[Sony Xperia S, Acro S, Ion] Tuatara:
Hi BPaul,

I've recently become the (proud?) recipient of an Acro S, to replace my other phone which had an untimely demise.

Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), upgradable to v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) ??? really ???

No thanks. I'm not going to do that. The first thing to do was to go to XDA in order to (hopefully) update the ROM to Kitkat.

And all I can say is ... WOW!!! ... it's beyond my wildest dreams ... Lollipop is available for a 2012-era phone!

Thank you BPaul for your ongoing development on this device - a 5.1.1 kernel was far more than I could have hoped for. I may just keep this phone for much longer now! :D

ROM Installation:

No issues with unlocking bootloader, repartitioning (to 8Gb), wipe, format, flash new kernel & ROM & TWRP through fastboot, device initialization/installation, and Rooting (sideload through TWRP).

It was a very smooth upgrade. I've easily replaced the boot animation, made a few system/sound/ui tweaks, iOS emoji, and other minor cosmetics. No issues with any app installs, or general usage either.

ROM Operation:

I've noticed a few "lag" events, but nothing which caused me any real concern. For me, this lag is noticeable when using SMS messages - especially when trying to send them. Sometimes the touch to "send" is not responsive ... a second later - touch again - no problems. A little bit of patience is needed ... but this only happens sometimes.

Issue#1: I've had the phone reboot 'randomly' twice. Each time I was not actively using it, but I was bringing it out of my pocket, and had to wait for the boot animation to finish. I'm not sure what would have triggered this issue. The Acro S I have is a "lost in the warehouse" demo model, and is (effectively) "brand-new" out of the box, so it can't be a physical fault.

Issue #2: The FM Radio application hangs the entire phone. While it can scan the stations, and (mostly) finds valid stations in the US band - here in New Zealand, all radio stations are on the even frequencies (i.e. 91.0, not 91.1), so I would need to change the band. Changing the band (to Europe) causes the phone to completely lock, and the application to be unresponsive. Additionally, the phone is then 'unstable' in some way, and requires a restart to set it right again.

For now, I'm not going to use the FM Radio app - although it would be a nice feature to have available. I also tried Spirit FM 2 Spirit 2 Real FM Radio. It installs fine, but it is unable to find the FM Radio API, and will therefore not run.

Any chance of supporting Spirit or fixing the (built-in) FM radio? That'd make for a perfect device. :)

For general device control, I'm using ROM Toolbox Pro. I've left the I/O scheduler at row, and set the Governor to interactive to see if I can get more fluidity out of the device. I'm not sure if it's helping - subjectively, possibly a bit. I'm also not sure if the battery life is being affected. For today's testing, I'm going to try the performance governor just to see if it works better - but battery life will probably suffer. I'm not sure if the SnapDragon has a low-power idle state (race to idle condition). Are there any other RAM/usability/performance tweaks you would recommended?

Otherwise, thank you very much for the ROM. It makes the (emergency) replacement phone I was dreading, something I will keep for quite some time!

Keep up the good work. I wish I had more time to develop. I too need to finish my work, in order to get back to the "real job" of working on the "other android device" which has become my interest of late. ;)

Cheers!

Tuatara