So, the CyanogenMod team is teasing something new. My guess is that we’re either looking at the CM team getting early access to new Android versions, or – and this is something I really hope – an OEM, preferably a large one, has decided to ship a device with CyanogenMod preinstalled. A boy or girl can dream.
Cyanogenmod has plenty of problems which make it a bad choice for some people wanting to have a clean version of Android on their device. Chief among them is that the past several versions completely, and permanently, bork the ability to use the LTE network on a Samsung Galaxy S3. This huge bug has been around for over a year with no resolution. I installed 10.1 onto my GS3 and lost the ability to use LTE, so I had to go through the whole process again to re-lock, unroot, and get the stock ROM back on it. CM is nice, is snappy, and lets your phone run very fast, but they need to do a MUCH better job of letting people know what it can do to your phone.
As with other Linux distros, you’ll get the best experience from a vendor pre-load. If CM is about to be pre-installed on a commercial device (wouldn’t that be nice?), I would certainly expect LTE to work flawlessly.
Yeah, I’m guessing if they have access to the source code and all the drivers, it would be sweeeeeeeeeeet
They wouldn’t have to hack that shit.
As for reliability, from my experience with CM, it varies from device to device. Even two people running CM with the same device can have vastly different experiences, such as battery life, or whatever.
That isn’t always true, remember ‘netbooks’ ?
You misunderstand – I’m asserting that buying a netbook with Ubuntu pre-installed will get you a better experience than buying the same netbook and then installing Ubuntu yourself.
I’m not promising a *good* experience on any particular hardware, though http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge looks rather promising…
Blame Samsung.
On top of that, there is no stable release for the S3 – only snapshots and nightlies. They warn about stability issues with those, so this should hardly be a surprise for you.
Edited 2013-07-21 12:27 UTC
I am not too sure about that but I guess the LTE version is Qualcomm based, not Exynos based.
And I tought the Qualcomm SGS2/3/4 were supported.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. LTE has been fine on my (Qualcomm based) SGH-i747 with CM9, CM10, and CM10.1, AOKP, and just about every other AOSP ROM for more than an year now. And even though Samsung is hiding the specs and source, it’s been pretty darn stable even with the reverse engineered hardware support. It’s been so stable that haven’t had a single complaint since I gave the phone to my non ccomputer-savvy dad 2 months ago.
P.S. Have you tried dialing *#*#4636#*#* and checking that LTE is enabled in the phone information tab? Its disabled by default on many ROM/carrier combinations. If its not enabled, switch it to LTE/GSM auto.
Edited 2013-07-21 16:32 UTC
I tried that, but as lots of other people have reported, the setting does not stick. Go away from that window and come back to it, and the original “WCDMA preferred” setting has returned. I also tried different APN settings but no dice. Nothing worked. I forgot to mention that I have an AT&T GS3.
You mean the nightlies? Nightlies are supposed to break. There is no guarantee of anything working with a nightly.
Since it sounds like re-flashed the ROM so that it worked just like it previously did, there’s hardly grounds for saying that it ‘permanently’ borks the device, hm? Is this a problem with CM or a problem with Samsung crap?
Sorry for the wording, it “borks” the device as long as you continue to use CM.
Which Variant of the Galaxy S3? I’m guessing the international one, GT-I9305 ?
No, it is an unlocked SGH-i747, it came with stock AT&T software on it. Sorry for the delay in responding, I’ve been out of touch for a few days.
Strange. Same phone as me. It works *too well* with LTE. If I’m in an area with a weak LTE, it switches back and forth between LTE and HSPA+ draining the battery. I switched to the extended battery to mitigate the effect.
This is clearly evidence that they’re making a fan-based sequel to Star Trek Nemesis.
In this movie, Captain Picard attempts to get Noonien Soong to unlock Android Lieutenant Commander Data’s bootloader to load customer firmware.
Obviously.
Data got blown up remember? Maybe they are looking for a non retarded rom for Data’s clone.
Crap.
Blown himself up, to be more precise (hey, if you can;t be pedantic on OSNews, where can you be? ;p )
Or CyanogenMod diversifies into the television market starting by picking up the fan-based _remake_ of Star Trek Nemesis:
http://fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-listin…
A sequel to the official released movie could only ever be a disappointment.
A Tizen Mod? Or something along those lines.
So far I am pretty happy with the progress on the ROM over the past year.
Although it has had issues, many of them are fixed now.
Battery life is getting much better since March, and is now comparable to the stock SAMSUNG ROM for example.
I plan on having my Galaxy S III for the foreseeable future, unless something spectacular comes out.
But I can’t imagine what more I could want in a phone Galaxy S III has a removable battery, SD Card slot, fast processor, nice big screen…etc.
I might trade up for a better screen or faster processor.
Can you imagine when we get 10nm semiconductor phones?
Probably be able to put a small data center on your phone complete with virtualization, generic iSCSI block storage and God knows what else.
CM 1000 – Data Center Version
🙂
-Hack
I’ve never tried Cyanogen modded ROMs but I fully support the work they do. I’ve found that the best experience on Android is with Nexus devices. Sure, you pay more for them but they’re unlocked, are not saddled with OEM overlays or carrier bloatware and receive timely updates directly from Google. Personally I’m excited to see Samsung’s Galaxy 4 and HTC’s One as Nexus devices.
When I started playing with alternative ROMs on my Optimus G, I was excited to get CM 10.x onto it. It was nice, faster than the stock ROM, newer (4.2.x vs 4.1.x), and “the in thing to do”.
Then I started playing with other options, just to see how things differed. Carbon and AOKP were even nicer than CM, and when I first started using dark themes (how anyone can use an iPhone with all the garish coloured icons is beyond me now).
But then I tried Rootbox, and all the rest just seem clunky and dated! This was the first ROM to really use the full 1280×768 resolution of the LGOG. Text was small and crisp, lines were sharp, colours were sharp (although FauxClock allows you to change them on any kernel that supports gamma changes). And there are more features than you can shake a stick at (PIE, ribbons, nav bar, LED/vibration control, halo, etc) without bloating the ROM (under 185 MB download; even with LG sounds and minimal-gapps it’s still under 200 MB; stock ROM is just under 1 GB).
CM may get all the attention and press, but they aren’t anywhere near the top of the heap of Android ROMs anymore.
Any one noticed the brief flash of a phone, picturing a carrier called FREE?
Perhaps they’re partnering with the Free Mobile french carrier? http://mobile.free.fr/
Edited 2013-07-23 07:08 UTC
Ah, that might make sense, or it was just the network the phone was configured with at the moment. Never heard of free before, but it makes sense that its a carrier as that is where the carrier name goes.
Some people were speculating wildly that they would provide seamless voip over wifi or something ( similar to what they are doing with google voice and SMS). So it would display “free” when you are able to use voip.
That would surprise me, as it would be an obvious usability problem if the same area was used for carrier name and as a voip promotion area.
it’s CM on devices other than phones/tablets such as google glass, cameras, etc..