yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] brons2:
The S2 was a good phone for it's time and the display is still pretty nice compared to many phones available now. But the battery life is really atrocious compared to the newer devices. I was using an Alcatel OneTouch Fierce before but I put it in my pocket with my keys and shattered the screen so I pulled the S2 out of a drawer and starting using it again. I loaded a couple of custom ROMs and currently have ParanoidAndroid 4.4 RC1.

What I have noticed is that both the screen and the GPS both take a ton of battery on the S2. On the Alcatel, the screen was down usually at the bottom of the list of things using battery. On the S2 it is always at the top of the list. I have the S2 screen turned down to minimum brightness, which is fine for indoor usage, and also set the screen timeout to 15 seconds, but still the consumption issues persist.

I do a lot of fitness logging and the most I have been able to log on the S2 is around 40 miles of bike riding until the battery runs out. This is from starting with the battery in the mid 90s percentage. With the Alcatel phone I had been able to data log over 200K/125miles before running out of battery.

Saturday I was out in the sticks riding my bike. I put it in airplane mode to save battery in case I needed to call home. After the 44 mile stop at a country store, I forgot to put it back in airplane mode and by the time we went another 30 miles to the next food stop (about 2 hours) the phone had drained from 70% to 14% percent. And I wasn't even using it, it was just riding along in my pocket as I pedaled.

Even with just web surfing on 4G data or WiFi takes a lot of battery. Seems like I can play with the phone for 30 minutes and the battery goes down at least 20%.

On top of this I've also been having problems with lockups. On the first ROM I tried, Liquid Smooth, it was getting android.systemui crashes pretty often. But if I waited a while, the system would right itself and I would be able to keep on going. When I first installed PA it was doing great but now I'm getting random lockups as well. On PA the lockups require a hard boot to fix. Perhaps a hardware issue, who knows. The S2 has not been dropped and is in excellent condition, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

If it was just the battery consumption issues, I could try an extended battery and see how that went. But in the end I decided that I was going to bite the bullet and get a new phone. I thought about a refurb S4, or Nexus 4 which were both under $300, but in the end I went with the LG G2 as it was less than $400 new from T-Mobile direct.

Farewell Galaxy S2, your days are numbered.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] sarandroid:
:crying:
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] Lokke9191:
My wife has a s2 t989 running cm 10.1.3 with a new anker 2200 battery. Her phone flies, zero lag. And Her battery gets her through the day. This phone is a old little beast.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] brons2:
If it wasn't for the lockups, I might have tried a new or larger battery. The battery will last all day as is if you don't ask the phone to do anything and you have good signal. The screen and the GPS use so much power on this phone though. It's just older silicon.

I agree it's still a fast phone when you use a cm10 or cm11 ROM. It's just not meeting my needs.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] Rushing:
Get the M8
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] brons2:
too expensive!

I ordered an LG G2 for less than $400, and signed up for the payments divided over 2 years. So I'm trading a really old phone for a 1 year old phone :D

Funny thing is, the S2 has not locked up once since I ordered the new phone. Haha.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] ArtfulDodger:
I can really relate to your frustration as I have had quite a bit trouble getting great performance out of this device in the 7 months I've had it. I've went through what seems a million ROMs and have had problems with every single one. To the point I believe it was just the phone and not the ROMs. The last month was really bad when CM made a lot of changes that seemed to adversely affect this device. Then I started trying JB ROMs that were even worse than KK ever was. I've had way over 2 years experience flashing ROMs and kernels so in nearly every case I wouldn't say user error was to blame either. That said, after nearly making a coaster out of this thing, PA RC1 really has come to the rescue along with the Wild kernel. Which is why I'm a bit surprised you are not even having good luck with that. The battery drain you describe is very extreme. At the worst my battery drains 3% an hour on standby. I always have everything on, such as Wifi, GPS and high accuracy location reporting too. Not to mention Viper audio mod with super quality driver which uses a chunk of battery as well.

