Other device, comarisons to other devices, and upgrading phone discussion

[conchchowder]

Not impressed

I'm getting similar results with my rooted Note 3. My benchmarks are fantastic and my battery life is phenomenal. No need to make a lateral move. The screen is already great. I don't need better at this price. It isn't THAT much better...jt's like the G4 to the G5. They really could have done much better.

 

[Techngro]

Guys, my last three phones were Samsung (S2, Note, Note 3), but after seeing what Samsung released with the Note 4, I am actually kinda thinking about heading in a different direction this time. I want something larger than 5.7". I don't blame Samsung for not increasing the size of the Note 4. Not everyone wants a behemoth of a device. I've also realized after years of owning the Note line that many of the benefits of the Note I end up actually not using that often (stylus, multiview, removable battery, etc.)

I was actually kinda hoping that at IFA they would release the next version of the Galaxy Mega 6.3 with better specs, since I was considering that before I bought my Note 3 but was dissuaded by the low-end specs. But since I haven't heard anything on that front, I'm actually very impressed by what I've seen from the Ascend Mate 7. The design looks really nice, and the price is going to be reasonable.

Here's a quick video showing off the Ascend Mate 7. Tell me what you guys think. I don't have any experience with Huawei, so if you guys know about the reputation of the company, feel free to share your opinion. Also, I have to check out what kind of support it gets from devs here on XDA. Don't want to be stuck with a stock ROM forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayYcVWO3yLI

---------- Post added at 10:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 PM ----------

Damn, we have the note 4 on the horizon... What is everybody thinking!?
A. Jump on the next big thing, like the best 'galaxy' note 4 like we've been doing since galaxy 2, or...
B. Wait to see what's on the horizon. Like, I know Sony has some new shiz coming in the form of z3. And what about a cheap one plus 2!? I know I'm leaving a lot out here..

What are you all thinking?

I would've made a new thread asking this in more detail within the General section BUT I'm positive I would be shot down and redirected to this thread.

I'm looking at the Ascend Mate 7.

 

[blade7840]

I had the Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, 2 Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. I'm seriously thinking about skipping the Note 4. It has nice specs. But their software is getting dated. I'm thinking about upgrading to LG G3 and waiting for Note 5 next year.

 

[Bataga]

Anyone else man enough to admit they're jumping ship to the iphone 6 plus? I am! I'm not a developer by any means so an android phone isn't that important anymore. Still have android devices just not a daily driver phone anymore.

 

[Juanito216]

I'm gonna try to stay put for a while, if I get another main phone then it most likely might be another Note device (Note 4 or 5? I don't know). The Note 3 is strong. There's no need to switch to another phone. Not thinking about any iPhone that doesn't even touch the current N3, and don't even bring up the Note 4.

 

[jazzmachine]

I saw an article today (can't remember which site it was), where (for kicks) the author did a comparison between the iPhone 6 and the Android device most similar to it based solely on the specs of the hardware. Think for a sec and make a guess...














Did you guess a somewhat recently released phone? Bad news if so, since the Nexus 4 (!) dropped in 2012. That the phone that won the honor of going up against Apple's new shiny (obviously resulting in a massacre). However, I found it pretty interesting that looking at a massive spreadsheet with every Android device ever, the phone with the closest specs (in terms of these two having the most boxes filled with the same value, so no bonus points for the CPU or anything) was made for Google itself 2 years ago... I'm sure it would have been a closer fight if the iPhone didn't still just have one gig of RAM, which is kind "for reals?" ya know, in this day and age, and such...

 

[Bataga]

I saw an article today (can't remember which site it was), where (for kicks) the author did a comparison between the iPhone 6 and the Android device most similar to it based solely on the specs of the hardware. Think for a sec and make a guess...














Did you guess a somewhat recently released phone? Bad news if so, since the Nexus 4 (!) dropped in 2012. That the phone that won the honor of going up against Apple's new shiny (obviously resulting in a massacre). However, I found it pretty interesting that looking at a massive spreadsheet with every Android device ever, the phone with the closest specs (in terms of these two having the most boxes filled with the same value, so no bonus points for the CPU or anything) was made for Google itself 2 years ago... I'm sure it would have been a closer fight if the iPhone didn't still just have one gig of RAM, which is kind "for reals?" ya know, in this day and age, and such...

I read one too. It's hard to compare in some cases though. Take display for instance, the ppi is huge on the n4 but you'll never see the difference (imo) because of the retina technology. The 1gb ram is retarded, but it can multi task like a mofo. My kids run tons of apps on my wife's iPad without closing them out and we can't tell the difference.

