[ONE Android Development] :
Flashed the latest nightly.

I was hesitant to try out Nougat because of lack of Xposed, but I went through my Xposed modules list and though there are a couple modules that I really like and miss, they're not things I can live without. My current setup therefore is the same as I was using previously, except I haven't installed all the Xposed modules I use, and haven't installed VIper4Android.

My findings have been very interesting. [MENTION=2040569]jgcaap[/MENTION] if you remember me from your CM13 thread, I was having a big issue with battery life and we tried to solve that to no avail. I thought it was due to my battery physically having been degraded and we didn't arrive at a solution, even after trying out a few different kernels. I used to get 3 hours SOT tops with the CM13 ROM, as well as with Sultan's CM13 ROM.

Yesterday, I got 4 and a half hours on this ROM with 11% battery left.

Which leads me to believe that Xposed and/or Viper4Android may have been the culprit. I'll flash V4A in the next couple of days to see if that's what's causing the usage drain. Either way, I'm very satisfied that my battery life hasn't been abysmal due to battery degradation. In terms of battery usage of this ROM for the everyday man, therefore, I'll say that this ROM at stock will give you at least on-par battery life; in most cases battery life will improve.

Another thing that I've noticed is that my phone is now razor sharp. Just a few days ago, it was definitely showing its age, I thought, because even though it was not slow, my One definitely couldn't keep up with today's phones, and generally felt aged. Since flashing this without Xposed, it feels much more responsive, much quicker.

What both of these tell me is that there was something continuously running in the background that both compromised battery life as well as a significant chunk of the system's resources. I'm not sure what exactly this was, and until Xposed releases for Nougat, I'll never know. Now that I've seen what this phone is capable of both battery- and speed-wise, I'm not sure I'll even bother installing Xposed again. Which is not to say I'm bashing Xposed - it's a brilliant mod/tool - I don't think I'm at the point where I'm bothered about countless module installations, activations, and assessments for potentially little reward. Also, even though I think that testing battery life is possible - albeit a slow process - I don't think that I'll be able to quantitatively test system speed. As far as I recall, system slow-down was caused gradually, and only after using this "clean" ROM is when I realized truly what I was missing. For the record, the Xposed mods that miss most are Flat Style Bar Indicators, Snapprefs (though I use Casper now), Bootmanager (which I suppose I can recreate manually with SD Maid/Titanium), and things like Crappalinks. None of these are dealbreakers (or dealmakers) except perhaps Flat Style Bar Indicators, though.

With regards to the ROM itself, this ROM is very, very stable for such an early version. I've been having a few app crashes but most are due to, I believe, incompatibility of the app itself in Nougat. Other apps crash without rhyme or reason and need to be restarted. Other app crashes are caused by the various cameras - especially when launching from the lock screen. A lot of CM features aren't working, as is expected, but a surprising amount of CM features actually are. This was a nice surprise.

Bugs? The biggest bug, obviously, is still camera compatibility. ColorOS camera doesn't work, and as other people have said, video recording, probably - I haven't tested video out personally. Picture quality is good, although Sultan's 30 fps viewfinder does spoil you and I wish that was true here. I'm pleased to see that the camera faces the correct way in Camera FV5 this time 'round. Not sure when OP fixed that from the CM13 ROM, but that's a nice change. RAW capture works.

As mentioned before, many CM options don't work, mostly those related to the statusbar. The battery icon can not be changed, the percentage position can't be changed, either. Also, I enabled the percentage, but that disappeared after charging it fully. Weird. Lack of distinction between H/H+ in the statusbar is a minus, although I don't know whether this is a Nougat thing or a CM thing. The biggest disability, though, is the lack of the network speed, which, although isn't a strong dealbreaker, is definitely tempting me slightly to flash back CM13. I also wish that the ringtone and notifications volumes, although separate, actually worked that way. I like turning my notifications volume to low, and my ringtone volume to high, and I wish that gets worked out soon. Custom LED notification customization is missing here; I hope that gets fixed soon as well as I rely on custom colors quite a bit.

I've always been using the hardware keys on the bottom of the device to try and reclaim as much screen real-estate that I can (not to mention actually have Snapchat work properly), but I've switched to using the on-screen keys for this ROM due to incompatibility with multitasking. Enabling the hardware buttons also removes the software menu key from many apps, so that needs to be rebound somehow to one of the buttons. Also, there isn't an option for split-screen on long press of the Menu key, so if you decide to use the buttons, you can't fully take advantage of the multitasking features of Nougat, which is a shame. Ideally, I'd like to remap the menu key to work exactly like the recents soft key does.

Nougat in general isn't necessarily as big an update as Lollipop was but it definitely is a breath of fresh air. A lot of functionality and customization has been added to the stock Android experience such that a lot of features that were exclusive to custom ROMs are now a part of Android, the biggest one being split-screen. Not a lot of apps are compatible yet, and I don't use it much, but it's nice to know it's there. I've been using long-press menu/recents to switch to the last app since I started using Android in Kitkat, and though it's worked well it's always been a bit slow; the animation for flitting through apps on Nougat has been designed by Android to be extremely quick and it's reassuring to see a feature that I've personally been using for a while implemented in the core by Android. The Recents screen is a mess; apps that I closed last week still show up. The app I miss the most on this version of Android is chainfire's Recently; hopefully an update or something similar pops up soon. I've mapped a downward swipe on the Nova home screen to pull down the notifications shade and it's much snappier and quicker in this update. I don't like the Suggestions strip at the top of Settings (anyone know how to disable that?). The advanced notifications control for specific apps is brilliant and very understated, enabled in System Tuner UI. Notifications in general for me are less functional; I could see quite a few messages from Whatsapp just by expanding the relevant notification in previous versions but in this version, all I can see is the latest message by the latest sender from my notifications. I haven't figured out how to expand the notification to show more messages without having to go into the app yet. Nougat doesn't take a month to boot up: I'm not hesitant to reboot my phone anymore.

Overall, I'm extremely satisfied. Extremely good work, OP. Looks like I found my next daily driver.

Oh, quick question: OP suggests Slim GApps. I'm using Open GApps because I can't find the 7.0 Slim GApps, could anyone kindly point me in the right direction?