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So I found a brand new Xperia SP at a local retailer and I like it's unique looks and slick pocketable size,
but I don't know how usable it could be in 2018, Android never been my thing but it's running Jellybeen which has I think has aged now..
So in brief how usable will it be (with the official rom) given that my usage is fairly light and revolves around:
1. Most importantly IMAP Email (Anyone kindly confirm that the mail client still works nowadays).
2.Some light web browsing (Stack overflow, Twitter, Youtube (Rarely)), How is it's web performance overall ?
3.Some music playing and Light PDF Viewing (My Nokia E66 handles those quite easily, So I think it will have no problem).
As I said I am not good with Android so I won't be able to Flash ROMs, Root, etc...
So we are talking official ROM as is..
Any Thoughts
Hi !
I used the Xperia SP as a daily driver last year for a few months, mostly because I bought some other cheap chinese phone and it had ****ty ROM - so before I found new ROM, I switched to Xperia SP for some time. Here's what I think :
1. Most importantly IMAP Email (Anyone kindly confirm that the mail client still works nowadays).
I'm pretty sure it will work without problems, in case you faced anything not working you can install some alternative e-mail client from the Play Store, like Aquamail (brilliant piece of software, and free for up to 2 e-mail accounts)
2.Some light web browsing (Stack overflow, Twitter, Youtube (Rarely)), How is it's web performance overall ?
For this it should be also OK, and actually I'd recommend using Firefox Focus (exceptionally light browser with built-in advertising filter!)
3.Some music playing and Light PDF Viewing (My Nokia E66 handles those quite easily, So I think it will have no problem).
Music sound absolutely great on this phone, as it is always for Sony devices. PDFs... no problem.
The major problem might be overweight set of Google apps. They cause weaker phones to slow down, so at the beginning it's actually good to spend some time on actual configuration of the phone (de-bloating, switching off unnecessary things etc.)
And it would be really nice to consider flashing Lineage 14.1 or 15.1 switched to Android Go. It's really not that difficult, but gives great results.
And actually it's possible to use the phone without Google Apps at all (this is what I did) - it depends on your needs. First, think about what actually would you like to use the phone for, and it might come out that you don't need Google at all (for the things you mentioned, I don't think you need it...)
Hi, I don't recommend this phone with 4.3 stock ROM, but I do recommend it with 6.0 AOSP or CyanogenMod, it just works far more better (Nougat and Oreo are worse). So, it depends if you want to try installing a custom ROM, it's not so hard, and if you want, I can try helping you with it
actually xperia sp can only run smooth without gapps, but i suffer alot because of it, if you have a better phone then you could use xperia sp for app development if u are a dev or as spare phone
You can use it without Gapps pretty smooth enough for daily basis on even Android 9.0 Pie
Then, wich is the best Rom for Xperia SP (Faster, good Batery, and daily use)
Fast, daily, battery friendly
I have used for this experience stable XenonHD 8.1. Best rom i ever had ! You dont need any tweaks, this rom is pretty fast, battery friendly and good daily experience. Plus - you can choose no navbar but gestures. Newest root solution magisk 20.1 - no issues and try with MindGapps or only Yalp Store apk.
If you turn on Ambient Display, battery drain will be knowable. I will recommend turn this function off.
My second will be LineageOS 15.1.
But lineage 15.1 have newest security updates, obviously i prefer XenonHD. Try by yourself and reply to me your exp and comparison.
Too good is AOSP-CAF 7.0, this rom have things straight from hardware compositioner (Qualcomm), so you can have fun with their options and is pretty fast.
I have tried new stable AOSP 9 and LineageOS 16.0, but i cant mark it stable, because they have still some issues, what you see after some days using, see my comment at AOSP 9, we must wait for some update.
So after seeing announcements about Project Treble and GSI floating about the internet I thought I'd look for a version to use on my Honor 9 Lite and came across this thread:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/project-treble/trebleenabled-device-discussion/android-pie-kirin-guys-t3830420
Users have had Android Pie running on a honor 7X so I thought there can't be that much difference between the 2 devices, so why not give it a try? If it goes wrong I can always use my stock backup.
So I flashed as per the instructions in that post and it works, really well. So much so that I'm gonna keep it as a daily driver.
Be careful which version of Gapps you use, the BitGapps mentioned in the post has been discontinued by the Dev, I initially tried OpenGapps but it was for 8.0 so failed to install.
If you search around you can still find the last version of BitGapps that was released, and is version 9.0 compatible.
