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Sure is lonely here...

I'm still using the MT4GS. How do you like the like the Relay? Can you give a comparison between that the and the Slide? I think I recognize you from another forum so your Slide is rooted right?

Yup, my MyTouch 4G slide was rooted and s-off via the Revolutionary method. I like the size and feel of the Relay. Keyboard is very nice. Camera however does not compare to the 4G slide. 1080p and 8 megapixels made the slide a beast. The best the Relay can do is 5mp and 720, which isn't bad at all.

It is a bit hard to slide open the Relay as it feels slippery, but it feels very solid. Keyboard is great, but it has a bunch of keys I'd never use.

The screen does not smudge with finger prints! It is super-SUPER sensitive, as I have noticed a few scratches already. Screen protector is on it's way and definitely recommended.

One quirk is you can't install apps on the SD card. You can only install to the 5 or so gigs built in, but this helps with responsiveness, and you don't get the "sometimes missing apps after a restart" that plagued every android I've ever owned.

Overall I'm happy with my decision, just cant wait to root and overclock it:smokingsomb:
 
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Overall I'm happy with my decision, just cant wait to root and overclock it:smokingsomb:

Some people have already rooted the Relay. Cyvillian from XDA said that he flashed a T-Mo GS3 (SGH-T999) CWM recovery. The T999 recovery didn't display any video, so he used adb to push Superuser and the su binaries while in recovery. You can see what he did here.

Nardholio on XDA was kind enough to go through this process and post a rooted image on his Dropbox account for those of us who aren't adept at adb in recovery mode.

The Samsung drivers from the GS3 should work fine with the Relay. Also note, after extracting the rooted image, delete the .md5 extension so that the file name reads 'SGHT699_rooted.tar' or else it won't flash via PDA in Odin.

Make sure to let your device settle for at least 5 minutes and do a factory reset to avoid any FCs or other issues. Superuser will still be there after doing a factory reset.

Btw, for those who don't know:
Download Mode (for Odin): Hold down Power, Home, and Vol DOWN simultaneously.
Recovery Mode: Hold down Power, Home, and Vol UP simultaneously.

Now we just need CWM recovery and AOSP. Hopefully development for this device picks up soon. Maybe we should donate or start a bounty thread to get some dev going :thinking:??
 
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I'm looking to likely pick it up in the next few days since Tmo and HTC didn't care enough to make a G3.

Sadly, not much help in the dev portion of things aside from beta testing stuff (short of stuff that will brick) though I have been through both of the first versions of the G1 and 2 terminal root processes.

Glad that root was achieved at least so far. Even if it's light on ROMs, being able to use Titanium and some other things are pretty essential to phone usage for me (along with setCPU, etc)
 
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\Camera however does not compare to the 4G slide. 1080p and 8 megapixels made the slide a beast. The best the Relay can do is 5mp and 720, which isn't bad at all.
:smokingsomb:


It seems all of the good senseless ICS Custom ROMs for the MT4GS have camera functioning without 1080P anyway (I miss the face detection of stock too) so unless I went back to say Bulletproof ROM or another close to stock (which I just can't do at this ponit) all we're really missing is the 8 megapixels.

It's nice to hear that that keyboard is solid. I really miss a 5 row qwerty and I think I'm willing to trade the 3 megapixels to get a dedicated number row again. Hope to be sharing a device with you again soon!
 
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Glad that root was achieved at least so far. Even if it's light on ROMs, being able to use Titanium and some other things are pretty essential to phone usage for me (along with setCPU, etc)

The first thing I did after rooting was delete a bunch of T-Mobile bloat with AntTek App Manager and Root Explorer. Then Titanium Backup restore.

I was ecstatic when I heard someone rooted the Relay already. T-Mobile bloatware is almost as annoying as AT&T bloatware.
 
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Thanks for the replies! Not as lonely as I thought:D

I'll definitely try to root it when I get home; it's a neccessity for me..:)

Good luck with rooting the Relay. It's wayyyy easier than rooting the MT4GS, to say the very least :D.

I think a bunch of people have upgraded to the Relay from the G2/MT4GS but are just lurking, too busy, or don't feel like making an Android Forums account. I really wish they would though, because who knows when XDA will decide to make a Relay forum. Might as well get involved here, right?
 
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It seems all of the good senseless ICS Custom ROMs for the MT4GS have camera functioning without 1080P anyway (I miss the face detection of stock too) so unless I went back to say Bulletproof ROM or another close to stock (which I just can't do at this ponit) all we're really missing is the 8 megapixels.

