[ZTE Z7, Z7 Max, Z7 Mini] pnin:
Upgrade to paolothlw8's Unofficial CM12.1 Lollipop v5.1.1 V3 report

Summer holidays are here, so, time for another ROM upgrade. This time the target is paolothlw8's Unofficial CM12.1 Lollipop v5.1.1 V3...

paolothlw8's Unofficial CM12.1 Lollipop ROM English forum thread at Andoidiani:

- http://www.androidiani.com/forum/in...e-z7max-android-5-1-1-cm-12-1-unofficial.html

paolothlw8's Unofficial CM12.1 Lollipop page at Needrom.com:

- http://www.needrom.com/download/cm-12-1/

Before starting, let me just state briefly that I'm not intent on ROM hopping; my goal has always been to achieve a stable and convenient phone setup that will lend itself for relaxed daily use. I've owned this terminal since October 2014 and, although it sports flagship hardware, only now do I feel it is reaching full potential.

Right away I can report success coming directly from Nubia stock v3.19. Read on...

My flashing steps:

Nandroid backup executed from TWRP recovery;

Connected device to computer and copied required files to internal memory -- meaning 'cm-12.1_NX505J-20150726-Rel_V3.zip', 'tk_gapps-modular-nano-5.1.1_20150705-signed.zip', and 'baseband_322.zip' that you can get from links above or directly from paolothlw8's Mega repository at https://mega.co.nz/#F!PFohDS4b!sahS9rHvzgVLV-gMaA3zcQ;

Rebooted phone to TWRP recovery, executed wipes, formatted '/system' (as recomended), and installed everything in the following order: 1. ROM, 2. baseband, 3. GApps.

That's it! :)

After rebooting, you wait a little while and if everything went normally the phone will display vanilla CyanogenMod options and features.

My first observations after the fact (apart from an irrepressible urge to tweak the hell out of the UI :p) was that battery was draining slightly faster and the Antutu score decreased to around 38600 (from over 45K on stock); otherwise, everything is fluid and without any noticeable lags, making me very pleased with the phone current state.

Findings and tweakings post-install:

The default launcher in CyanogenMod is Trebuchet, so if, like me, you're left wondering where can you change its configuration, I can tell you straight away to long press any empty homescreen area and then pull up the three dots indicator on top of the "Wallpapers", "Widgets" and "Settings" icons that show up;

Screen density was set to a default of 480DPI; given that the real screen density is about 400DPI (e.g., as per GSMArena's specs) I found that changing that value in "Settings | Display and lights | LCD density" to 440DPI provided a much better overall appearance;

My fancy of Google's Material style stops short of the pervasive white backgrounds -- not only do they make your eyes sore after only a while gazing at the screen, they're also a battery drainer -- thus I immediately looked for dark background style alternatives (ATM, I have settled with either Chummy Development Team's [THREAD="3005868"]Dark Material[/THREAD] and 93Akkord's XDA version [THREAD="3012227"]Dark Holo[/THREAD], coupled with tung91's nicely rounded [THREAD="1374139"]MeeUI[/THREAD] icon pack; take care to leave the status bar with the default style, since it'll be easier to read; also, remember to choose "Material Dark" as the theme for Android Keyboard);

In the same vein I activated LiveDisplay (similar location to "LCD density" above) and changed Trebuchet's grid to a more balanced 7x5;

Due to some unknown incompatibilities, SELinux mode is set to permissive by default, something you should look into if you're concerned about security;

Data usage seems to be set to a default monthly interval, which doesn't fit my operator schedule that starts on the 11th day, but I couldn't find any way to change it;

[THREAD="2191223"]Viper4Android[/THREAD] sound processor installed happily as user app and after installing its driver (root required) and deactivation of native CM DFX effects, it is now merrily thumping out all of its bass boosting goodness (among many other sound enhancements);

Bluetooth headset connection worked without issue, including transmission of audio file ID3 metadata, something I'd never manage to make work with previous ROMs; :victory:

Lastly, when accessed with [THREAD="2986129"]Kernel Adiutor[/THREAD] (root required), the embedded kernel seems to be lacking the overclocking levels present in paolothlw8's NZ7ML custom kernel v1.3, but everything else seems to be there -- bear in mind that I am not kernel tweaking expert, but if you notice your Z7 Max heating a little, you can remedy that with the following settings: reset battery stats; set "CPU governor" to intelliactive; undervolt all CPU levels by 50mV; activate "Simple GPU Algorithm"; set internal "IO scheduler" to BFQ[?] and the external one to NOOP, with a read ahead value of 2048 or even 4096; change "Swapiness" in "Virtual Memory" to a value of 20 or lower; and raise "Entropy" to values of 1024 for read and 2048 for write.

Check back sometime, as I might add further info...

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Antutu benchmark:

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