What's Good
Installs pretty quick
Fast, much faster than EMUI - Could be a Placebo effect, but general use is very snappy and downloads/app installs seem very quick
Wi-Fi working fine
Bluetooth working fine, confirmed on Ticwatch and Car radio
Mobile data works fine
Finger print reader works fine
Sound and phone calls work fine
What's not so Good
This Rom is based off AOSP, don't expect any of the Huawei/EMUI functions or features.
On first boot the ROM is bare bones, hardly any apps installed, looks like an old version of Android rather than a shiny new one.
You have to enable guestures before the swipe navbar appears
You'll have to use a 3rd party launcher to get the full Android P look. The Quickstep launcher in this version of AOSP has sqaure icons and certain options like wallpaper/widgets etc just FC. - I chose Lawnchair for this.
Hotspot doesn't work at all, it just disables wi-fi then FC
You may have to mess around with the display settings to make things align correctly, for some reason everything seemed to be shifted to the left edge. I chose small display size with large font size to smooth it out
Camera obviously, same issues as we had on the 8.0 roms, banding/poor tracking/poor quality (Biggest downside) I've not rooted, so not tried any of the camera ports. Open Camera app has the same issues.
Sound over bluetooth was distorted (not confirmed, could be my car radio)
Some graphical glitches. Stutters & frame drops when using task switcher, switching to chrome from recents has a lag/distorted effect and menus appear out of focus and take a second or two to correct
Any Questions I'll try to answer as best as I can.
I've tried many different gsi images on my H9L. Most did make my phone 'feel' faster, I guess mainly due to the overhead EMUI takes and eliminating it does remove some burden from the phone. However, that's where the advantages stopped. Many of the issues you mention on Pie are on Oreo also. I had too many issues to overcome and make it 'daily driver' usable that it just wasn't worth it, so went back to stock and removed as much huawei/honor stuff as i could via root, then removed root. This seems to give me best of both worlds, i.e. close to vanilla android but everything, hardware wise, just works as intended. Since I have BL unlocked and TWRP working i can also keep updating, via HURupdater, with official updates for as long as huawei/honor keep posting updates; e.g. currently on B135 with Aug security patches, that is just as good as any GSI image now (Aug18).
Hi guys,
I just bought this phone and tried some custom rom, and it works perfectly!
I have just a couple of questions about the camera,
How can I know if, for example, the google camera port is using the telelens instead the main camera?
I just love to have the pixel experience on my mi8 but, I want also to be able to use all the cameras in my phone. I also searched the 4k60fps option in google camera or im ANXCamera but the maximum setting is 4k30fps.
I tried to learn something more in some thread and i found that many people talks about the impossible to access the second camera through the api2.
I'm honest, I don't have the knowledge to understand all that, so I'm asking you, did you know some guide that can help me out?
I just want to know if with an aosp rom is possibile to access the full potential of mi8 camera, nothing else. I wish I could use some google experience instead the miui but with a complete camera app.
Thank you
Thomas
Has someone an idea why there is no sign of a custom ROM? I mean the phone is for a longer time on the market, we have a working TWRP and its the top of MI 11 lineup...
I would like too see custom ROMs because the original is full of annoying bugs.
Good question... there have been several threads now with a similar topic, none of them are being discussed thorougly. Try this one...
Lineage OS
Just a question for the future. Are there custom roms like Lineage OS coming for Mi 11 Ultra?
forum.xda-developers.com
I don't think custom roms will be easily doable on this device, especially the rear screen driver will be a pain in the ass
The rear display is almost useless. So i dont care about it. I mean, the display is from the watch but it can NOTHING. A whatsapp message will be showed for a few seconds, but i cant read it again. I cant check who called me (missed call), it doesnt work wit other messengers and so on.
RheinPirat said:
The rear display is almost useless. So i dont care about it. I mean, the display is from the watch but it can NOTHING. A whatsapp message will be showed for a few seconds, but i cant read it again. I cant check who called me (missed call), it doesnt work wit other messengers and so on.
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The rear screen functionality or lack thereof is nearly the worst thing about the phone
The only time I notice it's there is when it makes my Spotify songs skip by accident...
RheinPirat said:
The rear display is almost useless. So i dont care about it. I mean, the display is from the watch but it can NOTHING. A whatsapp message will be showed for a few seconds, but i cant read it again. I cant check who called me (missed call), it doesnt work wit other messengers and so on.
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Click to collapse
Same here... I was reminded that the rear screen existed by accident. In addidtion to being utterly useless.