It's nice to hear that that keyboard is solid. I really miss a 5 row qwerty and I think I'm willing to trade the 3 megapixels to get a dedicated number row again. Hope to be sharing a device with you again soon!

The Relay keyboard is awesome, just takes some time to get used to because all the letters are shifted to the left. It's much more clicky and responsive than the MT4GS's keyboard.

The Relay's 5MP camera isn't bad, but nothing compared to the stock 8MP MT4GS camera. If only T-Mobile and HTC updated the Doubleshot to official ICS....
 
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I'm coming over from G2, so for me everything on this phone is twice as fast and better. The camera is great, screen is great, phone is lighter, and the extra row of numbers are great. The only reason why I don't like it is because of user error... I'm not use to the key placements things missing from my G2 ICS Minicry 1.5 ROM. It's a good phone, too bad it's sorta being buried by t-mobile.
 
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Just a heads up, here's my post from XDA concerning all the bloatware

One great thing I just discovered is you can actually disable some of the apps that came built in (including all the bloat-ware)! They no longer show up in my drawer and aren't running when I check watchdog. I can hold off root (atleast until someone makes a step-by-step guide and official recovery) for the moment being thanks to this discovery.

Just go to Application manager, click on the "all" tab and go down the list and disable the apps you don't want.
 
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Just a heads up, here's my post from XDA concerning all the bloatware

One great thing I just discovered is you can actually disable some of the apps that came built in (including all the bloat-ware)! They no longer show up in my drawer and aren't running when I check watchdog. I can hold off root (atleast until someone makes a step-by-step guide and official recovery) for the moment being thanks to this discovery.

Just go to Application manager, click on the "all" tab and go down the list and disable the apps you don't want.

Something I've noticed, is rooting the phone and removing some of the bloatware causes massive amounts of wakelock time while the device is supposed to be sleeping. Investigating with Badass Battery Monitor leads me to believe the Phone process is causing this. I think Wifi calling might be the cause but I'm not sure.

T-Mobile seems to have built the bloat upon the bloat. For example, removing tethering and wifi calling apks still leaves the T-Mobile tether icon in the App drawer and the options for both in the System settings. While I expect to see tether options in Android always, I do not expect to see Wifi calling directly in Settings with the relevant app uninstalled. And I do not expect to see a T-Mobile tethering icon tied directly to Settings in my app drawer with the apks uninstalled.
(Edit: I realize a great many people will be using wifi calling and won't want to try to remove it)

If you remove the two Carrier IQ apks, the option to turn it off entirely disappears from Backup and Reset, for example. That's the way something added on top of Android should behave if removed. It should actually be gone.

This is probably why removing bloat causes wakelocks, because it's baked into the system itself. This is something custom ROMs will have to address.

Which leads me to CWM. Without it we're forced to releasing custom ROMs in Odin format, which is doable but annoying. For one thing every flash with Odin has the potential to up your custom binary counter. Also Odin format ROMs can't integrate any scripting to do things like fix permissions or the like. At least not easily.

I'm no dev by any stretch of the imagination but I did find an automatic CWM builder at builder dot clockworkmod dot com. I built one and I didn't work :) One thing stopping it is probably the lack of the custom graphics.c for the device, which is because Samsung hasn't released the source code yet. Hell, with source available, we could even get a dev to start working on cyanogen for us...
 
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T-Mobile seems to have built the bloat upon the bloat. For example, removing tethering and wifi calling apks still leaves the T-Mobile tether icon in the App drawer and the options for both in the System settings. While I expect to see tether options in Android always, I do not expect to see Wifi calling directly in Settings with the relevant app uninstalled. And I do not expect to see a T-Mobile tethering icon tied directly to Settings in my app drawer with the apks uninstalled.
(Edit: I realize a great many people will be using wifi calling and won't want to try to remove it).

For most custom ROMs I've seen, Wifi calling is usually the last feature added since it causes so many compatibility issues.... However, I understand that Wifi Calling is a very important feature for T-Mo users who have poor reception indoors.

Bloat on bloat seems about right. Mobile Hotspot in settings doesn't go away even after deleted. I'm just miffed that they took away the native tethering option and replaced it with T-Mo's crapware. I've been using PDAnet to USB tether. Works pretty well with Firefox and User Agent RG.
 
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Just got back from picking it up. Rooting attempt will be made shortly.

Edit:

Rooted image successfully flashed, but need to go back to the old phone and re-run titanium as it was acting oddly and not finding my backup files.