For me, I've always had issues running any type of aosp rom going back to my captivate. Nothing major but annoying stuff that are normally fixed by the devs but would piss my wife off on her phone every time. I'm just ready for a change. I'll jailbreak it and install a theme and I'll be all good. Still on JUMP so I'll get rid of it if it sucks.

 

[cuezaireekaa]

I read one too. It's hard to compare in some cases though. Take display for instance, the ppi is huge on the n4 but you'll never see the difference (imo) because of the retina technology. The 1gb ram is retarded, but it can multi task like a mofo. My kids run tons of apps on my wife's iPad without closing them out and we can't tell the difference.

For me, I've always had issues running any type of aosp rom going back to my captivate. Nothing major but annoying stuff that are normally fixed by the devs but would piss my wife off on her phone every time. I'm just ready for a change. I'll jailbreak it and install a theme and I'll be all good. Still on JUMP so I'll get rid of it if it sucks.

I hope it works out for you.

Since you're being honest here and saying you're gonna jump to iPhone, (which I commend) would you be honest with us when you use it? Tell us in this thread if it's worthy or if it's behind the note 3 and your opinion as well of the phone for comparison sake?

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

[Bataga]

I hope it works out for you.

Since you're being honest here and saying you're gonna jump to iPhone, (which I commend) would you be honest with us when you use it? Tell us in this thread if it's worthy or if it's behind the note 3 and your opinion as well of the phone for comparison sake?

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

Absolutely! My brother may end up getting the edge too so hopefully i get a good comparison. He still has the note 3 so ill play with them side by side and see what i like and don't like.

 

[pete4k]

I would really like you to explain to me what retina technology is. I always thought it was some marketing BS name for higher quality ordinary LCD technology. I mean we have TFT LCD screen technology, then we have IPS LCD technology, what does it mean for the screen to be retina? BTW retina is light sensitive part of the eye and as a name for technology is meaningless as compared for example to Thin Film Transistor or In Plane Switching type LCD. I guess LG and Samsung should call their displays Super retina, or something.
I would speculate that if you don't see the difference between higher resolution screens it is because of particular person's eye sight or resolution being so high that's beyond human's eye capability in general.

 

[jazzmachine]

I read one too. It's hard to compare in some cases though. Take display for instance, the ppi is huge on the n4 but you'll never see the difference (imo) because of the retina technology. The 1gb ram is retarded, but it can multi task like a mofo. My kids run tons of apps on my wife's iPad without closing them out and we can't tell the difference.

For me, I've always had issues running any type of aosp rom going back to my captivate. Nothing major but annoying stuff that are normally fixed by the devs but would piss my wife off on her phone every time. I'm just ready for a change. I'll jailbreak it and install a theme and I'll be all good. Still on JUMP so I'll get rid of it if it sucks.

All valid points, and at least you know what you're getting into :good:

Personally, I had the iPhone OG - 4, ALWAYS jailbroken, etc. before I decided to ditch my 4 for a Note II, on which I discovered Tweaked and started getting pretty deeply into Android. Maybe a year or more after that, my Dad, who is strictly Apple (works in the field) cracked the screen very minorly, not affecting use at all, but he wanted to upgrade anyway so just went and picked up the new at the time "Retina" iPad and offered the completely usable iPad 2 to me. As it turned out, I picked it up 2 days after the current jailbreak exploit was patched and the iPad firmware auto-updated it, making it unjailbreakable untill ?? (all I know is not before it got stolen ) I mean, free iPad, why not? I've got a Note 8, but I'm sure I could use it for something... except the dullness of the stock IOS UI pretty much killed the desire to. This was seriously the first time in YEARS that I had used un-jailbroken IOS (I think this was soon before v7 was released) and it is (was?) so incredibly mind-numbingly boring! I mean, truly wtf kind of UI consists solely and unmodifiably of the Applications directory, which is the only part of the system you can touch, graphically rendered in a static grid which can be conveniently arranged into folders that have a hard limit on how many elements they complain. That pretty much accounts for the alleged RAM requirements (although, I'm thoroughly unconvinced that Apple couldn't increase the performance of existing software, err - "apps", or allow a higher level of, for ex., "console-quality" games by cutting just a bit into their margin for an extra gig of memory or at least freakin 512kb). So yeah, that stock (or even jailbroken, which adds a plethora of options including themeing) iOS vs. whatever Android launcher with numerous pages packed with widgets, live wallpaper, etc, etc. obviously the latter REQUIRES more RAM, but that doesn't even remotely imply that IOS apps wouldn't benefit / be more capable if they had more memory to make use of. From my Android-centric perspective, it makes even less sense since that's the platform that now completely runs on 64 bit architecture and is able to address more RAM but just doesn't. I mean, my desktop PC runs OK on 8 gigs, but it runs a HELL of a lot better on 16.

