...Galaxy 5? Hadn't even heard of that til I googled it. Looks kinda puny. Lights, fair enough. I'd still go for the S3 for those reasons, and the battery thing can be a real ***** if capacity starts to drop, though obviously that depends on how long you plan on keeping the phone for. As for updates, Samsung are actually a lot better now since they got the Nexus contract with Google (extended to the next device, as well), so I think that issue is a thing of the past. I actually understand that most delays for updates in the US are down to the crappy carrier approach to them.
Ooooh! This site has needed a thread like this I've been into the ROM scene since I got my first android phone. I have an Epic 4G Touch (Sprint's version of the Galaxy S2) and I'm running an AOKP rom that's based on 4.0.4 It's very snazzy. I've recently even layered TW5 and S-Voice over it since they've been ported over from the S3. Makes me happy )) PS: S3 let me down. I'm no-go on upgrading from the S2, doesn't seem worth it to me. A9's anyone? Blah
No it won't be quad core. It's even better, it's a dual core A15 Makes me happy. And touchwiz isn't that bad. It's generally hated just because of how it looks, but the TW5 is a good step in the right direction....not a big one, but still a step. Not to mention a lot of the features built into it really are worth having, and it uses hardware acceleration. You're not going to find a smoother launcher, I'd take it over Sense anyday.
Nice, sounds like a swish set up. What's the name of your ROM? Most of the Galaxy ROMS right now seem to be using AOKP as a base, I'm using Resurrection Remix which is also AOKP and I absolutely love it. As for the S3 not being quad core, do you mind explaining to me how a dual A15 is better than the CPU in the regular version? I'm not too hot on CPU architectures etc. And LIGHTS: agreed. I always prefered ADW to Launcher Pro on Gingerbread, but now I'm on ICS it's pretty much all about Apex (or Trebuchet if you want something more slim). Same basic functionality as ADW etc. had in GB, but with the move to ICS it really seems like the launcher torch has been passed from the big names back in 2.x
Maybe in terms of customization sure, but I can flash away if that's what I'm going for. I want speed along with my fancy UI, and that's something ADW, Go Launcher, and Launcher Pro fail to offer. Not to mention Launcher Pro halted development in January this year. Unless I'm mistaken it's not even supported any more. Look at the pc market for reference as to the use of multiple cores. Only very high-end gaming or graphical publishing, neither of which I would want to do on my phone. Most programs can run on any core in a system, but 99% of them can only run on 1 core at a time. They are also unlikely to add multi-core processing to those apps, not only because the apps don't need that much processing power, but also because the vast majority of users aren't going to get a quad-core phone anytime soon. Apps need to be specifically designed to run on more than one core otherwise they won't recognize multicore systems. In fact, the Android OS itself can't recognize more than one core, only ICS can and ICS isn't out for 99% of the market. The new dual cores are A15, versus Tegra 3 which is only A9. An A15 chip is 40% stronger at the same clock speed. Tegra 3's strongest core is clocked at 1.4, Krait S4's strongest core is 1.5. 1.5 vs 1.4 doesn't seem like much of a difference, but don't forget to adjust the numbers because Krait is A15! An A9 1.4 processor is what we were overclocking our Tegra 2 cores to at this time last year! Relativistically, consider it comparing a 1.4 core to a 2.1 core. Overall at the exact same clock speed a Krait S4 (which is a DUAL CORE) will smoke a Tegra 3 chip (which is a QUAD CORE). And it's not by a small margin, the Krait will blow it out of the water. ARM (who's the only manufacturer for mobile processors at the moment until Intel begins later this year) has many different architectures for their processors. Beginning with A5, their worst chip, to the most recent, the A15 design. The jump from A9 to A15 chips isn't the same jump we all experienced from A7 to A9. ARM literally skipped leaps and bounds with the A15 architecture, being not only the most power efficient architecture out there, but also the most powerful. The only place the T3 chip outperforms the Krait S4 (based on A15 arch) on benchmarks, is multitasking. In every other aspect, float point and other calculations, the S4 is king. And I'm sure the T3 would be beaten in multitasking as well if it could only use two cores at a similar clock as the S4. But multitasking doesn't mean anything not only because there's no app available that can utilize four cores, but the only phone available right now with the Tegra 3 quad core chip is the HTC One X, and the One X doesn't support multitasking (I know right?). Sense was too much of a memory hog so the multitasking feature was dropped in effort to leave available space on the ram. Back to comparisons. Every processor has transistors in it, by making them smaller manufacturers are able to fit more into each chip. The Krait uses 28nm transistors, while the Tegra 3 uses 42nm transistors. Quite a difference on power consumption (the smaller the better). Even if the Dual core Krait S4 chip performed similarly to the Tegra 3 chip in terms of performance, the battery savings on the Krait would be huge. The Tegra 3 chip in general is just a horribly designed piece of crap. It's designed in such a way that if one of the four cores are activated, it either runs at full power, or nothing at all. This makes any phone using a T3 chipset a powerhog. Krait utilizes a feature called asynchronization, which allows each of the two cores to run at the clock speed that will best suit whatever load is on them. I've read so many articles on this with diagrams and benchmarks between the two chips, I wished I would've book marked some of the pages so I could pull them up. