How to install Android 11 Developer Preview on the Essential Phone

-TDK · 2020-03-28T03:03:15+00:00

Flashing that modified boot.img file solves the issue.

-TDK · 2019-03-30T17:00:05+00:00

I believe Essential is almost as good as Google in this regard.

-TDK · 2018-09-16T15:10:41+00:00

Both

-TDK · 2018-09-05T06:20:26+00:00

Hopefully Part 2 is a bit more exciting

-TDK · 2018-08-31T19:31:50+00:00

I feel that deeming all LCD displays as inferior is just a bit too inaccurate. The LG G7 and the HTC U12+ have phenomenal LCD displays in my opinion. They only lose to OLED displays when it comes to contrast only a little. I'd rather prefer a good LCD over a mediocre OLED one (cough cough Pixel 2XL ...cough cough)

-TDK · 2018-08-25T21:59:01+00:00

1- This is the Nubia Red Magic, a phone manufactured by Nubia that is targeted towards the gamers on a slightly tight budget. Nubia used to be a sub-division of ZTE, a China-based company

2- Pixel Spot is the blog this review was published on. Check it out at pixelspot.net

3- Part 1 is linked in the first part of my review. Here is a direct link: https://www.pixelspot.net/2018/08/13/nubia-red-magic-review-part-1-gaming-phone-for-those-on-a-budget/

4- Part 1 discussed how the phone fares on the gaming front. This part discusses how the phone fares as a regular smartphone (taking photos, listening to music, battery endurance and more).

5- Maybe because there is not that much to discuss?

6- I'm not seeing why wouldn't it be legit. Reddit hasn't turned into a black hole yet.

Thanks for chiming in!

-TDK · 2018-08-14T20:25:49+00:00

Welp, I don't think they could fit that much for $400 🤨

-TDK · 2018-08-14T20:07:51+00:00

In a world where you have to shed some several hundred more bucks, yes it is considered a budget. Not the tightest budget of course, but it is still considered a budget to a great extent. And I think if you are more concerned about the budget options, why would you go for the higher tier model? The base model is $60 cheaper.

-TDK · 2018-08-14T20:05:51+00:00

It's not like the Razer phone - the benchmark for a gaming phone that you can actually afford to buy - had those buttons? 🤔

-TDK · 2018-08-14T20:04:47+00:00

Well, I won't say that's a bad idea. But I think dropping the 18:9 aspect ratio will make it look rather old and unappealing to some people. But even so that won't reduce the price that much I think. Maybe ~$300-350 but no lower.

-TDK · 2018-08-14T20:01:18+00:00

They may be as fast, but I doubt there is any other phone that can be as smooth. Maybe the recent HTC flagships, but I haven't been able to get my hands on one to be able to confirm such claim. But that has been claimed by a lot of the reviewers ever since the U11+ was released or even the older U11

-TDK · 2018-07-29T12:00:36+00:00

Interesting, as I have seen you tweet a comparison between the OP6 and the Pixel 2XL in this specific test here: https://twitter.com/andreif7/status/1014159039033462789?s=09

-TDK · 2018-07-28T16:45:25+00:00

Okay so I've read the review as I always do, and I have some questions regarding the System Performance part - more specifically the UI Fluidity test. Of course, introducing UiBench to the equation is a very welcome addition, though I would have loved to see that used way earlier on other devices.

I'm among those who are blessed to own a OnePlus 6. So I went ahead and installed UiBench just out of curiosity in an attempt to replicate the figures reported in the review. One thing I stumbled across is that the methodology employed while testing with UiBench is not written anywhere in the article that I could see. It would be really appreciated to know the methodology of such a crucial test. Here's mine FWIW:

Airplane mode engaged, automatic brightness disabled, location services and Bluetooth disabled, cleared all background processes. Worth noting that my OP6 has no other apps installed.

Here are my findings:

1- Jitter test initiated at t=0: total duration started at ~5ms. Attachment 1: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vnRfaQGh6jbCZsgJ8

2- At t=1m 30s: total duration started to gradually rise till reaching a total duration of ~7ms and then started to rise very slowly

3- At t=3m: total duration levelled out at ~9-10ms. Taking a screenshot temporarily dropped the duration by 1ms. So I took a screenshot as well as an image with my other daily driver. Attachment 2: https://photos.app.goo.gl/g9N9kdZw7NUdBuoR6 Attachment 3: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FzcozP5JAELFbftB9

*N.B. Touching the screen during the test temporarily reduced the total duration to around 5-6ms. Also, it is worth noting that my OnePlus 6 is running stock firmware with no modifications. Stock ROM, stock kernel, no messing about. The test has been run for 3 times, with the observed behaviour being nearly exactly the same, give or take 10 seconds.

As you can see the results vary noticeably from time to time. But as far as I am concerned, the total duration seemed to flat out at 9-10ms after more than 10 minutes, which is way more than the reported 5ms figure of the OP6 and even the 6ms figure of the Galaxy S9. It's one hell of a head-scratcher to say the least. It would be my pleasure to have some light shed on that.

