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Root What I've learned... How to be happy with MT

SteboMT

Member
Want to know RIGHT NOW how to be happy with a MT?

Precursor, I never had a smartphone so the MT is my first. I came from iPad2 world and enjoy the flawless operation of it. A friend gave me his MT and right off the bat I ran into memory problems, reboots and freezing of the unit. In addition I found this amazing forum and the great people here that made my life better with it.

Right off the bat I rooted it, and loaded MT-DEV 2.4. Looked and operated just like my ipad and everything seemed great. Then the reboots and freezing started to happen. Poor battery life and phone got really hot in temperature as where I work has 0 bars of service.

Then I wiped it and went with MT-DEV CM7, eventually loading MT-DEV CM9. Again camera problems and reboots while sitting there doing nothing.

Later on I tried Paranoid Android 1.6 which was really fast and had a great theme. After having the camera app work once, I had to pull the battery to just to get it to work again. I realized something else was going on here...

If you want to experiment with ROMs make sure you;

1. Wipe / Factory Reset
2. Wipe Cache
3. Most important Wipe Dalvik cache.
4. Then flash your new ROM.

The problems still ensued later down the road and after noticing the phone running out of memory I found Super Memory Booster app. Watching the ram problems constantly I ended up flashing the MT-REVAMP 5/15/2013 and the phone has been flawless ever since...

The MT has 512 mb of internal ram but only 384 is available. When you run those newer ROMs, it will run them but there is really not enough free ram to run apps designed for the newest ROMs. Running MT-REVAMP I have 148-184 of free ram on the phone (VS. 59-64 free) and now all the problems are gone! Good luck in your adventures and THANKS BSYDZ and anyone else who spent time on this one it has really been fun!

PS. Make sure you get ROM manager 5.5.0.4 and make backups each time you get a new ROM and sort out all the apps and shortcuts...
 
Want to know RIGHT NOW how to be happy with a MT?

Precursor, I never had a smartphone so the MT is my first. I came from iPad2 world and enjoy the flawless operation of it. A friend gave me his MT and right off the bat I ran into memory problems, reboots and freezing of the unit. In addition I found this amazing forum and the great people here that made my life better with it.

Right off the bat I rooted it, and loaded MT-DEV 2.4. Looked and operated just like my ipad and everything seemed great. Then the reboots and freezing started to happen. Poor battery life and phone got really hot in temperature as where I work has 0 bars of service.

Then I wiped it and went with MT-DEV CM7, eventually loading MT-DEV CM9. Again camera problems and reboots while sitting there doing nothing.

Later on I tried Paranoid Android 1.6 which was really fast and had a great theme. After having the camera app work once, I had to pull the battery to just to get it to work again. I realized something else was going on here...

If you want to experiment with ROMs make sure you;

1. Wipe / Factory Reset
2. Wipe Cache
3. Most important Wipe Dalvik cache.
4. Then flash your new ROM.

The problems still ensued later down the road and after noticing the phone running out of memory I found Super Memory Booster app. Watching the ram problems constantly I ended up flashing the MT-REVAMP 5/15/2013 and the phone has been flawless ever since...

The MT has 512 mb of internal ram but only 384 is available. When you run those newer ROMs, it will run them but there is really not enough free ram to run apps designed for the newest ROMs. Running MT-REVAMP I have 148-184 of free ram on the phone (VS. 59-64 free) and now all the problems are gone! Good luck in your adventures and THANKS BSYDZ and anyone else who spent time on this one it has really been fun!

PS. Make sure you get ROM manager 5.5.0.4 and make backups each time you get a new ROM and sort out all the apps and shortcuts...

I agree, the Gingerbread and ICS ROMs have a lot of candy, but for fast smooth push the back button once operation, MT-REVAMP is the way to go. At least until a revised Nexus 4 with LTE is released.
 
I love this post... and can't agree more.

As much as I'd like to have an ICS+ ROM on the MT, it's just not made for it.

I can get by just fine with the Gingerbread ROM, and the Revamp is made for this phone.
 
Maybe I'm one of the lucky one's, but I have ran just about all ROM's available for the MT and NEVER had issues like you described. I am currently running CM9 and my phone works better than ever. I always do the mentioned wipes, but do them twice. I wonder if your MT might have a piece of hardware that is malfunctioning.

One thing that I have found out though, is that I quit trying to enhance my MT with launchers and fancy themes, because those impact the performance of the phone.

I have used my MT for just over a year and don't see me getting a new phone for a while as 4G wont be available around here any time soon. That's about the only reason I would upgrade. Well, that and maybe a better camera.
 
