i920 File Caching Settings [PATCH RELEASED!]

[Guest xlightwaverx]

Hey guys (and gals), I have been on MSDN messing with the file caching system for this phone.

I need some assistance though from the users. If any of you have BattClock, or any other monitoring software, could you please post what your phone's processor runs at when you phone is on idle (like, a few minutes after it boots, without touching it, etc.), even if you are using my ROM.

The reason I am doing this is because while running SENSE, little things like the flip of the clock and the user selecting a new operation at the same time, can cause great lag in the system. The lag comes when the processor maxes out its percentage to 100 percent. Otherwise, Sense runs quite well on this device. (Yes, I know I can disable the flip, but I want to attack it from the Source.)

I think I may be onto something but I would like to have as many reports as I can get, and what ROM you are using, and whether or not SENSE is currently running.

There might be a way to make this phone Faster, without over clocking.

If the reports match what I think they will, I will release a CAB to alter the file caching system for the phone. Then again, it may play out to be nothing.

Thanks in advance,

X

EDIT: Ok, I've managed to come up with a working patch for the i920. I've re-flashed my Current CHT ROM with XMenu on top of it. Straight from boot, the XMenu would lag on Sense. After the patch, it flies. Data access has increased, and over graphic speed as increased. Let me know what you folks think. Feel free to run some benchmark tests and post them here! I'll check the forum tomorrow from my cell.

It is uninstallable and SHOULD NOT BRICK your phone, but use it at your own risk, for I am not taking any responsibility. NOTE: Data writing has been altered a bit. After installing patch and rebooting, make sure you give your device a few seconds before turning off or putting to sleep after saving a file.

Get it HERE [xLightWaverx.at.Modaco.XDA.i920.GPU.and.File.Access.Booster.v1.0.cab].

X

Edited March 10, 2011 by xlightwaverx

[Guest tedkord]

Wow, I hope this is a mistake. After a soft reset, allowing time for all backround programs to load, etc..., and flipping to each SPB home screen to load all icons, I'm settling out and holding at 92% processor usage. That can't be right.

If I let the screensaver activate and wait a moment before turning the backlight on, I see it's at about 46% for a microsecond before jumping back to 92% and holding. Any program I run bumps it up to 98-100%.

If it matters, I'm running AMD's older 6.5.5 sense ROM, but with Sense deactivated and SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 installed, skinned with Mskip's PProPlus Freedom. Hope this helps (and hope your fix is for ALL i920's, not just specific ROM's)

[Guest kainobean]

ya im using battclock on my own custom light rom and my cpu usage idles around 90% and i always thought that was a little high even when its on high performance it dont make a diffrence but i did notice when you touch down on the screen or buttons and hold them the cpu goes down to about 50% idle not sure why exactly but when it lags i find pushing down on the screen helps speed up the lag....

[Guest xlightwaverx]

Wow, I hope this is a mistake. After a soft reset, allowing time for all backround programs to load, etc..., and flipping to each SPB home screen to load all icons, I'm settling out and holding at 92% processor usage. That can't be right.

If I let the screensaver activate and wait a moment before turning the backlight on, I see it's at about 46% for a microsecond before jumping back to 92% and holding. Any program I run bumps it up to 98-100%.

If it matters, I'm running AMD's older 6.5.5 sense ROM, but with Sense deactivated and SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 installed, skinned with Mskip's PProPlus Freedom. Hope this helps (and hope your fix is for ALL i920's, not just specific ROM's)

I have so many settings I am dealing with I am losing my mind I guess. Yes, this would be for all i920's. My issue is that Microsoft has settings in this device that they, themselves, specifically say not to use after WinCE5.0, while we are using WinCE5.2.xxxxx.

The time consuming part would be the trial and error process of what actually works the best.

Settings that will be of interest to us:

BitmapCacheSize - Caching of graphics.

CacheSize - What is discontinued, but still on our phones.

DataCacheSize - Caching of data, just as, but probably not as, important as BitmapCacheSize.

EnableBitmapCacheWarm - Boot the phone with cached graphical data.

EnableCache - Enables all these goodies.

EnableDataCacheWarm - Boot the phone with cached data.

EnableWriteBack - Setting to 0 should allow us to just overwrite the cache information without rewriting the whole cache.

LazyWriterThreadPrio256 - When to kick in the cache dump.

FatCacheSize - Caching of data from disk.

You can find the information I am referencing HERE.

