[Android General] ManuLM:
general update

Hi,

with this post I want to post update not on the flashing details this time, but more in general on the status of the phone, how it works and what remains a pain. Feels free to further populate this.

Positive:

- Phone is fast in general. I get something around 5200 on Antutu benchmark, which brings us in the range of the Galaxy S2.

- Camera is very fast on ICS upgrade, no longer fails on startup

- USB is fast.

- Wifi is very fast.

- Power consumption is very good (I can live with 1 charge over 2-3 days depending on my usage)

- GPS is faster than average (example my GS2) in A-GPS mode

- Display is awesome. Surfing, reading on 720p is great. I did a comparison with my neighbor having a 5 inch display phone (K860): on a web browser window, due to the stupid bottom buttons displayed on screen, eating up a big bar at the bottom on K860, display height is similar on K800 and K860 !

- can be purchase for ~1600RMB (~250usd) on taobao, which is a deal for this device!

- ICS available (with the listed limitations)

- can be rooted

- Lenovo "firewal" Lesecurity is quite a good software, unfortunately not available on ICS (nor the Lenovo Launcher and Mediaplayer, but I was not a big fan anyway)

- Free Autonavi GPS software, very efficient and detailed for China (more details than Gmaps).

Negative

- no micro SD slot

- front camera is catching dust, making front facing camera pictures blurred. I see this on every K800 I've seen so far (quite a few). The solution is to open the phone and clean the glass surface from the inside. This will most likely kill the guarantee, as you have to break a seal protecting one screw, unless you are super cautious to remove the small round sticker with a twizzer. The phone works well though after remounting (overall this is very easy), and with a clean lens, I can now have decent skype video sessions. This is a big mechanical flaw, because in some extreme cases, it leads the proximity sensor to fail and not reactivate the screen during a phone call, when you need to type something (=so you can't type :eek: ). It is also a bit stupid from Lenovo as the solution is rather simple (properly sized rubber/foam ring to seal the "lens to glass" space, the one currently in place is simply too small).

Update: I believe the issue is actually related to some corner lifting of the front glass and not the sealing foam ring. Lifting it up, applying a dot of super-glue fixed the issue for me.

- Camera often fails on startup (fixed on ICS)

- some apps are not supported. Example my banking app is not supported :( (might be related to China Operator)

- ICS upgrade reduce the number of apps supported. Even some mainstream Gapps like GMaps are officially not supported, but by manually installing the APK you get a fully working GMaps. (caution here, as apps compliance is also linked to countries = my statements are valid for China Unicom users).

- Single core (or hyper-threading) presents some drawback: general performance is very good, but when playing on the phone, if you have in the background an application being installed (because download just finished), the front app. can lag, at rare occasions though (did occur to me once when running Angry Birds, which is really a killer app in terms of CPU usage)

- sounds unlikely the phone will be further supported by Lenovo, which is super disappointing.

(I removed the point on 3G AP, as it is natively supported by ICS, shame on me :o)