Ok, should I go the ROM route?

[Paul627g]

Thanks, Paul627g. From what I can gather it sounds like I'll still need to flash a kernel after flashing the ROM, correct? I've downloaded the sfr-1.2-final.zip and Genocide1.1_final.zip files.

Normally no you don't have to flash a kernel when flashing a ROM unless you want to change what is included in the ROM. I think this latest SRF is the exception to the rule, they didn't have a kernel ready or something at release.

But in answering your question if that is the instructions for installing the latest SRF then do as instructed. In any other situation, flash the ROM zip, reboot and enjoy

 

[StoneRyno]

It is normal with smartphones or more generally the type of battery that when the indicator says fully charged that it is not always at 100%. This is because for overcharge prevention at the last 5% 95% to 100% it trickle charges then shuts off charging between 99% and 100% then discharges down to 95% and the begin tickle charging again and rinses and repeats. So unless you time it just right you most of the time will disconnect the charger somewhere between 95% and 98%.

 

[IAmSixNine]

I've been following this thread with great interest; rereading it several times, watching qbking77 videos, etc. Here's my situation: I'm running stock Froyo/EC05. I'm rooted and have CWM Purple installed, plus Titanium Backup Pro and Bloat Freezer installed. All of which seem to work fine.

Here's my issue for wanting to try a different ROM: stability. My phone crashes at least once a day, may be more. And at some inopportune times. What I want most is stability, improved battery life is always a plus, but I currently get about a day from each fully charged battery, so I can live with that.

I have ODIN 1.3 installed on my desktop (Windows XP, sp3), and have downloaded the SFR 1.2 zip file from one of the download sites. I also have SPH-D700-EC05 tar file to fall back on if need be. I've backed my files using Titanium and also using the backup menu pick within CWM.

As I understand things (obviously, I'm new to flashing ROMs, etc.) what I need to do know is copy the SFR zipfile to SD card and use CWM to flash it after wiping data 3 times. After that, restore data using the restore function in CWM? Or do I want to reinstall Titanium Backup and use that. I'm a bit confused on the differences between the two and what each of them actually backs up. Or do the essentially do the same thing?

I think I understand what I need to do next but is there anything I'm missing? I find qbking77's videos a bit confusing as he does whip through things pretty quickly and I think they may be a bit out of date, ie. he mentions the Genocide kernel whereas the SFR 1.2 zipfile apparently uses a Twilight Zone kernel, correct? This is the one I've been viewing: YouTube - ‪How to flash SyndicateRom Frozen 1.2 on the Samsung Epic 4G‬‏

Thanks for any advice.

arhoolie one thing to keep in mind when doing restores is that if you had any bugs or glitches in the apps your try to restore you bring those with you.

I myself am a big fan of only backing up the SMS, MMS, Call Logs, Book Marks and Contacts.
Anytime i have to reset my device i always install the software from the market so i can get the newest version of software with a clean install.

Thats just me..

 

[dead78]

if someone be so kind, could they please explain a bit of how to work with Voltage Control? I really don't have any idea what I'm doing. the one piece of info I can share is that when running CPU Spy, it seems that 66% of the time is spent in deep sleep, and 24% of the time is spent at 100 Mhz. The remaining values (200-1000) all hover at around 1-2%. any suggestions?

 

[StoneRyno]

I wouldn't mess with overclocking and voltages not knowing what you are doing. A good place to start is understanding what the different options mean to find out what fits your needs. For instance on my webOS device I ran using the performance governor at a fixed speed of 1Ghz. I think the system default on the epic is conservative or perhaps that is set by the ROM or kernel. Some details are unknown to me still. Overvolting can be pysically damaging to the device due to heat so it is wise to be cautious even if you know what your doing. I almost fried some performance RAM in my pc overvolting it and I've been o/cing for years. Undervolting the only problem I am aware of would be instability causing the software to crash.

The less one uses the device the more time in state deep sleep and low cpu speeds will be. The conservative governor will only kick in the higher speeds when the device really needs it. Which basically means heavy processing like games for example. But back to o/cing, you can increase the top cpu speed but there is no guarantee the device can handle the speed even with increased voltages. It's all a big game of trial and error while being careful not to go too far.

 

[arhoolie]

OK, so I found the time today to take the plunge. Despite my questions above, things went very smoothly after all. I'm now running SFR ROM ver 1.2 with the Genocide 1.1 kernal. Titanium restored my data without a hitch. After playing with it for an hour or so, everything seems just as it was, application/data wise. It's too soon to notice any improvements in battery life and stability. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks to Paul627g and IAmSixNine (really?) for their responses and to qbking77 for the videos.

 

[dead78]

I wouldn't mess with overclocking and voltages not knowing what you are doing. A good place to start is understanding what the different options mean to find out what fits your needs. For instance on my webOS device I ran using the performance governor at a fixed speed of 1Ghz. I think the system default on the epic is conservative or perhaps that is set by the ROM or kernel. Some details are unknown to me still. Overvolting can be pysically damaging to the device due to heat so it is wise to be cautious even if you know what your doing. I almost fried some performance RAM in my pc overvolting it and I've been o/cing for years. Undervolting the only problem I am aware of would be instability causing the software to crash.