X

Edited March 7, 2011 by xlightwaverx

[Guest the sandman]

After soft resetting my phone my CPU settles at 92%. I'm using amd's test #4 ultralite+sense rom

[Guest xlightwaverx]

After soft resetting my phone my CPU settles at 92%. I'm using amd's test #4 ultralite+sense rom

I think I am doing this incorrectly. It seems that if I open an application, the processing percentage goes down, but I am not sure why this is doing that. For example, when I tether internet to get on here, it drops down to 84-85% and Sense runs even better. This is without any tweaks. When I close the app out, it returns to about 92-93% and Sense's speed decreases.

Another question I have to whomever is reading this, of all the cache entries we can allocate sizes to, do these entries reside in the PagePool?

For example, I could set, BitmapCache, FatCache, DataCache, to one meg, for both files systems on the phone (PocketFS, and FATFS), then allocate 2 megs for the glyph (another graphics cache) and fully utilize the 8MB PagePool?

Do any of these changes not show significant results because of the PagePool Size?

If anyone has any information on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

X

[Guest Bryan W.]

I didn't soft reset recently but, mine idles at 15%.

I have ZeroLite DG21 version 1.2 (COM5 23569) with gchris titanium.

neeneer neenerrr :(

[Guest tedkord]

I think I am doing this incorrectly. It seems that if I open an application, the processing percentage goes down, but I am not sure why this is doing that. For example, when I tether internet to get on here, it drops down to 84-85% and Sense runs even better. This is without any tweaks. When I close the app out, it returns to about 92-93% and Sense's speed decreases.

Another question I have to whomever is reading this, of all the cache entries we can allocate sizes to, do these entries reside in the PagePool?

For example, I could set, BitmapCache, FatCache, DataCache, to one meg, for both files systems on the phone (PocketFS, and FATFS), then allocate 2 megs for the glyph (another graphics cache) and fully utilize the 8MB PagePool?

Do any of these changes not show significant results because of the PagePool Size?

If anyone has any information on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

X

Just a thought - maybe %CPU is reading %free. Then when you launch an app, the %free drops, and the CPU throttles up to full speed making it seem smoother. Maybe?

[Guest xlightwaverx]

I didn't soft reset recently but, mine idles at 15%.

I have ZeroLite DG21 version 1.2 (COM5 23569) with gchris titanium.

neeneer neenerrr :(

@#%^@#$@^!

I want to see a screeny of that!

X

Edited March 7, 2011 by xlightwaverx

[Guest xlightwaverx]

Just a thought - maybe %CPU is reading %free. Then when you launch an app, the %free drops, and the CPU throttles up to full speed making it seem smoother. Maybe?

I'm not losing it that much :(

X

[Guest xlightwaverx]

It seems that if I open an application, the processing percentage goes down, but I am not sure why this is doing that. For example, when I tether internet to get on here, it drops down to 84-85% and Sense runs even better. This is without any tweaks. When I close the app out, it returns to about 92-93% and Sense's speed decreases.

This seems to deal with ActiveSync Only. When ActiveSync is xferring data for a connection it uses less resources than "waiting for it to connect."

X

[Guest yieldsign2]

Mine is saying 90% with amd's ultralight + sense test 4, after a reboot and waiting 5 minutes.

installed batt clock just to test for you. though it's hard to test instantaneous because batt clock seems to just cycle through the statuses (email, txt, proc, internet bw, etc) one at a time, rather than show it all across the top like the version in the x920 ROM.

[Guest Bryan W.]

Read it and weep!

There is a slight increase at the end, that is the screen capture app running.

... What is eating cpu cycles in the other roms at idle?

[Guest tedkord]

Read it and weep!

There is a slight increase at the end, that is the screen capture app running.

... What is eating cpu cycles in the other roms at idle?

I forgot I had Task Manager for Pocket PC installed. Using it, I show about 87% idle CPU, with about 13% usage for Task Manager. This is while Battclock is still showing 97% or more.

I think Battclock may be reading something wrong.

EDIT: I disabled SPB and re-enabled Sense, and it's the same story - battclock is reporting CPU% in the low 90s at all times, while taskmanager is showing about 85% cpu idle, 14% for taskmanager.

Edited March 8, 2011 by tedkord

[Guest xlightwaverx]

I forgot I had Task Manager for Pocket PC installed. Using it, I show about 87% idle CPU, with about 13% usage for Task Manager. This is while Battclock is still showing 97% or more.

I think Battclock may be reading something wrong.

