[Galaxy Note 3 General] germanister:
My experience with N9002 and a question.

Hey guys,

Thank you for sharing all these valuable information.

Let me share a few pieces of my experience with N9002 duos.

1) Battery performance of N9002 stock ROM

I purchased Note3 (dual-sim) in China, and naturally it came with CHU stock ROM. I compared it with my friend's Note3 (single-sim) and found that my N9002 uses a lot more battery than his. We had lunch together, both of us used the phone for 4 hours without charging that day, and mine had less than 80% battery left and his had more than 90% left. For the 4 hours I used a lot of 3G/WiFi connection and he didn't use a lot, but still I felt the battery performance was not so satisfactory, especially for those like me who heavily use 3G/WiFi connection.

2) Software Update Error

When I first purchased Note3 N9002 duos in China last week and tried to update the OS with "Software Update" function in the stock ROM, it could successfully download the file but it failed to install it. After downloading the file, it automatically goes to recovery mode and tried to patch the file, but when the patch progresses to 25%, it fails. I tried a few times but it fails at 25%. I went to a local Samsung store and asked the Chinese sales guy there, and his response was "It's not only you. Everybody is having the same problem. Actually it is not a problem. You do not need to install the new patch." However, I couldn't understand why it is not needed. Oh my poor Chinese...

3) Rooting and installation of Google Play Store (marrkdaviid.com/2013/10/install-google-play-on-the-samsung-galaxy-note-3-n9002])

In order to get Google Play Store installed, I followed Mark's guide. Everything was easy and all was as explained by Mark. Actually I didn't have to root and install Google Play Store following Mark's guide, because I already decided to install SVA 2.0 ROM. However, downloading SVA 2.0 ROM took me so much time that while waiting I just followed Mark's guide just to download a few apps from Google Play Store as a means to kill time and play around with it.

4) SVA 2.0 ROM (studenikin.ru/svarom/svarom_N9002.asp)

With the absence of Google Play Store in N9002 stock ROM, which is fairly important for my work, I decided to install SVA 2.0 custom ROM. It took me quite some efforts to download the file, but anyways I could download it completely. Installation was quite easy with the support of GUI-based installation wizard. The installation wizard got freezed twice though, but in the 3rd try I managed to complete the custom ROM installation. Now I could access Google Play Store, but the connection was very unstable. Very frequently I encountered the warning "Your WiFi is unstable", and the actual download speed from Google Play Store was very slow, or sometimes even encountered "Error downloading".

So far I had many other Android-based smartphones in China, on which I installed custom ROMs and accessed Google Play Store. With the previous phones I did not have this problem, and so I wrongly thought that it is SVA 2.0 ROM's problem. (Anyways, later through googling I found out that weak WiFi performance is Note3's in-born problem and many others experience the same. I turned off the "WiFi power saving" option in *#0011# and I feel it got better).

5) Custom ROM from a Chinese developer (bbs.aijikong.com/forum-461-1.html)

Mainly out of curiosity, I wanted to compare SVA 2.0 ROM with this custom ROM from the Chinese developer. I also hoped for a better battery performance from this Chinese guy's cusrom ROM because bigjimmy547 (who first posted the link to the Chinese guy's cusrom ROM) mentioned that he/she saw great battery life with it.

So I went on to download this Chinese guy's custom ROM, installed it using Odin, and at the last point of the installation I encountered installation failure. My Note3 kept repeating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again". Of course Kies did not recognize my Note3. Perhaps this is what happens when a phone is bricked? My Note3 didn't boot up, and I couldn't get into the recovery mode.

Anyways, after I re-flahsed CWM recovery, I could boot up into Android. After booting up, I found that my Note3 was flashed with the Chinese-guy's custom ROM. However, the system was SO UNSTABLE that I couldn't do anything. So I flashed my phone with SVA 2.0 ROM again.

Current Problem & Question 1

I now have SVA 2.0 ROM installed together with two fixes (stability fix and called-id fix). But the system is still NOT VERY STABLE. Not very frequently though, but sometimes my apps force-close or do not respond. Not only newly installed 3rd party apps, but also system apps show such unstability. I can live with it because it's not so serious, but if there's a way I want to repair it. Anyone has any ideas?

Question 2

How do I flash my phone with the stock ROM? Here's what I did but failed.

1) Download the CHU stock ROM (CHU-N9002ZNUDMJ6-20131101133835)

2) Put it in my phone's internal storage

3) Go into recovery mode (Volume up + Home + Power)

4) Select "Install from zip" and choose the CHU stock ROM

5) Select "Start Installation"

6) Immediatly it says "Installation aborted" and does not install