[Samsung Galaxy Mini] domcale:
Hello dear XDA users, today we are going to talk about improving the performance of your freshly flashed Official CyanogenMod 7.2 ROM on your Galaxy Mini!.

I am going to cover a couple of simple stages that could make your Mini run happier and be more responsive! This is strictly performance orientated, we are going to disable various animations and speed them up wherever possible.

Do not expect miracles. To be honest, I think many of you already know this stuff, but it can help newbies or somebody who doesn't know it.

What you're going to need for this is 2 things:

1. Galaxy Mini with Official CM7.2 flashed on it (doh!)

2. Common sence and ability to understand every word I've written here :)

DISCLAIMER

I am not responsible for anything that happens to your device during the following of these procedures. Also, don't blame me for undesirable effects, you're doing this on your own responsibility. Every operation should be harmeless if you follow it correctly. DO A NANDROID BACKUP BEFORE DOING ANYTHING!

Okay. Ready? Let's start!

Disable CPU Rendering

The original guide is in this thread: [GUIDE] Disable CPU Rendering, thanks & credits are going to leolawliet!!!

This modification will speed things up since the system will use GPU instead of CPU for some of the graphics rendering.

To get this mod, you first have to download the egl.zip which you can find in that thread. Extract it, and copy the egl.cfg to the root of your sdcard. Then, navigate to /system/lib/egl and delete libGLES_android.so. After that, copy the egl.cfg from the SD card to that system/lib/egl folder, overwrite it with the original one, and change the permissions to rw-r-r. After that, it's just a matter of rebooting your device!

Warning! There is a small chance of bootloop, so have a nandroid backup handy!

You can do all this deleting and copying with Root Explorer or any other file manager which can mount the /system partition and mess with permissions of files. Also, all this can be done with Terminal Emulator if you know how, but it's waaay more complicated.

ADW Launcher tweaking

I recommend you do not switch to another launcher. The reason for that is this one is lightweight and fast. CyanogenMod team had a reason to integrate this launcher and not some other within their ROM ;)

Open ADW launcher settings. In the Screen preferences, go ahead and disable Wallpaper scrolling, and Desktop overshoot. Also, change the desktop scrolling speed to 0 (my prefered setting, because the launcher isn't that smooth and I love speed, not animations)

In the Drawer Settings, disable Animated drawer, disable Fade app labels and also change the background color of the drawer to whatever color you like, mine is set to black (that will disable the transparent drawer, which lags A LOT)

In the General Behaviour section, disable Sense like previews, and, if you want, go ahead and disable Show notifications (don't worry, notifications will show up in the status bar, this is just for the sms and dialer icons, on top of them the number of missed sms's and calls show up)

And lastly, in the UI Settings, disable New icons selector and disable Show desktop indicator, else is optional

Here is a pic where you can find all of the settings I mentioned:

The ROM settings and tweaks

I am a personal fan of non-animated things, because that makes me fell I have a faster phone. And animations use a little bit of battery since every time phone has to render an animation, it uses CPU and GPU power. However, battery savings here are unmeasurable, but they do exist.

If you want to do that, go to the Display section in the main settings menu, and under Animation dropbar select "No window animations are shown". Also, in the CyanogenMod settings, there is also a Display section. Go there and disable Rotation and Screen off animation.

I find "Sliding Tab" lockscreen style faster too, so go ahead and change that if you want to try it out. You can find it in the CyanogenMod settings->Lockscreen settings->Style options.

And now we come to the "Performance" part of the CyanogenMod settings menu. In there, go ahead and disable "Enable surface dithering", enable "Use 16bit transparency, set Scrolling cache to Force Disable, check "Allow purging of assets", and disable boot animation. Do not check Lock home and messaging app in memory since they do almost nothing, and we need them disabled for another tweak coming on later!

Overclocking is something you should also consider doing. I think that part you will have to do for yourself, because every phone has different overclocking ranges on which it works stable. But I think that every phone should run at 710MHz without problems. Give it a shot, if it reboots imidiately or later as you use the phone, try the lower values and see what works the best for you. If everything works fine, and you want more, go for it.

The best way to test your overclocked setting is to just use your phone like you would always do. Playing games alo is not a bad idea, however if you don't play them you might be able to jump the frequecy one step further, since everyday operations don't stress the CPU so much. Keep an eye on the temperatures, if your phone gets very hot quickly you might consider going a couple of notches down.

Removing apps that came with the ROM

Everything is covered in this article: Cyanogenmod Wiki: Barebones

You can read everything you're worried about there. My knowledge also comes form that place, so credits go to the CyanogenMod team!

For the lazy ones who don't want to mess with Terminal Emulator, you have alternative ways of doing this which are listed a little below!

Why would you want to remove system apps? Basically, if you use a replacement app or there is a app you do not use at all, the apps that are left over use internal memory, and potentialy RAM memory!

To delete an app:

1. Open Android Terminal Emulator (comes preinstalled on the ROM, so nothing to download form the Market)

2. Type

su

- to give it SuperUser permissions (Superuser app might come up asking you do you want to allow the emulator root access, allow it)

3. Then type

mount -o rw,remount /system

-to allow read/write operations on the /system partition, or basically to "mount" it.

