[Galaxy Note II General] Entropy512:
I think at this point the Exynos nightmare is not fixable. There is a clear attitude of "**** outside developers" throughout Samsung Korea. There are a few people that care (codeworkx and I have a Korean contact that wants to make a difference and is a really nice person), but their management and the other engineers at Samsung constantly get in their way.

When I met with our contact and 2-3 other engineers a few months ago to discuss the eMMC disaster, things were looking promising. We were going to start opening up new channels of communication such that next time something like this happened, we could address it in a more timely fashion. Svetius offered to create a private subforum here that would just be select ERDs (those who work with Samsung devices), our contact, and hopefully eventually some other Samsung engineers and maybe some established RDs here that worked with Samsungs, in order to facilitate better communications, cooperation, and discussion.

Our contact's manager killed the idea. Email only - mind you, Samsung's email system is a broken mess that goes to great lengths to isolate the company from the outside world. Now, I could understand blocking emails sent to Sony or Asus or whatever - makes sense. I could understand blocking emails with various attachments. However, if an email even contains the word "Sony" or "Asus" or "Xperia" or godonlyknowshowmany other words, the firewall will drop it. So if I say, "Hey, Sony is doing this awesome stuff, what is Samsung doing to try and match that?" - the answer will never arrive due to the fact that it contains the word Sony.

So I've been trying to give Samsung the benefit of the doubt - after all, the eMMC meeting was a big first step for them, and I was hoping it would lead to the start of some progress. However, over the months since, no progress has been made, and in fact Samsung is regressing.

1) Engineers at Samsung constantly lie to my contact when they to get answers to questions we ask. Almost universally, when I get an answer it's either "no they won't provide that" or the answer is a blatant lie. (I detailed this in a post a few days ago... when search comes back I'll try to add the link there)

2) Samsung is not even bothering with proper GPL compliance any more. The Note 10.1 source code did not match any shipped kernels for any variant (the provided source had a totally broken wifi driver). When asked to provide source code that matched the UEALGB firmware originally shipped on the GT-N8013 (USA Wifi Note 10.1), they replied that UEALGB was a leak and thus they were not obligated to provide source for it. Bull**** - every single N8013 sold in the USA at the time I asked that question was preinstalled with UEALGB. (This is one of the lies detailed above.)

3) Samsung has not yet deployed the fix for eMMC damage to any affected device yet. If they have deployed a fix, they are (yet again) violating the GPL. The only devices for which the fix has appeared in source drops are the I9300, I9305, and N71xx - all of these devices have eMMC chips that are immune to damage in the first place, and the patch won't do ANYTHING on them!

As to cyanogen working for Samsung - he works for Samsung USA. It's of almost no benefit when dealing with Samsung Korea.

As to what device - right now, if you want OK CM support and a big screen, the N7000 is the closest. If you want a newer device - I strongly suggest waiting 1-2 months to see what happens with the next round of Nexus devices.