[Device Reviews and Information] Satbeginner:
Now my Elephone P8 is GREAT (after some playing around)

I found out what I did wrong, somehow I managed to connect the file-type 'mp3' to ES-explorer as default application, since then new files would never show up again as available tone. I could not find how to un-set this....

Anyway, to solve all I decided to flash again. Here is a step-by-step description of what I did.

I used the same ROM I was using before, just because I really had NO problems whatsoever with this ROM during the past months. (Except for my messing-up of the Ringtones.:eek:)

It can be found here:http://bbs.elephone.hk/thread-97-1-1.html

I flashed this using the SPFT. SPFT is the SP-FlashTool used for the MTK-based phones, it can be found here: http://pan.baidu.com/s/1o6ySBsY

The page is in Chinese (not the tool), but click on the down-arrow near the upper right corner.

The button that says: ( 保存至网盘下载(45.5M) )

It will download "Flashtool.rar" to your PC. Unpack this to run later.

During the flash I used two different EBR files (EBR1 and EBR2).

The original EBR-files would give a too small /DATA partition (only 1,2Gb).

These two EBR-files (made by N2k1) give a 8Gb /DATA partition: View attachment P8_8GB_EBR.zip

Steps to flash the new ROM with adjusted /data -siza:

1 : Scatter-file: select the scatter file from the unrar-ed downloaded ROM files.

(Put these together in one directory)

2 : When you double-click the scatter-file, it will bring all the files which are part of the ROM in the SPFT.

You can see this in the separate lines, they all point to the files in your ROM directory.

2b : now change the EBR files and the recovery-file to the ones you want to use by double-clicking the corresponding line. Point to the new (N2k1) EBR1 and EBR2 files for an 8Gb /data partition.

3 : You can download the newer Recovery.img and flash it directly with the ROM when you flash, or...

you can flash the recovery-partition afterwards, using the same SPFT, but with ONLY the recovery-file selected (Tick-box at the beginning of each line, the tick-boxes indicate whether you want to flash this part or not. For a full ROM and Recovery-flash you tick all the boxes)

Here an example how I used the SPFT-tool: View attachment 3074662

SPFT is now waiting for the phone.

Now connect the phone without the battery.

If you have all the drivers properly installed, the PC will connect the Phone, you place the battery and the download to the phone will start showing the coloured bars. I used v5.1352.01 of the flashtool.

During the flash I replaced the recovery-partition with this one: https://mega.co.nz/#!kN9CnK7A!arry4xfDLY5dlKlYRcvXqi2Zqy8JvP8_d2XMygPLFOs

You can flash the recovery partition also seperately later, by just ticking the recovery-box in SPFT.

This way you can change recovery, without flashing the entire phone.

The recovery can later be accessed by booting the phone, holding Vol-Up and pressing Power-On.

UPDATE: I replaced TWRP with a newer version (2.7.1 Thanks N2k1 !!) that can be found here: http://n2k1.com/n2k1/Sesonn_N9000+/P8_twrp.zip

Recovery can be used afterwards for flashing .zip files, like SuperUser.

Extra: I found that using a direct "reboot" or "restart" uses a lot of the battery.

Also when you use the Mobile UncleTools to reboot into Recovery, this drains the battery as well a lot.

Instead, if you power-down, and than perform a boot (normal or into recovery) the battery usage is normal.

A lot of ROM's show this behaviour, although they run perfectly. It is just the direct reboot thing that "eats" the battery.

However, in this ROM is a version of GAPPS (Google Apps) where the Play Services have a CPU bug, causing high temperatures and high battery usage, so I replaced this with this version: http://www.apkreleases.com/2014/06/27/google-play-services-5077-apk-for-android-direct-download/#

(When using the phone, it will upgrade again to a newer version automatically)

I can confirm Titanium Backup is working, but only when the phone is 'Rooted' using Superuser and with a SD-card fix applied, I used this version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.superuser

Install the App, then afterwards install the .zip through Recovery.

I used this SD-card fix: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geeksoft.extcardpatch&hl=nl

And finally, I picked up a tip from Italian P8-users: turn off all the Cell-Phone frequencies we do not use. It will improve cell-phone reception and also battery usage. I use the phone in Spain, so I only need 900MHz, 1800MHz (GSM) and 2000GHz for 3G/UMTS (HSDPA+).

Turning off the USA and Japan frequencies can be done using MobileUncleTools, in Engineer Mode (MTK).

It is done per SIM, so first SIM-1, then SIM-2.

Mobile Uncle Tools can be found here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobileuncle.toolbox&hl=nl

Here the link to the original article (in Italian, but with a Google translation it becomes understandable) : http://www.androidiani.com/forum/modding-altri-terminali-mtk/403072-topic-ufficiale-modding-elephone-p8-64.html#post6251500

Also GPS is working like a charm. I installed FasterGPS from Google Play, and used it to set my region to Europe, Spain.

After that GPStest was able to get a fix, even in-doors.

Overall performance:

NEW: the battery drain when choosing RESTART can be fixed!! The original article can be found here: http://www.android-hilfe.de/elephone-p8-forum/586327-akku-bug-beim-restart-2.html

In short: re-flash ONLY the UBOOT partition with this "lk.bin" file, it can be found here: http://www.android-hilfe.de/attachments/elephone-p8-forum/318451d1405249003-akku-bug-beim-restart-lk.zip

I used this approach with this ROM, just because it works for me.

I know there are many other great ROM's out there, but again, I am really happy with this one.

I just hope my comments will be of help.

Un saludo from Spain,

Satbeginner

P.S. (1) A while back I blew my speaker. The volume on the P8 is quite high, and one time I left the volume at 100%. After that a text-message came in, and my speaker was gone....

I was able to replace it with the speaker from an old Nokia N73 I had lying around. (Same size, same everything, so an relatively easy drop-in replacement.)