The less one uses the device the more time in state deep sleep and low cpu speeds will be. The conservative governor will only kick in the higher speeds when the device really needs it. Which basically means heavy processing like games for example. But back to o/cing, you can increase the top cpu speed but there is no guarantee the device can handle the speed even with increased voltages. It's all a big game of trial and error while being careful not to go too far.

Hey, thanks for the word(s) of caution. My interest in undervolting stems largely from the fairly quick battery drain I've noticed since flashing the Twilight Zone 1.1.1 kernel. Yesterday, for instance, my wife and I were out on a boat for about two hours, in an hour with pretty strong coverage. I did use the gps a bit (particularly with a speedometer app) and took several photos. My battery dropped over 25% in those two hours. That being said, I'm definitely not too keen on doing anything that could either make the system more unstable or, potentially, fry the device.

Is there a way to more accurately check what is putting the biggest strain on the battery other than about phone->battery status?

 

[StoneRyno]

Hey, thanks for the word(s) of caution. My interest in undervolting stems largely from the fairly quick battery drain I've noticed since flashing the Twilight Zone 1.1.1 kernel. Yesterday, for instance, my wife and I were out on a boat for about two hours, in an hour with pretty strong coverage. I did use the gps a bit (particularly with a speedometer app) and took several photos. My battery dropped over 25% in those two hours. That being said, I'm definitely not too keen on doing anything that could either make the system more unstable or, potentially, fry the device.

Is there a way to more accurately check what is putting the biggest strain on the battery other than about phone->battery status?

Undervolting will squeeze a little more juice but I wouldn't expect miracles. GPS is a huge battery sucker just like talking on the phone is. So I would expect one to get no more than about 4 hours from a full charge with constant GPS use. The android assistant app (by Aaron.) has a battery use feature that shows how much battery percent apps have used. The info resets any time charging takes place like the built in battery use info.Though for some reason it does not accurately reflect battery use for streaming app since it is not the app directly that is consuming the power but the cell or wifi radio. I found that out when after running slacker for hours and it said only a small percent used compared to the actual percent used during the time. But for battery savings I would recommend using juice defender in addition to adjusting the memory parameters so that the OS is less lenient on letting undesired stuff remain running in the background. I believe I may have posted the name of an app that has presets for them or there is the memory manager section in the galaxy tuner app that is preloaded with the ROM you can manually set the values for the parameters. Between those two things along with the benefits from the ROM itself I get 36-48 hours (twice as much without them). Juice defender calculates it at 2.15 times more. I use the ultimate edition (got it on a real good sale awhile back).

 

[dead78]

Undervolting will squeeze a little more juice but I wouldn't expect miracles. GPS is a huge battery sucker just like talking on the phone is. So I would expect one to get no more than about 4 hours from a full charge with constant GPS use. The android assistant app (by Aaron.) has a battery use feature that shows how much battery percent apps have used. The info resets any time charging takes place like the built in battery use info.Though for some reason it does not accurately reflect battery use for streaming app since it is not the app directly that is consuming the power but the cell or wifi radio. I found that out when after running slacker for hours and it said only a small percent used compared to the actual percent used during the time. But for battery savings I would recommend using juice defender in addition to adjusting the memory parameters so that the OS is less lenient on letting undesired stuff remain running in the background. I believe I may have posted the name of an app that has presets for them or there is the memory manager section in the galaxy tuner app that is preloaded with the ROM you can manually set the values for the parameters. Between those two things along with the benefits from the ROM itself I get 36-48 hours (twice as much without them). Juice defender calculates it at 2.15 times more. I use the ultimate edition (got it on a real good sale awhile back).

Thank you for the response. Between the Epic and my time with the Palm Pre, I've just about had my fill of poor battery life. I have noticed some marginal improvement in the battery since rooting the Epic and installing SRF 1.2 but I still feel a bit like the only way to really get good battery life out of the device is to not use it and disable everything. Many have said using WiFi is a better alternative to using 3G, but I've noticed WiFi drains the battery considerably since switching to SRF 1.2 and Twilight Zone 1.1.1 - the battery consumption is probably double what it is when using 3G and I'm usually within about 15 feet of the router. GPS being a battery cancer is something I'm pretty comfortable with - my biggest beef with the GPS on all of these devices has been the inconsistency of it. But I'm going to try out a few of the things you said and if I still don't see any improvement, I may just pay a visit to Sprint.

 

[StoneRyno]

There probably are some troubleshooting steps for the wifi issue because it definitely shouldn't be consuming more power than the carrier radio. My average wifi radio use is 4 hours in a 24 hour period and battery use indicates 4% consumed for that duration. I set juice defender to turn off both wifi and carrier data radios and then turn them on with a 30 minute schedule. and stays on for 5 minutes to allow syncing and apps to fetch data. If needed they stay on longer. And I set night mode to keep them off while I sleep since obviously I don't need any activity at that point. But still have the ability for incoming call if a family member has an emergency.