[Lenovo ZUK Z2 (Plus) ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & ] NaXal:
Its been 3/4 days since I have got this AEX 6.0 Installed and here is my experience so far.

The Upgrade

Since July this year, I was using AiCP 13.1 along with Nameless Kernel (Pixel Icon Pack + Apex Classic Launcher). I didn't have ROOT or any other mods. It was a stable setup and I used it as my daily driver till the last update of PubG came. For some reason the game became unplayable with lot of performance lags. I needed to check few options so thought to move on to Pie.

Installation of AEX 6.0

As you may see, this ROM is with Kernel 4.4 / EAS so it needed latest Baseband/firmware. Now most of us would be either stuck on ZUI 2.5 (if Indian Customer) or in an Oreo based custom ROM. In both cases we may possibly be with older Baseband, like Baseband 1.76 (From Indian or Chinese ZUI 2.xx)

If you are like that, you would need to upgrade to more new baseband. You can read more about this baseband it version here. https://xdaforums.com/lenovo-zuk-z2/how-to/baseband-radiomodem-z2-plus-twrp-t3749988

There are two ways to make your phone compatible with AEX 6.0 with this newer 4.4 kernel. That is either using that TWRP flashable 1.70 baseband or doing it the old fashioned way of going back to stock QPST (unmodified / official) Chinese ZUI 1.9 and using official update channel to obtain the latest ZUI 4.0.199 to make sure that your phone as the latest firmware/baseband (warning, this will relock the bootloader).

Once you have the compatible firware/baseband, this installation is straight forward. Simply Flashing the ROM + GApps.

Regular usage / UI Feeling

First thing you would notice the smooth over all operation. There are no apparent lag in day to day operation. App opening/switching times are good, yes not blazing fast like those non treble Oreo ROMs but satisfactory. But as you start bit of UI tweaks to make your phone more personal, ugly things start to show itself.

The darker theme seems need tuning. When you set a darker wall paper, the UI theme will switch to more darker shade. I like this, saves bit of battery and easy for eyes too. But here, fonts and over all UI design of notification, few built in apps are not optimized for this darker theme. Specially the fonts. They are kept dark on darker backdrop. Making them pretty difficult or impossible to read.

Talking about notification, another small issue is a notification about "Device is HD Capable" is always shown.

Coming to more good things for daily usage, all the basic phone function are working. I have two SIM Cards, Jio and AirTel. Both are working fine. Jio is primary and VoLTE along with career aggregation seems to be working flawlessly. Jio is able to all 3 available frequency of 850/1800/2300 MHz.

WiFi is working at full 150 Mbps link speed and I could enjoy Bluetooth calling while paired to my cars audio system.

Coming to few problem with performance.

For some reason, regardless of default AEX 6.0 kernel or Nameless R22 Kernel, CPU cores are often staying at their max frequency. This is keeping the phone bit warm during idle or normal phone usage.

While using Chrome for heavy browsing, I can feel the heat in my figures. For some reason, Chrome usage (not all but few intensive websites like News Portals) heating up the phone more than PubG. Most of the regular using Social, entertainment (media streaming like Gaana, Youtube, or such) or Productivity Apps are working fine. But occasionally I am experiencing UI or app crashes, later being rare.

The default Camera needs fixing. Clicking the shutter button makes the camera keep on taking pictures unless you manually exit the app. Thankfully open Camera is working. So is GCam. I haven't tested video yet, I shall update once I do so. I do use my phone for a lot of video shooting.

The default launcher is fine, its clean and its effective but I like Apex Classing along with Pixel Icon pack. One immediate issue on installing launcher was no prompt to make it default. One has to find the option deep down in settings menu to make a 3rd party launcher default. Any modification relating to system or UI need a restart, since without reboot I kept on facing wired UI issues and ultimately an app or UI crash.

OTG ad WiFi Hotspot Works but didn't try casting or USB tethering so unable to comment on them.

Gaming / PubG

I guess devs hate this topic but what to do, some of us are pretty addictive towards things which which are injurious to us, lol, like PubG. A game which is so poorly optimized that finding a perfect ROM is pretty tough. But if a ROM runs PubG satisfactorily, it can for sure run anything else.

Well AEX 6.0 + Nameless R22 (without root, so default frequency) runs PubG butter smooth (under medium settings) for like 20/25 mins in a match. But after which you can feel the heat and experience thermal throttle resulting in drop frames. A firm but quick touching of the back surface of the phone to my bare skin drops the temps a bit. That helps to close the match but you need to give it a few mins of cool down before next match as otherwise, you will continue to face thermal throttle very early in the match.

Although PubG is running butter smooth but it isn't the case with battery draining. For me, it is consuming like almost 50% per hour. Little less while on WiFi. But still its been 40-50% per hour.

Battery

As you may see, weekends non stop PubG session may drop the SOT down to 2 hours plus few odd minutes. But on working days, I can easily last whole day and SOT goes up to like 4 hours before I hammer it again with few PubG matches before bed time.

A non gamer but heavy social or productivity app user can expect anywhere between 4h30mins to 5h30mins of SOT. Some one without social or productivity apps can see much higher SOT numbers also.

Remember the CPU-Z screenshot above? Surprisingly that ain't effecting idle battery usage. There is hardly any idle battery drain with this ROM. Overnight idle draining is less than 0.2% per hour and deep sleep working over 98%. I feel this is excellent battary management without the help of any 3rd party mod / or apps.

Battery charging is similar to any previous Oreo ROMs I have tried. With default charger, it pushed around 2000 mh to 2222 mh if the temps are lower than 42c. As or if the Battery temps go high, the charge slows down. If we talk about this in real world, usually the phone is charging 2% or bit more per minute when battery is really low like around 15% till it goes up high 30s. From there it slows down to 1% per minute till it reaches mid 80s. The last 85-100 per, it slows down a lot and takes its own sweet time to do full 100%.

Over All

This my first try on Pie ROM. So I am unable to compare it with any other Pie, but coming from Oreo, I do certainly feel it still needs time. Oreo AEX or any other in that sense, was much more polished and fine tuned compare this Pie. Yes, it is stable enough but hopefully devs will fix those minor issues, polish it up a bit along with some performance tuning to make it worth having as daily driver.

I shall stick with it for few more days before I may try some other Pie to judge the difference.

Thanks for reading.

[MENTION=5551474]sanjay.2704[/MENTION] for your reference.