[Rom] AOKP Jellybean l Task650 & Ktoonsez (9/4)

[SteveO390]

You might consider this more of a blog post for my experience with this ROM.

I've been perusing the XDA forums just seeing what's being developed for the SGH-i777 and check for updates for the Siyah kernel I used to root my phone. I recently had a SERIOUSLY scary issue with my phone which brick'd it and with the help of Ultradroid for putting the call out for help and Ronnie and Ollie for answering that call I was able to get my phone back to exactly where it was just before I brick'd it.

So, beaming with confidence and anxious to see what JB might be like on my phone I kept a look out on XDA for any JB ROM's for my phone when I came across this one ([Rom] AOKP Jellybean l Task650 & Ktoonsez (9/4) - xda-developers). I read through the OP several times to see what bugs were known and skimmed through a few of the most recent pages (with 2,298 at the time of this writing there was NO WAY I was going through all of that) to see what users might have been dealing with.

I decided that the problems most people were facing had to do with them either not following install instructions (which seemed SUPER simple even with my limited Android knowledge) and/or not finding the settings in the ROM so I read the instructions, read them again, waited a couple days, read a few more posts, read the instructions again, waited a couple more days, read the instructions, read FAQ, read the instructions one more time and dove in!

The installation went off without a hitch and as of this writing I just got all my apps back on it and I'm about to set about getting my homescreens set up and so forth. So far so good, I'll post again soon.

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[UltraDroid]

Way to go Steve! You're more knowledgeable (and sensible) than you give yourself credit for.

Das8nt would be proud of you buddy!

[SteveO390]

So after spending WAAAAAAY too much time trying to fiddle with my phone last night I finally went to bed satisfied I had gotten it mostly sorted the way I want. I struggled with a few things though, some I would call minor glitches and hard to tell if it was because I'm using a different launcher than what the dev had intended (Apex) or the ROM itself. Others are simply apps that I got used to that are Samsung specific and can't be used with this ROM.

1) Soft key back light auto shut off is set to three seconds by default. I hate that, if I'm in a mildly dark room (and at the time it actually WAS dark) I sometimes can't see the keys so I like them to be constant on when the screen is on. I must have gone through the menus a dozen times before realizing I had looked at that very setting without realizing it almost every time. Then when I change it, it doesn't recognize it, the back light was still shutting off after 3 seconds. VERY IRRITATING! I tried rebooting the phone, no help. I decide to let it go for then because my thumb was still able to find back pretty easily so I did my best to not pay attention to it.

2) The clock/timer/stopwatch/alarm clock that came on the phone and the Kiescast podcast catcher I had gotten used to using aren't available, because it's Samsung of course and this ROM is more or less straight Jellybean so that kinda bummed me out. It's not THAT big a deal to me because I had only been using Kiescast for a few weeks, which wasn't all that superior to what I was doing before, so I just went back to that, which was going straight to the web site where they post the podcasts and downloading them to play back later with the Google Play Music app.

3) So I had most everything set up the way I wanted but I wanted to get it EXACTLY like it was before with the Nandroid I had made moments before flashing the ROM. "UH OH......I don't see CWM in my app drawer! How could a custom ROM not have CWM pre loaded?! Ok lets try holding down power+vol down+vol up to boot into download mode. All it does is reboot, crap! Wait....what did I see when it asked me to reboot, I had the option to reboot or reboot into recovery." I tap recovery and sure enough it boots into CWM but it looks like it's a different version. "Oh well, I'm still able to navigate the menus and get to what I need." So I flash my nandroid back up, reboot aaaaaand.... "Whoa! That's the Siyah kernel boot animation. All my home screens are as they were before I applied the nandroid but now Siyah is the kernel and the CWM app is back in my app drawer, oh and the back light for the soft keys is staying on like I set it. Oh well, Siyah is one of the kernels suggested by the dev so it should be fine. But now I'm wondering, if had had the entire Samsung ROM file on my phone, would nandroid have brought back that too effectively undoing everything I had done to this point? Do I now have TWO versions of CWM installed on my phone and will that cause some sort of conflict?"

4) I've been using my phone for half the day now and everything seems to be working just fine, WiFi, text, email, bluetooth. Now that it's close to lunch time it's starting to act REALLY glitchy though. When I wake the phone it stutters, the brightness acts like I have it on auto when I don't, the ring volume is acting weird, iHeart radio is cutting in and out. I'm wondering if I should try just flashing the fluxxi kernel it came with to see if that would work. The only problem is that fluxxi was IN the ROM package so I can't just flash it by itself. The dev's OP states "If you have any problems, do a full wipe and reflash, now f*** off!" Hmm, maybe I should just do that?

[SteveO390]

Well, just before I left work, I tried that. I wiped cache, dalvick and did a factory reset while in recovery...twice and then flashed the ROM again. At first it was SNAPPY fast but once all my apps got loaded, it was locking up left and right and no matter what I set the back light at it WOULD NOT do anything but turn off after three seconds. It was just driving me nuts so I reflashed the UCLE5 FULLY STOCK ROM that Ollie pointed me to and then flashed the rooted Siyah kernel and made a Nandroid back up with NO apps installed so I can flash that if I have any issues.

Well that was short lived but between the Samsung apps that I had gotten accustomed to using, (including the messaging app which has a really clean way to send my location to all my iPhone using friends and family) the inability to change that damn back light, and the frequent lock ups and freezes...I was just done. I have little patience for this stuff, I'm just glad that I've learned how to be able to switch back and forth so easily.