Upgrading from a ZTE Blade to a Optimus 2X.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

My O2x arrived on Monday (ordered on Friday night)... good job at that Xpansys! Now the phone is waiting for my return to the UK this weekend...

Seems like the delievries go pretty well.

My trusted Blade does the most fantastic job for the basics (calls, twitter, facebook and stellar gps navigation), what I miss is a larger screen and true multi tasking, the LG O2x should cover all basis.

Hi vulpy, glad to hear another person snapped up the O2X at the bargain price. I was planning on getting the ZTE Skate, but unlocking is an issue. The O2X costs more, but is technically superior/capable. Are you planning on sticking with the stock ROM?

Regards. Anil.

[Guest vulpy]

Hi vulpy, glad to hear another person snapped up the O2X at the bargain price. I was planning on getting the ZTE Skate, but unlocking is an issue. The O2X costs more, but is technically superior/capable. Are you planning on sticking with the stock ROM?

Regards. Anil.

Hi Anil, I went through the Skate temptation phase as well and like you : "no unlock" = "no buy" as I'm comutting all throughout Europe and need to swap sim cards on a weekly basis. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that when you start asking alot from your hardware you should be able to provision for a high end beast, O2X came as a nice trade-off price vs. performance/features.

I am a modding freak, first thing I will do after charging my phone will be to root it and get the most stable custom ROM out there. What is your choice today (CM, Paul's, xda options?). Keep us posted, I'll do the same ;) Have a blast unpacking your Optimus!

[Guest vulpy]

Anil, you may want to give Ginger Stir Fry ROM a chance on your Blade, I see huge stability and speed improvements over CM... All this waiting to get your hands on the O2X of course !

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Anil, you may want to give Ginger Stir Fry ROM a chance on your Blade, I see huge stability and speed improvements over CM... All this waiting to get your hands on the O2X of course !

Hi vulpy, on the O2X I will start with Cyanogen and see how that works out. I have been using CM for months now, and apart from one glitch. I have had zero issues. I easily get 12 hours of hardcore use and 24 hours of medium use, both scenarios are with Wi-Fi and 3G use, a bit of video watching, gaming lots of email & web surfing. So hopefully I will get the same performance on the O2X. The fact it has CM7 support is the reason I chose it over other handsets.

As for the Blade. I have a slight dillema. I'm going to give the Gen 2 Blade running CM7 to my girlfriend. She already has a Gen 1 Blade running Swedish Spring RLS5. She needs two phones, one with an Italian SIM, the other with a UK SIM. Do I put the Gen 2 version of Swedish Spring on the second handset? Or Ginger Stir Fry? She hasn't made any complaints about battery life or performance with SS. I bought her an ASUS Transformer last month, she absolutely loves it, and it also means she now uses that device for any heavy duty tasks. In fact I think she only uses her phones if she has to.

My gut is to put Ginger Stir Fry on both Blades. But I need them to be 100% stable like Swedish Spring. She is gorgeous :), but technically a mere mortal, unlike us :D. Thankfully WBAWs GSF installer upgrades the handset to Gen 2 if needed. But perhaps SS would be a less feature rich but safer bet? Like I said, dilemma.

I have a week to think about what to do with the Blades, and to plan the transfer of stuff over to the O2X.

Anil.

Edited August 24, 2011 by Anil K Solanki

[Guest vulpy]

Hi guys, here we go... my impressions after roughly 2 weeks of usage (not intense usage though):

- the HW screams quality and roars pure speed... very enjoyable, I particularly like the gorgeous screen and the metal edges, top notch quality

- the SW screams pain... how in the world could they release it half way through the dev cycle?

----- on this part I knew there would be work to do and I did not even blinked before I got CM7 on it. Works like a charm.

------------------ did not like in CM7 the lacvk of FM radio support, AD2P support and poor GPS perfs... so on with Paul's stuff

- the combination WH + SW seems to be particularly sensitive, had ugly crashes with many ROMs, updated the BB to 725 and with Paul's GB looks stable and fancy

all in all, O2x is two/three times better than the Blade or Skate, money differential is fully justified. Pay attention this is not for the faint of heart. you need to be patient and get your hands dirty to get where you want.

now i very much enjoy the beast, great GPS performance, hdmi out on my 55" LCD is just mind blowing and the screen... well is a delight ;)

let me know your experience!

