AOKP on my i9300So normally by now I would have tried out Cyanogenmod at least, but there's a few things been standing in the way. One, I'm not sure if it's all Android 4 versions or what, but I keep seeing people recommending factory data resets (and cache/dalvik cache wipes) before upgrading, which is fine and cool but it means all your settings and apps do NOT carry over into the new install. You have to be ready to start from scratch again. Now that could be fine, but there's two.
Two, installing Android 4.2 does something to your sdcard. The way 4.2 handles disk access is new, or something (and this is actually a good thing because it makes proper file security features available for Android... or something). And as a result, you need the latest clockworkmod and you need to screw around with directories if you end up wanting to back to an earlier 4.x.
But worst of all, there's three.
Three, Samsung is keeping i9300 hardware information of some kind back from outside software developers. Without that information the devs are unable to make i9300 specific mods. This is annoying in particular because, as we all know, there are several versions of Galaxy S3, and it's only the "international", aka the i9300, for which this information is still unreleased. (It's released for the other versions because the other versions are not solely owned by Samsung... or something... and the other owners have let it slip out or given it away.) This means the outside developers are taking a much longer time than usual to produce "stable" i9300 mods, and maybe that even when it is stable, it's not as optimized as it might be for the hardware.
So I've been waiting.
But the Galaxy S4 has been released, and Samsung has said there will be an official Android 4.2 released (eventually) for the S3, and I had some time today so I figured I'd experiment with such mods as there are because when the official 4.2 comes out I'll presumably be wiping everything anyway. (Come to think of it, that may not make sense....)
So, long story short, I tried out
AOKP. Specifically, the MR1-build 6. It's kinda not worth it. Which is a damn shame because AOKP is the coming thing for Android modders. It's a lot like Cyanogen but more customizable, they say, and it has unicorns. (No, really, it has.) But compared to Samsung's official Touchwiz Android 4.1.1, the latest AOKP with Android 4.2.2 is immediately slower (which it shouldn't be), uglier (which maybe it shouldn't be) and makes the phone run hotter (which may not be true but it felt like it to me). Things like pinch-to-zoom are less responsive, which is enough of a deal-breaker I really didn't give the rom that much more opportunity. I reinstalled my old setup (which was a small ordeal in itself, and still isn't over yet, but was basically easy enough).
Tomorrow maybe I'll have a crack at Cyanogen 10.1 and see if it's likeable.
Anyone else have any experiences?
/blog