In Titanium, you need to change the backup file location because the Relay has both an internal and external SD card. Menu>Preferences>Backup Folder Location and auto detect the ext sd card location should do the trick.
 
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In Titanium, you need to change the backup file location because the Relay has both an internal and external SD card. Menu>Preferences>Backup Folder Location and auto detect the ext sd card location should do the trick.

Thanks, I actually managed to figure that one out shortly after posting it.

Also, don't be an idiot and restore the system data too. Derp.


Here's my overly simplified how to for root:

Flashing root image for dummies like me:

1. Download the Relay 4G USB driver from Samsung's site (they actually have it up) http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/SGH-T699DABTMB and install.

2. Download Odin and the rooted image from the post above.

3. Uncompress both files (remove the .md5 from the image so that it is just .tar)

4. Connect phone to computer and boot into download mode (hold Vol. down, home and power)

5. Run Odin, click PDA and select the rooted image

6. Start and patiently wait for flashing and phone to reboot.

Definitely a LOT easier than the early G1 and 2 rooting attempts

Thank you to everyone involved in getting it rooted so quickly
 
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Which leads me to CWM. Without it we're forced to releasing custom ROMs in Odin format, which is doable but annoying. For one thing every flash with Odin has the potential to up your custom binary counter. Also Odin format ROMs can't integrate any scripting to do things like fix permissions or the like. At least not easily.

I'm no dev by any stretch of the imagination but I did find an automatic CWM builder at builder dot clockworkmod dot com. I built one and I didn't work :) One thing stopping it is probably the lack of the custom graphics.c for the device, which is because Samsung hasn't released the source code yet. Hell, with source available, we could even get a dev to start working on cyanogen for us...

Samsung posted the T-Mo GS3 source code the same month it was released (June 2012). I know the Relay isn't as popular, but hopefully Samsung releases the source code on a similar timetable so we can get some dev going. At least Samsung is better to devs and consumers than HTC is....
 
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Thanks! Seems super easy. I might try it this weekend. Im a little weary about no recovery, but i can always factory reset.

It really is. I compiled that after screwing up a few steps and having to look up how to work Odin since I haven't really played around with anything remotely like that or adb in a year or so.
There is the basic built in recovery that you can access, I know it isn't the same as what gets flashed for ROMs somehow, but I have no idea how. I'll leave the explanation to someone that knows what they're talking about.
 
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It really is. I compiled that after screwing up a few steps and having to look up how to work Odin since I haven't really played around with anything remotely like that or adb in a year or so.
There is the basic built in recovery that you can access, I know it isn't the same as what gets flashed for ROMs somehow, but I have no idea how. I'll leave the explanation to someone that knows what they're talking about.

Built in recovery can clear cache and factory reset and will only flash scripts signed with the Samsung key. To recover from a brick custom recovery is nice but Odin mode is really what you want anyway. If you're excessivly worried about bricking I'd spend the three bucks and get a jig. When you plug it into the usb port it automatically powers the phone into Odin mode, even if it's bricked. On some phones it also resets the custom flash counter but sadly that's not the case here.

On another note, I finally got the unlock code for my Relay. This is one of the few tmo phones with the AT&T frequencies and it actually outperforms my AT&T phone (Captivate Glide) in 4G testing.I am absolutely shocked they aren't pushing this phone, which is nearly identical to the s3, except with a keyboard, more aggressively.
 
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So as I see XDA is once again enforcing their "it better be popular" plan for forums, I migrated over here. I already ran thru the root method by flashing the image, and deleted bloatware. I loathe android, it's spyware, but with root, I can at least use Droidwall to limit everything but what I want from having network access. :) And this keyboard is just something I've been missing.
 
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Also, the newest version of Wi-Fi tether located here seems to work just fine on the device for bypassing T-Mo's modification. As expected, root is required with that application.

As for the dev support. I would happily pay for it. A nice custom ROM, more ASOP, less touchwiz. Granted I would also pay for a lockscreen mod that borrows from the Nokia N9's lockscreen. The always on floating time with notifications under the time is amazingly awesome.
 
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On another note, I finally got the unlock code for my Relay. This is one of the few tmo phones with the AT&T frequencies and it actually outperforms my AT&T phone (Captivate Glide) in 4G testing.I am absolutely shocked they aren't pushing this phone, which is nearly identical to the s3, except with a keyboard, more aggressively.

Did you get your unlock code direct from T-Mobile or a website? I wanted to get mine too but I heard T-Mo makes you wait 90 days after purchasing the device.
 
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