[Guest Rusty!]

You might have had an older CM build, GPS is brilliant on newer builds. There was a userspace change a little while ago, gets locked on damn fast and the wakelock issue was sorted in the kernel.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Hi guys, here we go... my impressions after roughly 2 weeks of usage (not intense usage though):

- the HW screams quality and roars pure speed... very enjoyable, I particularly like the gorgeous screen and the metal edges, top notch quality

- the SW screams pain... how in the world could they release it half way through the dev cycle?

----- on this part I knew there would be work to do and I did not even blinked before I got CM7 on it. Works like a charm.

------------------ did not like in CM7 the lacvk of FM radio support, AD2P support and poor GPS perfs... so on with Paul's stuff

- the combination WH + SW seems to be particularly sensitive, had ugly crashes with many ROMs, updated the BB to 725 and with Paul's GB looks stable and fancy

all in all, O2x is two/three times better than the Blade or Skate, money differential is fully justified. Pay attention this is not for the faint of heart. you need to be patient and get your hands dirty to get where you want.

now i very much enjoy the beast, great GPS performance, hdmi out on my 55" LCD is just mind blowing and the screen... well is a delight ;)

let me know your experience!

Thanks for the feedback vulpy. My girlfriend has been stuck at work in the UK, but she gets back tonight, yay! So I will finally get my hands on my baby, after which I will take a look at the phone. :)

I will go straight for CM7, it's the reason I chose this handset. Talk of basebands does confuse me, just another layer of stuff to learn, along with RIL files.

I will make no bones about saying that I'm sure glad Rusty & yourself are participating in this thread.

Thank you gents. Anil.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

You might have had an older CM build, GPS is brilliant on newer builds. There was a userspace change a little while ago, gets locked on damn fast and the wakelock issue was sorted in the kernel.

Many thanks for the insight Rusty, much appreciated.

Anil

[Guest vulpy]

You might have had an older CM build, GPS is brilliant on newer builds. There was a userspace change a little while ago, gets locked on damn fast and the wakelock issue was sorted in the kernel.

Thank you for the info Rusty! it look slike I'm behind the curve on the CM7 for O2x development... I will dig for the GPS patch and give it another try.

CM7 is defo a reference and despite a couple of shortcomings (features missing), I would use it more often.... So far tried the RC version and the latest Nightly (127 if I'm not wrong). Wil search more thoroughly Modaco and XDA for background.

Edited September 7, 2011 by vulpy

[Guest everett_psycho]

I echo the sw being the bug, it works out of the box but it really doesn't feel like it has the power inside it does. Personally I've been really lazy since i got this and I've barely touched it from a mod standpoint, it's not even rooted yet. I think my plan is to hold out as i am until the imminent LG update to GB is released and see how that is, if its not a significant improvement I'll be trying some new roms out and making the most of the beast within. For now I've of a few old pcs to be making servers out of instead to clear the flat up a bit

Edited September 7, 2011 by everett_psycho

[Guest Rusty!]

Thank you for the info Rusty! it look slike I'm behind the curve on the CM7 for O2x development... I will dig for the GPS patch and give it another try.

CM7 is defo a reference and despite a couple of shortcomings (features missing), I would use it more often.... So far tried the RC version and the latest Nightly (127 if I'm not wrong). Wil search more thoroughly Modaco and XDA for background.

If you're on #127, then you have the better GPS, but the RC was definitely on the old one.

[Guest everett_psycho]

I echo the sw being the bug, it works out of the box but it really doesn't feel like it has the power inside it does. Personally I've been really lazy since i got this and I've barely touched it from a mod standpoint, it's not even rooted yet. I think my plan is to hold out as i am until the imminent LG update to GB is released and see how that is, if its not a significant improvement I'll be trying some new roms out and making the most of the beast within. For now I've of a few old pcs to be making servers out of instead to clear the flat up a bit

Less than an hour after i defend this thing it restarts itself, maybe i won't wait and will just get a Rom on it this weekend, after the rugby though of course

[Guest vulpy]

Less than an hour after i defend this thing it restarts itself, maybe i won't wait and will just get a Rom on it this weekend, after the rugby though of course

Yeap... particularly sensitive to combos RIL+BB, ROMs, ext partition version, etc... from my experience: find the stable combination that works for you and stick to it (until the next reboot/ shutdown :)

What did it for me: Paul's Gr1 + BB 725 + RIL 6xx.... If I allign the RIL and BB I get an ugly mess, any other changes makes it behave wildly :(

On the bright side, the GPS lock time is fantastic, beats the Blade hands down... my Blade used to be the benchmark for me, now expectations reset to the LG O2x standards...

