Root [International Tegra 3] Hox --> hox+?

[jlparsons]

So I want a new phone. Must have a great screen in the region of 5 inches, 32gb onboard (or SD), and vanilla android 4.1. Obviously the One X+ looked pretty good and I do like the added battery life, but the price seems very difficult to justify - I don't think I really need the extra storage and I'm not sure anyone could notice the extra 200mhz from the cpu.

So, my cunning plan is to buy a One X, change up the battery to the unit from the One X+ (which I believe has been done quite a bit) and flash a custom vanilla rom. I'm fairly used to taking phones apart and flashing roms etc. I might then consider clocking the processor up to 1.7ghz, though frankly I doubt I'd bother.

So, this would be basically turning a One X into a X+, ignoring the extra storage of course. Anyone see any issues with this? Or have any recommendations for which vanilla 4.1 rom to use as a daily driver?

 

[Wilkas]

Have you taken a unibody phone apart before? While not impossible the One X is a bugger to get into and can sometimes leave marks on the casing, also it would void your warranty so if you had problems with your phone down the line you would have to pay to get it fixed yourself.. I don't think phone insurers would touch it either due to the work you had done on it yourself.

How much is a one X+ battery? Would the price of the phone and battery not be pretty similar to the X+?

Honestly after a little tinkering around I'm getting nearly two days out of the battery now it's on JB, after a bad start though... I'm not even sure it would be worth putting in a bigger battery but let us know how you get on if you choose to do it!

 

[Rik Mayall]

Have you taken a unibody phone apart before? While not impossible the One X is a bugger to get into and can sometimes leave marks on the casing, also it would void your warranty so if you had problems with your phone down the line you would have to pay to get it fixed yourself.. I don't think phone insurers would touch it either due to the work you had done on it yourself.

How much is a one X+ battery? Would the price of the phone and battery not be pretty similar to the X+?

Honestly after a little tinkering around I'm getting nearly two days out of the battery now it's on JB, after a bad start though... I'm not even sure it would be worth putting in a bigger battery but let us know how you get on if you choose to do it!

What have you done to get the extra battery life mate? Factory reset? Mines pretty bad since jellybean and am considering a factory reset.

 

[Wilkas]

Honestly rik, I don't know what one thing it was I did.. you can see on the thoughts about jb thread it just changed overnight. I did disable Google Now and stopped hotmail from syncing, I've done a complete reset taking all data, pics and music off and went app by app to see if anything was behaving a bit odd.. I did find my banking app (halifax) although working was using a ridiculous amount of power so that went the journey and since then it's really lasting. Most I've had out of it was 2d 13hrs before it went into the red, I am using the power saver mode but leave my wifi on all the time.

 

[El Presidente]

I can't comment on taking the phone apart, sorry. I'll give you my thoughts on the ROM stuff though.

I don't think there's any kernels which allow you to clock up to 1.7GHz. It also depends on which variant of the tegra 3 chip you get (have a read here for more info.) 1.5 is fine anyway.

Also, any additional extra battery life you'd get by putting the new battery in would be negating by installing a Vanilla ROM anyway. Battery life is worse on AOSP ROMs compared to Sense offerings. When the phone is sitting idle, it's comparable, but when in use, AOSP drains much faster than Sense.

The Official CM10 nightlies are "relatively" stable. I get the odd reboot here and there and one of the tasker profiles I have activates GPS at certain times and if I'm listening to music, the music will stop (no other ROMs do that). It's pretty specific to my setup, so it might not be an issue to you and I'm not sure if it would happen if GPS was on all the time.

AOKP (IceColdJelly) seems to be the most stable and gives the best battery. I was running it for a while, but then the kernel dev started overclocking and undervolting by default and I'm not a massive fan of either (especially when done in tandem). I just installed a Release Candidate of LiquidSmooth last night, it seems nice so far, but I can't really give a detailed review as it's only been on the phone for 10 hours and I've not even restored my apps yet .

If you're looking for the Vanilla feel with decent battery life, your best bet would be the ViperX ROM with Sense removed via aroma installer and an AOSP theme.

 

[jlparsons]

I'm not too worried about opening the device, i've openned unibody phones before and never had issues. Equally, if I find the battery life quite acceptable then I wouldn't bother. When batteries for the HOX+ come down to

 

[BigCiX]

When batteries for the HOX+ come down to £10 each on ebay direct from China then I'll almost definitely do it though.

If its not a OEM battery don't waste your time. After market batteries are never on par with OEM. Even if they are bigger.

 

[El Presidente]

As for overclocking, as noted I probably wouldn't bother, though I've had perfect results undervolting and overclocking my HTC Desire HD.

Interesting that the Sense roms are more battery efficient. Makes sense I guess. Might look at a stripped down sense rom, perhaps. Are there any good sense 4.1 roms with bloatware stripped out?

I tried UV on the One X for a bit and whilst the phone ran very slightly cooler (or seemed to), battery life didn't really improve much.

Take a look at ViperX, with the aroma installer you can remove Sense and other apps you don't need.

 

[jlparsons]

If its not a OEM battery don't waste your time. After market batteries are never on par with OEM. Even if they are bigger.

I've heard this a few times - very easy thing to label with whatever Mah you want to then sell direct from China on ebay! I'll be using the OEM HOX+ battery which it seems a lot of folk are having success with in the HOX.

I tried UV on the One X for a bit and whilst the phone ran very slightly cooler (or seemed to), battery life didn't really improve much.

Take a look at ViperX, with the aroma installer you can remove Sense and other apps you don't need.

I found exactly that with the Desire HD - undervolting made it run cooler when overclocked but no other advantage. Technically less heat loss surely must equal better battery life, but I never noticed. However, running cooler may mean longer device life I'm guessing, which is important when overclocking.

I'll take a look at ViperX, thanks! I think a Sense ROM from which I can chop out the crud might be acceptable.

 

[El Presidente]

I'll take a look at ViperX, thanks! I think a Sense ROM from which I can chop out the crud might be acceptable.

I'm sure if you get round to installing Viper, you'll find it more than acceptable. The customisation options it contains are immense and the dev is pretty good when it comes to fixing bugs etc.

 

[jlparsons]

I'm sure if you get round to installing Viper, you'll find it more than acceptable. The customisation options it contains are immense and the dev is pretty good when it comes to fixing bugs etc.

Is it based on android 4.1 jellybean I assume?

 

[El Presidente]

Yep. There's 2 versions, one based on ICS and a new one based on 4.1.

 

[jlparsons]

Yep. There's 2 versions, one based on ICS and a new one based on 4.1.

Any disadvantage to the 4.1 version that you're aware of?

 

[El Presidente]

There have been a lot of gripes with the way JB handles mounting your phone to the PC/MAC on the stock ROM and as Viper would be based on that, I imagine it would have the same issues.

I think you'd also need your phone to be running JB before hand too, or at least have done the firmware upgrade.

 

[scotty85]

i have always been an AOSP fanatic. its what i got used to android on,and on other devices ive found it to give me significantly better battery life than the heavy footprint sense roms.

however...

i have to admit that sense 4.0+ has grown on me its supposedly efforts of htc to not have the ui be so interwoven and battery dependent,and it definately has an elegance to it. this is actually one of the first htc phones ive owned that it doesnt really bother me to run stock.

im on jb,and ive found the battery life to be not bad at all... especially compared to my rezound,that im lucky to get 5 hours out of even with the hox running auto sync,gps on and the screen a reasonable brightness i still get get a whole day out of fairly heavy use in wifi. what honestly uses most of my battery is the fact that i use it on t mobile,where its gotta work pretty hard to download stuff with edge data