Overall I can typically get 20 to 24 hours on an average weekday. If I use the screen for a couple hours, listen to music, browse the web and make a call or two, more like 10 to 16 hours. At any rate things are good enough I can live with this phone for while now, provided I do myself a favor and leave well enough alone.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] mr_stevey:
i've had my s2 for almost 3 year, i believe, and i know the pain in the ass it can be. the screen issue happens to me, too, and there isn't a solution, so you learn to deal with it. seems like you may have a faulty battery? i still have the stock battery and it doesn't hold up well as it used to. i run carbonrom with wildkernel (testing) and it's not too bad. but it's a dated phone in techie age.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] brons2:
Yea PA RC1 was the best of the ROMs that I tried on the S2. But I've moved on and am super happy with my new phone. The LG G2 is the best phone I've ever had. 3000mAh stock battery, huge screen, blazing fast LTE and I love the volume buttons on the back!
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] HeadachePuppies:
The T989 may be difficult to deal with but with a few customizations (new battery and rom), it'll be faster.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] brons2:
Too late, I already have the new phone and it is way better even with the stock rom. I might update the S2 again though just for kicks when PA goes stable. It probably does need a new battery also but there's no reason to go that route when I have another phone already.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] IncendiaryPyro:
Glad to see I'm not the only one that's having battery problems. It seems as if using Apollo for music and using Messenger to talk to a friend, the battery drains really quickly. Can't wait to upgrade in the near future.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] caspernetherlands:
Any custom ROM that i have tried are not to good for the battery life. I think the best ROM so far for battery life is SHADOW 1.5 ROM because it is based on Stock ROM and has the Power Saver feature.

Now i am using CM 11 and loving it, the features and speed are incredible. Thanks CM Team for your great work.:good:
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] jensen2112:
The T989 is one of the best phones in his time. Now is almost obsolete, we grow ups, every months there are lots of new devices, sooner or late the time will come when we will let go the T989 and have a newer one. It's like a childhood girlfriend experience. I now have the Moto G LTE version, I keep my T989 in my archived electronic things, he is simple something not to forget.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] Lorien_Silmaril:
I gave my old S2 to my wife after I got my Note 3. At the time all the Jellybean ROM's for it were unstable, so I put the Jedi ROM on it. For some reason it was ridiculously slow, despite being based on the stock ICS ROM. I had figured the phone's age was just showing and didn't think much about it.

Recently my wife asked me to upgrade the ROM on her tablet to KitKat, so I figured I would do her phone as well. To my surprise, KiKat runs amazingly smooth on the S2 - especially with Wild kernel (1.89GHz overclock + sio governor). Tried both SlimKat and Carbon. It's just liquid smooth and feels totally like a new phone.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] kelbaez:
is really surprising how kitkat can give new life to this old phones.. I've changed my T989 for a nexus 4 as a daily driver but still keep the S2 as a work phone, after using the AOSP of the nexus4 I tryied evervolv in a MyTouch 4G and really liked it then though of trying that on the S2 and wow that was an improvement. right know Im currently using Evervolv kitkat 4.4.4 with Cl3kerner on the T989 and I tell you is a really good combination if not perfect.

KB
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] msal:
I love this phone much like you guys but it's time for the sweet prince to nap!

One of the issues I had a few months ago is that my power button got stuck. My device kept rebooting every few minutes to the only option was to open up the phone and remove the power button entirely. This fixed my issue but now the only way to turn the phone on when it dies (or turns off due to crashes!!) is by plugging it via USB and going into download mode then cancelling. Talk about a hassle!

I also got some dust particles (I think?) on my camera lens so I have several black dots whenever I take a picture.

My battery life is also HORRIBLE. I can relate to OP. My phone can barely make it to lunch let alone get through a full day. If I want to get through a full day, brightness needs to be low, bluetooth/wifi/data/gps/screen rotate all need to be off and I can't expect much screen on time. Basically, I use my phone for communication (texting, calling, etc) and for listening to music. Nothing else really. I might also try flashing another CM rom. I've tried KitKat CM roms but they are all incredibly laggy, so I don't know. Perhaps a new battery could fix this but it's too late.

(By the way, if anyone can recommend a good KitKat rom [preferably CM based], I'd appreciate it. I plan on giving this away to someone who will mainly use it to listen to music, web browse, read. Nothing too major but I'd like to update it as much as possible before giving it away.)

Although there a number of problems, this phone has lasted me 2.5 years. I got it in May of 2012, about 6 months or so after launch. That couples with Cyanogenmod has given me one hell of an experience. This phone, without a doubt, has been one of the best phones I've owned. It just works, in spite of all odds. Heck, I've had it for several months with all of these issues and it can still go until the end of the year (or longer, who knows). But all good things must come to an end.

So good night sweet prince. You were amazing, will never forget! Also, thanks Cyanogenmod for supporting this device! Thank you devs and fellow T989 users for all the support!