@xNAPx I'm not exactly sure about that statement. First off, there are devices that have an A/B-Partition-configuration and are running Lineageos and TWRP. Second, the Kernel and Vendor are available. Only extracting proprierity blobs might be an issue, meaning i might be unable to do it, but someone with more experience might be lucky. All in all, i don't see the problem with it.
Maybe it would be wise to think outside the box and try different solutions to get custom roms after all... maybe open up a donation pool for someone to look into it.
I don't have a mi 11 ultra but I find myself having kinda the same problem I have a note 20 ultra 5g we have twrp available but if you look at the development thread you won't find any custom roms. I honestly fear the custom rom community is dying out which is a shame as I think it's the best part of android..
Funny thing is,i f I go into the one plus 3/3t (THREE) thread, you still find updates for custom roms lol. A 5yo device.... (My previous phone before moving to Mi 11 Ultra)
xNAPx said:
Funny thing is,i f I go into the one plus 3/3t (THREE) thread, you still find updates for custom roms lol. A 5yo device.... (My previous phone before moving to Mi 11 Ultra)
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Click to collapse
Over the years it has become more troublesome to unlock bootloaders etc and install custom ROMs and root modifications and in the old days the apps weren't smart enough to know if your phone was rooted but now many of them can detect a rooted phone and won't work (especially finance apps)
There are ways around the problem but most people don't have the time because they just want a phone that works (and don't have time to data wipe and reinstall everything over and over)
I expect this to get worse as Google is going to prevent side loading apps from alternative sources with a new app signature policy I was reading about
Samsung have improved the android experience a lot, following companies like OnePlus w cleaner interface and more features work out of the box that used to need a custom ROM to enable
speedtripler said:
Over the years it has become more troublesome to unlock bootloaders etc and install custom ROMs and root modifications and in the old days the apps weren't smart enough to know if your phone was rooted but now many of them can detect a rooted phone and won't work (especially finance apps)
There are ways around the problem but most people don't have the time because they just want a phone that works (and don't have time to data wipe and reinstall everything over and over)
I expect this to get worse as Google is going to prevent side loading apps from alternative sources with a new app signature policy I was reading about
Samsung have improved the android experience a lot, following companies like OnePlus w cleaner interface and more features work out of the box that used to need a custom ROM to enable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're absolutely right.. It's a shame but it's going that way to be honest with my note 20 between hex theme engine and the goodlock app thingy from Samsung this is the first phone i've had in 10 years I didn't find a need to root (yet) so I guess we have that things working better out of the box
Well whatever they do, these companies always give phone full of bloated **** and ads. Even with root getting rid of some apps gives you bootloops. A custom ROM will always be clean and minimal. My latest AOSP ROM on One plus 3 was having only 170 apps and services in total, my Mi 11 Ultra over 300. I don't know why people use financial apps while you can do everything with your browser. But it is not this the point.At least someone with knowledge and experience could at least find ways to clean a stock ROM to AOSP or giving custom versions. I know there is Xiaomi.EU but it is based exclusively on China Version and also is plenty of stock services.
mi 10 ultra took awhile to get the first custom roms
RheinPirat said:
Has someone an idea why there is no sign of a custom ROM? I mean the phone is for a longer time on the market, we have a working TWRP and its the top of MI 11 lineup...
I would like too see custom ROMs because the original is full of annoying bugs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been a member of this website for several years, back then there was a fibrant community of phone enthusiats and developers here. That doesn't appear to be the case any longer. Most stock roms today have many of the features that people used third party, custom roms for and fewer manufacturers today allow the bootloader to be unlocked. So with less demand, there are fewer devs.
xNAPx said:
Well whatever they do, these companies always give phone full of bloated **** and ads. Even with root getting rid of some apps gives you bootloops. A custom ROM will always be clean and minimal. My latest AOSP ROM on One plus 3 was having only 170 apps and services in total, my Mi 11 Ultra over 300. I don't know why people use financial apps while you can do everything with your browser. But it is not this the point.At least someone with knowledge and experience could at least find ways to clean a stock ROM to AOSP or giving custom versions. I know there is Xiaomi.EU but it is based exclusively on China Version and also is plenty of stock services.
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Ads?
I haven't seen an ad yet...
You must be doing something drastically wrong
Any miui apps that eu ROM devs leave in could be removed and replaced with similar ones from the playstore, like calculator, calendar, dialer, sms messages, contacts, file explorer, gallery etc
These are all critical for a fully functional device but if you don't like them you can remove them via adb and add some that you prefer from the playstore
AFAIK, the kernel source code is indeed out so we're really just missing developers that own this phone. Unfortunately, I'm learning python and not android related coding so as much as I want to start to make a custom rom, I wouldn't be able to do so till I finished learning python.