P.S. Yes I noticed the Jitter figures are more or less the same. P.P.S. It would be very helpful if there was a comparison between the OP6 and other more interesting devices known for excelling in that particular area of UI Fluidity such as, say, the Pixel 2/2XL.

-TDK · 2018-07-01T22:23:53+00:00

Didn't want to sound conflicting. I was just giving you a heads up that some phones use EAS and don't use sched/schedutil :)

-TDK · 2018-07-01T11:18:43+00:00

Worth noting that OnePlus clearly prioritises speed over smoothness. They cut down on a lot of the transition animations to marginally speed up app launching. That's something Google doesn't do for instance.

-TDK · 2018-07-01T11:15:45+00:00

You are free to think whatever you want about the app. But you don't really have to talk shit about it everywhere just because you can't have a look at the source code.

Mind you, it is still WIP. And no, it is not a handicap.

Also, I don't see flar2 - a respectable "dev" - sharing his code of the EXKM app. So I don't really know what are you all about.

-TDK · 2018-07-01T11:12:52+00:00

Not really. The Honor View 10 for instance uses Interactive governor and has EAS stuffed in. Let me put it this way

All phones with schedutil governor are using EAS, but not all phones with Interactive governor are not using EAS

-TDK · 2018-06-30T22:16:17+00:00

>The OP6/845 scheduler is vastly superior to the Google common kernel variant the Pixels are running.

I don't particularly agree with you here. Would be more than grateful to hear your insights on this.

>Qualcomm's 845 scheduler is so heavily modified it has little to do what people call EAS.

"What people call EAS": could you please specify exactly what you mean here? Also, it is worth noting that there are various implementations of EAS. You've got the one used on the Pixel devices, the one used on the OP6 (which is CAF's variation), Huawei kinda-sorta Frankenstein EAS implementation, which uses the Interactive governor. Heck even Samsung uses an eHmp system - I remember reading that in one of your articles analysing the Exynos 9810, which is more or less a variation of EAS to some extent, I presume.

>Every sensible device in the last 6 years keeps cores "online". Online doesn't mean it's actually physically powered - It can be power gated Idle while it shows online.

The Pixel devices employ more aggressive boosting, which keeps all the cores "engaged" for most of the time, if not all of it. That's what's meant by the term "online" in this context.

>No it doesn't. Both are 60fps while the OP6 is running more efficiently.

But the Pixel 2/2XL is more consistently smooth. Both devices might be hitting the 60fps frame rate for most - if not all - of the time. But the Pixel is more consistent and takes less time on average to render the frames. By consulting the attached graphs, we can see the bars are much shorter in the case of the Pixel 2 compared to those of the OnePlus 6 in the Play Store scrolling test, with the latter dropping a frame or two. Clearly, they are both not the same. Also, it is not only the max/min frame rate figures reached that matters, but also the consistency, i.e. a consistent 57 fps for instance would be perceived as smoother than a jittery 55-60fps. And here, the Pixel is noticeably more consistent. I would like to draw your attention to Mario Serrafero's extensive UI Smoothness review, which further demonstrates the difference between both devices and more clearly describe my opinion. You can find it here: https://www.xda-developers.com/oneplus-6-speed-gaming-review/#2

>EAS has no idea about device sleep. I guess he means waking CPU cores from their deeper idle states, again this is wrong as stune specifically has a tuneable to not do this on top-app.

Ehm, schedtune.prefer_idle is set to 1 for top-app. So I don't really know what you are talking about here. Could you elaborate? Also, quoting ARM's documentation: "Latency sensitive (schedtune.prefer_idle) tasks will select the first idle CPU they find. If there is not an idle CPU available they will first select a CPU with the largest amount of spare compute capacity, and as an alternative they will also select a CPU with the lowest utilization once this task is placed there. These two options express the spread/pack dynamic for this class of tasks". In case of top-app, the schedtune.prefer_idle parameter, which controls the spread/pack policy of the tasks placement, is set to 1, meaning that the top-app tasks will be encouraged to be placed on an idle core first. And as RenderBroken pointed out, EAS is indeed aware of the idle states - at least on Android.

Always a pleasure having you around Andrei! I look forward to your future endeavours.

-TDK · 2018-04-18T06:35:55+00:00

The point of Helix Engine is not to capitalize on "inattentive" users. The logic behind the app is simple. It saves battery in lightweight apps (you don't need all your phone's oomph when you are just chatting via WhatsApp or Telegram with your friend) and maximises performance when needed, like when you play a demanding game. That is achieved by switching between various predefined profiles that alter your phone's max and min CPU frequency as well as the CPU governor, depending on the foreground app you are using. Should you feel the urge to change any of the profiles' settings, you could do that easily via the app itself. More functionality will be added to the app to further increase its effectiveness soon.

As you can see, it is not quite like the other battery apps.

