Monday, April 16, 2012

CM9 alpha3 now available for the Epic 4G Touch

After much bug squashing, feature fixes, and stability improvements, the Epic Touch CM Team feel we have a build worthy to be released as another alpha. As always, follow us on Google+ and Facebook, for the latest info regarding progress on CM9 for the Sprint Epic 4G Touch. Mind you, this is still alpha, and not yet a release candidate, nor the final product we hope to present in the future. There will be a few bugs and kinks here and there, but it's still deemed stable for us to release an alpha build for the masses. Be sure to check in the Issue Tracker to see if your issue has been posted.

Changelog
  • Faster GPS triangulation. In previous builds, you may have noticed yourself unable to locate more than 2 satellites. this bug has been squashed, and now more satellites should be available to get a signal from. That, and also, with improved gps binaries, getting a GPS lock shall be much quicker.
  • Phantom voicemail fixed (seriously)! In alpha 2, we didn't compile the Phone.apk with the proper flag for the fix. We didn't forget this time! :)
  • Manual CPU frequency settings. We patched the Settings app so it sees our frequency table, thus aptly allowing us to manually adjust this. Be aware that any mods done in the performance section can be a bit dangerous. Be smart when adjusting your frequency maxes and mins.
  • Improved battery life. Tweaks in the frameworks xmls to optimize it for our phones have led us to have much improved battery life.
  • Fixed Roaming Menu. Previously, there was a bug where making a change in the system select menu for roaming didn't persist through reboot. We've fixed that, as well as making it possible to select more roaming options as featured in Touchwiz. 
  • Updated kernel to FD10. This is pretty self explanatory.
  • Pinch to zoom in camera. This feature was brought into our builds from upstream. 
  • Expandable sound menu. This patch was also brought from upstream. You can now make it so that when you change volume with your rocker, you can make that more expandable, to edit other sound volumes, eg media or alarms.
Release Notes
  • For the phantom voicemail fix, we made it so it disabled incoming voicemail notifications coming directly to the phone; you should still be able to get voicemail notifications from your Sprint VVM or Google Voice account. If you're on a carrier which supports handling voicemails through the phone, you can check the checkbox in Phone>Settings>Voicemail Notifications..
  • This is posted in the CM Status page, but we figured we should post it here as well: if you're having difficulties with MMS, it is almost assured it's an issue with a bad telephony.db file in /data/data/*telephony*/databases/ which google may have restored during the initial setup. Just delete that file, reboot, and resend your MMS; it should work from then, on. 
  • There's a bug in CPU Settings in Performance Settings, where the changes don't persist on a reboot. We're aware of it.
News
The Epic Touch CM Team has still been working hard on getting working kernel sources. Darchstar has been making some very good progress. He's taken teamhacksung's repo, made changes to it, and compiled a kernel which is quite functional. Besides the underlying factor that makes it our phone a phone, the cdma radio, it works quite well. Be sure to be on the lookout for more progress. We may actually beat Samsung to the punch here! If you're interested in helping out, kernel sources can be found on darchstar's github

Links
See the CM9 Status page for more details on the ROM, then head over to the CM9 Install Guide to install the ROM. Please check the Epic Touch CM Issue Tracker to see if your bug has been reported, before filing a new issue report.

If you appreciate our work, please, consider supporting the Epic Touch CM Team. Thanks


Saturday, April 7, 2012

Coming soon in CM9 alpha3 for Epic Touch

This page will be updated periodically as things are fixed, features are added, etc. Please, check back regularly.

News
It's been a week since alpha2 hit the scene and development has continued full steam ever since. The Epic Touch CM Team has been working diligently to fix bugs, improve functionality, and more. Enough work has been completed since alpha2's release that we can warrant a "coming soon" blog post ;). Even so, more work needs to be done and we're looking to our users to learn what's most important for our next update. More information on how to contact us can be found at the bottom of this post.