EDIT: I disabled SPB and re-enabled Sense, and it's the same story - battclock is reporting CPU% in the low 90s at all times, while taskmanager is showing about 85% cpu idle, 14% for taskmanager.

Sounds like something is off, but the important thing is, that whenever BattClock reports 100% CPU, Sense Lags. Therefore, BattClock must hold some relevance.

X

[Guest Bryan W.]

It seems that if I open an application, the processing percentage goes down, but I am not sure why this is doing that. For example, when I tether internet to get on here, it drops down to 84-85% and Sense runs even better. This is without any tweaks. When I close the app out, it returns to about 92-93% and Sense's speed decreases.

Sounds like we need to get a cpu at %100 and check both...

Perhaps one will show the offending process.

I'd do it but I don't have sense. :(

Perhaps on the home screen of sense some graphic effect is going on that is cpu intense. It could be this effect is hidden when you open another window, reducing graphic rendering and thus cpu load. Just hypothesis.

Some quick googling:

I know you didn't want to disable things, but it appears that Sence by its nature sucks memory and cpu cycles even on native devices. This may all be worsened by the fact that we do not have an optimized opengl driver.

(http://www.htcphones.net/htc-hd2-opengl-performance-increase-of-500-possible/)

A little bit of searching shows ways to improve sense performance...

http://softwaretracker.blogspot.com/2010/0...cation-for.html

Disable Useless Application in Home Screen Tab

Disable HTC Weather Wallpaper Animation (or all animations, probably all)

Disable HTC Calender Application

http://softwaretracker.blogspot.com/2009/0...crease-htc.html

Disable ClearType of screen fonts

Disable keyboard input method that you don’t use < This might be a biggie for texting! I might try this in my rom.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=629388

A Whole bunch of tweaks... This one in particular has a lot of registry keys for memory optimization.

It may simply be that to have Sense on the i920 we have to take away the eye candy..

But I would be ok with that if the overall UI experience is easier to use.... Its either that or SPB or my personal favorite -gchris Titanium.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Bryan W.

[Guest amdzero]

Sounds like we need to get a cpu at %100 and check both...

Perhaps one will show the offending process.

I'd do it but I don't have sense. :(

Perhaps on the home screen of sense some graphic effect is going on that is cpu intense. It could be this effect is hidden when you open another window, reducing graphic rendering and thus cpu load. Just hypothesis.

Some quick googling:

I know you didn't want to disable things, but it appears that Sence by its nature sucks memory and cpu cycles even on native devices. This may all be worsened by the fact that we do not have an optimized opengl driver.

(http://www.htcphones.net/htc-hd2-opengl-performance-increase-of-500-possible/)

A little bit of searching shows ways to improve sense performance...

http://softwaretracker.blogspot.com/2010/0...cation-for.html

Disable Useless Application in Home Screen Tab

Disable HTC Weather Wallpaper Animation (or all animations, probably all)

Disable HTC Calender Application

http://softwaretracker.blogspot.com/2009/0...crease-htc.html

Disable ClearType of screen fonts

Disable keyboard input method that you don’t use < This might be a biggie for texting! I might try this in my rom.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=629388

A Whole bunch of tweaks... This one in particular has a lot of registry keys for memory optimization.

It may simply be that to have Sense on the i920 we have to take away the eye candy..

But I would be ok with that if the overall UI experience is easier to use.... Its either that or SPB or my personal favorite -gchris Titanium.

The problem with sense, simply put, is that it was designed by a hardware manufacturer. In my experience, when a hardware maker, creates software, they make it specifically for their hardware. By this I mean that HTC, the maker of MANY great mobile devices, makes some awesome software that was DESIGNED to work on their device. Case in point, take apple for example. How many times have you seen MacOS X running on a PC? Or an HTC device running iOS? I've never seen it. Not that it can't be done, it just can't be done AS WELL as apple did it. Make no mistake, like iOS, there are things in SENSE that even HTC can't get right on every device it sells.

Okay so the short of this is to remind you guys that we are using a phone designed for Touchwiz, not HTC Sense. Don't expect your Hyundai Elantra (i920) to perform like a Honda Civic (any HTC device made in 2009, you remember when the Omnia II was made).

Sense is pretty, and the beauty costs you something. On our devices it costs speed and ram. Sense 2.5 doesn't use .png images. It uses another encoding scheme that must be processed using OpenGL (yes we know that we DON'T have a proper driver written for i920). HTC Devices have a gpu that does this on the fly. We must use a software wrapper that does this via extra CPU cycles. So for every clock flip, and every scroll done in Sense, it has to be processed using software at a higher level, than HTC devices (where their native driver and gpu do all the work).