As far as the future goes, I am putting all my eggs in one basket and hoping that the Nexus 6/X is solid. There are rumours that it is going to be nearly 6" which is just too big for me to use reasonably. I also considered the Note 4, but honestly, after almost 2 years of using Cyanogenmod, it's very difficult to go back to TouchWiz. The other phone I have considered is the Moto X (2014). If none of these work, I might settle for last year's Nexus 5. Who knows! All I know is that I'm getting a new phone soon!
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] tuxx1337:
Try also the new CM11 by Sultanxda:

http://xdaforums.com/galaxy-s2-tmobile/development/rom-kernel-unofficial-cyanogenmod-11-t2885259

Seems to give best battery life for this device.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] ArtfulDodger:
Absolutely, I no longer feel anything like I did when I posted the previous comment in this thread. I'm not ashamed to own this device anymore, LOL. Sultan did things with his kernel that made CM11 stable & fully optimized for the Hercules.
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] kelbaez:
thanks for the suggestion! i was thinking about changing the ROM for my Hercules and this seems like a really good choice..
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] md1008:
2011 was not a good year in terms of battery life. Although I can relate to poor battery performance with the nexus 5. I ordered this phone as a back up but may get rid of both my Nexus 5 and m8 to lower my phone bill. Looks like I may have to get an extended battery. No big deal I have a battery case for both my Nexus and my m8.

I am kinda excited to own this phone as I remember being on Virgin Mobile where the best phone they had was the triumph and the optimus v, and wishing I had a "power house" like the s2
[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989] tiguy99:
Having used both phones I'll say the g2 is the gs2 on steroids.

Still use mine faithfully since launch in 2013 with no want or need to upgrade
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] netsmagic:
After a whole lot of searching I wasn't really able to find anything on this topic beyond people recommending third party apps, but has there been a fix for group mms in the stock messaging app for MIUI? I love the UI for it and that's the only reason ive gone away from MIUI. If stock group mms was working fine I'd never leave.:D
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] alwaysbless:
Not sure if its really bricked or not but Its all messed and wont fully boot so it doesnt have lan access anymore for ssh and adb over wifi. I have a male to male usb cable and my pc is recognizing when its plugged in but there are no device drivers installed and adb/fastboot wont recognize (no usb debugging enabled?) so it just hangs on <waiting on device> any idea how I can install devices drivers and move forward with restoring backup of the file I fuxored? Thx guys!
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] roustabout:
Have you tried disconnecting that A to A cable? When I tried using an A A cable from my laptop to the Fire, it hung when it booted.

It powered on, went to the first white on black Amazon logo, and halted. Disconnecting the cable and power cycling let it complete the boot cycle.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mastafunk:
Havnt got that far yet myself but the way i tinker i will be there shortly ;) .. but as a warning to others, if you are not 100% sure what you are doing, dont muck around especially if you remount /system as rw.

Playing around will be much safer once we get recovery..

Building a recovery shouldnt be too difficult.. its booting a custom recovery that will be the trick.. Jcase had allready said he has figured it out perhaps he will share now that root is out.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] alwaysbless:
Ive got fastboot connected now so it appears it was some funky unknown issue. Fastboot isnt like adb tho and the only time ive ever used it was to re-write whole img files so is that my only option or is there some way I can push stuff through fastboot? The OTA firmware links posted a few weeks back are now dead too..
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Luxferro:
You can download the OTA updates (they are complete roms). http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2709811 - links still work, i just redownloaded them (not sure where I put my old ones).

Only problem is the recovery looks for them at /cache/, which isn't writable w/o root. I'm not sure of the functions available via fastboot w/ Fire TV (don't have a cable), but if you can't get into the recovery from fastboot, you can always try to boot a dumped recovery.img from fastboot... but still not sure how you can work around the stock recovery looking for the update file at /cache/

edit: actually don't think fastboot will be of much use with a locked bootloader.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] alwaysbless:
Im rooted already, but basically what youre saying is to wait until bootloader is unlocked then flash that via fastboot and then flash recovery via fastboot. I feel like there has to be an easier way lol but im a noob so who knows.

Im not have any luck with those links either ive even tried assigning a static public dns to make sure my opendns stuff was no longer blocking. Does anyone have an alternate link?
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Luxferro:
Nah, not saying that at all - would love for an unlocked bootloader, but you might be waiting forever.

