Hello everybody!
OK! First of all, we all want to say (and hit the button) THANKS to TamsuiCM11 members and to vishal_android freak from CarbonRom Dev Team, who worked so hard in porting the last iteration of Android: KitKat! Without their effort, nothing of this could happen!
Our respect to you guys!!! :angel:
We are all excited with this! Our little tapioca now has Android 4.4.2! That's great! But, we all have to remember this has just begun... The ROM is in BETA stage, so we all have to be patient with some things that CarbonRom lacks or fails...
About performance, it runs well, a little bit laggy sometimes with some transitions... but nothing important anyway. It's usable as a daily driver until now. You can receive and send SMS, use WhatsApp or other messenger app. You'll not be able to send MMS, and microphone is not working right now, so calls are out of the scene... System only restarted by itself just once in my case.
RECCOMENDATION!: If you don't know where to find GAPPS for this ROM, use this ones... I've used them, they gave me no problems (except that Set Up Wizzard problem... but it's not big deal! Read below on this post in LAYOUT PROBLEMS to find out how to deal with it! It's very easy!)
LINKS TO GAPPS HERE!!!
I TESTED PERFORMANCE WITH ANTUTU BENCHMARK. RESULTS:
In Stock firmware 4.22 without any change:
In CM10 from FXP:
Now, in KitKat, Using Dalvik Virtual Machine:
And now again in KitKat, but using ART runtime. It was better than expected, considering ART is experimental:
ATTENTION!: When you turn from Dalvik to ART, the device will restart and will take up to 20 or 25 minutes to optimize all the apps to work now on ART. So if you give it a try, dont get upset if your device takes a LOT OF TIME to boot! Remember that it has to "rebuild" everything related with the apps you have. Don't be afraid, you wont lose NO DATA! Dalvik is set by default, to change it to ART, go to Settings > Developer options > Runtime and select ART. (If you can't find Developer options, continue reading, I'll explain it below). And Xposed Installer may give problems when trying to enable ART. If you plan to install it, you'll only have to use Dalvik.
NOW, LETS TALK ABOUT BUGS IN THIS ROM:
I TESTED PERFORMANCE WITH ANTUTU BENCHMARK. RESULTS:
In Stock firmware 4.22 without any change:
In CM10 from FXP:
Now, in KitKat, Using Dalvik Virtual Machine:
And now again in KitKat, but using ART runtime. It was better than expected, considering ART is experimental:
ATTENTION!: When you turn from Dalvik to ART, the device will restart and will take up to 20 or 25 minutes to optimize all the apps to work now on ART. So if you give it a try, dont get upset if your device takes a LOT OF TIME to boot! Remember that it has to "rebuild" everything related with the apps you have. Don't be afraid, you wont lose NO DATA! Dalvik is set by default, to change it to ART, go to Settings > Developer options > Runtime and select ART. (If you can't find Developer options, continue reading, I'll explain it below). And Xposed Installer may give problems when trying to enable ART. If you plan to install it, you'll only have to use Dalvik.
NOW, LETS TALK ABOUT BUGS IN THIS ROM:
* LED WORKS BAD ON STARTUP: When you turn on the phone the led tells you that the device is turning on. After the boot process ends, and meanwhile the screen is on, the led will continue on in red color.
* PARTIAL SOLUTION: Lock the phone and unlock it. Thats it!
* WAKE UP BUG: You will face this when you lock the phone. If you try to unlock the device, it wont wake up, I mean, the screen wont turn on. That is very annoying if you have new sms to read.
* PARTIAL SOLUTION: Set the brightness at 25% or 30%. If you put the brightness higher than that, you'll face the wake up bug!
* SOUND IS MISSING: Yes, remember that this ROM is in early BETA stage. So, if you expect to use the ROM to listen to music, or to use the alarm, maybe you'll have to consider back to stock or CM10. No sound will be played by the device.
* PARTIAL SOLUTION: Just wait meanwhile the devs work on it! It takes a lot to fix things like that.
* I WANNA TAKE PHOTOS BUT... camera doesn't work right now!