Don't expect miracles from your phone and you will be happier. The i920 was an AWESOME phone back in 2009, and still is a good phone today. There is only so much blood you can squeeze from this turnip.

P.S.

Not that I'm trying to discredit what XLightwaverX is doing, I'm just being a realist. Do you honestly think that M$ is keeping some magic caches secret that could unlock the hidden potential of your phone? Sometimes a phone is just a phone.

[Guest xlightwaverx]

The problem with sense, simply put, is that it was designed by a hardware manufacturer. In my experience, when a hardware maker, creates software, they make it specifically for their hardware. By this I mean that HTC, the maker of MANY great mobile devices, makes some awesome software that was DESIGNED to work on their device. Case in point, take apple for example. How many times have you seen MacOS X running on a PC? Or an HTC device running iOS? I've never seen it. Not that it can't be done, it just can't be done AS WELL as apple did it. Make no mistake, like iOS, there are things in SENSE that even HTC can't get right on every device it sells.

Okay so the short of this is to remind you guys that we are using a phone designed for Touchwiz, not HTC Sense. Don't expect your Hyundai Elantra (i920) to perform like a Honda Civic (any HTC device made in 2009, you remember when the Omnia II was made).

Sense is pretty, and the beauty costs you something. On our devices it costs speed and ram. Sense 2.5 doesn't use .png images. It uses another encoding scheme that must be processed using OpenGL (yes we know that we DON'T have a proper driver written for i920). HTC Devices have a gpu that does this on the fly. We must use a software wrapper that does this via extra CPU cycles. So for every clock flip, and every scroll done in Sense, it has to be processed using software at a higher level, than HTC devices (where their native driver and gpu do all the work).

Don't expect miracles from your phone and you will be happier. The i920 was an AWESOME phone back in 2009, and still is a good phone today. There is only so much blood you can squeeze from this turnip.

P.S.

Not that I'm trying to discredit what XLightwaverX is doing, I'm just being a realist. Do you honestly think that M$ is keeping some magic caches secret that could unlock the hidden potential of your phone? Sometimes a phone is just a phone.

It's not magic, its microsoft :(

X

[Guest Bryan W.]

I personally think they key is to get the basic UI minus the eye candy.

Gchris Titanium has limitations. All I really want is a nice layout for my home screen that is fast.

However, I don't know how much Sense is designed to have its graphics disabled. That and the i920 ram is gimped. That is like buying a sports car for looks and trying to take everything off to make it a Geo Metro so one could save gas... If this could be done with Sense, I'd love it, lol.

Even SPB takes more cpu... nothing is as fast as Titanium. To me, updating gchris might be a solution, but I haven't put the effort since the general populace is in love with the whole Sense thing. There are nice Titanium plugins out there, and you know what? They pale in downloads to Sense despite its performance problems.

To me, a fast phone beats bleeding edge tech that hardly works in the real world. I think dumbing down Sense to make it work quick is worth a go, and really the best way it can succeed on our phone.

My ideas:

Make ROM overall save as much ram as possible.

Enable overclock scripts.

Disable Sense CPU and graphical intensive features.

--The text page has some blending effect... I vote we disable that if possible. Same idea for the rest.

--Are the backgrounds of each page a picture, straight color, or some sort of graphic dithering? Cut it, set it to black.

Disable lesser important Sense features that take RAM.

Optimize page pool for Sense (I read about this I have to admit I don't know how it works)

Or any of those performance features mentioned in other threads.

Just brain storming... Disable all pages.. to save ram and cache. They are slow anyways. Just make shortcuts to the real apps in the favorites section or whatever its called. Real apps are faster than 'page apps' on that slider anyways. For music make shortcut to Samsung music app, or calendar to samsung calendar app.. Etc.. or MS apps, really is up to personal taste.. I like Samsung apps.

If possible, setup the main screen like in this (example). For those who want a preview of a text or email like the pages did on the slider, well S2U2 does that nicely before you even unlock.

This puts the emphasis on just the home page. Possibly saves on screen real estate if that bar can be turned off. Your start bar on bottom contains notifications, so we dont need to see them again in Sense slider. If that not possible well obviously I don't know how sense works. :(

As you can tell.. I prefer the real apps over the mini apps on the slider.. I just want a nice home page, access to messages, and quick access to my most used apps. Now that I think of it, I might do a little research and see if disabling all pages, but home, is possible and see what happens.

