[ROM][GEN2]CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3.7)

[Guest BruxoMor]

Hi Guys.

My promised feedback on CM7 nightly 142+ (by SEJ7278).

MY USER PROFILE (noob, but fan )

This is my very FIRST Android phone, I received it in mid March/2011 with a v2.1 Eclair stock firmware and after 2/3 weeks I rooted it with "Universal Android Root", upgraded to Gen2 and installed CM 7.1 RC1 with WBAW's all-in-one "CyanogenMod 7.1 RC1 Gen1 to Gen2 Upgrade TPT".

Used the phone like this until the end of July/2011 when I instaled the above mentioned nightly version 142+ that I'm using up to this date.

MISCELLANEOUS SETTINGS

Sync:

- Auto-sync ON

- Background data ON

Power:

- 2G ON (rarely use 3G);

- GPS ON.

Display:

- Brightness 75%;

- Timeout 2 minutes.

Performance:

- Surface dithering DISABLED;

- Governor ON DEMAND;

- CPU frequencies min=245, max=600 (no OC).

TYPICAL USAGE (since last charge)

- phone calls 3/4 short (1 to 2 mins) a day;

- WiFi 2 hours a day (LAN and Internet, disabled when not in use);

- FM radio 1.5 hours a day;

- MP3 player 30 minutes since last charge;

- GPS 30 minutes since last charge (always enabled);

- APPs 2 hours a day (reading email and pdf documents and transfering files to/from networked PCs mostly).

(see attached screenshot "BatteryUsage.jpg" for battery usage statistics)

FEEDBACK

Positive points:

- Great power consumption in stand by (relative to stock 2.1 and CM7 7.1 RC1)

- FM radio works (relative to CM7 7.1 RC1)

- GPS works (relative to CM7 7.1 RC1)

Negative points:

- FM radio only works using North American regional band (in 200 Khz increments wich leaves out a few European radio stations);

- WiFi power consumption (relative to stock 2.1);

- WiFi doesn't reconect after stand by (relative to stock 2.1, could be a problem with my router, needs more testing);

- ADW home screen is nonresponsive at times (mainly draging items to edge of screen to move them between screens and when changing between services and apps in the apps managing interface), maybe a CPU related issue.

FINAL NOTES

Very stable firmware - never had a Force Close (but I'm very selective with the apps I install and I'm not Overclocking the CPU).

Never felt the need to calibrate the battery (it charges to 100% and is usable down to 0%).

Overall, the experience has been very positive when compared to Stock 2.1 and CM7 7.1 RC1 firmwares.

Sorry for this (maybe too long) post but I'm writing it because, judging by my own experience as an Android newbie and by some questions that I've seen posted in this and other similar forums, I believe it to be of interest for newcomers.

Long Live ANDROID!

Edited August 8, 2011 by BruxoMor

[Guest Anil k Solanki]

Hi Guys.

My promised feedback on CM7 nightly 142+ (by SEJ7278).

Long Live ANDROID!

Hi BruxoMor, thanks for sharing. Nicely detailed post, it's very interesting to read about other users experiences. I'm more than happy with N152, but it does seem you get more battery life than me. But it's not an issue at all, I get at least 24 hours on heavy usage, and I live in Europe so I'm always near to a power source.

Thanks. Anil.

[Guest k0zmic]

Any idea when the next nightly will come out???

Can't say when, but maybe sometime today when the buildbot starts building it.

Edited August 8, 2011 by k0zmic

[Guest wishmasterf]

Any idea when the next nightly will come out???

Maybe next nightly will be the next stable release? 7.1?

[Guest BruxoMor]

Hi Anil.

Glad you liked it.

Hi BruxoMor, thanks for sharing. Nicely detailed post, it's very interesting to read about other users experiences. I'm more than happy with N152, but it does seem you get more battery life than me...

As you can see from the info that I provided this is a relatively "light" usage of the phone so probably the battery life that you are getting is normal for your "heavy" usage.

