Develop Bugs

custom roms VS launchers

hi guys
i am a new android owner here, and i wish to ask for some assistance and maybe your opinion as well. i am currently a samsung galaxy S3 owner. and i am currently using the official firmware of this model. what is the main point of re-flashing your unit and installing a custom rom (oh and by the way which custom firmware is the best for samsung galaxy s3?). and if you are only looking for personalization, would it be installing launchers and some lock screen apps will do the job?
oh and lastly which is the best launcher available in the market place? Apex or nova?
thanks guys

bossrobo said:
hi guys
i am a new android owner here, and i wish to ask for some assistance and maybe your opinion as well. i am currently a samsung galaxy S3 owner. and i am currently using the official firmware of this model. what is the main point of re-flashing your unit and installing a custom rom (oh and by the way which custom firmware is the best for samsung galaxy s3?). and if you are only looking for personalization, would it be installing launchers and some lock screen apps will do the job?
oh and lastly which is the best launcher available in the market place? Apex or nova?
thanks guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are ONLY looking for customization, then I'd say launchers/lockscreen apps would do the trick.
The custom roms based off of stock are very similar to the stock rom. A lot of them make some improvements/tweaks/mods that make it more appealing/faster/efficient, etc. but if anyone tells you there is a HUGE difference between stock/custom I really believe that is not true. Especially on this phone. The roms NOT based off of stock (located in ORIGINAL development) are actually A LOT different. If you like the idea of natural Android you may want to check them out because it is close to the Nexus devices.
I personally like Nova, but I think Apex gets the job done too. Both have free versions so play around.
Widgetlocker is a good lock screen replacement app.
Also, if your new, and feel you do want to check out the custom offerings plenty of people will be here to help you out.

gpgorbosjr said:
If you are ONLY looking for customization, then I'd say launchers/lockscreen apps would do the trick.
The custom roms based off of stock are very similar to the stock rom. A lot of them make some improvements/tweaks/mods that make it more appealing/faster/efficient, etc. but if anyone tells you there is a HUGE difference between stock/custom I really believe that is not true. Especially on this phone. The roms NOT based off of stock (located in ORIGINAL development) are actually A LOT different. If you like the idea of natural Android you may want to check them out because it is close to the Nexus devices.
I personally like Nova, but I think Apex gets the job done too. Both have free versions so play around.
Widgetlocker is a good lock screen replacement app.
Also, if your new, and feel you do want to check out the custom offerings plenty of people will be here to help you out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey thanks man, if you say efficient. does it mean it can improve the phones battery life?

bossrobo said:
hey thanks man, if you say efficient. does it mean it can improve the phones battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, and a lot of times they are a bit smoother and faster than the stock firmware.

bossrobo said:
hey thanks man, if you say efficient. does it mean it can improve the phones battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes...a lot of roms claim (and some) do improve battery life. Also, some are smoother/faster than stock roms.
HOWEVER, in my experience using many roms on many phones on many carriers I would point out:
1. You WILL run into unexpected bugs using custom roms.
2. A lot of the improvements are placebo. I don't care what people say, your phone does not magically become THAT much better. An S3 running a custom rom will not blow an S3 running stock out of the water. That said, when you have a good rom dev there will be improvements. Just watch out for people who take roms and really only theme the rom and not make improvements.
I've used the AT&T and Sprint versions of the S3 for about a week each on stock roms, and I did not notice a big difference in battery life or speed when switching to custom ones. Maybe a little smoother, maybe, but my battery life has been about the same.
EDIT: What I would say is expectations need to be reasonable. Your phone will get better with a (good) custom rom, but custom roms aren't going to make a S2 as powerful as an S3, or an S3 have the battery life of a RazrMaxx. The phones performance are still primarily based on the hardware and not the small tweaks made via the roms.