This link seems to be a good start
EDIT: Crap. You're going to have to do this as well to create the device tree for lineage os
speedtripler said:
Ads?
I haven't seen an ad yet...
You must be doing something drastically wrong
Any miui apps that eu ROM devs leave in could be removed and replaced with similar ones from the playstore, like calculator, calendar, dialer, sms messages, contacts, file explorer, gallery etc
These are all critical for a fully functional device but if you don't like them you can remove them via adb and add some that you prefer from the playstore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Xiaomi, EU rom has all ads removed plus a majority can be disabled and if you root the phone, all can be disabled/removed. The stock EEA and Global roms have ads, but during the setup process, you can opt-out of getting them. All apps can either be removed or disabled using ADB command's. Also comparing the overall size of a rom from a old OnePlus 3 to a rom from the Mi 11 Ultra is totally unfair, as well as, unrealistic, as total size of a rom has nothing to do with the amount of bloat it may contain. Those extra files are because of the extra features in today's roms. They could be optimization/ram management files or dark mode/customization files or files related to the screen refresh rate, AOD, etc... All features that were unavailable in a OnePlus 3 era rom.
I would also like to point out that in order to do a well done custom/lineage rom, that person needs to have/buy the device or be donate to them and were talking about a expensive phone.
As a owner, I would be biases if i say i would be interested in this having custom roms, on the other hand its a phone that has a lot of potential and a lot of road for bug fixing stuff.
Luckily the same rom can be use for either Mi 11 Pro or Mi 11 Ultra since they share similarities and some model device name, and someone with the expertise goes for it.
i'm also sad there is no custom rom, just bought mi 11 ultra 3 days ago, and in process of unlocking it {china rom} with lots of crazy chinese lines that i didn't understand, if only china rom would automatically translate everything when i switched the language to english, i would prefer china rom because of the battery endurance it gives me. but chinese apps/bugs etc. is troublesome so im waiting 1 week to unlocked it and opt for global or eu rom instead.
Hope a clean rom like Elite rom with my poco x3 pro will also be available to mi 11 ultra.
I'm hoping for a pure Android ROM at some point. MIUI is not the worst and it actually has some nice features but it's too fancy. Just plain old Android like the Android One phones would be a nice choice to have.
Are you saying One UI is plain? It's a very good skin, but plain it's not.
MiUI EU, Arrow OS, lineage OS, paranoid android?
Which do you prefer or dislike and why?
Hi. i use since one week "aosp extended" version 8.6 with included miui camera. this is for me the best rom for our phone. everything is working. i use this rom with elipson kernel. just try this rom !
lukas030581 said:
Hi. i use since one week "aosp extended" version 8.6 with included miui camera. this is for me the best rom for our phone. everything is working. i use this rom with elipson kernel. just try this rom !
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Click to collapse
MIUI camera means here ANX camera?
AOSP Extended is a great and fully functional daily driver.
I've tried most of the popular roms for our device. In terms of stability, IMO you can't go wrong with either ArrowOS, AOSPExtended or Xiaomi.eu if you prefer MIUI. crDroid is not bad either, but I had issues with Snapchat voice calls breaking up with the screen off. Otherwise it was also good.
ArrowOS: Great battery, very stable, everything works. The included camera is very basic though. ANX Cam 204 works great though but requires root.
AOSPExtended: Also great battery life, is very stable, and includes ANX camera (but dark mode didn't work for me). Hey google doesn't work though (requires a workaround as posted by fobtob387 in the AEX thread) and currently charging is a bit slow on this rom but I would imagine will get fixed soon.
Xiaomi.eu: Stock so everything works fine. I found it to be fast, stable and the battery life was good. I just prefer AOSP.
crDroid: Great battery, quite stable, includes ANX Camera 204 with working dark mode. But again I had snapchat voice call issues, which I use often with my niece.
I installed Pixel Experience but it currently has a bug where it thinks the external SD card is corrupt and can't read it. It asks to format, which I do not want to do and this doesn't happen with any other rom I've tried.
LOS18.1 unofficial seems to be another good one but I haven't tried yet.
For me, I'm debating between AOSPExtended and ArrowOS. I'm gonna test both roms out for a longer period of time and see if I experience any bugs. I'll reconsider crDroid if they can fix the snapchat problem.
djskribbles said:
I've tried most of the popular roms for our device. In terms of stability, IMO you can't go wrong with either ArrowOS, AOSPExtended or Xiaomi.eu if you prefer MIUI. crDroid is not bad either, but I had issues with Snapchat voice calls breaking up with the screen off. Otherwise it was also good.