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Less than an hour after i defend this thing it restarts itself, maybe i won't wait and will just get a Rom on it this weekend, after the rugby though of course

Hi everett_psycho, perhaps the LG has a sixth sense and senses you haven't updated your profile? :)

I would like to know which ROM you end up using. Perhaps I should seek out reviews of the Gingerbread release LG have started rolling out to other folks around the world. Have seen any? Perhaps it will be worth the wait, or, perhaps not.

Anil.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Yeap... particularly sensitive to combos RIL+BB, ROMs, ext partition version, etc... from my experience: find the stable combination that works for you and stick to it (until the next reboot/ shutdown :)

What did it for me: Paul's Gr1 + BB 725 + RIL 6xx.... If I allign the RIL and BB I get an ugly mess, any other changes makes it behave wildly :(

On the bright side, the GPS lock time is fantastic, beats the Blade hands down... my Blade used to be the benchmark for me, now expectations reset to the LG O2x standards...

Hi vulpy, changing the BB, & changing RIL files, is that done through Recovery? I'm a Mac user and really don't fancy having to boot up Win7. Simply because I'm lazy.

Anil.

[Guest Rusty!]

RIL is recovery (or ADB push) baseband is done via Smartflash, so you'll be needing Windows.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

RIL is recovery (or ADB push) baseband is done via Smartflash, so you'll be needing Windows.

Thanks Rusty, I suppose changing the Baseband isn't something you do every day, so I can fire up Win7. Baseband is the Cellular radio firmware right?

Sorry I'm not being lazy, I just want to triple check my facts and not make any assumptions. I hope you don't mind my noob questions.

Anil.

[Guest Rusty!]

Yeah bb is the radio firmware. It's not a daily thing, but I have been through more radios on this than I did my Nexus One, upgraded to 823* yesterday :D

*Not that that means a lot, LG baseband 'versions' are just build dates.

Edited September 8, 2011 by Rusty!

[Guest everett_psycho]

See I'm not up on bb and rims yet, planning to spend tthis weekend researching all this stuff until it makes sense. I think my first stop is Pauls fr Rom. Only downside is my laptops battery died so I'm tied to plug sockets and hoping the dog doesn't catch the cable mid flash. That and my girlfriends phone is now dead and not knowing about these things means its falling on me to do the research for her, she said no to a blade, i just wanted to play with it without me buying one

Edited September 8, 2011 by everett_psycho

[Guest vulpy]

3 days now since the last ROM flash with no crashes, reboots, unexpected shutdowns...

Wolfson (British... actually Scottish) audio technology is suuuuuperb, I ditched my iPod4G already. Even the included headphones are high quality !

I love the HW, design ,screen... Really find the reviews heavily biased by the underwhelmin SW quality (thank god, this made it affordable, otheriwse we would have had to pay +400£ for it).

This is one f-ing beautiful piece of equipement, I sincerely doubt the latest top of the range Galaxy matches the quality here (I know I did not like the SG2S when I had it in hand).

Verrrry happy with my purchase, never believed a smartphone can be soooo smooth and sexy ;)

Waiting for Paul to enhance his Ginger ROM, a good SW is what this little device was missing.

BTW, satellite lock time (A-GPS enabled) is 2-3 seconds, beats all other dedicated GPS devices I have ever used!

I also think it is pretty well future-proof with the Tegra 2 engine. Wondering how far the 512M RAM and 800p screen will take it in terms of updates and compatib, nevertheless with a good gingerbread ROM, O2X will be in good shape for benchmarking.

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Hi, I finally got my hands on my Optimus. I used the stock ROM for around 15 mins, before I thought f**k this! I then fired up Win7, installed the LG software & drivers. Rooted the phone with Superoneclick, installed ROM manager & flashed recovery. Flashed CM7 & Gapps. Rebooted and went about setting up the rest.

All in all it took me around two and a half hours. I now have CM7 running and everything is set up.

