I have been using my ace now since january this year. During that time there was dissatisfaction with various things but overall I am glad I have the phone as it allows me to do things that previously werent possible, here is my thoughts tho on its performance.
As everyone knows there is a ton of phones on the market and the ace is currently now in the lower end of the market especially with the release of the ace 2 as its replacement. But is the ace really not up to power?
Since the last 2 weeks I have been toying with rom updates and different kernels and have discovered that the ace can be a LOT faster when one moves away from stock configuration.
A stock firmware runs on the rfs filesystem using the ondemand cpu scheduler and with samsung's software running as well, it also excessively checks for OTA updates.
I initially just moved to 2.3.6 stock from my providers 2.3.3 firmware and didnt notice anything different on performance but this learned me to use odin and at that point I was confident of a procedure to revert should I mess up so I then ventured further.
I installed CM 7.2 RC1 nightly build and the first impressions was it is fast, damn fast. To give you an idea of the % increase to load my call log up on stock it could take in excess of 5 seconds, whilst every time its under 1 second on CM. Other apps which lagged on stock were noticebly faster on CM as well. I then tried other roms including CM 7.1 and some modified stock.
CM 7.1 was a bit slower than 7.2 but still ripped stock apart with speed, the modified stock I tried such as omega rom were also noticebly faster than stock but still slower than CM 7.2. I then ventured further.
Today I put stock back on from my nandroid backup and then used cf-root's tool to convert the system filesystem from rfs to ext4, this got rid of 70% of the lag right away. I then installed the most reccommended tweak lagfix script from XDA however I found this made little noticeble difference other than slowing the boot process down, this also matched what I did on omega by removing the lagfix scripts and on that rom it also made little difference.
Also changing the cpu profiler to something like interactive got rid of another chunk of lag although this drains more battery as well.
Whats my conclusion so far?
From what I see so far CM is the only real true modded rom for the ace where they actually have changed features etc. as it has its own phone dialler, contacts, extra settings, themes, profiles etc. The modded stock roms from what I have played with so far are mainly just pre converted to ext4 and pre installed lagfix scripts, also preinstalled cf-root although some also say they have added gui acceleration. They dont feel truly modded like CM tho. I suspect the main reason the modded roms are faster is the removal of the samsung overlay and the ext4 filesystem.
Sadly it seems BLN doesnt work properly on any cf-root kernel newer than b82-ex and no CM kernels so far, not sure if the kernel dev's did something wrong or its a case of the BLN dev needs to fix his app for newer kernel drivers, the BLN dev hasnt responded to my email and forum post tho so for BLN fans be aware.
My experience in the last 2 weeks I feel is a big reason no ICS for the ace, because ICS uses ext4 by default and has other speed improvements, so if people's ace's ran faster due to a better stock rom then samsung would sell less newer phones.
If anyone wants to venture into changing roms here is what I reccomended.
First get cf-root, this will root your phone and install CWM for you. I reccomend version b82-ex, and the associated fix file for it. Once you have cf-root it can be installed in the stock recovery app using the update option. At this point you will have the ability to do full nandoid backups and restores (backup of entire phone system and apps, but not sdcard data). I then reccomend installing the CWM 5.0.2.6 update for the ace, again this is done via recovery, this time via the CWM recovery. This gives you the ability to install any rom made for the ace, as many require CWM v5. With cf-root installed its also now possible to install dr-apps2sd should you want it as well as the cf-root ext4 convertor app, the ext4 convertor app can convert your system to ext4. So cf-root gives root,ext4, BLN, CWM recovery to the ace on stock rom.
So before doing anything else after install cf-root and CWM 5, do a backup from CWM recovery, then copy that backup to your pc as well so its backed up. In most scenarios using CWM to recover will get you out of a stuck situation should it happen. Next if you want to try out cyanogen then you can simply install that using CWM5 using the install zip from sdcard option but remember to do a factory reset first, or if you want to see how your existing stock runs on ext4 then install the cf-root ext4 apk from the CWM app and then run the convert rfs to ext4 option, this does auto revert back to rfs if it comes across a problem. In ym case there wasnt enough free space on /system so it auto rolled it back, I then freed some space and was able to covert it to ext4.
If you want to try another rom such as CM, then other tools I suggest are.
titanium backup - to backup your apps and app configs, in my experience its not 100% perfect at reinstalling the configs, eg. opera wont load after recovery and have to wipe the data to run it, but most apps work fine.
my backup root - to backup call logs, sms and contacts. However dont backup sms if you have go sms pro.
go sms pro - to backup sms, this is better than my backup root as it preserves the timestamps on messages.
titanium backup can also wipe system apps to free up space on /system. I suggest freezing them first to make sure you dont get unintended consequences from removing the apps.
Now if you install a rom that uses the ext4 filesystem but then want to go back to your rfs based stock nandroid backup, you will also need a pc app called odin, CWM wont convert the filesystem on its restore feature. To use odin you will also need a stock rom and whats called a cooper file.
