[Galaxy S II General] LenAsh:
My month with a factory unlocked Galaxy S2​

Bought this in mint condition from a friend for about half price with only 1 hour of use, an unwanted upgrade. Came with 2.3.4 as expected, so hooked up to Kies; no update at the time. As is my wont, I used the phone for a few days to get to grips with TouchWiz (TW) and the phone generally. All quite reasonable, no stability issues and TW is not bad by any means.

My thoughts and trials so far then:

Hardware

Well made, light and thin. Slippery, so a black rubbery skin bought and fitted and I popped a spare 8GB microSD card in, not that the phone needs it for my purposes.

Only criticism is the OLED screen, I'm used to higher resolution (Moto and Sony) and 800x480 looks rather "cheapo" in terms of detail on a screen this large, but no deal breaker. What I do find somewhat at odds with the price of the phone is the slight but noticeable shading and colour tints across the screen at low brightness levels and on some backgrounds. Plus, the screen's legibility outside on a bright day is no better than more run of the mill LCD screens. (I mean cheaper!)

My first GB update

I generally root phones straight after flashing a new firmware version, if it isn't already. I had already successfully rooted the original stock 2.3.4 firmware with Zergrush 4 and debloated that ROM.

I was keen to try a later GB version before trying ICS, and I found 2.3.6 for "Open Europe" on Sammobile and downloaded it. I had already tried Kies, so the USB drivers were present and working. I uninstalled Kies on the PC but left the USB drivers alone. Kies and Odin are not good bedfellows. I did a full factory reset on the phone and erased everything, allowed it to reboot and then powered off, got in to download mode and flashed XXKL1 (which is an engineering version and deodexed it seems). Rooted it via Zergrush 4, deleted known bloat and renamed possible bloat to xxx.bak to clean the ROM for my own usage, and deleted that very annoying start-up sound. Downloaded all the apps I normally use (about 22 of them), including the excellent CPU Spy to check for deep sleep.

I used/charged the phone over the next couple of days to let the OS bed in. No problems encountered at all, and a very pleasing battery life of 30+ hours of light use, with syncing and GPS, 3G, WiFi always on and occasional BT. Magic! Only thing I did is change the Modem to LPR - the KI3 Modem that came with the ROM is not quite as good at holding weak signals. Only just though...

My first ICS update

So, good phone, stable and very usable ROM in 2.3.6. Time had come to try this new ICS thing. Downloaded the LPQ version and installed it, after a full wipe, via Odin. Not impressed by all the automatic installation rubbish at first boot... Rooted via a hot boot CWM and SU/Busybox successfully and did all the same debloating and app installation as GB 2.3.6. Spent some time getting orientated and used to the new menus and so on.

Over the next day or so, I let the ROM settle and began using the ROM - I changed the Modem to LPR as LPQ was not as good, perception wise. ROM was stable and usable, didn't really look or feel much different from 2.3.6 and was worse on battery - I would say 18 hours at best with the same usage pattern.

Absolutely hate the new Exchange thing for live.com email.... real pain usability wise and battery unfriendly.

My second ICS update

So, not overly impressed with LPQ, although it was usable, I decided to try LP7, the UK generic one. Went through the same process as above, and again swapped the Modem from LPS (awful!) to LPR.

No obvious differences at all. Battery life was as poor, but it was usable.

My first CM trial - CM9

So, somewhat disillusioned by Samsung's ICS implementation, I decide to look around for another "mature" ROM. CM9 fitted the bill (I have used CM6 before on another phone) and was smack bang up to date in terms of kernel, AOSP and G Apps. After my usual clean deck start, installed fine, 23/04 build.

At first, I was quite impressed as I could configure more and to my liking. The ROM was stable and I set the phone up with the usual Apps and deleted some useless stuff (like GenieWidget).

Swapped Modem out to LPR - bit of a theme going on here...

I liked the fact that the Spirit FM radio worked (so bought the Pro version as it is that good). The ROM is very usable and never got bogged down, BUT, for reasons I never fully determined, the battery life would start OK and then decline faster during the day. I never saw more than 12 hours life, again using as per my normal pattern and after a few days to settle. There appeared to be various background activities going on that were preventing deep sleep sometimes, but BBS was not really showing me what. Note that I only use BBS as a last resort as it can increase battery use...

No other real problems, but the soft key backlights wouldn't play with NoLED and were somewhat counter-intuitive. A bit trivial, but a mess.

My second CM trial - CM7

I like GB, it is mature and well understood, so CM7 RC 2 was therefore of some appeal. It had been developed over months and must therefore be fairly sorted. Surely.

Installed without issue on a cleaned platform as usual, including G Apps. Did the usual debloat and installed the usual Apps from the Market/Play, and some that were missing, like GMail. LPR modem was already there, Hooray! Spent rather longer fiddling with the settings in CM7 than CM9 since they were less obvious at first, to me anyway.

Switched off and put the phone on wall charge overnight and was rather shocked to find the phone was noticeably warm and displaying "Kernel Panic" in the morning. The phone had only charged by about 5% in total (to 64%). Worry Worry. I put the phone on USB charge until 100% without incident.

Started to use the phone as normal, the phone UI and operation was very good, fluid even. But, first problem I had was in the car. I paired BT fine, as usual, and made a phone call. After the call, I couldn't end the call on the car or phone - it had locked up. Oh dear.

Later, I tried the FM Radio during my daily walk - doesn't work, so why is it there? I tried Spirit FM - no way would it work. Oh dear.

The following day, I noticed that the battery life was amazing! I had never seen this phone sip juice like this. Deep sleep was always easily achieved. That was until the afternoon. I noticed that the battery level was declining at a much higher rate than earlier. I hadn't done anything different, so BBS was called in again. Nothing obvious shown but I kept seeing the GPS icon winking at me from the Notification bar, and continually. I always keep GPS on, but for some reason on this ROM, no GPS signal meant the ROM just kept trying. I played with various settings like Location etc. and managed to stop this odd behaviour, but this was too silly. I use a Smartphone for all the smart features. This wasn't very smart at all.

CM7 was my biggest disappointment of all the above ROM trials. It was the lightest and most promising, and yet the least reliable or functional. Which is a huge shame...

Today...

I'm now back on KL1 2.3.6, and it just works fine - day after day.

The future for me?

I would really like to use CM9 (or CM7 for that matter). They represent a number of ideals for me, including the open nature of development, the collaboration, a pioneering spirit and giving users a choice and a superb base to build on. I am no developer - I can split and modify kernels to a point, I can rehash ROMs with or without adb, I can amend frameworks. But little more.