this is also one of the reasons that jcase hasn't released what he had (according to his G+ page). since if you bork the stock rooted rom, you'll have a hard time getting it fixed (since the rooted rom is the only current way in). If you can't boot the rom, then you can't fix anything. I'm no expert, so maybe one will chime in. But I think the next step after rooting, is to have a custom recovery, and a way to boot into it if the rom breaks - which we don't have yet.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesrascal:
I had a similar instance. Gained root messed around too much and got it to not boot. Amazon is sending a replacement... But if there is a way around that in the future I would love to just fix it my self.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] alwaysbless:
So I couldnt even take the system.img and rewrite it using fastboot without having an unlocked bootloader? Sounds like the only way this thing will recover is install cwm/twrp recovery.img whenever that becomes available and then reflash w/ custom recovery.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Luxferro:
Except you won't be able to install a custom recovery since only your ROM has root access and it doesn't boot.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] alwaysbless:
Got you now. So this is def the first bricked fire tv lol. Guess ill just sit it to the side and see if someone smarter than I can figure something like this out in the future.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] {ParanoiA}:
Have you tried fastboot boot commands? Like fastboot boot blahblahblah.img? If it is softbricked i guess it can't hurt to try rite?
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] roustabout:
I don't know if this will work or not, but if you've already tried pulling the power, pulling USB and powering on the next thing I'd try is to obtain a 1 gig or so USB drive, format it fat32 and copy the OTA update to it.

- Leave it zipped.

- Name it update.zip

- pull the plug on the FTV

- put the USB stick in

- power it on and leave it for a bit. Watch it - is the power LED going out? If so, it may doing a recovery install of the signed OTA and rebooting - many Android devices will install anything on the sdcard called Update.zip if it's there at boot time.

What you're hoping is that the USB mass storage is mounted as a possible recovery source at power on and that the OTA is isntalled via the stock recovery. If it works, great, if it doesn't, too bad.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Yigo:
another brick on the wall ?

Dear OP ' i think you are not the only one .

im not sure if im bricked or plain noob

after i rooted successfully and did the blocking through host editor guide in fire tv news and for a good measure i run this command "su

pm disable com.amazon.dcp" . all was good and i had an issue with audio in xbmc and in my great wisdom i did a reset to factory settings.

since then i can not register to amazon i believe because it can not accsses amazon site for verification. so im stuck in there.

i tried to SSH and through command line no device was recognized .

any assistance to this stupidity will be much appericiated

thanks yigo
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JPDeckers:
Afraid I can't help you, but in light of preventing other people (and me) to have the same issues:

I assume the /etc/hosts file will survive factory-resets, it's a file that probably is not restored (so immediatly removed the host-lines from mine), but wonder if the pm disable dcp will also survice a reset ? I assume not (core funcationality for amazon, likely in factory-reset group), but you never know, esp. not in the v1 versions we are running.

Anybody knows if this is the case ? I like the pm disable solution, but if this means that borking up my installation will prevent me from ever restoring it (as unable to connect to amazon), I'll have to fall back to the router-blockage solution, and would suggest other ppl to do that as well
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jljaries42@gmail.com:
Deregistering AFTV may help with registration issue.

I had problems registering after factory reset.

I only disabled my amazon.dcp nad had dns and router blocks to prevent updates.

I did not edit my host file.

To de-register your Fire TV-

1 - log on to your amazon account

2 - Hold the mouse over where it says 'Your Account" but do not click. You will get a list of options.

3 - Click "Manage Your Content and Devices"

4 - Click the center tab "Your Devices"

5 - Click on your Fire TV.

6 - Click "Deregister" right below your Fire TV.

You will ge a message saying it there may be a delay for it to take effect.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JPDeckers:
So (while you need to de register the FTV itself within amazon), it looks like you can factory reset after disabling the amazon.dcp service.

Which is good news, as this allows easier disabling of update checks on machine level instead of router level (which not everybody will be able to do) and disabling the update service is better then overlooking a (hidden) fallback URL.

N=1 though, so'll have to wait if more confirmations come in, or somebody will be brave enough to try it ;)
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jljaries42@gmail.com:
Still Learning - Passing it on.

I read your other posting about update blocking.

Seems I did not have my amazon.dcp disabled.

I was not in SU mode when executing command and amazon.dcp was just killed not disabled.

Sorry for any confusion. Thanks
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] roustabout:
I hope one of the folks with a softbricked device gets a chance to see what happens with the over the air update file copied to a fat32 formatted USB stick and renamed update.zip.

With luck, at power on if there is media present, the stock recovery is looking to removable media to see if there's a file named update.zip it can process.

I don't want to softbrick mine to test, though.
[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] byrdcfmma:
So if I am understanding correctly, you should enable updates before you factory reset?
[Motorola Droid RAZR] theErock:
My apologies in advanced if this is an ignorant question. Is it OK to delete the stock ROM slot on safestrap and replace it with a custom ROM? If so how is the precise way to go about doing so?

XT912 [ROM] [ASOP/4.3] Eclipse v5.1 build 6 Spyder