Yum, just upgraded to ICS (finally) with Wanamlite. Yeah, I know it's just a deodexed (and lightened) Sammy leaked ICS XWLPF, but hell it's been fast and stable so far with Apex. IMHO a much better transition from VR3 compared if I went AOSP or AOKP.

Modded and loaded it up with all mods I NEED as per my old faithful VillanRom 3.0 (skinned SystemUI, Kavi's mods, more freezing and uninstalling of stuff), and now it's back to being the reliable SGS2 I know and love.

Except it's so much smoother and faster now with hardware acceleration it's not even funny anymore. I even managed to hack the Beats Audio drivers in lol.

Yay to the TouchJizz framework.

Well, stuff's been hell stable so far. So much so that I think going to an S3 JUST for the DAC, HD Screen and Camera might not be worth the money.

At least not yet.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 5 2012, 02:54 PM

Dunno. DXLP9 better mah? LPF asso not bad really.

Oh and recommended modems?

@Freddy's: Using Siyah 3.3.1 with Wanamlite XWLPF, no issues with CWM here. Undervolting related data corruption? Happened a lot with my old N900.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 5 2012, 09:23 PM

Wow, the "MORE RAM FREE BETTERER!" issue. I thought only the PC world suffers from this shiat.

Truth be known, like madlocke said, RAM IS MEANT TO BE USED. Why? It's faster than flash storage (or the humble HDD in the PC world).

So everything in RAM is FASTERER. If it's not in RAM, than it's prolly cached in flash (or HDD) and moving slower then a snail on a hot day.

Although having ZERO free RAM is an issue, having it USED OPTIMALLY is what you ACTUALLY WANT.

So, having 300 of 1GB RAM free and the rest optimally used is ALWAYS better than having 800 of 1GB RAM free and having everything cached in flash. The former will be smoother and faster.

Of course, having 2GB RAM to begin with IS BETTERER, but we can't have it all, can we now.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 6 2012, 02:10 PM

I'm on Wanam v12 LPG with some self modded bits and pieces, making everything dark as I like it + some lite undervolting with SetCPU + further de-bloating with TiBu.

Battery life not as good as GB, but it's not too bad. User experience has improved tenfold though. Viva TouchWiz ICS.

This should help my S2 last another year. I'll just get S4 for JellyBean lol.

Somebody looking for a battery case? Skip the ori Sammy Battery Sled/Case and get one from PowerSkin or Ebay. The Sammy one sucks, seriously. I had it and traded it back for 2 2000mah batteries.

Want better power? Try the Momax fatbatt. Yes it's fat. But it lasts about twice the normal 1650mah batts. You can't use cases with it though, except for bumpers.

i9100 + Siyah 3.2.7.2 + Wanam v12 (self-modded) + Apex + SetCPU Profiles and slight undervolting. Used for over a week now: STABLE AS A ROCK! No lags, major FCs or hangs + superb standby battery life (with my Sammy 2000mah batts lar).

Just a weird occasional bug with bluetooth calling while BT streaming with my car's Clarion HU - calls sometime screw up media output from PowerAmp. And a few other hiccups I can live with.

Overall, I'm liking this a lot. Short of the BSI camera sensor, the HD screen (which is Pentile anyway) and the Wolfson DAC, I'm not really finding much reason to upgrade to the S3 now lol.

Especially when somebody hacks USB Audio to work with the SGS2 - which considering the S3 can already do, shouldn't take too long. Fiio E7 + S2 FTW!

Oh and as for Navigation? GoogleNav bar none. Traffic + real time alternative route suggestions WITH traffic info, NOBODY has this lol.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 13 2012, 09:22 PM

Actually, the saving thing has been in GLABS like, forever. I've used while in Japan last year asso (ended up I managed to get unlimited data while over there so it was largely irrelevant). Just map caching nothing new, it's just gonna be "officially" rolled out.

CACHING maps for NAVIGATION would be useful however. Not sure if they already do this though.

The 3D imagery thing is new though. So much better looking compared to the usual "textureless white blocks of stuff".

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 13 2012, 08:53 PM

The Mysterious Inversion System issit? I ACTUALLY wanna turn it off as my browser can do it fine on it's own (ICS+), and my entire suite of apps is AMOLED-optimised (aka. Emblackened) - so accidental inversion = whiteout = not fun.

Plus I rely on double clicks for PreHome so invert gets "accidentally" activated quite a few times when I DON'T want it to, which is a PITA.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 14 2012, 03:57 PM

In short: Android apps (APKs) are simply compressed archives. Zipaligning arranges the contents of the archives in proper order so that it can run faster and eat less memory (RAM).