I think it boils down to: IOS requires only 1 GB and it obviously runs fine, so there's no "perceived need" for additional memory (especially considering the stereotypical iOS user-base - which clearly doesn't include you, Bataga ) So here we are at the ol' debate between "what it needs" and "what it can use". I doubt many would argue against the notion that doubling the RAM on the iPhone would improve the performance and software capabilities considerably. IOW, give people a taste of iOS on an iPhone 6 with 2 gigs, then try to remove that extra gig - call it a "complimentary upgrade" and Apple Store lines will circle blocks... obviously device takes a performance hit, and they now need 2 gigs of RAM because the complimentary "upgrade" drastically reduced the performance metrics of their phone. What is Apple's deal with memory anyway... freaking soldering it into Macbook Airs just so they can charge like 4x retail for an extra 4 GB DIMM? I like OS X and sometimes run it in a VM or decreasingly frequently on bare metal (PC is self-built Hackintosh). I've changed GPUs on this specific machine 3 times (ending up with a GTX 660 that I'm QUITE happy with)... try switching out the GPU on an Apple machine... I don't even know if you can do it on the newest MacPros anymore and if you can, you need the Apple specific version (which is only slightly different, but something like a c-note more than the regular "reference model" or whatever). Anyway, good luck man. Hope the 6 treats you well (and is jailbreakable)

 

[Bataga]

Well, I canceled my pre-order for the iPhone 6+. The more i read, the worse i felt about my decision. I'm about 90% sure I'm gonna wait for the next Nexus phone which hopefully comes with the 5.9 screen.

 

[LightYagmai]

Don't really post much or come on here that often so don't kill me over my question please. Is their any development for Android L for the note3? I work a lot so I don't know what is going on with it. Sorry if it's been asked already.

 

[ttabbal]

Don't really post much or come on here that often so don't kill me over my question please. Is their any development for Android L for the note3? I work a lot so I don't know what is going on with it. Sorry if it's been asked already.

No. It hasn't been released by Google yet. Until the source code is released to AOSP, don't expect anything at all to happen. And it will take some time for CM and other groups to get the device trees all set up.

I doubt Samsung will release an update to L until after the Note 4 gets it. That's just how they usually do things. We will probably have CM nighties before that happens. I'm not in any huge rush. L is going to break a lot of stuff I use frequently, so I'd probably wait for all that to get sorted before updating anyway.

 

[LightYagmai]

No. It hasn't been released by Google yet. Until the source code is released to AOSP, don't expect anything at all to happen. And it will take some time for CM and other groups to get the device trees all set up.

I doubt Samsung will release an update to L until after the Note 4 gets it. That's just how they usually do things. We will probably have CM nighties before that happens. I'm not in any huge rush. L is going to break a lot of stuff I use frequently, so I'd probably wait for all that to get sorted before updating anyway.

Oh ok,that clears up a lot for me, thanks. I'm still looking forward to what it'll bring.

 

[jazzmachine]

Don't really post much or come on here that often so don't kill me over my question please. Is their any development for Android L for the note3? I work a lot so I don't know what is going on with it. Sorry if it's been asked already.

Hi LightYagami, not to worry. Very few deaths occur as a result directly because of activities that take place here I could certainly imagine wondering about that if I didn't have the... luxury(?) of visiting this forum as much as I do (it's really a very friendly and helpful community, and probably the best place to get an 'informed' answer to that question).

To answer your question, there's not yet any development of Android L for the Note 3 (particularly the T-Mobile variant) that is yet available for public use. I have no idea when that will become available, but as soon as it is, I would imagine that the place to find it would be in one of the top threads (i.e. most discussed) in either the Android Development or Original Android Development forums.