[Q] A quick (stupid) set of questions

So I just picked up a HTC One M8 (AT&T variant). I am no newbie when it comes to rooting/flashing custom roms, having had a Galaxy S3, Nexus 5, and still owning both versions of the Nexus 7, however I just want to make sure I'm fine to flash before I go ahead and end up doing something stupid.
I already unlocked my bootloader successfully, loaded TWRP 2.7.0.2, and rooted the phone, but I keep reading about S-OFF and Sunshine and Firewater and I'm like, WTF? Do I need to enabled S-OFF to flash a custom ROM/Kernel? If so, is there a free way to do this (I see Sunshine costs $25 bucks and I have no idea what it does or why I need it)?
I figured I'd ask before trying anything, but I don't want to get setup if I'm just going to flash over everything anyway.
Also, I'm quite a minimalist. I like Sense, but I'd like a ROM with some optimizations performance and battery saving wise but not so much a visual overhaul. The realistic usable additions are welcome, but I don't want a ROM that is completely themed and doesn't mesh well with the default Sense 6 style. Can anyone recommend a nice ROM to start out with?

First off, although S-OFF is NOT mandatory to flash custom roms and kernels, it may be required to flash firmwares that may be needed to match the custom roms firmware - IF the custom roms firmware does not match your own. Simple answer: No, you don't need it to flash custom roms/kernels.
You can try Firewater to S-OFF but it just doesn't work for everybody, if it doesn't work for you then Sunshine is your only option.
As for a rom to start out with, really it's all about personal preferences. For the description you said, Android Revolution comes with a stock look with the option to change visuals if you prefer. Already optimized so you don't have to touch any power settings, voltages etc.

Roms don't create good battery life. Setup and usage does. So use any rom that appeals to you... Not what you think or they claim, will improve battery life. Rom and kernels make a minor difference in battery life at best.
I, and many others, know this for a fact.... As we run any rom or kernel, setup the same way, use the device the same way and we can get similar battery life on all of them. ?

KJ said:
Roms don't create good battery life. Setup and usage does. So use any rom that appeals to you... Not what you think or they claim, will improve battery life. Rom and kernels make a minor difference in battery life at best.
I, and many others, know this for a fact.... As we run any rom or kernel, setup the same way, use the device the same way and we can get similar battery life on all of them. ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
truer words were never spoken..plenty of tools out there to maximize battery life, but rarely, if ever, is it totally determined by your rom/kernel choice

[Q] Trade offs of going with Custom ROM

Hello guys, i have ordered one of these babies and being this my first HTC i was wondering if is there any trade off on moving from stock to a custom firmware?
is some other phones you have to sacrifice camera quality, or some sensor, or any specialized driver for the pleasure of having a custom rom
thanks!

Please do your research instead of opening a useless thread. Search through custom roms/ read there description and changelogs, that will give you a fair idea what the differences are regarding stock and custom.
It's an individual preference therefore no one can choose for you. Best bet is to read about the custom roms that are available,also read users comments to further indicate any known bugs.
I am using viperone 3.0 in my opinion and my own preference I think this is the best Rom in the m8 forums.
Obviously stock is standard but custom roms offer a variety of tweaks, customisation and user custom choices .
Reading will set you free...

There isn't really a plethora of custom roms available. The ones that are available are pretty popular, fast and some nice features but there's something always broken or not as stable as stock in my opinion.
HTC One M8

Don't get me wrong, i never asked which rom is better, i did read and understand the forum rules.
But for example, im comming from a samsung s3, where it is a known fact that any aosp roms have worse camera than touchwiz ones. It does not mean that aosp roms are worse, it is just a trade off.
I will be trying roms, i was just wonderig if there are general, well known trade off

don_ernesto said:
I will be trying roms, i was just wonderig if there are general, well known trade off
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. There is no general blanket statement that can be made about this. There are a variety of ROMs, and ROM types (Sense, GPE, AOSP). In particular, the Sense ROMs are based on stock, but optimized. Therefore, there are often no "tradeoffs", just added features and better performance. Even with GPE and AOSP, it depends on what ROM you are looking at and your personal preferences. So I agree with Post #2 that you just need to read through the ROMs and decide for yourself what the pros and cons are.