Oh.. and, please, if AMD allows it, include the dialer skin changer.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Bryan W.

[Guest xlightwaverx]

My ideas:

Make ROM overall save as much ram as possible.

Enable overclock scripts.

Disable Sense CPU and graphical intensive features.

--The text page has some blending effect... I vote we disable that if possible. Same idea for the rest.

--Are the backgrounds of each page a picture, straight color, or some sort of graphic dithering? Cut it, set it to black.

Disable lesser important Sense features that take RAM.

Optimize page pool for Sense (I read about this I have to admit I don't know how it works)

Or any of those performance features mentioned in other threads.

Just brain storming... Disable all pages.. to save ram and cache. They are slow anyways. Just make shortcuts to the real apps in the favorites section or whatever its called. Real apps are faster than 'page apps' on that slider anyways. For music make shortcut to Samsung music app, or calendar to samsung calendar app.. Etc.. or MS apps, really is up to personal taste.. I like Samsung apps.

If possible, setup the main screen like in this (example). For those who want a preview of a text or email like the pages did on the slider, well S2U2 does that nicely before you even unlock.

This puts the emphasis on just the home page. Possibly saves on screen real estate if that bar can be turned off. Your start bar on bottom contains notifications, so we dont need to see them again in Sense slider. If that not possible well obviously I don't know how sense works. :(

As you can tell.. I prefer the real apps over the mini apps on the slider.. I just want a nice home page, access to messages, and quick access to my most used apps. Now that I think of it, I might do a little research and see if disabling all pages, but home, is possible and see what happens.

Oh.. and, please, if AMD allows it, include the dialer skin changer.

Everything that mentioned has been done, minus the attaching of Samsung apps to relevant shortcuts, but that would take about 15 minutes. Sense runs fast after all the tweaking is done. My only issue that I am trying to dissolve is that fact that every once in a while, when the CPU hits 100%, Sense lags a bit (usually at album or weather tabs if you stop a bit) Nothing serious, but I just want to release a Sense ROM with 0 problems, and the caching thing seemed the most relevant because we have the ability to tweak these settings, yet no one seems to have tried it yet.

We have the ability to control three important caching features that gets thrown into the PP. If Sense is more graphically intensive, then I guess we adjust those cache settings and lower the others.

Seems like a no brainer. My apologies if I want to share the information with the public instead of hording it for my next release. I figured you folks would be interested and trying different settings since you all have the how-to (pretty much) and the more of us working on it the better.

X

[Guest amdzero]

...

If possible, setup the main screen like in this (example).

...

That is actually using CoOkie Home Tab, which slows down the phone a bit more. I'll try to cook a scaled down version of sense, and lets see if ppl like it.

[Guest tedkord]

The problem with sense, simply put, is that it was designed by a hardware manufacturer. In my experience, when a hardware maker, creates software, they make it specifically for their hardware. By this I mean that HTC, the maker of MANY great mobile devices, makes some awesome software that was DESIGNED to work on their device. Case in point, take apple for example. How many times have you seen MacOS X running on a PC? Or an HTC device running iOS? I've never seen it. Not that it can't be done, it just can't be done AS WELL as apple did it. Make no mistake, like iOS, there are things in SENSE that even HTC can't get right on every device it sells.

Okay so the short of this is to remind you guys that we are using a phone designed for Touchwiz, not HTC Sense. Don't expect your Hyundai Elantra (i920) to perform like a Honda Civic (any HTC device made in 2009, you remember when the Omnia II was made).

Sense is pretty, and the beauty costs you something. On our devices it costs speed and ram. Sense 2.5 doesn't use .png images. It uses another encoding scheme that must be processed using OpenGL (yes we know that we DON'T have a proper driver written for i920). HTC Devices have a gpu that does this on the fly. We must use a software wrapper that does this via extra CPU cycles. So for every clock flip, and every scroll done in Sense, it has to be processed using software at a higher level, than HTC devices (where their native driver and gpu do all the work).

Don't expect miracles from your phone and you will be happier. The i920 was an AWESOME phone back in 2009, and still is a good phone today. There is only so much blood you can squeeze from this turnip.

P.S.

Not that I'm trying to discredit what XLightwaverX is doing, I'm just being a realist. Do you honestly think that M$ is keeping some magic caches secret that could unlock the hidden potential of your phone? Sometimes a phone is just a phone.