I recognise these apps I have listed are hard to find on the net, some now impossible due to dead old web links, so I will be posting download links to all the non market apps on my own webspace.
As everyone knows there is a ton of phones on the market and the ace is currently now in the lower end of the market especially with the release of the ace 2 as its replacement. But is the ace really not up to power?
Since the last 2 weeks I have been toying with rom updates and different kernels and have discovered that the ace can be a LOT faster when one moves away from stock configuration.
A stock firmware runs on the rfs filesystem using the ondemand cpu scheduler and with samsung's software running as well, it also excessively checks for OTA updates.
I initially just moved to 2.3.6 stock from my providers 2.3.3 firmware and didnt notice anything different on performance but this learned me to use odin and at that point I was confident of a procedure to revert should I mess up so I then ventured further.
I installed CM 7.2 RC1 nightly build and the first impressions was it is fast, damn fast. To give you an idea of the % increase to load my call log up on stock it could take in excess of 5 seconds, whilst every time its under 1 second on CM. Other apps which lagged on stock were noticebly faster on CM as well. I then tried other roms including CM 7.1 and some modified stock.
CM 7.1 was a bit slower than 7.2 but still ripped stock apart with speed, the modified stock I tried such as omega rom were also noticebly faster than stock but still slower than CM 7.2. I then ventured further.
Today I put stock back on from my nandroid backup and then used cf-root's tool to convert the system filesystem from rfs to ext4, this got rid of 70% of the lag right away. I then installed the most reccommended tweak lagfix script from XDA however I found this made little noticeble difference other than slowing the boot process down, this also matched what I did on omega by removing the lagfix scripts and on that rom it also made little difference.
Also changing the cpu profiler to something like interactive got rid of another chunk of lag although this drains more battery as well.
Whats my conclusion so far?
From what I see so far CM is the only real true modded rom for the ace where they actually have changed features etc. as it has its own phone dialler, contacts, extra settings, themes, profiles etc. The modded stock roms from what I have played with so far are mainly just pre converted to ext4 and pre installed lagfix scripts, also preinstalled cf-root although some also say they have added gui acceleration. They dont feel truly modded like CM tho. I suspect the main reason the modded roms are faster is the removal of the samsung overlay and the ext4 filesystem.
Sadly it seems BLN doesnt work properly on any cf-root kernel newer than b82-ex and no CM kernels so far, not sure if the kernel dev's did something wrong or its a case of the BLN dev needs to fix his app for newer kernel drivers, the BLN dev hasnt responded to my email and forum post tho so for BLN fans be aware.
My experience in the last 2 weeks I feel is a big reason no ICS for the ace, because ICS uses ext4 by default and has other speed improvements, so if people's ace's ran faster due to a better stock rom then samsung would sell less newer phones.
If anyone wants to venture into changing roms here is what I reccomended.
First get cf-root, this will root your phone and install CWM for you. I reccomend version b82-ex, and the associated fix file for it. Once you have cf-root it can be installed in the stock recovery app using the update option. At this point you will have the ability to do full nandoid backups and restores (backup of entire phone system and apps, but not sdcard data). I then reccomend installing the CWM 5.0.2.6 update for the ace, again this is done via recovery, this time via the CWM recovery. This gives you the ability to install any rom made for the ace, as many require CWM v5. With cf-root installed its also now possible to install dr-apps2sd should you want it as well as the cf-root ext4 convertor app, the ext4 convertor app can convert your system to ext4. So cf-root gives root,ext4, BLN, CWM recovery to the ace on stock rom.
So before doing anything else after install cf-root and CWM 5, do a backup from CWM recovery, then copy that backup to your pc as well so its backed up. In most scenarios using CWM to recover will get you out of a stuck situation should it happen. Next if you want to try out cyanogen then you can simply install that using CWM5 using the install zip from sdcard option but remember to do a factory reset first, or if you want to see how your existing stock runs on ext4 then install the cf-root ext4 apk from the CWM app and then run the convert rfs to ext4 option, this does auto revert back to rfs if it comes across a problem. In ym case there wasnt enough free space on /system so it auto rolled it back, I then freed some space and was able to covert it to ext4.
If you want to try another rom such as CM, then other tools I suggest are.
titanium backup - to backup your apps and app configs, in my experience its not 100% perfect at reinstalling the configs, eg. opera wont load after recovery and have to wipe the data to run it, but most apps work fine.
my backup root - to backup call logs, sms and contacts. However dont backup sms if you have go sms pro.
go sms pro - to backup sms, this is better than my backup root as it preserves the timestamps on messages.
titanium backup can also wipe system apps to free up space on /system. I suggest freezing them first to make sure you dont get unintended consequences from removing the apps.
Now if you install a rom that uses the ext4 filesystem but then want to go back to your rfs based stock nandroid backup, you will also need a pc app called odin, CWM wont convert the filesystem on its restore feature. To use odin you will also need a stock rom and whats called a cooper file.
I recognise these apps I have listed are hard to find on the net, some now impossible due to dead old web links, so I will be posting download links to all the non market apps on my own webspace.