redpoint73 said:
Nope. There is no general blanket statement that can be made about this. There are a variety of ROMs, and ROM types (Sense, GPE, AOSP). In particular, the Sense ROMs are based on stock, but optimized. Therefore, there are often no "tradeoffs", just added features and better performance. Even with GPE and AOSP, it depends on what ROM you are looking at and your personal preferences. So I agree with Post #2 that you just need to read through the ROMs and decide for yourself what the pros and cons are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you expect to use the HTC apps like the camera software, you need to be on sense I'm pretty sure, so that might be considered a trade-off.

deefster said:
If you expect to use the HTC apps like the camera software, you need to be on sense I'm pretty sure, so that might be considered a trade-off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some HTC apps work on GPE (but not AOSP). So again, it goes back to the OP reading about what works and what doesn't, versus their own personal wants and preferences. Its difficult to just say there are any blanket trade-offs.
At the very least, the OP has to be more specific in what type of ROM they are looking at (Sense, GPE, AOSP) and why (what features they like and want, and what they need). Otherwise, the question is just to vague.

I'm getting a 5T soon and I have a few modding questions...

I've had a iPhone 6 for 3 years and it's time to update to a OnePlus, a company I've been stalking for about 4 months that I've fallen in love with! Hopefully I can rack up enough Christmas money to snag mine!
I have spent a fair amount of time on the forums. I've read enough and watched enough videos to where I could probably root and flash roms and all that good stuff from memory, but there are a few questions I have...
I think I understand the difference between a modded kernel and a ROM, but can both be flashed? If so, in what order?
If anyone is familiar with jailbroken "tweaks" on the iPhone, what is it's counterpart on Android?
If a ROM or kernel is flashed, how do OTA updates work?
With the latest iPhone jailbreaks, there would be a good amount of instability (restarts, lots of crashes, etc). I see OnePlus phones are sort of meant to be modded, so is it in turn more stable?
Hopefully these questions were clear and not annoying, thank you in advance! I hope to be an active member of this community!

A kernel and a ROM can be flashed but I would flash the kernel after the ROM as the ROM flashes a kernel by itself so it would override your own chosen kernel.
Probably Magisk but Xposed is the equivalent of Cydia Substrate.
OTA depends on the ROM. Normally, you get prompted to download a ZIP and then flash it via TWRP or your custom recovery.
I wouldn't say that the OnePlus devices are more stable, but it has a bigger community compared to other phones. Same as the Google devices but since the Pixel they're insanely high priced. In terms of options regarding custom ROMs and custom kernels, OnePlus is a good choice. For Magisk and Xposed you would only need the right Android OS. No difference or benefits in having a OnePlus device here.

Question why do custom roms improve more performance? why are some original roms so bad?

I saw several people installing custom roms and the performance of the device improved a lot! I would like to know how these roms do it

If we talk about MIUI here it's full of bloat and far from AOSP (stock Android) and I think the focus is features, over performance.

theoneofgod said:
If we talk about MIUI here it's full of bloat and far from AOSP (stock Android) and I think the focus is features, over performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They also clearly copy some UI Design from iOS
which is not bad... It looks good.
But my biggest problem with MIUI is that, it breaks standard Android features.
Like broken Gestures on 3rd-Party Launchers.
Or the MIUI Permission-system breaking apps like Instagram.
or MIUI's battery optimisation being too extreme...
I don't hate MIUI, but it's 很胖 (very fat)

Custom ROMs are not bad per se, but they are made for ppl who want their phone to run without gving it too much thought. MIUI is not the worst Stock ROM imho, but clearly made for John D. Noob.
If you debloat MIUI, you can get along with it if you don't need to much customization.
Btw, battery is usually best on stock ROMS in my experience.
But if you want real control over your phone, or need features that the manufacturer doesn't want you to have, you deffo need a custom ROM.
Also, you need to take into account that a manufacturer doesn't earn a penny for giving out updates and patches, so they tend to keep their fuzz to a minimum.

