Well guys (and girls)... have given 2.2beta1, 2, 3 and 4 a go.
I find it difficult to quantify kernels. Oh sure, there's Battery Usage, BetterBattery Stats, AnTuTu, SmartBench and CPU Spy to give you the statistical breakdown of what a particular kernel is, or is not, doing but there is also, as I call it, the "feel" of the kernel and how it interacts with your particular ROM and, more importantly, how each person uses their phone.
Sure, we've all seen battery lives of 3, 4 or 5 days being posted but I like to use my phone every now and then and not leave it in a catatonic state with everything disabled just to get an extra few hours.
I don't really see the point in having a great smartphone like the SGSII and then not using the features and effectively crippling it. So, I have Homescreen live widgets, news and weather updates, email polling, GPS, Auto and Background syncing as well as WiFi enabled.
The same applies to "speed tests". Great, set your phone at 1600MHz and performance governor and then go flat out to get the highest scores. Whilst interesting, that setting will shorten your battery life in no time.
I suppose, in a perfect world, we'd all like a 3 day battery life with top notch speed but instead we have to make compromises that we can live with such as undervolting or choosing a governor that will give a little extra when you need it or enable smoother scrolling or faster page loading.
So, when I see postings that say, "what's the best kernel" (or indeed, the best ROM) the simple answer is... whatever suits you best I guess.
Now we've had 4 beta kernels out in a couple of days, which really isn't long enough for me to give a definitive opinion as some of them I've only used for half a day.
However, for my real life usage and my ROM, so far the best kernel is beta1.
It was the best for me on battery life and wakelocks (or lack of) and felt quite smooth. A similar thing happened with Siyah 2.1. In the end the 2.1 rc2 kernel was better for me than the final release.
All I can say is that I've had no Forced Closes or Screen of Death with the 4 beta's and that any of them are good enough for day to day use and are an improvement, for me, on previous versions.
Having said that, it will be interesting to see what Siyah beta5 with Tegrak's second core application enabled.
UPDATE
Now that I have had a little longer with beta4 I have to say that I can put it on a par with beta1. This is because in the 3-4 hours I monitored it originally it did not appear to go into as deep a sleep as beta1 and seemed to show more awake time.
All my observations are based on "smartassv2" governor, 100-1200MHz, no Profiles, stock voltage and my medium to heavy usage.
I'm delighted with how b1 is working here and am in no hurry to update it. I'll use synthetic benchmarks as like-for-like comparisons to eliminate variation, but proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Using the exact same setup and configuration as I've had for months this is far and way the best blend of performance and economy I've seen.
The Siyah beta5 kernel will support Tegrak's, "second core" application which, from what I can gather, means that using the, "2nd Core" app from the Market, means that we can select to either use both cores, as we do now, or just a single core for greater battery life or a mix of the two to give us a sort of halfway house between them.
The Siyah beta5 kernel will support Tegrak's, "second core" application
Interesting.... I'm wondering if the "hotplug_mode" can be changed on the fly without needing a reboot. If so could the second core be completely disabled via a Tasker intent whenever the handset was screen-off?
Well, the good news is that it loads and boots up OK and is showing the dual core options.
Think I'll start off with Dynamic hotplug to begin with as this intrigues me and I want to see what it does to performance, stability and battery.
Scrolling is fine. Browser is fine. 1080p HD video recording/playback is OK.
Am using it in conjunction with SetCPU on smartasv2, 100-1200MHz. No profiles. Stock voltage.
It occurs to me that I don't know if this should be used with SetCPU... anyone know?
The phone is showing only one core being used in standby and does switch, automatically, to dual core when called on.... think that answers Slug's earlier question.
Last edited by ironass; November 9th, 2011 at 10:47 AM.
Same as me butty.
i might try putting it to single core overnight.
shame there isnt an option for "single core when screen off" or similar, but perhaps this is what the dynamic option does as standard.
EDIT: In fact, it looks like dynamic mode is quite intelligent. Doing a bit of screen processing then going into the app shows 2 cores active. Leave it there for a couple of seconds doing nothing then 1 cpu active.
Yes, that seems to be about the size of it when using Dynamic hotplug.