... But it's not an issue at all, I get at least 24 hours on heavy usage, and I live in Europe so I'm always near to a power source.

Reminds me of an online conference in G+ between 4 Android editors/reviewers where 3 of them rambled for at least some 20 minutes about the short life span of their phone's batteries and the multitude of tweaks and apps they used to achieve a better life span until the 4th of them, who had been quietly listening until that point asked them simply if they didn't had access to the power grid at work and home. Unquestionably batteries are actually the "Achilles heel" of today's electronic gadgets but after all we are speaking of "smart" phones that we use to do a lot of "smart" stuff so we should use also be "smart" while using them.

Cheers.

[Guest k0zmic]

Maybe next nightly will be the next stable release? 7.1?

I don't expect that to be that case.

[Guest targetbsp]

I don't expect that to be that case.

Be good if it was. The Blade builds are pretty good atm. It'd be our first stable 'stable' :D

[Guest sej7278]

Be good if it was. The Blade builds are pretty good atm. It'd be our first stable 'stable' :D

we could do with a stable or RC2 so we could report bugs before 2.6.35 comes along and introduces a whole load of new ones :D

not sure why there's no build, it compiles ok for me so its not broken.

i think v9 tablet and trying to root/dump the skate are taking up the devs time right now.

[Guest wishmasterf]

Negative points:

- FM radio only works using North American regional band (in 200 Khz increments wich leaves out a few European radio stations);

Thats very bad. Is there anything we can do?

[Guest Mousses]

Thats very bad. Is there anything we can do?

Click on FM Radio/Menu/Settings.....and change regional bands increments

[Guest Anil k Solanki]

Reminds me of an online conference in G+ between 4 Android editors/reviewers where 3 of them rambled for at least some 20 minutes about the short life span of their phone's batteries and the multitude of tweaks and apps they used to achieve a better life span until the 4th of them, who had been quietly listening until that point asked them simply if they didn't had access to the power grid at work and home. Unquestionably batteries are actually the "Achilles heel" of today's electronic gadgets but after all we are speaking of "smart" phones that we use to do a lot of "smart" stuff so we should use also be "smart" while using them.

Cheers.

Hi BruxoMor, My feeling on the battery performance of modern gadgets is, we get tremendous functionality and joy for such a tiny device. As for getting through the day, even for hard core users, the solution is so simple, so cheap. A spare battery, or an external battery pack. Both of which are very small and weigh an insignificant amount.

Anil.

[Guest De@n]

Hi ritterkeks, thanks for the update, I will bear the info in mind for the future. Also good to know you no longer have an issue with 16 GB SD cards. I use an Ext3 partition on my card for A2SD, using an app from the Marketplace called S2E, it works great.

Anil.

Hi, Anil.

1. Are you using S2E by Oleg?

2. Would it be worth using on a class 4 ScanDisc 8gb?

3. What steps would I have to take when update CM7 with S2E?

Edited August 8, 2011 by De@n

[Guest sej7278]

Hi BruxoMor, My feeling on the battery performance of modern gadgets is, we get tremendous functionality and joy for such a tiny device. As for getting through the day, even for hard core users, the solution is so simple, so cheap. A spare battery, or an external battery pack. Both of which are very small and weigh an insignificant amount.

you shouldn't need to lug around a spare battery or charger for a day's usage, although you'd have to be hammering wifi/3g/gps pretty hard to drain the battery in a day, in which case i think its fair enough to have a car charger or a usb cable to hand.

but the point is, cm7 has poorer battery life than froyo or gingerstirfry, so there's obviously something that can be done in software about it, its not a hardware issue.

[Guest sm4tik]

Thats very bad. Is there anything we can do?

After selecting your non North American region, manually set the tuner as high as it goes and seek downwards. Currently this is the only workaround I know of if you want to use auto seeking.