@Dark_Angel: Will do. Currently the only way of doing so is changing kernels, as IINM only Siyah has this.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 14 2012, 04:12 PM

I had the ori Sammy battery sled. Used for a month. Then it broke, exchanged it for a 2000mah extended batt, which I'm using now exclusively.

Even before it broke, it was rubbish. MAKE SURE the groupon one HAS AN ON-OFF function, otherwise the sled will ANNOY THE HELL OUT OF YOU with constant "fully charged" notifications when you use it.

The Sammy one didn't have ON-OFF. Powerskin/DroidAx cases do. IMHO if you don't wanna pay so much, the DroidAx cases aren't THAT expensive (150 ish direct from their site) and are good quality.

The ebay/china/groupon ones I'm not so sure, the MAH ratings are usually rubbish anyway. Trust somebody who has gone through a large number of battery cases on his old (now stolen) iPhone 4 (the best battery case for which was the Chameleon, in case you were wondering).

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 14 2012, 10:08 PM

Yep. That one. They STILL have plenty stock of that rubbish in Shah Alam where I am (on weekends lol).

DroidAx I've helped a forumer buy before, and according to him it fits and works great. Comes with an off on button too.

Powerskin seems to be great quality stuff, but expensive and only available online thus I have no actual experience with it.

Direct from the website. Got for around 160-170 after convert. Not so bad. Shipping wasn't bad either. Within a week got it edi.

Bear in mind the slightly less mod-friendliness of the non-G. Exynos is virtually issue free modding wise.

Plus you can always buy spare batteries, even extended ones. Can you switch the processors? Though the less heat thing IS true, the non-G can even dual function as a pants/thigh heater.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 15 2012, 07:51 PM

Still hoping they get USB audio working on the S2, in which case I'll just wait for the S4.

If not, we'll see. But not anytime soon. I'm too broke now lol.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 15 2012, 07:54 PM

Seconding the Wanamlite recommendation. On V12 here + Siyah (not the latest "castrated" one). Stable as a rock and smooth like water while being relatively easy on the battery.

No regrets moving up ICS at all. I'm partial to the smartdial so AOSP/AOKP/MIUI is not really an option fer me, and Wanam has been a great choice so far where Samsung Framework ICS ROMs are concerned.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 18 2012, 11:20 AM

Sadly Wanam seems to have an S3 edi, so v12 might be his last. And compared to NEAT, not much diff actually. Both deodexed stock (not sure NEAT is which build, Wanam is LPG), but Wanam did put in a couple of his own changes. For a better changelog, check the wanamlite site (google).

I guess it was just a matter of me finding Wanamlite first, not much of a ROM jumper you see. I stuck with VillainRom 3 for only God knows how long lol, extensively self-modded of course.

As for Jkay's mod, it should work fine with the stock unthemed Wanamlite V12. There's even a Jkay's version for the ICS themed Wanamlite over at XDA, so no worries.

As for me, I'm running the ICS themed version with a self-mod version of Vertemus's dark theme, fugutweaks and all sorts of funky mods - and it still runs fine. So no issues. Standby battery life is a peach too, relatively.

You CAN manually uninstall all the Sammy stuff you know lol.

Which I did anyway - even Wanam has a few of them left, namely Sammy Apps, Sammy Login and the Sammy tracking framework.

I don't want Sammy apps, don't care about my Samsung accounts and use Ceberus in place of the Sammy tracking thing - so I got rid of everything.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 18 2012, 07:43 PM

Ummm, Checkrom. Hopefully it's Sammy flavoured. I still need my quick dialler.

Hmm.

My Gorilla Glass screen is protected by a Glas tempered glass protector, which is in turn protected by a SGP Micro Optics screen protector (replacing my half-year old Estoc).

Overkill eh? Things could've been so much simpler if the SGP Glas came in a matte version to begin with.

I just can't stand glossy surfaces.

Cons? I've lost some touch sensitivity on the extreme left and right edges of the screen - not that that's too much of a problem. Oh, and I CANNOT use any kernels that are not modded with vitalij's touchscreen tweaks while charging.

Oh, and the screen gets damn hot under heavy use + high brightness settings.

Pros? I can drop the phone face first all day long. Which I do, clumsy as I am.

Tried out launcherSS. Dumped it. Minimalist desktops sacrifice too much practicality for looks IMHO. The boring grid of icons still is best for touch homescreens.

Okay, a TABBED grid of icons rule (tabs at the bottom please), but there's no ICS launcher that got that one right yet.

Back to Apex with my new Meego icons, yum.

Oh, and anybody find a good rain live wallpapers that:

a) Allows use of custom backgrounds.
b) Does not suck battery like a pornstar.

Currently on SakuraPro. Not bad. For a LW.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jun 20 2012, 09:05 PM