I've had an old s8 almost since the model came out, still my daily driver, and for the record, I have a spare one which I use potentially for anything that doesn't require a working SIM card. It'll become clear why I mentioned the spare S8, though you can probably guess from the thread title. The second S8 originally belonged to my wife, but she upgraded to an S9.
My daily driver S8 has been kept fully stock, so the KNOX bit hasn't been flipped. As I found when I bought it, there's really not much need to tinker with a flagship model because they have enough memory, storage, and processing muscle to perform well. In fact, mine still does very well considering all that I have crammed on to it, despite being almost seven years old. Everything still runs with the exception of one finance related app that says the new version cannot run on my phone. That's not a huge deal, I can still access my account on the browser. But if you have a seven-year-old device, when this happens, you can't help worrying that it's only the thin end of the wedge. What's the next thing that's going to stop working? What if it's something I use almost daily, like Google Maps GPS, and there is no viable browser-based workaround?
I pretty much stopped posting here when we got the S8s, because my main reason for being here was to talk about rooting and flashing custom ROMs, and I just didn't need to do that anymore. But now I'm wondering if it's time to reconsider. Long ago, probably around late 2015 or early '16, I accepted the Marshmallow update on my S5, which this step basically cut off at the knees. With the increased resource demands of Marshmallow compared to Lollipop, almost everything stopped working-- until I rooted it and flashed a custom ROM. After everything worked fine, and I had made my phone great again. (After flashing the custom ROM, though my memory isn't 100% clear, I also modified it to use part of the storage card as virtual internal memory, which also helped.)
My current phone is still great, but is it possible that I could make it even greater? Especially with a spare phone to experiment with before I attempt making any changes to my daily driver?
There are two main reasons I've been thinking about this. First, I would like to get a couple more version updates if possible, either because a custom ROM would allow me to install the update, or because the custom ROM is already one or two versions above Android 9 which is on my phone now. I need to keep this phone going for a couple more years, because frankly a current model flagship mobile isn't in the budget. And looking at the specs of midmarket and low-end handsets, it's clear that if I went that route I would be taking a huge hit in memory, storage, and processing. I don't want to step that far back.
The second reason is that I'd love to have a Nexus type ROM. I think it was even before I had the S5, when I was using a cheap LG Optimus if memory serves, when I tried out a Nexus type ROM, and the improvement was phenomenal. Unless something changes, the availability of this type of ROM to flash would be essential before I start making any changes.
My daily driver S8 has been kept fully stock, so the KNOX bit hasn't been flipped. As I found when I bought it, there's really not much need to tinker with a flagship model because they have enough memory, storage, and processing muscle to perform well. In fact, mine still does very well considering all that I have crammed on to it, despite being almost seven years old. Everything still runs with the exception of one finance related app that says the new version cannot run on my phone. That's not a huge deal, I can still access my account on the browser. But if you have a seven-year-old device, when this happens, you can't help worrying that it's only the thin end of the wedge. What's the next thing that's going to stop working? What if it's something I use almost daily, like Google Maps GPS, and there is no viable browser-based workaround?
I pretty much stopped posting here when we got the S8s, because my main reason for being here was to talk about rooting and flashing custom ROMs, and I just didn't need to do that anymore. But now I'm wondering if it's time to reconsider. Long ago, probably around late 2015 or early '16, I accepted the Marshmallow update on my S5, which this step basically cut off at the knees. With the increased resource demands of Marshmallow compared to Lollipop, almost everything stopped working-- until I rooted it and flashed a custom ROM. After everything worked fine, and I had made my phone great again. (After flashing the custom ROM, though my memory isn't 100% clear, I also modified it to use part of the storage card as virtual internal memory, which also helped.)
My current phone is still great, but is it possible that I could make it even greater? Especially with a spare phone to experiment with before I attempt making any changes to my daily driver?
There are two main reasons I've been thinking about this. First, I would like to get a couple more version updates if possible, either because a custom ROM would allow me to install the update, or because the custom ROM is already one or two versions above Android 9 which is on my phone now. I need to keep this phone going for a couple more years, because frankly a current model flagship mobile isn't in the budget. And looking at the specs of midmarket and low-end handsets, it's clear that if I went that route I would be taking a huge hit in memory, storage, and processing. I don't want to step that far back.
The second reason is that I'd love to have a Nexus type ROM. I think it was even before I had the S5, when I was using a cheap LG Optimus if memory serves, when I tried out a Nexus type ROM, and the improvement was phenomenal. Unless something changes, the availability of this type of ROM to flash would be essential before I start making any changes.
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