My SGS2 decided to test my patience and alertness all at the same time – 2 days ago it decided to “lose” some of the data on the internal storage (WTF?) followed by wiping contents of SD card. That has happened just as I was trying to download some files *from* the device, and upload some back. I have received messages about I/O errors etc which were not very promising.
Now, I’ve been using Cognition-1.5.1 for quite some time now (which is stock ROM with some tweaks really) however in my situation I was looking for more control over the device and desire to run fsck against internal storage etc. Considering I’ve lost most of my data (by a lucky stike of luck I did have a backup that is 2 weeks old) I decided to bite the bulet and go for Cyanogen. Long research and questioning of my motives resulted in CM7 being installed on my SGS2.
Things I liked
- WiFi drivers: I’ve got solid WiFi performance with CM7 unlike stock ROM I speeds were amaizing
- Number of tweaks and presence of “profiles”
- UI is nice and clean. Looks like ADWLauncher settings are better polished than what I have in Cognition…
- very spartan ROM. Bare minimum to get by, as it should be, except…
Things I miss/didn’t like
immediately after I’ve booted into CM7 I have noticed that I’m attached to certain things:
- Clock: I really use that Samsung stock clock to it’s fullest – Alarm, Timer, Stopwatch, etc. CM7 stock clock pales in comparison… pitty
- Video playback: I had to show movies to some people that day and all “recommended” players from Market would stutter after a minute or two of playback which was embarasing…
- I couldn’t find the list of supported formats/codecs for CM7 to convert to that my videos… ugh…
- Default system font change – I’m too used to my current font in Cognition and would like to keep it
- SMS application looked rather “dull”. Not sure if it’s not just a different interface but it felt like it was missing features
- It CRASHED on me while using Market… saw something in MIUI forums about insufficient disk space for larger applications – maybe that’s the cause?
Things I should try/may be able to fix
- clock: Lightning Bug, Alarm Droid could probably replace Stock Alarm clock… haven’t found the rest yet
- sounds like some Video players can switch between HW/SW decoding so switching to SW decode may help my problem with stuttering. May also try different format/codec combination
- MIUI is a custom ROM atop of CM it sounds
- CM9 may be able to bring some goodness as well
- AOSP-based ROMS
- INDEX – Galaxy S II Original Android Development [ 5 March ]
Where I’m at
At the moment I have returned to Congition-1.5.1 (sigh..) I am looking at CM9 now, except it’s an “alpha” and hoping that imminent release of ICS for SGS2 by Samsung will yield source code dump which may speed up CM9 development (or not).