Personally, I prefer to stick to TouchWiz-based ROMs in order to maintain proper function of the phone's native features. The ROM versions based on Samsung's TouchWiz are limited by the firmware versions that are released specifically by T-Mobile. For example, you may have seen that Sprint Note 3's are receiving a new version of firmware that will bump them up to 4.4.4. T-Mobile users however, just received our third update to version 4.4.2 (currently the firmware version ending in NF9) and there is talk that we'll receive yet another update within a few weeks that will remain on 4.4.2 (but not likely any less "current" than the version of 4.4.4 released by Sprint). Anyway, of the TW based ROMs, my personal favorite is called Tweaked, which I feel pretty confident that anyone who feels negatively about TouchWiz would change their opinion after trying out Tweaked for a bit.

There are also ROMs developed that aren't based on TouchWiz but instead based on the Android Open Source Project (for example), which many people prefer because they are variations of pure 'vanilla' Android rather than Samsung's TouchWiz skin (this is generally my preference on devices that don't have as many custom specialized features as the Note 3, which are generally sacrificed to some degree when using a ROM that isn't based on Samsung's skinned version of Android). These ROMs generally are based on a newer version of Android, their development being limited by the point that the AOSP is at on our device.

Hopefully that answered your question and gave you some kind of idea of what you can expect. To summarize, Android L will likely come to the Note 3 relatively soon, but no preview suitable for public use is yet available. Not sure if my reference to various ROMs is something that you're familiar with, but you can learn quickly by browsing around the forum

 

[kenq2001]

I'm not sure if it was discussed, is anyone interested in Huawei ascend Mate 7? Will it support LTEs for U.S. carriers? Just wanted to get your insights. Thanks.

 

[LightYagmai]

Hi LightYagami, not to worry. Very few deaths occur as a result directly because of activities that take place here I could certainly imagine wondering about that if I didn't have the... luxury(?) of visiting this forum as much as I do (it's really a very friendly and helpful community, and probably the best place to get an 'informed' answer to that question).

To answer your question, there's not yet any development of Android L for the Note 3 (particularly the T-Mobile variant) that is yet available for public use. I have no idea when that will become available, but as soon as it is, I would imagine that the place to find it would be in one of the top threads (i.e. most discussed) in either the Android Development or Original Android Development forums.

Personally, I prefer to stick to TouchWiz-based ROMs in order to maintain proper function of the phone's native features. The ROM versions based on Samsung's TouchWiz are limited by the firmware versions that are released specifically by T-Mobile. For example, you may have seen that Sprint Note 3's are receiving a new version of firmware that will bump them up to 4.4.4. T-Mobile users however, just received our third update to version 4.4.2 (currently the firmware version ending in NF9) and there is talk that we'll receive yet another update within a few weeks that will remain on 4.4.2 (but not likely any less "current" than the version of 4.4.4 released by Sprint). Anyway, of the TW based ROMs, my personal favorite is called Tweaked, which I feel pretty confident that anyone who feels negatively about TouchWiz would change their opinion after trying out Tweaked for a bit.

There are also ROMs developed that aren't based on TouchWiz but instead based on the Android Open Source Project (for example), which many people prefer because they are variations of pure 'vanilla' Android rather than Samsung's TouchWiz skin (this is generally my preference on devices that don't have as many custom specialized features as the Note 3, which are generally sacrificed to some degree when using a ROM that isn't based on Samsung's skinned version of Android). These ROMs generally are based on a newer version of Android, their development being limited by the point that the AOSP is at on our device.

Hopefully that answered your question and gave you some kind of idea of what you can expect. To summarize, Android L will likely come to the Note 3 relatively soon, but no preview suitable for public use is yet available. Not sure if my reference to various ROMs is something that you're familiar with, but you can learn quickly by browsing around the forum

I'm running tweaked also, is their an AOSP or Cm theme for the rom? Also thanks for all all the information, it's extremely useful, I'll probably be reading over it a few times. To fully remember it all, of course.

 

[jazzmachine]

I'm running tweaked also, is their an AOSP or Cm theme for the rom? Also thanks for all all the information, it's extremely useful, I'll probably be reading over it a few times. To fully remember it all, of course.

There is actually a really nice AOSP theme, available in different colors made by @foreverloco. It's in the Themes and Apps subsection, but here's a direct link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2676315 There are separate themes for stock deodexed and Tweaked, so make sure that whichever theme you pick, the one that you download is the Tweaked version. Enjoy! :good:

 

[Roflopolis]

I'm not sure if it was discussed, is anyone interested in Huawei ascend Mate 7? Will it support LTEs for U.S. carriers? Just wanted to get your insights. Thanks.

Googled it and its a very pretty looking phone, but I have always heard bad things about that brand. Build quality on past phones being bad and what not