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason they have for making quad-core chips in the mobile market is to take advantage of those who fuel their self-esteem by the specs on their device. And the sad thing is, The dual core A15's will outperform the quad-core A9 chips the vast majority of the time anyway! tl,dr: 99% of developers won't make their apps multi-core capable, HD gaming is the only group that will. Therefore, your device will be faster and more efficient if you use a dual core A15 chip like the Krait S4 instead of the quad core Tegra 3 chip. Quad-core processing is not future-proofing. Future-proofing is to get a stronger chip, than just 1 with more weak cores. Hope I helped, feel free to ask anymore questions Also, side note: The Tegra 3 chipset as a whole, while inferior in terms of the CPU, is graphically superior to the Krait S4. The Tegra 3 utilizes a 12 core graphics card known as Kal-El if I'm not mistaken. It performs considerably better than the Krait GPU, but in the end they're both great chips that will get you where you need to go. But if you're forced to choose, go with anything that uses A15 architecture. Also, another side note. The Krait S4 chip designed by qualcomm was actually initially designed off of A9 architecture. But with how much qualcomm redesigned and tinkered with, it no longer resembles an A9 chip at all, on paper or in terms of performance. It's teeeeechnically not A15, but it's referenced as an A15 level chip, as in it can perform as efficiently as anything using an A15 architecture. One final side note: Samsung's exynos chipsets are generally the best around, they always have been a year ahead of their time. While the S3 uses quad core A9 architecture, it still outperforms the quad core A9 architecture seen in Tegra 3 chipsets. And it features the new Mali gpu that outperforms the PowerVRM4 GPU (the graphics card in the ipad 3). So all in all, the newest Exynos chipset that will be in the international versions of the S3 (which is the Exynos 4412) is considerably better than the T3 in every aspect, even power savings. But still not better than Krait in terms of CPU. But the american versions of the S3 are supposedly shipping with either the Krait chip, or a new exynos A15 chip. EDIT: Almost forgot. I'm running Milestone 5 Build 36 AOKP based on 4.0.4
Well, Zeam's a pretty nice, moderate-customizable, fast launcher, but im using ADW because I managed to snag it for free in the Amazon App store a few months back. HTC T Mobile G2 with Android 2.3.4.
This site needs a 'Thanks' button. Very informative post, cheers. What you said about GPUs rang a bell as well, since I remember that one advantage of the Tegra 2 devices a while back was that they seemed to get support for some of the better games a little earlier. As you point out, gaming is a very specific requirement on which to base device choice in terms of the chips used, and not one I'm really concerned about on my phone for the most part (until I get a nice stable dual boot going for a tablet/desktop style ersatz-cotton candy). But my brother had the original Transformer tablet and it was certainly nice to have good support for games on a device which was much more suited to them. Would have been the same on my Vega if we hadn't had to make do with ported ROMs the whole time. As for the ROM, I didn't realise you were on AOKP itself. Since we're apparently on pretty much the same hardware, how does it run for you? I'm gagging to get my S2 back, the ROM I'm using has a build 37 version out and I had to put stock back on there before I sent it in, so it'll be a clean slate when I get it back. EDIT: BT, I use Zeam on my HTC G1/Dream, nice launcher which runs smoothly and doesn't put too much demand on a pretty tired old phone. I'm basically only using as a music player right now as it's locked to T-Mobile and can barely hold charge, but it's a nice toy to keep around, there's something satisfying about squeezing the best out of old devices like that. Apex on my S2, though. Can't do without the customisation on my main device and it's what I'm used to at this stage.
As far as Ice Cream Sandwich goes, it's the best you're going to get. CM9 is still in it's alpha stage for our device, and while it's usable, it's still unstable enough to keep me at a distance. I used it for a day or so and odin'd back to GB. AOSP is nice as well, but it's on par with CM9 in terms of its usability. AOKP from what I've seen so far (and I've been using it for a good month now) is near perfect. I've got almost no FC's (any closes I've gotten have been the cause of a launcher) and the battery life is 90% of what I get on GB; so I can go almost two days of strong usage on a single charge. I'm not entirely positive if 4G is working on Milestone 5, I don't have Wimax anywhere near me so it's not a big deal. If you're a heavy 4g user you may want to find out about whether or not it works. And video recording works as long as you're in 480p. Which is...meh, it's whatever. HD would be nice, but I can live without it for the time being. So it definitely is worth getting if you really want to try out ICS. But to be honest, ICS is really just hype. I personally strongly prefer GB, while it doesn't have a snazzy UI, its much faster than ICS. EDIT: And yeah, the tegra devices do have the advantage of Tegra zone which gives you access to some nice HD games, but any device can play them as long as you install some drivers, it's not difficult at all. And The Mali 400 gpu in your S2 is more than enough to compensate for the lack of hardware acceleration.