Along with bug squashing and additional features, there's still the matter of the kernel. You've probably noticed how much we've progressed so far. While we've been examining and working with the code we have, we still need more help to get it running at peak performance; either that or we'll have to wait for kernel sources from Samsung, (which shouldn't be too far in the future :)

Changelog - Fixed for CM9 alpha3
  • More roaming options. Home, International Roaming, National Roaming, or None.
  • Kernel updated to FD02. including a change to the adb binary to match CyanogenMod's root implementation. "adb shell" will now return a non-root shell unless "adb root" is used first.
  • Faster GPS location triangulation. With help from the latest leaks we've been able to update the proprietary libs to give us more efficient and reliable GPS.
  • Phantom voicemail fixed (for real this time). With alpha2 we forgot to compile our Phone.apk with the flag to get rid of that pesky phantom voicemail. For alpha3, you can be sure to see that fixed.
  • Manual CPU frequency setting. The option that used to be greyed out in performance settings can now be adjusted. There's no overclock or anything of that nature, yet; we need kernel sources for that.
  • Improved battery life. We've been working on tweaks to the framwork's xml files to optimize our builds specially for Epic 4G Touch, and we've been returning results with much better battery life. Darchstar reported that he got around 20 hours of battery life with moderate-to-heavy usage.
Along with all these updates concerning only Epic 4G Touch, there have also been updates in upstream CyanogenMod that you can hope to see in the future, e.g. pinch to zoom in the camera app.

Now we want to direct our focus to our users! We find your input extremely valuable to the development of our ROMs. And so we ask: what bugs do you really want to see fixed as we move into alpha3? Any requests? Feel Free to join us in our IRC Channel to talk about it, or comment on our Google+ or Facebook

Sunday, April 1, 2012

CM9 alpha2 for the Epic 4G Touch now released!

Once again, the Epic 4G Touch team is proud to present our second alpha release of CyanogenMod for your Sprint Epic 4G Touch. Please, follow us on Google+ and Facebook for the latest news. Even for being an alpha, with it as stable as it is, be wary of bugs and other kinks for the matter, as they are still being worked on.

Changelog
  • Android version has been updated to 4.0.4. This brings along with it all the bug fixes upstream that it introduces. Big thanks to the Andoird Open Source Project.
  • Video recording has been fixed. A big thanks to the guys at teamhacksung for the patch.
  • The issue regarding Netflix and other similar video players has been fixed. Thanks to our Sbrissen for the fix.
  • The phantom voicemail issue has now been fixed. If the problem seems to persist, even after flashing alpha2, try pushing this apk to /system/app.
  • Capactive lights now turn on by last action. This was a request by the users, for a convenience, especially in nighttime, so the lights don't bother them.
  • Dock settings has been introduced into the ROM.

Release Notes
  • With Android 4.0.4, testing has shown the following:
    • Smoother overall experience
    • Camera autoflash works properly now
    • Better overall battery life
    • One tester noted that sync with Exchange, which was broken for him in 4.0.3, now works with 4.0.4
  • We have removed Sprint VVM from the base package, for the sake of legalities. See the customization guide, for how to get it back.
  • Stock android recovery is still being used in the ROM. This is for your protection, so you don't brick your phone due to all the people whom having flashed an ICS kernel, bricking when flashing a rom, wiping, etc. If you would like to backup or restore, or do any flashing, please go back to an ELXX gingerbread kernel, and do it from there.
  • Dock audio confirmed working BUT users must select 'Use Dock USB Audio' from Settings->Dock BEFORE connecting device to dock (setting locked when docked). Default is UNCHECKED.
  • Do NOT use SetCPU with this ROM.  It is known to cause the "Sleep of Death" issue.
Links

See the CM9 Status page for more details concerning the ROM, then head over to the CM9 Install Guide to install the ROM. Please, check the Epic Touch CM Issue Tracker, to see if your bug has been posted already, before filing a bug report.