[Galaxy S 4 General] juan_rugge:
First time with custom room, need some help

Hi, this is the first time I flash a custom ROM and I'm having some problems. First let me give you some info:

Phone model: GT-i9500 (made in vietnam)

Radio (baseband) version: XXUHOG2

GearCM version: 20160220

GearCM download url: provided by developer

Google Apps version: tk_gapps-modular-micro-5.1.1-20150927-signed

Did you--

wipe data/factory reset: YES

restore with titanium backup: NO

reboot after having the issue: YES

Are you using--

A task killer: Greenfy (only to apps downloaded from play store and none of the ones with push notifications like Whatsapp, Outlook, etc)

A non-stock kernel: NO

CMSettings/Performance Settings (other than stock): NO

Other modifications: I disable a couple of apps (AudioFX, stock internet explorer and stock clock)

Additional information: the phone arrived with KitKat 4.4.2, can't say with version, after that I've been flashing Stock firmwares from SamMobile:

1st I9500UBUHOE2_I9500UUBHOE2_ARO

2nd I9500UBUHOI1_I9500UUBHOE2_ARO

3rd I9500UBUHOL1_I9500UUBHOK1_ARO

I live in Argentina so I figured to flash those.. (?)

I always did a factory reset and clear cache in between, before and after each installation. Never root.

The procedure that I follow to install GearCM 12.1 is as follow:

Factory reset and clear cache

ROOT with CF-Auto-Root-ja3g-ja3gxx-gti9500 (Odin v3.10.7)

Install TWRP 2.8.7.0 (odin)

Did a backup

Install GearRecovery 20160220 (Flashable ZIP)

Wipe: I select: dalvik / ART cache, system, cache and data.

Install ROM from SD card follow by modem and Gapps

At first everything work fine. Really like how it looks, the UI and fluidity. I totally love the recent apps and switch to last app in the capacitive menu button! The problems that i'm facing are:

1- WiFi work fine for a couple of days, but now is completely broke.. the battery gets drained, apps don't connect (whatsapp etc). No problem on 3G, excellent battery consumption, switch full time for now. See screenshots for this.

2- mediaserver battery drain. This happen randomly some times after listening music on headphones (stock app), I have check in GSam and media server keeps consuming battery, “audio on” keeps going up in time usage. This stop when force close music app.

3- Video playback high battery consumption. I haven't tested this enough. I use MX Vid Player to watch a video for about 15 minutes, battery goes down 25%. I should test this with stock video player and youtube..

4- Exclamation mark in signal bar. This only happen when wifi and/or mobile data are disable. I read something about this being a Google thing to indicate Google services can't connect.. (?)

5- Fail to copy files through USB to SD card. A few days after installing the ROM i attempt to copy my music to the SD card (about15 GB). I tried to copy half but about 20% start receiving errors “file can't be copied” (or something like that..) try again in smaller quantities, same error.

All of these things start to happen pretty much at about the same time, after problem 5 happen.

A- Other than that, i have a reboot after a fail to open camera and one or two can’t connect to camera.. (camera quality isn’t really great, but this is known..)

B- Also every time I boot the phone I get a floating message “Synapse boot cancel” but it is shown open in the app manager.

C- Call Quality in the earpiece, think is good, but could be a little bit louder. At the other end of the line quality goes down (although it is distinguishable) and it should be definitely louder. Loudspeaker and headphone sound excellent, but at higher volume it gets louder to the point of distortion. I think all this can be tweak in synapse.. (?)

D- Message app has a dark theme option but it doesn’t work for me. Also i see some screenshots where the system UI has a dark theme, is this option hide somewhere or what?

E- Shortcuts on lock screen. At first thing they didn't work, but then I realized they can only be activated when you swipe from the laterals respectively, not from the corner, bottom corner, or touching first in the icon, but only from the lateral. Is this normal behavior? if that is the case I think they should be able to access in the other ways I described.

I think it's very probably you will advise to make a wipe. If this will let the phone like fresh install with now apps and previous system configuration, do you think it may be convenient to take an extra step and make a clean base install, described in post #3? I could use Titanium Backup, but I don’t really mind to manually install apps and configure them (I reed that Titanium Backup can cause some problems..?)

About the clean base install, I have some questions:

F- Flashing latest Stock ROM Odin package through Odin. I understand this will leave the phone with stock recovery? It will lose root? Do I need to root in order to flash TWRP? If so, can I use CF-Auto-Root?

G- Flash .pit file. I have not idea on how to do this. Do I need to do it??? If so, how and when: first room and after boot, then the .pit file, or at the same time? It’s so easy like selecting de .pit file from the PIT tab?

H- After flashing TWRP, point 5 indicates: Shutdown your device (pull off your battery), is this because you can’t exit download mode? (accidentally enter download mode the other day and couldn't exit holding volume up and power button, or in any other way)

I- Point 9 indicates Clean completely your device. That means dalvik / ART cache, system, cache and data, that's right? Nothing more?

Sorry for bothering with this beginner questions.. wow this post become longer than expected.. Thanks in advance and excuse me if you find my english funny, write is not my strongest :P

Can't share outside links with screenshots, I haven't reached 10 posts :L