It uses single core when phone is quiet and switches, very quickly, to dual core when required. Therefore, screen off, should automatically be single core.
However, like you, I will monitor my battery usage for awhile as I want to see if this is a gimmick that uses more battery than it saves.
Still uncertain as to whether I should be using SetCPU and smartassv2 with it though!
Voltage control seems to be working ok. I just froze it to see if it would have any affect and without the voltage seemed to change between 100, 200 and 500mhz alot more frequently even though I had nothing running in the background.
Well that was a bit strange. I just tried to load a webpage and a line of black and white squares appeared down the left side of the screen. This gradually got smaller and spread out over the entire screen leaving my phone with a black and white chequered effect. They disappeared after a few seconds and everything seems fine now but I'll have to keep an eye out for any other problems.
I've never had them when a page is loading slowly so I'm not too sure if they were the same but they appeared when the page was pretty much fully loaded, I could see the page but the progress bar still had a little way to go.
I hope that was a one off with the screen as the kernel seems the smoothest and quickest yet. I have to say I'm impressed. Nice idea about tegrak overclock ironass, I froze voltage control and gave that a try and if anything it feels even smoother.
man. siyah kernels do not agree with my phone (on checkrom rev 2.0).
lag galore on scrolling (side and vertical)
get higher antutu scores compared to my speedmod, but if it doesn't behave so smoothly in day to day use, think I'll be heading back. (or might try lulz 15)
unless anyone has any ideas on how i might reduce lag by altering settings - tried smartass, lagfree, on demand etc etc - all the same
The auto fit pages in browser settings will greatly reduce the chequer board effect.
I'm running on conservative governor with no issues at all as yet on both go launcher and TWv4.
Interested to see how much of the battery drains overnight with just the single cpu operational.
I somehow suspect I won't see too much difference. We shall see!
Beta5.1 seems okay on DlevROM v3.1 here. On my third AnTuTu '1600MHz suicide run' with the usual 0.75mV undervolt to test stability.... yaay, passed with 7436. That should at least mean it won't crap out in normal use, and let me tinker with other stuff.
fixed the lag in dynamic hotplug mode (a problem in new workqueue implementation).
increased the “second-core-kick-in” threshold to save battery. previous value was 50, new value is 70, original value in samsung kernel is 60. you will hardly notice the difference but the benchmarks may notice it. if you want higher scores you can always use tegrak’s 2nd core app to enable the second core. Maybe I will make it customizable before v2.2 release.
increased the fps limit in the camera driver (30 to 120). I hope that the one who sent me a PM about this modification can manage to use it to have better image or video quality.
disabled ramfs “tweak/cheat/whatever” in quadrant benchmark. If I knew how to make it worse I would do it to let quadrant-slaves go away.
removed a (part-of) patch that enables the second core as soon as you turn the screen on. we don’t want to waste more battery and that may be the reason of some SOD problems.
Early indications were that v2.2beta5.1 was no worse for me than 2.2beta1 or beta4 on my average battery usage.
Have switched to beta6 now to see how that fares.
Time for another cup of Taylor's Rich Italian Roast black coffee... industrial strength.
Last edited by ironass; November 9th, 2011 at 11:32 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to ironass For This Useful Post:
man. siyah kernels do not agree with my phone (on checkrom rev 2.0).
lag galore on scrolling (side and vertical)
get higher antutu scores compared to my speedmod, but if it doesn't behave so smoothly in day to day use, think I'll be heading back. (or might try lulz 15)
unless anyone has any ideas on how i might reduce lag by altering settings - tried smartass, lagfree, on demand etc etc - all the same
Putting my neck on the block here Sydney99... but it might be worth you giving beta6 a try as it is ultra lag and stutter free for me, better even than previous versions.
and thanks, will give beta 6 ago. fingers crossed ......
Carpe diem old son, carpe diem!
Here at the Home for the Terminally Befuddled, matron likes us to get up early and check the morning papers to make sure our name isn't in the obituary column.
Bon chance with beta6.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shotgun84
Beta 6 seems good to me. Maybe its a bit smoother than 5 but its hard to tell as that seemed good as well.
It does seem smoother to me and the developer, gokhanmoral, says that this release cures a "micro" stutter, as he puts it.