Oh I'm already on ICS (or was before I wiped to send it in to the shop), have been since the first stable-ish device specific ROMs started coming out. I've been using Resurrection for ages, and since 1.2 it's been based on AOKP, before that it was built off the stock Samsung ROM iirc. As for 4G, I'd definitely care if it weren't for the fact that our country is still in the stone age and patchy ass 3G is the best we get. How do you go about installing those drivers? Tbh my first experience with it was having to wait to get GTAIII, annoyed me. Oh, and your more techy knowledge of Android is likely to have me bugging you with lots of questions when I get my Mele A2000 box. It seems like a lot of fun but it sounds like getting the most from that thing will take more end user prodding than I've had to deal with up until now, and getting the best from it is certainly my aim.
Oh believe me I know. America has the slowest wireless internet speeds of any highly industrialized country. From what I've read places like Japan average over 20mbps on 3g. Play Tegra Zone Games On Non-Tegra Devices With Chainfire3D It's no problem at all, really. I like to help people in any way I can One of my favorite pastimes is to go into Best Buy or the AT&T retailers and help people get what's best for them. Especially because the employees at these type of stores are generally clueless. You can message me here, skype, email, whatever you'd like I'm glad to help.
Yeah it's mad. I was surprised to find out how bad the US is at worst, especially considering I thought that we were pretty bad over here. Still, we need 4G, like seriously. Thanks, will check it out. Cool, I am indeed glad I started this thread then. Have you seen the Mele A1000/2000 or any of the Allwinner A10 based devices coming out of China right now? Another one of them (the MK802) is a stick machine, much more similar to the Cotton Candy but cheaper. Even though they're only A8 based chips (and I'm starting to understand how much of a difference this makes based on what you said and some more reading I've done as a result), I really like this new trend of bang-for-your-back Android devices which are capable of handling full interfaces (basically keyboards and mice). It's a lot easier to see the value in cheap and cheerful when it is actually cheap. I'm gonna need to get ICS on my A2000 though, as the improved tablet UI does wonders for larger screens, I guess that's the main advantage of the MK802/CC, having ICS as standard would be very nice.
I actually had never heard of that. After looking it up it seems pretty cool though, being able to run android on a big screen. The development for it will probably be near nonexistent but that just means you get to learn how to port roms and mods on your own fun stuff. I'll look into it more
I've always preferred LP to all the rest (and I've tried most of them.. well, at least those below ICS). I still use LP to this day. I LOVE the sliding docks and super clean widgets for calender, facebook, messages, etc. The best widget suite that I've seen, and it hasn't really been close. It's a shame Federico isn't updating it any longer. But I can only assume its because he's working on something bigger and better. I love his Uber Music app. By far my fave music app (on a phone, at least. On my tablet, its all about Hive). Great widgets and a nice metro UI. Anyway, LP doesn't work AS well on GB as it did on Froyo (I get a launcher FC upon startup like clockwork, but its steady after that). It serves me well enough until I upgrade in about 3 months. I won't be seeing ICS until I upgrade though (well, other than on my A500), but hopefully it'll be more stable than it has been so far. My bud, who works at Qualcomm funny enough, got the G-Nex upon release, and he HATES it. Have other devices had as much trouble with it as that handset has? I had done some light reading on Snapdragon v Kal-el before, but not nearly that in-depth. Good stuff, Lock. My best bud working at Qualcomm means I'm pretty partial to their work, so you've reinforced my reasons for leaning towards the One X over the GS3.
Qualcomm for the most part has a good running record. They're about on par with Texas instruments with the consistency they put out for their SOCs. Their last generation (the s3 snappdragon) of socs weren't the greatest but they got back in the game with being the first to push out an a15 level chip to the market. TI is planning to launch an a15 chip later this year which should be good. I'm confused why I pushed you towards the one x over the s3 though, the international versions of ether use a9 chips, and if that's the case go with the s3, because the exynos 4412 performs much better than the tegra 3. The us versions should both be using krait s4, so at that point it comes down to you. Samsung is planning on launching a new chip set in quarter 4 this year, the exynos 5212, which is a dual core a15 with supposedly the highest clock speed to date. As well as the Mali t6 gpu, the most powerful graphic cs card in the world I'm saving my upgrade till then. Excuse my typos, posting this using my s2 . This site needs a mobile
Didnt know the US version of the GS3 would have the same chip as the OneX. Guess that's a moot point then. Still leaning towards OneX, but it could change I suppose. I've got some time.
Would anyone be interested in testing a theme I'm making for the galaxy s2 most of the ones people post are just the same thing with a different color tint. Or are just hideous. I'm putting my pro uber graphics skill to the test it should work with anyone on 4.04, or aokp for best results
Well, I finally figured out how to root my thrive with the help of these guys. Turns out hat Toshiba wanted to stop rooting by making it almost impossible to use CWM. I guess it was because of the ability to now rent Google Videos or something like that. However, the wonderful developers there figured it out and now I can enjoy my SuperUser privilages.
I was wondering if one of you super geniuses with this stuff would lend me a suggestion on what phone would be best for gaming, be it via emulator or standard android market games. I'd prefer it to be available through sprint, and have a small slideout keyboard. (Touchscreen controls in games is horrible) I know that theres the xperia play, but its getting kinda old and I don't know if a newer/better version of it is going to be released.