I usually move away from a stock rom as updates are slow to arrive.
When i was looking for a upgrade for my LG G7, i settled for the F3 because it was Very good value for money, was easy to unlock and had great Dev support on XDA.
For me the other downside of a MIUI stock rom apart from the bloat ware and slow updates, was not being able to use my Samsung Smartwatch as a trusted device, as Miui Stock would only permit Xiaomi devices.
Switching to the Evo-X rom, gave me back all the functionality I needed and is fast enough for me.

tanukitanuki said:
I saw several people installing custom roms and the performance of the device improved a lot! I would like to know how these roms do it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
custom roms, nah
custom modifications, yes
you can reach same or more performance on stock, if you just modify it
most or all custom roms are modified by the rom dev ofcourse, that is why its got better performance than stock

tanukitanuki said:
I saw several people installing custom roms and the performance of the device improved a lot! I would like to know how these roms do it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stock roms add much more functionality, then become bigger and slower
Customs roms are mostly based on AOSP, which is pure android. Less functionality = Lighter and faster rom
And for customs roms like Xiaomi.EU, well they simply edit some parts of the rom, adds fixes and remove some useless stuff, which again make the OS lightweight and faster
of course, that's more complicated in fact, and lighter rom doesnt mean faster, you can make a very heavy system work very fast with optimization. 'Optimization', you see, a word that most of roms dev like Xiaomi doesnt know about

MacTavishFR said:
Stock roms add much more functionality, then become bigger and slower
Customs roms are mostly based on AOSP, which is pure android. Less functionality = Lighter and faster rom
And for customs roms like Xiaomi.EU, well they simply edit some parts of the rom, adds fixes and remove some useless stuff, which again make the OS lightweight and faster
of course, that's more complicated in fact, and lighter rom doesnt mean faster, you can make a very heavy system work very fast with optimization. 'Optimization', you see, a word that most of roms dev like Xiaomi doesnt know about
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dont go around dissing devs without knowing anything about them
pretty sure devs hired by big companies like xiaomi would know about optimizations better than any custom rom dev
when custom rom devs start making bug free roms, go around dissing stock devs as you like

If you have a sub-flagship or flagship device it doesn't matter if that's a Xiaomi or not changing your rom into custom rom is kinda useless, because the stock rom is good enough and more stable(not 100% stable) and if you longing for more performance for flashing an AOSP base rom it's kinda useless base on my experience because it only increases like 1-2% in pure stock no modifications especially in Poco F3.
For me AOSP roms are only good for midrange and lowend devices, i have spare phone here it's RN8 and i changed my rom from MIUI to AOSP and the difference is night and day my mind is blown to the ram management.

From the first day i was in ArrowOS because Miui roms was a little poor in performance, not so much fast like AOSP roms, but one day i tried one of the last stable Miui EU roms and i was impressed how good became, sound and haptics it's just much better than AOSP, autobrightness works as intended, camera it's better that Gcam and SOT it's (in my use, the same).
So i'm with the last comment, in Poco F3 i think the last MIUI EU for example isn't bad, phone runs well and all works. Just tried the last Stable MIUI 13 and now the MIUI 14 EU beta build and i think it's a little more smooth than previous build.
I think any phone with A13 will run smoother than A12.1 builds, in my old Mi A1 just noticed that (and it's too old).

Wmbruckner said:
Also, you need to take into account that a manufacturer doesn't earn a penny for giving out updates and patches, so they tend to keep their fuzz to a minimum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, dude.
They took money in advance for that. On the other hand, people buy pixel devices because they have updates guaranteed.
They do earn money from it indirectly. A lot. Otherwise it wouldn't have been a thing.