4. And then, to remove an acctual app, type:

rm -f /system/app/app_you_wanna_remove.apk

- rm stands for remove, -f is force, and the rest is where the terminal can find the app for deleting. If you're deleting Email app, it would go like this:

rm -f /system/app/Email.apk

Carefull! This is case sensitive, and you're using the -f command. If you make a typo, nothing will be deleted, nor you will be warned about it! Check it before you press "enter"

List of apps you can delete (that i've deleted):

1. CarHomeGoogle.apk (App for using in the car, while the phone is mounted on the carholder)

2. CMStats.apk (CyanogenMod statistics)

3. CMUpdateNotify.apk (CyanogenMod update notifications. Not working without ROM Manager premium)

4. CMWallpapers.apk (CyanogenMod Wallpapers)

5. Development.apk (The development app, not needed by an average Joe)

6. DSPManager.apk (DSP Manager app. It's that equalizer app you can acces trough your music player. Eats 3megs of RAM!)

7. Email.apk (Email applications. Does NOT affect GMail)

8. GenieWidget.apk (Weather and News app and widget)

9. GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk (Google Search)

10. LiveWallpapersPicker.apk (Live Wallpapers selector)

11. PicoTts.apk (Copilot Live or Copilot GPS need this app (noted by ArthurBorsboom ). Also, might break Voice Search. Otherwise, safe to remove)

12. Protips.apk (That widget that shows up right after flashing the ROM. It even tells you that you can delete it lol)

13. RomManager.apk (DELETE DELETE DELETE!!!)

14. SoundRecorder.apk (Stock sound/voice recorder app)

15. Talk.apk (Google Talk)

16. ThemeChooser.apk (Theme Chooser. If you delete it - no themes, only the stock one!)

17. ThemeManager.apk (Theme Manager. The app that can't work without the chooser, themes your system when you apply a theme)

18. VoiceDialer.apk (Voice Dialer app. Not to be confused with Phone app)

19. VoiceSearch.apk (Google Voice Search)

20. LiveWallpapers.apk (Live Wallpapers that are included in the ROM)

21. MagicSmokeWallpapers.apk (Some wallpapers, I don't know everything)

22. VisualizationWallpapers.apk (Some wallpapers, I don't know everything)

23. SpareParts.apk (I don't know, never opened it - don't need it)

24. FM.apk (FM radio)

25. TtsService.apk (again something related to text-to-speech features. Might break Voice Search)

If you're using a non-stock keyboard, you can delete LatinIME.apk

If you're using a non-stock gallery, you can delete Gallery3D.apk

If you're using a non-stock music player, you can delete Music.apk

If you're using a non-stock internet browser, you can delete Browser.apk (PLEASE NOTE: This is apparently a hard-coded requirement for Google Voice Search (along with Talk and Voice); without it, Voice Search will FC after recognizing speech. Having Dolphin, etc., installed will not work. )

Beware of deleting LatinIME.apk! That's the keyboard app! If you don't have another keyboard which is already set up as the default one, don't delete it, otherwise you'd get stuck with no keyboard, and you kinda don't want that lol

If you want to find out if there is more apps to delete (but I assure you that you won't find anything worth bothering), navigate the stock FileManager to /system/app and check it out.

Alternative, more easy methods for app deleteing

I would avoid them if you feel taking that kind of time. Why? Well, installing an app to delete another one... no... just no. If you want, go ahead and do that :)

1. You can use Root Uninstaller from the Google Play to uninstall apps. (suggestion by ChunkFlip)

2. If you have bought Titanium Backup Pro, you can use it to remove apps as well. Also, you can use the app to make backup of the programs you're deleting, although you can pull them from the flashable .zip of the ROM anytime you want, and for the most part, just install them. (suggestion by avrox and R.A.G.E)

3. If you happen to have Root Explorer bought, you can easily delete apps by just navigating to the /system/app folder and delete the .apks you want. However, do not pirate the app. If you haven't bought it, I strongly encourage you to follow the original method using the Terminal Emulator. Do not pirate an app if you have free alternatives! NEVER!

Delete apps you do not use, and use as light-weight apps as possible

If you have a game or an app that is just sitting there and you don't really use it, delete it! I know it sounds silly, but those apps can have some services that run in our percious RAM and practically waste it. Not to mention you have less internal memory available, which is pretty obvious.

Use light-weight apps! Don't just throw a 5MB stopwatch app on the phone or something like that. Look for an app that's smaller and does exactly the same job. If you look hard you will usually find some stonning small apps that do the same thing as even 10x larger ones. And larger ones open slower, run slower, and use more RAM memory! Not what you really want, do you?!

Install V6 SuperCharger script by zeppelinrox

It's awesome! It will stop launcher redraws and potentially improve performance even more! I'm not going to write anything about it, because the download link and the instructions are all found in his thread, check it out!

[U9RC11T9] STOP! -=SuperCharger Time=- You Can't Touch This! Please zep don't hurt em

BTW, you do not have to downgrade the BusyBox, the one included in the CM7.2 (1.20.x) works great. There was some problems with BusyBox 1.18 at that time, that's why he mentions it. Don't worry about it, just install the damn script! :)

Don't forget to give him a thanks!

Speaking of scripts: don't use like all the scripts and tweaks that are out here. They usually tend to conflict and that is not what you want! If you install one RAM script tweak, don't install another one! Same goes for transfering apps to ext partition and a bunch of other things.

Don't use task managers

Why you may ask? It's simple, and you will have to get over it - Android is better at app and memory management than you :). Killing apps with a task manager doesn't do a thing except waste resources, because Android will run the app again if it wants to. Using auto kill app function is even worse, because the task manager will kill the app, Android will launch it, the task manager is going to kill it again, Android is going to launch it and the cycle repeats over and over again...

It's pretty obvious that will kill the performance, and impact battery life a lot. Not something you want, right? Yes, a task manager is included in stock sammy ROMs, but hey, stock ROM is crap anyway, and the point of it is to have as much of bloatware as it can possibly handle. Don't worry about free RAM and loaded apps, Android does a better job than you on it's own.

That's it, for now! I will keep updating the thread with something new, and possibly better. YOU make a suggestion how to improve performance, and I can add it here in the first post!

Note:

I will no longer update this thread. The reason for this: I have a new device now. Sorry about that :)