Phwew! The handset is like a Mercedes Benz compared to the Ford like Blade. With a retail price 4 times the cost of the Blade, you get what you pay for.

Superfast, with a great if over saturated display. The clicky, feel like they will break any minute Blade buttons, are replaced with great capacitive buttons. Really nice!

For the cost of a USED iPhone 3GS, you get a brand new Benz! UK users can sign up for a free 5 year warranty at the UK LG website. Even better!

I'm very happy with the hardware, nice one LG, also thanks for f-ing up the stock OS. Good news for nerds on a budget. But the star of the show is Cyanogenmod. A superb ROM, that turns a nearly there. In to a first past the post!

Fellow Cyanogenmod Optimus users, feel smug, your'e entitled.

My sincere & humble thanks to the kind people in this thread. You helped me make the right decision.

Anil

Edited September 9, 2011 by Anil K Solanki

[Guest everett_psycho]

good to hear you finally got your mits on the thing and it was worth the wait.

For the cost of a USED iPhone 3GS, you get a brand new Benz! UK users can sign up for a free 5 year warranty at the UK LG website. Even better!

remember rooting voids this though, just make sure if it screws up you can get it back to unrooted stock rom to send it back. Definitely planning on at least trying pauls rom this weekend. If the FM radio doesnt work with CM7 I probably wont flash it as i like having the radio to use, really missed it on my hero

Edited September 9, 2011 by everett_psycho

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

good to hear you finally got your mits on the thing and it was worth the wait.

remember rooting voids this though, just make sure if it screws up you can get it back to unrooted stock rom to send it back. Definitely planning on at least trying pauls rom this weekend. If the FM radio doesnt work with CM7 I probably wont flash it as i like having the radio to use, really missed it on my hero

Good point about warranty dude. I suppose if it is bricked then you should be covered. Good point none-the-less. Also many thanks to you for the eXpansys tip. Thanks.

Radio? Never touch the stuff myself. Hopefully the Cyanogenmod team will add it some point. Because, even though it's only been a few hours, N127 feels very smooth & hicupp free. Theres even an option to light up the buttons when you have a new email or text message. That makes up for the lack of a notification light. I thought only Apple designed portable devices without a notification light. Simply silly.

Anil.

[Guest vulpy]

Hi, I finally got my hands on my Optimus. I used the stock ROM for around 15 mins, before I thought f**k this! I then fired up Win7, installed the LG software & drivers. Rooted the phone with Superoneclick, installed ROM manager & flashed recovery. Flashed CM7 & Gapps. Rebooted and went about setting up the rest.

All in all it took me around two and a half hours. I now have CM7 running and everything is set up.

Phwew! The handset is like a Mercedes Benz compared to the Ford like Blade. With a retail price 4 times the cost of the Blade, you get what you pay for.

Superfast, with a great if over saturated display. The clicky, feel like they will break any minute Blade buttons, are replaced with great capacitive buttons. Really nice!

For the cost of a USED iPhone 3GS, you get a brand new Benz! UK users can sign up for a free 5 year warranty at the UK LG website. Even better!

I'm very happy with the hardware, nice one LG, also thanks for f-ing up the stock OS. Good news for nerds on a budget. But the star of the show is Cyanogenmod. A superb ROM, that turns a nearly there. In to a first past the post!

Fellow Cyanogenmod Optimus users, feel smug, your'e entitled.

My sincere & humble thanks to the kind people in this thread. You helped me make the right decision.

Anil

Good to see I'm not the only one excited with the quality boost coming from the Blade ;)

One question please: how do you get to the free 5 yr guarantee? Is it just about registering on the UK LG website with the model and serial or anything special needed here? (thanks a bunch)

[Guest Anil K Solanki]

Good to see I'm not the only one excited with the quality boost coming from the Blade ;)

One question please: how do you get to the free 5 yr guarantee? Is it just about registering on the UK LG website with the model and serial or

anything special needed here? (thanks a bunch)

Hi vulpy, this thing is very very fast. I really do like it. I saw the 5year warranty on this page.

http://www.lg.com/uk...one-support.jsp

I clicked the link but it required a UK address so I couldn't investigate any further. My only thought was "what the hell will mobile phones be like in 5 years anyway? And who's going to be using a 5 year old phone?"

Bye. Anil.

Edited September 10, 2011 by Anil K Solanki