[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] k00zk0:
I agree, XDA has gotten really crappy. The conversational style I find here is highly inefficient and appears to be for the benefit of 20 people rather than the large userbase. Doing a search doesn't help because SEARCH DOESN'T WORK. It hasn't for what, a couple weeks now?

It's not about us not knowing how to search for a post hidden in the thread. Do you developers build this rom for the 300 downloads you get of each version? Why not for tens of thousands like cyanogenmod? It takes more effort to repost the link over and over, than to update the OP. Again, anybody trying to switch from another ROM to this one, would see a gapps link broken. They might try regular gapps. It may or may not work. They'll tell you about some bug they're having because they're using the wrong gapps. They'll ask for the right one. They'll click to the last page, see some people complaining and return to the list of threads, tossing out this ROM as an option. You're shooting yourself in the foot. This message is for every developer, and anyone who writes any post on these forums.

This ROM is better than cyanogenmod. In fact, it may be the BEST rom available for the S3, or any phone. Why isn't it out there?

The original post, and even the entire thread, is INACCESSIBLE. Anyone coming here sees a bunch of stuff that does not equate to a procedure to get this rom on their phone. They have to have the entire background. The website and forums as a whole are not inviting. The stickies are supposed to preface what you see in the threads. Some are good, some are horrible and still have no perspective on who is visiting. They still make assumptions that you know certain things. An engineer with previous computing background still took probably 20 times as long to figure out the world of custom Android ROM's. Any more complicated subject can be taught, in entirety, much faster, by wording the guide correctly. I bet if you asked people who know how to root/customize phones, a question about some inner workings, they'll have no clue. Because nowhere, is the inner workings explained. Just procedures that noobs follow, and brick phones because they don't (and can't) really know what they are doing.

The only purpose to this kind of convoluted writing that most dev threads here have, is for the creation or support of "Android technicians", or people who charge money on craigslist or whatever, to root or customize phones. So that anyone Googling the process doesn't have a clue, and only few who care to snap their mind in half untangling incomplete explanations of what is otherwise not a difficult process at all, can actually do it.

It IS a big deal torch is missing. The pulldown quick tiles still have a button for it but the apk isn't present.

Torch.apk is the fastest (<1/5 s) response torch app/widget in the entire universe right now

. Any other torch you download, even those requiring root, take 1-5 seconds to light up. I'm not 70 years old any more. I don't use a flash light with a screw-on-top power switching mechanism. Why would you throw out one of the best features on my S3?

Youtube, and other videos, DO freeze. Latest PA gapps. On both a T999 and T999V. It is dependent on the size times the quality of the video. Turning HQ/HD off makes it work, unless the videos are too long. Super short but HQ or HD works ok, or long low Q. But not both.

Why aren't the older, stable builds available for download? Why do devs so quickly delete them? Every version of CM is available, because some people may like older ones, some people may need older ones. 3.69 was perfect, except for HW overlays. Now NOBODY can use PA on their S3. According to everyone except for 10% who care to follow or search the thread, gapps is MISSING. It's such a bizzkill to reformat your phone for half an hour and have an elementary feature missing.

None of this is an attack on Ayysir, it's an agreement with him. The environment shapes us into inefficient beings and make the hard work pointless. There are very few good bug reports, lots of repetition ("How do I get the nav bar away?") To be honest, WHY IN THE #!$^&ing #%@^ is the default, in this S3 variant, to have a 100% nav bar? Is there some sort of secret galaxy S3 variants that have no hardware buttons? It takes less effort to put a little script in to kill the nav bar on first install, than to answer even three people about how to turn the nav bar off. The question has been asked dozens of times. Obviously not everyone reads the entire OP, they should but they don't because it's very difficult to follow. Reducing the nav bar should be a step in the installation process unless you intend everyone to double up on their buttons and make their s3 a 4.5 inch phone. That's actually why I sold my Galaxy nexus (used PA exclusively) and got an s3. That little bit of extra screen.

