Serendipity vs. Infused and various questions

[aapold]

Okay... I had been holding off thinking official GB was coming (by end of August, right AT&T?) but between that not happening and SG2 think I'm finally ready to attempt this.

I got the root, the 3E recovery mod, and clockword mod installed....

but even so don't fancy doing this more than I have to. I know, once I make the plunge maybe it'll be easy, just still get nervous. I'm not in a position to replace the phone if bricked.

So...

I see some people seem quite happy with serendipity, over infused (1.x or 2.x)? What are the main reasons to go with Serendipity? Is it meant for the Infuse? I guess I'm kind of looking at a pros and cons of each vs the other.

Next, I read some posts suggesting various problems with some roms, want to inquire about these.

HDMI - some posts said you lose HDMI out. This actually matters to me as I watch netflix movies on my TV over the HDMI out. If some of these roms lose that I don't want to go to that.

First call no sound? - is this the ring or the call? Do you just get around this by dialing yourself after each reboot?

video recording at lower FPS? not as big a deal, but if all things were equal...

Re - TItanium Backup, which I have, do I need to copy the Titanium Backup folder off the phone, or will the SD card (the external one or the internal one) keep its backup intact. Do I then after the mod install titanium backup first, then go restore?

I'm worried if I don't do a "clean" install then I might mess things up... but worried a clean install would wipe out stuff...

anyway, thanks in advance for any help regarding this...

 

[aapold]

The serendipity thread mentions that the lack of MHL/HDMI is due to it not being based on an AT&T gingerbread... does this mean it applies to the GB Infused as well, and I should stick to the 1.6 (or whatever froyo-based infused)?

 

[Stonecold]

Alright foe one: dipity's battery life is amazing and since I prefer battery over speed I prefer dipity (but that's not to say that its slow).
All current ROMs with gingerbread do not have HDMI.
The sound. If I remember correctly, you can't hear the other person on the first call unless you go to speaker phone. But after that everything is fine.
I don't know the exact number but for particular ROMs the fps indeed was lower, but it isn't something that is significantly noticeable in my opinion
I never had a problem with losing my titanium back up flashing new roms

 

[631735]

Seems like you read through enough about it, don't worry as long as you've backed up, you're good to go. I've semi bricked this a few times now (i cannot afford a new phone as well), I'm always able to come back from it. Through all that, the internal/ext sd card has never been wiped. But of course, back up to be safe. Once you are in CWM recovery you can run a nandroid backup of your phone's current state(not int/ext sd though). You can always go back to where you started with a nandroid restore. I have 3 different types of backups of the same info on my desktop. You can follow my S7 thread or (retired)Terrigno's sticky on installing ROMs from stock. PM me if you still have doubts on the process. It's always that first one to get through, and once you do that, piece of cake now that you know the process, and you'll be schooling others that may have had the same doubts as you.

 

[mbnocx]

My first attempt to install a ROM was with Serendipity. I liked it a lot. I never had a problem with the first phone call as others have mentioned and the ROM was really fast. I liked nearly everything about it but I really did not see a major improvement on battery life. With the stock OS I would get anywhere from 10-14 hours on a single charge and with Serendipity I was about the same. I had heard good things about Infused, as well as with good battery life, so I decided to switch after a few weeks to Infused. Again, a very good ROM. Battery life is still about the same (maybe it is just me ) but it is fast just like Serendipity. If I had to choose I would probably go with Serendipity. Only reason I don't go back is because once the GB update officially comes out, I will be interested in seeing what the XDA devs can do with it and then I'll make another ROM change. Otherwise I am happy where I am at.

 

[aapold]

Due to wanting to keep the MHL HDMI out, I went with 1.6 Infused (the latest non-GB one).

It seems very fast and smooth. I know its not GB, but my benchmark scores are vastly better than what I was getting before.

A few things - during the addons step I noticed in addition to the AOSP lockscreen addon I selected there was another addon zip named something like "dummy-file". I didn't use this... did I miss anything as a result?

Also, I didn't select wipe everyting, just the davlik cache. That was the defeault setting. Anyway when it came backup all my apps were still there (I had already uninstalled a lot of the stuff that was attempting to modify how the phone worked like juice defender and stuff like that, which I had been planning to do regardless). Not sure if I'm getting all the benefits by not doing a "clean" install.

So I didn't need to go to titanium backup to restore stuff.. mostly.

I noticed Myth Defender ( a game I quite like) did not work. I tried to restore that (only) from titanium backup and it still did not work. Some kind of error message I couldn't read because it put up some kind of "initialization" window in front of it that took forever. So I uninstalled it and went to market to grab it again, figuring I'd just then restore the app data....

and found my market did not work. at all. I tried to revert it to the old market but that didn't work either. Finally I uninstalled the market... then downloaded the market APK from a website and installed that. That still didn't work, but now I could go to the app settings and tell it to uninstall addons, that got the market working again (even if it immediately updated back to the new market). Titanium backup was now able to properly restore myth defense (so figured the market issue was what prevented it from doing so properly before).

Since then, everything has worked smoothly. Very happy with it.

 

[drs155]

I flashed Serendipity 7 onto my infuse twice, and both times my networks speeds went way down to around 500k download and 300 upload, where stock froyo was in the 4M range. I love Serendipity 6.4 on both of my captivates, but on MY infuse the best results have been Infused 2.3.3, Network speeds ata least equal to stock 4g, and very smooth. But that's just my experience...I do like Serendipity, but my infuse does not.

 

[james.schueler]

Just in case anybody was wondering how it unbrick your Samsung Infuse phone, it is really simple and easy to do! Here is a link to the youtube video that shows you the steps.
How To Get Back To Stock\Unbrick Your Samsung Infuse 4G - YouTube

But the basic steps are:
1. download the files listed below (make sure your samsung drivers are installed)
3. install odin
4. open odin
5. power off phone
a. don't connect to computer yet
6. hold down both volume buttons and plug in cord (a warning screen may come up, just click the volume up button), you are now in download mode
7. odin should now recognize your device, select the downloaded PIT, PDA and PHONE files
8. press start and when the process is complete it should boot back to factory settings

I have done this multiple times and has worked everytime! Hope this helps give you peace of mind!

Downloads:
1. Drivers
Download drivers.zip for free on Filesonic.com

2. GTG
Download GTG_'s_Ultimate_Unbrick.zip for free on Filesonic.com