[EVO 4G Android Development] chrisstl:
Case Study: Return to RemICS-UX... SuperSUcharged!

In the 5 or 6 times I have flashed RemICS v.1.3.1, I always felt Superuser wasn't firing on all cylinders. It would tell me I had root access and grant apps permission, but nothing would ever work right. Examples of this:

ES File Explorer would tell me I couldn't enable Root Explorer because I didn't have root access, even though Superuser said it did.

AdAway would be granted permission, it would tell me it applied the new hosts file and reboot, but then every single ad in every single app would show up like normal.

What changed this time

A couple weeks ago Mazda provided me with this zip file. Flash it in recovery and it removes Superuser and drops SuperSU in its place. It seemed to fix some of my problems on an already 2 week old installation of RemICS, but the ROM still felt borked and I wiped. However after flashing today and using that zip while the ROM was fresh has made it feel like a completely different phone.

Here's the order of how I did everything in case my rambling is worth anything:

Initially rebooted into Smelkus recovery - wiped temp+caches, factory reset, superwipe, wipe rotate/battery stats, factory reset again, erase entire SD, partitioned SD to 0 and 1024MB, and upgraded to ext-4. I then left the phone off for 10 minutes to let the dust clear.

Transfered my files and flashed RemICS v1.3 zip. Let it boot up and I didn't touch a thing for 15 minutes. Then I rebooted into recovery, cleared caches, and flashed the v.1.3.1 update zip. Let the phone boot up, again didn't touch it for 15 minutes.

Signed into my Google accounts and let Play Store update initial apps.

Rebooted into recovery and flashed this zip file to remove Superuser and put SuperSU in place.

When the phone rebooted this time I still had to go to System Settings->Apps and unistall Superuser completely, but it didn't give me any trouble.

Rebooted back into recovery, wiped caches, and flashed S-Voice.

Next boot I went to System Settings->Performance->Processor and selected SMARTASSV2 with 384MHz/768MHz for frequency range, selected "Set on boot".

Then I opened terminal, "su", "a2sd reinstall", and then let the phone reboot. I don't know if my memory is just fuzzy or what, but I feel like this time I had way more internal memory free. After the a2sd reboot, I installed 38 apps from the play store. When that was done I still had 226MB free of internal memory, when I swear last time I was pushing the limit of having to delete a couple apps because I had no room left.

I then set up all my apps and logged into everything, went back to the home screen, and all of a sudden realized that this ROM was flying compared to other installs. I hit the dialer and it came right up, contacts opened right up... every app opens right up, just like I would expect. In addition, I always felt TouchWhiz was great but the launcher was laggy with transitions, etc. Well now transitions are totally seamless, even long pressing a widget and going into pan-mode is smooth(that wasn't the case before). I even went to System Settings->Apps to check RAM usage, and instead of it being 3/4 used, it was at 1/2 usage.

So long story short, even though I'm not a dev etc, I'm convinced swapping out Superuser for SuperSU at the very beginning, before changing any significant settings, was the only variable changed between this and the 5-6 other times I installed this ROM - and I am OCD consistant when it comes to following the steps I go thru.

Hope this novel helps anyone in case we're on v1.3.1 for a while, and I'll report back if everything goes to hell lol. Oh yeah, and I also attached screenshots to illustrate my talking points. Thanks.