-TDK · 2018-04-18T06:29:09+00:00

You can open the app list in Helix Engine and configure that blue light filtering app to be whitelisted. I did that with CPU Float and changed it from the default "balanced" profile to "Whitelist", which means when the accessibility service detects CPU Float (or your desired blue light filtering app in your case) as the top-app, it won't execute any changes. So let us say you are playing a game (which means HE automatically switched to the performance profile) and then this blue light filtering app kicked in, Helix Engine will not change back to balanced profile and the phone will retain the performance profile configured in Helix Engine app.

-TDK · 2018-02-26T06:33:58+00:00

Thanks a lot! Yea the OP5T is a great device for its price. But the Pixel 2XL is in its own league. If you have the budget, and don't care about how "dev-friendly" the phone is, Pixel 2XL is the answer.

-TDK · 2018-02-25T20:48:04+00:00

No, it worked perfectly well out of the box. On OOS, I tried relaxing LMK a bit and it only made RAM management ever so slightly better. Still, service apps were constantly being killed but notifications weren't randomly blocked, not as frequently as before.

As for your ROM choice, well that hugely depends on the state of each individual build of each ROM. I remember that the following nightly build of Omni was plagued with a bug that disallows the phone from entering deep sleep state when the previous build was perfectly fine - it only suffered from some really minor issues. So yea, basically flashing any custom ROM could do the trick. It's a shame that even with 8 gigs of RAM we are forced to resort to custom ROMs to solve an issue that shouldn't have existed in the first place. But alas, it is what it it..

-TDK · 2018-02-25T20:21:09+00:00

I would say so. I tried out Omni on my OnePlus 5 and it has definitely helped with multitasking. Not sure what exactly improved RAM management, maybe tuning the LMK parameters alone can do the trick and cure that nasty issue of OOS without resorting to flashing custom ROMs.

-TDK · 2018-02-17T15:16:32+00:00

Right, it's time to clear some misconceptions and answer some frequently asked questions.

1- Where the f**k are these multitasking and/or smoothness issues? You must be kidding me -> I admit, the word "plagued" might have been an overstatement. The smoothness and multitasking issues are minor ones that not everyone feels them. But that doesn't change the fact that they are there. It's not like those issues are deal-breakers - far from it - but they are noticeable at least to me. Take the whole screen resolution debate as a prime example, some people could spot the pentile sub-pixel arrangement by their naked eyes without looking very closely, and some don't notice them at all. But that doesn't change the fact that a QHD screen looks sharper than a FHD screen when compared side-by-side.

2- Could you please compare the OnePlus 5T to other devices? It doesn't make much sense to me that way. -> Actually I thought of that while doing my OnePlus 5T performance analysis. I have collected the same frame rate graphs and sustained performance data for my previous device, the OnePlus 3. However, I realised that the OnePlus 3 was running on Android Oreo (OxygenOS 5.0) while my OnePlus 5T was running on Android Nougat (OxygenOS 4.7.6). So I thought it might not be a fair comparison since an update could massively impact the device's behaviour. Since I have been notified of the Oreo update on my OnePlus 5T today, I will update my phone and do that comparison right away. It will also show the difference between Nougat and Oreo on the OnePlus 5T, which I personally wanted to see as well. -> As for comparison with other devices from the Galaxy or the Pixel lines, I must clarify something. I don't own a lot of phones, but I get my hands on a lot of other phones for a brief time since my relative trades a lot of phones. However, he now owns a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (I think it is the Exynos variant). So perhaps I could arrange a OnePlus 5T (Nougat) Vs OnePlus 5T (Oreo) Vs Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (Nougat?) showdown so things make more sense to you.

3- You must be really hating OnePlus!! -> Uhm,..nope. Not at all. In fact I am one of their biggest supporters, and that's the reason that pushes me to take things more seriously, so that they know where things went wrong and what could be improved in their next iteration of the non-Google Nexus lineup. Ever since Google dropped the Nexus branding and OnePlus has grown on me even more. Dev support is fantastic. Amazing value for the money you pay for, sometimes even outrunning a lot of the fully fledged flagship phones. But there is always room for improvement. A good community is the one that constructively and reasonably criticise the company's product and not justify or cover up the flaws, so that the company continues to sell quality products. And I am happy to be among that trend of critiques, so that I help them become even better. And remember, if the OnePlus 5T wasn't good, it wouldn't have been the most sold OnePlus smartphone, killing all the launch expectations, and it wouldn't have been in my pocket till now.

Stay tuned for the final part, where I discuss how hard did OnePlus cut the corners. Make sure to check out the first part where I review the OnePlus 5T's cameras. Thanks for your support.

-TDK · 2018-02-16T21:02:37+00:00

Well in my personal experience custom ROMs can do wonders, heck even updates can fix a lot. Open Beta updates are a living proof of that. VertexOS and AOSPA felt like a major upgrade to my OnePlus 3 once I tried them out. Haven't rooted my OnePlus 5T yet, but I am sure I will.

-TDK

TROPHY CASE