[Epic 4G Android Development] Bill720:
review

Full Review

All right, it’s been about a week now since I made the switch from Touchwiz Gingerbread roms to AOKP and JellyBean, and I’d like to share my considerations on what I thought about it. Bear in mind that I don’t mean to sound overly critical of this, as I am pretty thorough and relatively “picky”. Also, some of the things I note may be specific to the Nitest Kernel which I am using or just quirks of stock JellyBean as a whole – at any rate, I hope my thoughts will be useful to anyone running gingerbread or earlier and contemplating an upgrade to AOKP for everyday use:

(Installation)

After backing up, I went ahead and reset my data and caches and ran the installer. It did freeze on the first time, but I reset and ran it a second time, and that went without a hitch and relatively quickly. I also installed the Nitest kernel and memory patch while I was at it so that Voodoo control would work.

(First impressions and notes on settings)

The first boot was an interesting one, and I just took a bit of time to dive in and learn the different features of JellyBean and adjust the settings (for some reason, I did have to hard reset again to get some of the settings to come out right, but everything appears to be working okay now). I was a little disappointed to find that the “background data” checkbox had gone, and now I occasionally get unwanted notifications from applications at times when they don’t need to be wasting my data (especially the android market); Not a huge deal, but worth noting. Another weird setting change forces the phone into vibrate mode if the ringtone volume is turned all the way down through the settings – not too significant either, just worth noting. One gaping problem in the settings (that has been documented before on XDA Developers, but never solved) is the fact that the roaming and system selection menu does not work right; The default item selected is “home only”, but when you try to change it to “automatic” (“roam only” is unfortunately not an option), it just changes back again; I don’t know if this glitch is actually forcing the phone to not roam, but I didn’t stick around to find out- The only reason why this is not an issue for me is because I use “Roam Control” for Android, a software that “gets the system selection menu right”; for anyone else who lives in or uses the device in a fringe area and doesn’t have Roam Control, this may be a major problem. In other weird problems, the VPN settings apparently “aren’t to be reckoned with” unless you’ve set a lockscreen PIN.

(New Features)

Other new arrivals to JellyBean (and possibly IceCream Sandwich as well) include a slightly different font and a redesigned “recently used applications” menu (the one that happens when you hold down the home key). It does take up the whole screen now and doesn’t let you use the arrow keys to maniupulate it, but it is a nearly accurate representation of what’s actually running, and it lets you close applications right from within it, which is handy. Also new (to me anyway) is the camera application. It works okay I guess. The whole approach to “no words, only symbols” is a bit cryptic at times, but I got used to it and it kind of grows on you after a while. It seems like a few of the resolution modes are gone, but I was impressed by the fact that the controls now fully work in any orientation and the ability to record video out of the front facing camera and in portrait mode (I absolutely despise portrait orientation videos, but I suppose there could be times when it could be useful).

(Essential data restoration)

My first step in getting started with a new device (or more commonly, a new rom) is restoring my contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, and SMS messages. SMSes restored fine with the same SMS Backup & Restore program that I’ve been using, and everything else synced back with the miracle of an application that is MyPhoneExplorer. I also set up my email with the included email application. It is nice to see at least some included applications on a lightweight rom (the last one I used lacked an email client), but I didn’t understand the inclusion of “Movie Studio” or the exclusion of a Voice Recorder application and to a smaller degree, a music player (even though I usually use Winamp anyway).

(Notification bar)

Going back to new stuff, the notification area has been overhauled. It’s actually not too bad, especially after giving it a once over in the included ROM Control. It actually looks kind of cool now, although I wouldn’t have minded a more “green” theme rather than blue, but I’m going to stick with this for now and give it a chance first (like the camera, it too kind of grows on you). I liked how it was designed to save space, but the consolidated data indicator and signal strength icon make the arrows (that show when data is being transferred) especially hard to read (maybe I’m the only one who actually reads them?) and no differentiation is made between 1xrtt and Evdo while roaming. I was, however impressed that those data transfer indication arrows are now present on the WiFi connection icon, something I always missed on the old gingerbread roms. I was also pleased to see that the “brightness control” feature (where you drag left and right on the notification bar to change the brightness) is still present in JB and AOKP.

(Miscellaneous small changes)

As for small changes, the “smilies” shortcut on the keyboard no longer works (this is a touchwiz exclusive feature from what I’ve heard) and you can no longer set the keyboard/capacitive key backlight timeout duration, although the default 5 seconds is how I would’ve set it anyway if it were an option. The indicator on the front of the phone also now blinks purple when the battery is low as a reminder to fill it up. Another small software change that I noticed is text selection, which is now executed by doubletapping some text instead of tapping and holding, which seems to be an improvement.

(Dialer and messaging)

As far as the basics go, voice calls and messaging still work fairly well. The dialer is themed similarly to how it was on the last rom I used (and I really liked the blue numbers with the green underlines ;) ), but the dialer input seems ever so slightly less responsive (maybe it’s just me). Also, I can’t figure out how to set speed dial entries, which wouldn’t be as big of a deal if the feature where you can search for contacts by typing in the dialer worked better (it just doesn’t return as accurate of results as close to the top of the list as it used to). Overall, it is workable for me though as I don’t make a lot of voice calls. As for the stock SMS application, that works well enough, but it doesn’t handle “split messages” (that is, messages longer than 160 characters) as seamlessly as before – apparently I’m too longwinded in my text messages also :). In the textbox, pressing “enter” on the keyboard now sends the messages instead of actually advancing to the next line, which annoyed me at first, but I discovered that you can press Fn+Enter to achieve this – an annoying extra step, but atleast it can be done. I’ve also been unable to get MMS to work, but this may be because of my setup.

[Forgot to grab a screenshot, but it looks not unlike the screenshots in this thread]

(Performance)

Performance and battery life with AOKP and Jellybean is good as well. With about 50-60% of my full “payload” of applications installed, startup and shutdown times are still pretty quick and the device is still very responsive in general. The screen rotation animation is a nice touch. Sleep mode and device locking are actually even more responsive now, and the annoying locking bug (the one where if you hit a hardware button within about a second after putting the device to sleep, it would wake the phone up right away) is thankfully nowhere to be found. Available RAM is actually greater now with the Nitest kernel, but free memory still is about the same amount. Memory management is significantly improved (at least since the “Samurai” kernel) as well, and I can now actually leave the browser running with tabs open without fear of it being unnecessarily killed.

Phew! With all that said, I was mostly pleased with Jellybean and AOKP as a whole. I know a lot of the things I wrote kind of sound “nit picky”, but I know this is exactly the kind of detail I would like to read before making a jump like this on a primary device, so I hope this will prove useful to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

bill