* PARTIAL SOLUTION: Wait again... If you download another camera app from Play Store it wont work either.
* THE KEYBOARD SUDDENLY STOPS WHEN YOU ARE WRITING AND YOU CAN'T CONTINUE WRITING: To see it again you need to close the app from multitasking screen.
*PARTIAL SOLUTION: The "swipe to write" function is giving trouble. Maybe when you were writing you slide your finger, that activated the "swipe to write" function, and that stopped the keyboard. Just disable that function, and you're done!
* SOME LAYOUT PROBLEMS: If you install Gapps, in the "Choose language" section, the setup wizzard will show the "next page" button beneath Emergency call button. That happens if you have the phone vertically.
* PARTIAL SOLUTION: But if you put the device in landscape mode, you'll be able to reach the Next page button and continue with the setup wizzard.
* OTHER PROBLEMS
* In the power menu, sometimes this happens:
* Another thing that sometimes fails is the multitask message "No recent apps", sometimes it appears as corrupted text! I dont have a screenshot for it, but I mean this one:
* The menu on Settings > Carbon Fibers > Device tunables is empty, because all the options it brings in CarbonRom wont work on our tipo, so it's not a bug!
* If you turn on Airplane mode, after disabling it, phone process will unfortunately stop a couple of times... In my case, it stopped just twice, but if you get a lot of stops, you'll need to restart the device.
* The Extended desktop on power menu doesn't work.
* The ROM is locked on 32 fps only.
* For some people, to get the phone charging with the USB, enable USB as described below...
* Microphone during calls or trying to speak to Google Now doesn't works.
* For some reason, nobody was able to add widgets to lockscreen, we can't find the button!
* The Messages app doesn't bring a widget like the one in CM10, I miss that feature... :crying:
* Sometimes WiFi disconnects, displaying the "WiFi hotspot available" again. If you select your WiFi hotspot, you'll have to enter the password again.
* Hard Gaming is not possible. Games like Modern Combat will force close.
* Sometimes, the Recent apps screen is empty althought it should show the recent apps. This happens in ART runtime. You should reboot the device to get it to work.
SOME THINGS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT AND SOME TIPS:
* Where the ***** is Developer options menu?
I don't know why it is hidden but, we are nobody to question CM or Google to put this as a hidden menu. To find it:
Go to Settings > About phone and find the Build number text. And you have to do what you do to see the easter egg! Tap in Build number several times and you'll see a toast saying "Congratulations! You're now a developer!" or something like that. Go back and now in Settings you'll always find the Developer options menu when it was in other CM10 ROMs. DONE!
* How to connect the phone to a PC via USB?
As you can't use the camera, you can't either use Airdroid. So you want to connect the device with the USB, but it doesn't connect! OK! You have to do this:
Go to Settings > Storage then tap the options button and select USB computer connection. Then select Mass storage (UMS) to use as an USB disk. DONE!
* What happened with the transluscent status bar?
You install this ROM expecting to see the great KitKat UI but then you realize that the transluscent status bar is missing!
Go to Settings > Performance and select Force high-end graphics, then reboot the device. DONE! You'll get this:
* I want a Nexus 5! How I enable the navigation bar?
It's just for fun, but you can enable it this way:
Go to Settings > Carbon fibers > Navigation bar and select, obviously, Enable navigation bar. You can also set dimensions and you can select if you want the nav bar down in landscape mode or if you want to see it at the right side.
CONCLUSION
We are in front of a great ROM! Great overall performance, neat & clean UI, no bloatware and good battery life. We are expecting to see how it evolves into a great KitKat ROM for our devices. Xperia J, E, Miro and tipo dual surely will get a piece of KitKat too! Just be patient!
So guys, report bugs so Devs can take a look!
Now, I say goodbye with my little Nexus 5 in my hands
CHEERS!!
:cyclops:
Who helped with the bug search?
* vishal_android freak
* abstrkt1337
* MarckozZ
Now, I say goodbye with my little Nexus 5 in my hands
CHEERS!!
:cyclops:
Who helped with the bug search?
* vishal_android freak
* abstrkt1337
* MarckozZ
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