Moved up to CM 4.2.8 after I kept hearing how it's, wait for it, once again faster. It's really hard to believe that Cyanogen and the other guys working on this stuff can somehow continually squeeze more performance out of the OS / Hardware. This firmware is singlehandedly keeping me from being jealous of new Android offerings. I've yet to find one with a keyboard that I like as much as my trusty old (old?! it's only been out for a little more than a year) G1 keyboard. Yeah, it's sort of thick, and it has a Jay Leno-wannabe chin, but the CM software is tunable and I can get all day battery life with moderate use.
As long as Cyanogen and the guys keep improving the OS, I can't see a reason why I need a different phone.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Latest CM ROM is the best yet! (Go figure)
Well I've updated my phone a couple of more times since the last blog post and for the most part it just keeps getting better. I went from 4.2.3.1 to 4.2.4, then to 4.2.5 and finally 4.2.6. Each release fixed a few bugs and maybe caused a few more with the exception of the 4.2.6 release. This one is a keeper in my book.
Out of the box, compcache is disabled. You can enable it with using a setting in the Spare Parts app (installed by default with any recent CM release). I tried it with no swap and no compcache for a while. Wasn't satisfied with the response of the phone once you go into and out of a few apps though. (Did I mention that I view my G1 as much as a pocket computer as I do a phone now? No? Oh well.) So I enabled compcache and it was better. Still over time as I navigated places and ran too many browser windows, etc., the available memory gets too low and the poor little G1 processor has to work hard and the garbage collector gets way too busy and things would get a little to laggy for my tastes.
So I made the decision to crack open the Class 6 8g card that I scooped off NewEgg as an anniversary gift and formatted the partitions to mostly match my old Class 2 8g card that I've been using for a number of months. The only difference is that I formatted the 2nd partition as ext4 rather than ext3 this time. (More on why in a future post I hope.) I also resurrected my old /system/sd/user.conf and /system/sd/userinit.sh files to enable swapping to a 70M partition on the sd card. I know that this will wear out the card prematurely, but it's a risk / compromise I'm willing to take. Since enabling the swap the phone is working much better. Doesn't slow down, battery life is great, and I don't really have to go into ATK to kill off unused apps. I'm still trying to be somewhat judicious with what I'm willing to leave running, but I really like the way the phone is performing now.
I can't imagine it getting much better than it is now, so Cyanogen's going to really have to create a compelling release to get me to update any time soon. As always, write call, twitter, whatever if you need to supply missing details.
Out of the box, compcache is disabled. You can enable it with using a setting in the Spare Parts app (installed by default with any recent CM release). I tried it with no swap and no compcache for a while. Wasn't satisfied with the response of the phone once you go into and out of a few apps though. (Did I mention that I view my G1 as much as a pocket computer as I do a phone now? No? Oh well.) So I enabled compcache and it was better. Still over time as I navigated places and ran too many browser windows, etc., the available memory gets too low and the poor little G1 processor has to work hard and the garbage collector gets way too busy and things would get a little to laggy for my tastes.
So I made the decision to crack open the Class 6 8g card that I scooped off NewEgg as an anniversary gift and formatted the partitions to mostly match my old Class 2 8g card that I've been using for a number of months. The only difference is that I formatted the 2nd partition as ext4 rather than ext3 this time. (More on why in a future post I hope.) I also resurrected my old /system/sd/user.conf and /system/sd/userinit.sh files to enable swapping to a 70M partition on the sd card. I know that this will wear out the card prematurely, but it's a risk / compromise I'm willing to take. Since enabling the swap the phone is working much better. Doesn't slow down, battery life is great, and I don't really have to go into ATK to kill off unused apps. I'm still trying to be somewhat judicious with what I'm willing to leave running, but I really like the way the phone is performing now.
I can't imagine it getting much better than it is now, so Cyanogen's going to really have to create a compelling release to get me to update any time soon. As always, write call, twitter, whatever if you need to supply missing details.
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