[Captivate Android Development] Agent_808:
Paragon gets my vote

Hi Folks,

Great post, PBCLST, very detailed. I've been following along for some time now and have been evaluating Paragon since RC4 (updated to 5.1) and just wanted to chime in with my observations since I'm home with the flu. I'm fairly new to the android/linux scene having come from a modified Tilt2 (WM6.5). I had been running Cognition for about a month but was getting fed up with it's numerous "issues" that fresh re-flashes and tuning wouldn't alleviate.

The most notable of them being poor battery life and random sleep death. Running Cog, I would burn about 10 to 20% per hour while sleeping....many times the battery would die before sunrise after being topped off before bed. During active use (internet/calls/music), I would see the battery drop 1% or more per minute!

Paragon set a new standard for me. I now can go a whole night asleep off-charger and only see 1% drop....and I don't have to set up a backup alarm clock just in case my battery gets euthanized overnight.

During active use, Paragon performs much better and I've observed that the same 1% drop now takes about 5 to 10 minutes depending on what combination of apps I'm running.

I'm a fairly heavy data user (frequently dowloading music, listening to Pandora, YouTube, reading XDA and other sites). Very few emails, although my 4 accounts are set to check every hour. Talk time is typically 10-20 min except on Fridays/Saturdays when it goes through the roof. Also, I don't use WIFI except for syncing my contacts every few weeks and for the most part I get spotty "H" reception...except at work where I sometimes bounce down to Edge, then back to 3G.

The bottom line is, I can comfortably make it through a typical 10-hour work day and not worry if I forget my charger.

While my results cannot compare to the ASTOUNDING battery performance that PBCLST reports, I am nonetheless pleased and now have a frame of reference for what can possibly be achieved using this ROM/Kernel.

I also experimented running different kernels and different Hz on COG and on Paragon. I liked the concept of Suckerpunch and the promise of SpeedMod, but time and time again, Paragon proved to be smoother, faster in real use and most importantly predictable & stable.

Just to be clear, YES I am OC/UV and stable for my purposes. (No sleep death or random reboots anymore!)

Here are my phone's specs and how I have it set up in case it may help:

Captivate I897

BUILD : 1006

ROM: Paragon RC5.1 Update (flashed directly over RC5, flashed over COG)

KERNEL: Paragon 1400MHz / 500Hz

MODEM: KP1 (stock JK4 modem had horrible sound quality on either end)

GOVERNOR: Conservative

Ext4 Lagfix : Enabled

VM Tweak : Disabled (cause this fixed sleep death on SuckerPunch....any downside to this on Paragon?)

Ext4 Mount : Safer

BLINKY : Disabled

Scheduler : CFQ

UV Settings: Moderate

100 200 400 800 1000 1400 MHz

100 150 150 150 125 50 mV​

LAUNCHER: ADW

Animations : OFF

Brightness: AUTO

Screen Rotation: OFF

Gallery Drain? : Not observed? (but gallery does restart itself in background)

50% Without Signal? : NO, i get 100% time with signal.

WIDGETS:

Auto Memory Manager (moderate custom settings)

Foreground Apps: 6MB

Visible Apps: 12MB

Secondary Server: 16MB

Hidden Apps: 32MB

Content Provider: 52MB

Empty Apps: 75MB​

Perfect System Monitor

Juice Defender (disabled, I haven't dabbled with this complex app yet)

Gauge Battery Widget

NoLED

Mobile Signal Widget (anyone else notice signal strength on top info bar is high? What's an accurate signal strength widget to compare with?)

SystemPanelLITE

Google Calendar

FancyWidget

ScreenOn

BENCHMARKS:

Nenamark : 53 fps

Quadrant : 1750

NeoCore : 55 fps (for some reason this now loops)

SQLite : 53.9

An3dBench 1.3 : 7200

Benchmark : 580

Linpack : 19.3

SpeedTest : 2100kbsUP/300kbsDN MAX (my old Tilt averaged about 800/300) I average around 1000/200 in random tests....but it's VERY inconsistent as with the GPS.

OBSERVED ISSUES:

1.)

KP1 modem has clear incoming audio, however, I sound very garbled and there are a lot of digital artifacts on the listening party's end. I've tried playing with the Voodoo controls, balanced, sensitive, loud environment....no difference on either side.

For clarity, I had poor call quality whether the phone was used handheld, on speakerphone, or when plugged into my AUX port in my car stereo. (I dont use a bluetooth earpiece)

Why KP1? Well, JK4 had equally crappy call quality on BOTH sides of the conversation, so I decided to switch. This brings me half way to a solution. Any uggestions??? I'm in Hawaii in case a certain modem is better suited to my geographical area.

For comparison, the included captivate-based JI6 modem in Cognition seemed to be MUCH faster given the same daily usage routine and that it was at stock clockspeed....however....it had absolutely pathetic GPS and sucked hard on the 'ole battery. I haven't had a chance to fully test GPS on KP1, but I can get SO-SO locks indoors....it's the tracking & accuracy while driving at freeway speed that's most important for my purposes.

I see some people on SpeedMod K13A using JL3 and JP1 with varying degrees of success. What are the best options for a Paragon-compatible 19000-based modem with respect to 1.)call quality 2.)GPS performance 3.)battery life?​

2.)

Oddly, the Samsung Keypad still force closes. I've also tried installing the APK directly into the System.....no cigar. 5.1 update didn't fix it either, but the call log mod did take effect. I dont mind gingerbread keyboard....but I can't stand T9 or auto-suggest because we speak with a different dialect here. How can gingerbread's auto-suggest be disabled?

3.)

Downloaded apps don't always appear immediately in the Apps panel. If an app successfully downloads, but doesn't appear in the apps panel, I can locate and access it by going into TIBU. Backing it up also doesn't cause it to appear in the apps panel. However, after rebooting all news apps can be seen normally. This happened on R4 but not R5 and now it's back.​

4.)

The notifications panel is a tad too dark and makes text from apps that use black fonts illegible. For example: When dowloading a song on Tunee, the text is black on the dark grey tinted background = aggrivating to read. Hopefully Master eSPyeL can offer the user a choice of color to use in the notification panel background in a future RED/BLACK version! :) **YES I'll volunteer to test it!!!**

5.)

Lastly, my biggest gripe is also on the notifications panel. Is there a way to disable the Ongoing messages? (USB connection, USB debugging, battery is fully charged) :mad: Likewise, I don't care to see the USB connection/debugging/charging icons in the notification bar at the top of the screen and would like to disable that as well. NoLED does a great job of telling me my charging status. Hopefully this can be done since eSPyeL has removed the full-charge audio notification.​

Well, that's about all I can recall at the moment. I was considering flashing back to stock and then to 5.1 just to see if it clears anything, but I'd rather avoid the hassle if I can pinpoint what isn't working. I hope these issues can be addressed and I'm curious to see if anyone else is experiencing this issues because I haven't seen mention of them in the last 2300+ posts.

Again, much thanks to eSPyeL for his hard work, and for continuing to support and develop this software. Likewise, thanks to the brilliant XDA fans who help each other out and share their expertise with the greenies like me.

Confirmation number: 6Y064161AT8000216