ArrowOS: Great battery, very stable, everything works. The included camera is very basic though. ANX Cam 204 works great though but requires root.
AOSPExtended: Also great battery life, is very stable, and includes ANX camera (but dark mode didn't work for me). Hey google doesn't work though (requires a workaround as posted by fobtob387 in the AEX thread) and currently charging is a bit slow on this rom but I would imagine will get fixed soon.
Xiaomi.eu: Stock so everything works fine. I found it to be fast, stable and the battery life was good. I just prefer AOSP.
crDroid: Great battery, quite stable, includes ANX Camera 204 with working dark mode. But again I had snapchat voice call issues, which I use often with my niece.
I installed Pixel Experience but it currently has a bug where it thinks the external SD card is corrupt and can't read it. It asks to format, which I do not want to do and this doesn't happen with any other rom I've tried.
LOS18.1 unofficial seems to be another good one but I haven't tried yet.
For me, I'm debating between AOSPExtended and ArrowOS. I'm gonna test both roms out for a longer period of time and see if I experience any bugs. I'll reconsider crDroid if they can fix the snapchat problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great info, thanks.
Does it make sense to search for a ROM that comes with MicroG if I want to use Google Photos, Google Books, Gmail (not calendar), Google Maps, Google Play? If I understand correctly MicroG is a drop-in replacement for some proprietary piece of Google software. I suppose the advantage of MicroG would be to have less tracking.
Id also like to use GCam (because this is the best camera app?), Youtube Vanced (because its a better youtube app)
I'd also like NFC payments to function.
I been using crDroid 7.10 and its very stable. Good battery, anx camera included and Google Pay works fine. No messing about. Although it's only been one day I've been using but everybody works great from what I can see. Charging was decent but not super fast, wasn't slow either.
derpaloo said:
Great info, thanks.
Does it make sense to search for a ROM that comes with MicroG if I want to use Google Photos, Google Books, Gmail (not calendar), Google Maps, Google Play? If I understand correctly MicroG is a drop-in replacement for some proprietary piece of Google software. I suppose the advantage of MicroG would be to have less tracking.
Id also like to use GCam (because this is the best camera app?), Youtube Vanced (because its a better youtube app)
I'd also like NFC payments to function.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not very familiar with microg tbh.
As far as cameras go, someone else might be able to answer this better. But from my understanding, stock MIUI camera is very good. Gcam can look as good or maybe better, with some tweaking or using someone's config file.
djskribbles said:
I've tried most of the popular roms for our device. In terms of stability, IMO you can't go wrong with either ArrowOS, AOSPExtended or Xiaomi.eu if you prefer MIUI. crDroid is not bad either, but I had issues with Snapchat voice calls breaking up with the screen off. Otherwise it was also good.
ArrowOS: Great battery, very stable, everything works. The included camera is very basic though. ANX Cam 204 works great though but requires root.
AOSPExtended: Also great battery life, is very stable, and includes ANX camera (but dark mode didn't work for me). Hey google doesn't work though (requires a workaround as posted by fobtob387 in the AEX thread) and currently charging is a bit slow on this rom but I would imagine will get fixed soon.
Xiaomi.eu: Stock so everything works fine. I found it to be fast, stable and the battery life was good. I just prefer AOSP.
crDroid: Great battery, quite stable, includes ANX Camera 204 with working dark mode. But again I had snapchat voice call issues, which I use often with my niece.
I installed Pixel Experience but it currently has a bug where it thinks the external SD card is corrupt and can't read it. It asks to format, which I do not want to do and this doesn't happen with any other rom I've tried.
LOS18.1 unofficial seems to be another good one but I haven't tried yet.
For me, I'm debating between AOSPExtended and ArrowOS. I'm gonna test both roms out for a longer period of time and see if I experience any bugs. I'll reconsider crDroid if they can fix the snapchat problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
have you had any issues with snapchat being unable to open the camera on these roms? cuz i have had issue with it on pixel, arrow and aosp and would appreciate some help.
s0tix said:
have you had any issues with snapchat being unable to open the camera on these roms? cuz i have had issue with it on pixel, arrow and aosp and would appreciate some help.
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Click to collapse
No camera has been fine on all of the roms I've tried. The only problem I have with snap are either staticy voice calls, delayed messages (or until I unlock/turn on the phone).
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Kindly use the existing thread for continuing discussion: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/help-me-chose-best-custom-rom.4296373/
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