I gotta write some sort of open letter to the devs and put it in development general. SOME PEOPLE WOULD PAY 20-50 BUCKS FOR THE SOFTWARE CAPABILITY GRANTED BY THESE ROMS but there is no effort made to actually GET THE ROM OUT THERE and make it accessible!

Are you seriously telling me out of 50 MILLION S3's sold, only 2000 people on earth are interested in getting the latest PA ROM? That's the total download count for every d2 device and latest version (which has been out for a while, relative to other versions) on goo.im. Adjusting for updates less frequently than every version release, and any mirrors on little forums or whatever, let's be super conservative and say, only one in 10,000 S3 owners? They already dropped 500 dollars on a smartphone with capability they apparently NEED. A 200, or 300 dollar phone doesn't serve them. They are advanced users who want ONLY THE BEST. Touchwiz lags when you have 3000 texts or 300+ contacts. As soon as I first synced my google accounts, and used SMS backup and restore to put my galaxy nexus text messages onto my new S3, I could not open the messaging app. It loaded for TWENTY SECONDS. I could enter a conversation, but sending a message took TWENTY SECONDS AGAIN. Out with touchwiz. I immediately knew the problem:

AOSPA right away. Saved my bacon. How many million others have this problem? Who else pays Samsung or whoever, more for a new phone rather than just installing PA? or CM for that matter (not an alternative to PA. I can handle more information on screen. I don't need 20 point font! Why isn't DPI switch a stock feature everywhere?)

How much would you get in donations if you could reach thousands more people? What if you added Play Store apps to compliment PA, at a dollar a piece? Why isn't torch.apk in the google play store for one dollar? I'd buy it. There are torch apps that cost a few bucks that actually have thousands of downloads, and they're inefficient and take two seconds to light the LED.

I urge devs to pass this message on. You can do better, you can make it more. You don't have to charge money. Just make it make sense. Give the warnings to heed but be clear with procedure and confirmation of proper model numbers, etc. If someone is told to clearly check the label and make sure it says SGH-X123 and they don't, THEN it's their fault. Make the thing save us time. I spent five hours screwing around with new versions only to return to PA 3.69.

When I email and ask a dev "what is the current MOST STABLE AND BUG FREE VERSION" why can't they answer? Why can't they keep the confirmed great versions up for download, and highlight them in the list? Do they not spend more time on their phone than anyone else? Within 20 minutes of flashing a ROM, you can find and list 80% of totally stupid and obvious bugs, such as the issues of torch missing, etc, that somehow still remain in versions to come. It's sometimes the dev's fault, but bobody reports them, until weeks after, when one out of 700 d2tmo PA users musters up the courage to post about it. Only then after, you get "yeah, me too" posts. The devs are probably busy with their real jobs, working for free on these roms a few hours a day. A bigger and more active userbase would help, and the presence of threads where every other word isn't cryptic would help the most. Users are plainly fearful of posting. It's like its made to intimidate them on purpose. They don't want to look stupid posting something elementary but totally okay, because there are so many examples of someone making a post and getting strung up. That's different from truly bad posts such as "how do i flash this lol" but those are only present due to, once again, inaccessible procedure and first posts.

The community can be redesigned. There would be a page for each ROM. There would be a dev "thread" discussing cryptic inner workings, and alongside, a bug report thread, and a Q/A thread. It would facilitate such fast evolution, because it is impossible to find anything in this 400 page thread. Such as, a link to gapps. One should not have to google, because they're prone to getting the wrong stuff, and it's not secure and from the source. I don't want to flash something that may brick my phone, which may or may not be the correct thing I'm being told to search online elsewhere for. When I google "XDA T999" nothing comes up. Why? Because this model of S3 is referred to as the "t-mobile, wind, mobilicity and videotron s3". The others may be referred to by model number, or they might be a text name. Why not standardize and write both? The results page for XDA T999 is a single result for cyanogenmod, and then the remainder are almost unrelated or specific pages on OTHER SITES, and not from XDA themselves.