[Guest wishmasterf]

Click on FM Radio/Menu/Settings.....and change regional bands increments

If i touch the right arrow i get the first channel (88,8MHz) and after that i get the beginning (87,5MHz). If i use Noth America the i do not get the 88,8MHz.

[Guest lordofangels]

\o/ yeah, a build,

No specific Blade updates/fixes in this build.

Some cyanogen fixed included.

Official CM N156

md5sum: 06bf747660d6c7fa9ae8731a046931e1

[Guest Anil k Solanki]

you shouldn't need to lug around a spare battery or charger for a day's usage, although you'd have to be hammering wifi/3g/gps pretty hard to drain the battery in a day, in which case i think its fair enough to have a car charger or a usb cable to hand.

but the point is, cm7 has poorer battery life than froyo or gingerstirfry, so there's obviously something that can be done in software about it, its not a hardware issue.

I don't need to "lug" around a spare battery for a day's use. But that is my use case, if you're a very heavy user, then the solution is very simple. A spare battery isn't going to be hard to carry around. That's my point.

Anil.

[Guest sej7278]

No specific Blade updates/fixes in this build.

Some cyanogen fixed included.

Official CM N156

still no usb debug icon (compiled from git not n156)

[Guest bob100]

Hi i also have another problem.

1)My phone will randomly turn vibrate off. For example when i have my phone on silent i want my vibrate set on. However i find that randomly even though i have set vibrate to always on the vibrate will randomly turn off

2)I can't get gmail to vibrate when i'm getting incoming mail. Again my phone is set to vibrate (always on). I've look through gmail settings to check whether there is an option to turn vibrate on but there isn't

Can anyone help?

[Guest qwerty_29]

still no usb debug icon (compiled from git not n156)

Hi Sej!

Please tell my: what are the differences between N156 and your N152+, if any?

Also, can someone tell me about these quicker boot times someone mentioned earlier? The Blade boots noticeably faster?

Thanks!

[Guest sej7278]

Please tell my: what are the differences between N156 and your N152+, if any?

Also, can someone tell me about these quicker boot times someone mentioned earlier? The Blade boots noticeably faster?

my n152+ i just compiled from git, essentially no difference to n156, i've not made it public, it was just a test build as i was wondering if the build was broken (as the buildbot had been quiet).

the faster boot - mine was 45secs now its 40secs, so not that astonishing lol.

[Guest Anil k Solanki]

Hi i also have another problem.

1)My phone will randomly turn vibrate off. For example when i have my phone on silent i want my vibrate set on. However i find that randomly even though i have set vibrate to always on the vibrate will randomly turn off

2)I can't get gmail to vibrate when i'm getting incoming mail. Again my phone is set to vibrate (always on). I've look through gmail settings to check whether there is an option to turn vibrate on but there isn't

Can anyone help?

Hi bob100, perhaps you could provide info on which version of Cyanogen and Gmail are you using?

Anil.

[Guest danieljtmcleod1989]

I'm wondering if somebody can help me. Although it is nothing major, its more personal preference. If I want to remove the screenshot option from the power menu, could I do this simply by copying a few files from the rc1 build, such as framework-res.apk and framework.jar, and removing the .apk from the app folder prior to installation?

[Guest rockstarszzzz]

I'm wondering if somebody can help me. Although it is nothing major, its more personal preference. If I want to remove the screenshot option from the power menu, could I do this simply by copying a few files from the rc1 build, such as framework-res.apk and framework.jar, and removing the .apk from the app folder prior to installation?

Is it really such a bother? I thought it was a 'good' feature

Surprising, because in other ROM threads, there are members asking to cooking in such functionality!

[Guest danieljtmcleod1989]

Is it really such a bother? I thought it was a 'good' feature

Surprising, because in other ROM threads, there are members asking to cooking in such functionality!

Like I said, its personal preference. I know its a good feature and all, but I'm an awkward guy. I can happily sit for hours getting things how I want them, and removing this option is just one of those things.