I understand everything you are saying, except the part about the i920 being an awesome phone in 2009, and a good phone today. To my mind, it was a disaster in 2009. As released, it was atrocious. TouchWIZ blows. It locked up often. IF not for the small but determined cooking community, I'd have trashed it within months. As it stands, the miracles you folks have worked have made it a tolerable phone, 1000X better than stock. I'm not belittling your work, or Xs, or Steel, or Shemmy or any of the folks here. Honestly, you guys did amazing things with what you had to work with.

No matter how much you polish a turd, it's never gonna be gold.

[Guest Bryan W.]

Everything that mentioned has been done, minus the attaching of Samsung apps to relevant shortcuts, but that would take about 15 minutes. Sense runs fast after all the tweaking is done. My only issue that I am trying to dissolve is that fact that every once in a while, when the CPU hits 100%, Sense lags a bit (usually at album or weather tabs if you stop a bit) Nothing serious, but I just want to release a Sense ROM with 0 problems, and the caching thing seemed the most relevant because we have the ability to tweak these settings, yet no one seems to have tried it yet.

We have the ability to control three important caching features that gets thrown into the PP. If Sense is more graphically intensive, then I guess we adjust those cache settings and lower the others.

Seems like a no brainer. My apologies if I want to share the information with the public instead of hording it for my next release. I figured you folks would be interested and trying different settings since you all have the how-to (pretty much) and the more of us working on it the better.

X

Well its like tedkord says, dealing with this phone is a big task.

Make no mistake though, if it wasn't for people like you, all we would have is a phone that's a big pain in the butt. Don't think we aren't appreciating please, we're all just frustrated with the limitations of the hardware.

Without a doubt people like you are gold, because you bring life to a machine with nothing but your free hard work and determination. Please don't give up.

A huge 'thanks!' goes to you and all cooks.

[Guest tedkord]

Well its like tedkord says, dealing with this phone is a big task.

Make no mistake though, if it wasn't for people like you, all we would have is a phone that's a big pain in the butt. Don't think we aren't appreciating please, we're all just frustrated with the limitations of the hardware.

Without a doubt people like you are gold, because you bring life to a machine with nothing but your free hard work and determination. Please don't give up.

A huge 'thanks!' goes to you and all cooks.

Ditto. Hope I didn't come across as an unappreciative ass - that's not what I meant. If it weren't for the chefs in this forum, I'd have chucked the O2 a long time ago. Thanks to you folks, I have the luxury of waiting for the Thunderbolt, or Stealth or Bionic. My frustration is centered totally on the phone itself. I've used pretty much exclusively AMD's ROMs (tried Steel's and a couple of others, but always came back to AMD) I haven't tried your yet, Xlightwavers, only because ZeroSense has worked for me, and my free time to flash/reinstall has been much shortened lately. I've donated to AMD 2 or 3 times, to try and help support him.

And, I don't think it's even the hardware - Samsung always puts out first class hardware. It's their software that sucks. How do you release a device with FPU hardware, and no support for that hardware in the software (essentially making it a paperweight inside your phone)? How do you put in half-assed GLES2 drivers, and no GLES1 drivers? How do you even release a travesty like TouchWIZ? Of course, WInMo is a handicap from the get go.

Please, XLW - keep digging for improvements - this phone needs any advantage it can get. That's why I replied with the info you wanted as soon as I saw your post. I'll help if I can, and I DO appreciate all the work of people much smarter than me on this forum.

Edited March 9, 2011 by tedkord

[Guest amdzero]

I understand everything you are saying, except the part about the i920 being an awesome phone in 2009, and a good phone today. To my mind, it was a disaster in 2009. As released, it was atrocious. TouchWIZ blows. It locked up often. IF not for the small but determined cooking community, I'd have trashed it within months. As it stands, the miracles you folks have worked have made it a tolerable phone, 1000X better than stock. I'm not belittling your work, or Xs, or Steel, or Shemmy or any of the folks here. Honestly, you guys did amazing things with what you had to work with.

No matter how much you polish a turd, it's never gonna be gold.

My point was only that the phone indeed WAS awesome in 2009. Samsung just gimped it with crappy software. Remember the i920, was originally the i8000, a very popular phone to the rest of the world. Samsung makes great hardware, but fails on the support side. There is no doubt to the potential of this "turd", but after a while the limitations shine through, especially here in 2011 with Android at the top of the mobile UI foodchain.