[Sony Xperia XZ ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other ] local__hero:
An update

Yes, we know calling is kinda broken right now on both oem versions. Yes, we know you have problems with dualsim devices because you didn't flash the dualsim patcher. Yes, battery life isn't very good because we are testing out some increased CPU frequencies so video doesn't stutter. (you can go back to the 11-05 build which has the old CPU freqs and compare).

We're aware of a lot of these issues, and they are all tracked in the current buglist (see post #2).

Development happens mostly in the Sony open devices program, with a few heroic volunteers contributing. Right now, a lot of work is being done to get the current flagships(think XZ2, XZ3) to a semi-stable state, but work for our device is done as well.

You can check progress in the sonyxperiadev repos. E.g. recently, some changes to the telephony HAL integration have been made, see the common device repo.

Why is it taking so long to fix all this?

Sony buys many of their processors from Qualcomm. Lots of stuff in phones is proprietary and covered in patents, and you can only get the source code if you sign an NDA. So even if Sony wanted to, they could not release the source for a lot of things.

See all the files with the name "qti" in them? That's Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. See all the repos named something like "qcom-something-something"? That's Qualcomm.

When there's a problem, we have to report it to Sony, who report it to Qualcomm. This takes time already. And don't forget Qualcomm has suppliers as well, and so on and so on. The same is true for other parts, e.g. the Wi-Fi chips are from Broadcom.

Then, support for hardware stuff is on many levels. A lot of low-level drivers that are driving the hardware are on the /odm partition(the one that the oemv1/v2 blobs get flashed to). Then there is work to be done tweaking the actual hardware abstraction layer(HAL) interfaces that work with these driver blobs. Then there are kernel drivers that can go wrong and mess up. Then it can be a problem somewhere higher up in the Android frameworks. Lots of detective work.

If new blobs from Qualcomm come out, Sony itself needs to do some testing, and then releases a new oem version. It won't just magically work, we need to tweak the SODP vendor side as well. It could be as easy as changing a version to a newer one, but it could also be a lot harder. The sonyxperiadev crew knows what's needed to integrate these new blobs, but it still takes time and testing.

Qualcomm provide the a lot of the source code to work with their hardware and blobs from the higher-level Android side in their CodeAurora forum (CAF) repositories. The relevant changes then get merged into the sonyxperiadev repos and we can test if it works(or if something new is broken...).

For more info, read the Android documentation on hardware etc.

The chip in our phone, the MSM8996, is quite old already(even the SDM845 in the XZ2/3 is already quite old in processor standards). We can be luck that Qualcomm still provides support. But it's not a priority to them, they want to sell new

ones of course. That is also a reason updates can take longer.

Regarding full forced-reboot crashes:

Sadly, as of now, for some people the "/sys/fs/pstore" folder does not get populated after a crash. This is important to diagnose what happened.

You can apply this patch to force a kernel panic on every reboot, but I would recommend that you do

so only if you know what you are doing.

Regarding battery life:

Please install BetterBatteryStats

and find out what is draining the battery.

This could really help us out! But first, make sure you are not running any GApps, because the Google Mobile Services are a massive pile of battery drain.

If you absolutely have to use GApps, please run only the "pico" GApps version!

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About the posts here:

Like 90% of posts here and in the old thread are full of people who just plain refuse to read, asking how to install or demanding someone help them out with something that has already been answered time and time again. This makes it extremely annoying for the us who have to scroll through pages of useless stuff to find the genuine bug reports. You do realize this site is literally named "xda-developers", right? If you're unclear on the concept, please read this: https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=16682226&postcount=2441

"This doesn't work!" - "This thing crashes!" - That gives us almost no clue what is happening. We need logs, or we can't do anything about it. I have only one phone, and I only use the stock ROM. There are a lot of nice testers who send others and me helpful bug reports, with detailed explanations in what circumstances it occured, with proper logs.

With that info, the Sony open devices team and us can actually look into issues.

So please, if something doesn't work AND we are not aware of it yet, post it to the bug list (not here!) and attach a link to a log that you uploaded, e.g. to a service like hastebin.com.

Test it out, please. And don't forget to report the diagnosed battery stats.

I've tweaked for more performance right now, but you can use 11-05 to get old CPU freqs. Also, please help hunt down what is draining the battery, it's most likely too many held wakelocks, but it could be any number of things.

It's literally in the first post.

That is already in the bug list. Please read the bug list before posting.