[Galaxy S 4 i9505 Original Android Development] fryandlaurie:
Praise for this ROM, problems it solves, and 2 Questions

So here's my feedback for this amazing ROM:

With the 16th of June release it is now rock-solid and only a few minor quibbles remain. Thank you very much to all involved for all the work and effort.:good::good::good:

Sidenote: If any of you readers would kindly consider answering the questions at the end of this post I would be very much obliged!

I have been testing this ROM on my i9505 for two months and initially it seemed that it was lightning fast but fell victim to the same shortcomings every Cyanogenmod based ROM has since the early fall of last year: Amazing set of features and settings which I really would not want to live without anymore but buggy when it came to basic functionality. This - for me - includes GPS, mobile signal, WLAN and bluetooth connectivity. I understand that some or all of the drivers for these are closed-source and have to be reverse-engineered which I am sure is very difficult/near impossible but the fact remains that this feature set is essential for a mobile phone. Why then use a non-stable firmware at all, you may ask? Well, because the last stable release for my phone is from the beginning of last year (almost 1,5 years ago). The last milestone release is from the beginning of this year but seeing the stability of the milestone releases I have trouble subscribing to the official notion of "Milestones are the new release". So I was excited to find this ROM here which is even maintained by AntaresOne, the official Cyanogenmod maintainer for my phone if I am not mistaken. From the start, this ROM was extremely fast and had great battery. The issues with the aforementioned feature set of WLAN, GPS, etc. were - in my experience - greatly reduced as compared to the official Cyanogenmod version.

Let me list some of the problems I encountered - not to complain (obviously) but to give others some hint of what kind of problems they might expect to solve by installing the current release of this ROM.

- GPS fix would not be possible for certain apps. This was 100% reproducible and forced me to parallel start another app in the background which did not have the same problem in order to get a fix on the initial app.

- mobile signal would sometimes drop out in areas with great reception. Only to be fixed by a reboot.

- WLAN was generally great but in connection with heavy bluetooth usage would often falter. Only to be fixed by reboot.

- and finally: bluetooth! I am a heavy user of bluetooth and I suspect that most people giving feedback on the stability of a ROM are not so it is no wonder that my experiences quite often differ greatly from those of others.

I use bluetooth for

- smartwatch connectivity

- connection to my car: handsfree protocol, music streaming and office(messages,contacts)

- connection to a number of different bluetooth audio devices like headphones, speaker, etc.

I experienced dropouts for bluetooth audio devices during music playback, problems connecting the phone to my car with all bluetooth protocols enabled, disconnects from my smartwatch. For the car connectivity it would help to disable most of the protocols and keep only handsfree active. Once bluetooth functionality started to malfunction it would also have repercussions for WLAN connectivity necessitating a reboot.

Experimenting with additional devices and other phones had convinced me, that the core problem was the communications stack in my ROM. This is further supported by the fact that (tada!!!):

As of release "16th of June" most of my core problems are gone. I have not had any major glitches since installing this release and I am a very very happy camper ;)))). Bluetooth has not crashed once, I can stream audio to my car radio (tried several iterations of connects and disconnects to test stability) as well as talk handsfree, and connection to my watch is stable, as well. (Disclaimer: these particular improvements might in part be due to the advancements in "Android wear play services: multi device connections")

As for the two remaining minor quibbles mentioned at the start of my post (and QUESTIONS!!!! for you):

- my phone seems to go into some kind of energy conservation mode over night even though I do not want that. WhatsApp messages aren't delivered, Email-Accounts are not checked, the smartwatch is disconnected. I do not use any energy profilers or savers. Does anyone know if this is a feature of Lollipop? It almost sounds like the energy saving feature announced for Android M

- very rarely my phone will show reduced connectivity (exclamation mark shown with WLAN and Mobile data symbol in status bar). This puzzles me as this is always shown for both connectivity types at the same time (sounds highly unlikely) and other devices can use the WLAN just fine when this occurs. It is usually enough to wait for 20-30 seconds and internet access is restored automagically. Does anyone else have this problem?

- and finally a general question: I find it very difficult to obtain information about new Android features in general and new Cyanogenmod features in particular. Take the exclamation mark potentially shown with the data connectivity symbols in the status bar: What does that mean, exactly? No internet access? Reduced internet access? Over what time span? Can anyone point me to a dependable source of general online documention (not just for the symbol mentioned above)?

Thanks again for this great ROM and keep up the exceptional work!