of these solutions are worth it. Just swipe away all the recent apps whenever your phone slows down.
You can use the codefireX 4.1.2 periodicals if you want a fully working 4.1 JB ROM. Development has stopped for it because the dev synergye is now developing 4.2.1, but the last SR5 version is very stable, and everything works including Bluetooth. You can even enable a 'kill all' button in the recent apps panel to clear all the apps at once.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
4.1.2 has an issue with the speaker phone. I usually have to drive around the city and have to talk during that time, so I rely on BT and speakerphone. I will limit the number of processes and give it a try. If everything else fails, I can go back to CNM7(UGLY!! but STABLE!!!), and wait for BT to be fixed.
It seems that the phone will fall back to default option for number of activities kept every time I reboot it, any way to fix that?

Oh yeah it had that issue. You can also try ViperDHD ROM if you're okay with HTC Sense or go back to CM7 like you said.
Another ROM option is aospX from the HTC Inspire 4G forum. It's a great AOSP ICS ROM and BT has no issues on it as far as I know.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium

sashank said:
Oh yeah it had that issue. You can also try ViperDHD ROM if you're okay with HTC Sense or go back to CM7 like you said.
Another ROM option is aospX from the HTC Inspire 4G forum. It's a great AOSP ICS ROM and BT has no issues on it as far as I know.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
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Click to collapse
AOSP 4.0 is not an option, phone going on strike. I love the aospx ROM, but it is kind of annoying to have to restart when you need to call a client or something in a huury
I will try and go de-sense with Viper, probably, not many options left. I am not happy at all with Sense, dont know why I bought OneX anyway. To be honest, if I see press release about Nexus4 32GB I will sell it and keep DHD as a backup. I still have to use two phones for two months, and will sill what will happen. Till then, I will have to bit the bullet and live with either sense or CNM 7
Thank you for the support!!! Have a happy new
PS trying to limit the number of processes does not work

Happy new year to you too.
I've never used the limit number of background processes option before, so no clue about that.
I see in your signature you're waiting for official CyanogenMod (CM is the acronym ) for your One X. It's already there - http://get.cm/?device=endeavoru
Right now there are only nightlies though, but you can still use them as they're quite stable. A milestone release and a stable version should be out soon also. One X is a great phone and works brilliantly with AOSP, except the camera. The Sense camera image quality may be better (don't know till you try, I haven't experimented with it too much). Also, if you do flash CM/any AOSP ROM for your One X, use it with the NCX kernel. I've heard it gives the best battery life.

sashank said:
Happy new year to you too.
I've never used the limit number of background processes option before, so no clue about that.
I see in your signature you're waiting for official CyanogenMod (CM is the acronym ) for your One X. It's already there - http://get.cm/?device=endeavoru
Right now there are only nightlies though, but you can still use them as they're quite stable. A milestone release and a stable version should be out soon also. One X is a great phone and works brilliantly with AOSP, except the camera. The Sense camera image quality may be better (don't know till you try, I haven't experimented with it too much). Also, if you do flash CM/any AOSP ROM for your One X, use it with the NCX kernel. I've heard it gives the best battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will wait till something is marked stable at at least MR I have a phone to trouble my sleep with, and this is the DHD. I need one to be solid as rock. I already have 4.1 on One X, so everything I need to run on it runs, but I have a lot of unneeded HTC stuff under the cover running.
It's a pity that nexus is not around here, and the expected prise is going to be round 550 euro! It is not just overpriced, this is a [email protected]#ing robbery!