Maybe I'm one of the lucky one's, but I have ran just about all ROM's available for the MT and NEVER had issues like you described. I am currently running CM9 and my phone works better than ever. I always do the mentioned wipes, but do them twice. I wonder if your MT might have a piece of hardware that is malfunctioning.

One thing that I have found out though, is that I quit trying to enhance my MT with launchers and fancy themes, because those impact the performance of the phone.

I have used my MT for just over a year and don't see me getting a new phone for a while as 4G wont be available around here any time soon. That's about the only reason I would upgrade. Well, that and maybe a better camera.

That's great that you are troublefree Buzz! Try this. Download Foxnews app, Waze, and run both and then run the camera app and switch front and back, and switch pic to video and back. Then hit home and set it on your table... ;)

Do this without ANY memory cleaners installed. LOL If you can do this then you may prove that MY phone has something wrong with it!

Question so with MTDEV-CM9 - your camera works 100%?? video and front camera?
 
That's great that you are troublefree Buzz! Try this. Download Foxnews app, Waze, and run both and then run the camera app and switch front and back, and switch pic to video and back. Then hit home and set it on your table... ;)

Do this without ANY memory cleaners installed. LOL If you can do this then you may prove that MY phone has something wrong with it!

Question so with MTDEV-CM9 - your camera works 100%?? video and front camera?

It almost sounds like a cheat code for the Xbox, LOL.

That's one thing I don't do a lot is multitask with my phone. I am basically retired and don't need it to do that. When I was working, I used to carry 2 phones and a pager, so that could explain why. I do use it to listen to streaming radio though and it works great!

No, video on CM9 does not work. The fact that these guys got the camera to work was amazing. I use the camera a lot and video is not that big a deal.
 
One more thing, I used to do backups and every time I tried to restore them the ROM never functioned correctly, mainly the apps would not work. The only backup I currently have is the original ROM. I made a backup just before flashing my first ROM. I then re-install all the apps using the website and my laptop. It's way quicker that way.

Fingers crossed, I have never had any problems with flashing ROMs and actually got good at it. Not bad for an old fart! ;)

Another feature I enjoy with CM9 is Google Now. I use it for amusement more than anything, and I have two friends that own iPhones that say they like Now because it talks back a lot less than Siiri. But some of the search results make me laugh.
 
One more thing, I used to do backups and every time I tried to restore them the ROM never functioned correctly, mainly the apps would not work. The only backup I currently have is the original ROM. I made a backup just before flashing my first ROM. I then re-install all the apps using the website and my laptop. It's way quicker that way.

Fingers crossed, I have never had any problems with flashing ROMs and actually got good at it. Not bad for an old fart! ;)

Another feature I enjoy with CM9 is Google Now. I use it for amusement more than anything, and I have two friends that own iPhones that say they like Now because it talks back a lot less than Siiri. But some of the search results make me laugh.

I never had an issue restoring a ROM and apps with CWM. Perhaps you have a hardware issue. ;) My Backup Pro works great for restoring apps for me in new ROMS.

But really, the first time you push the back button, you always get the proper response?
 
odojoe said:
But really, the first time you push the back button, you always get the proper response?

Never had an issue with the back button except when trying the Paranoid Android ROM, but that ROM had issues with the touch drivers. I had to hit even the icons 3 times to get them to work, which was a common problem as others had the same problem.

odojoe said:
Perhaps you have a hardware issue.

You never know. But I wasn't restoring apps, I was restoring a ROM from a back up. I used to use Titanium Back Up, but that was hit or miss. I figured it takes about the same time to restore apps as re-install them. I don't play games that often so I don't need to restore them to save levels of play.
 
In the OP I think u need to look into modifying the zip, I'm currently running MT-Dev CM7 with around 30 apps and I've got 189mb or ram all the time, the highest I believe I've had it while running cm7 is 198mb I believe

By modifying the zip I mean there are big apps u can remove in favor of smaller apps
2 that I always pull from the zip are calculator and gallery(gallery is Huge)
I instead install quickpic and realcalc so much smaller
I also remove the themes I don't use like androidian
Protips can also be removed, that's the little android help Guy on first startup
Also very large files that can he removed if u don't use them
visualizations wallpapers and magic or moving wallpapers

Most mt-dev cm7 zips are around 90mb, removing those apps and such I don't use I've been able to get the zip itself down to almost 78mb

As for any other issues, the actual keys on the bottom of the phone not working is a phone issue, everyone has it, some worse then others

And camera freeze issues should only really effect cm9 and higher as none of those have the camera code 100%, but that being said neither does the cm7, the cm7 just happens to have the best working currently
 
Another tip for increasing free memory, is to make sure you know which of your apps run at start-up.

Some apps really have to run at start-up to provide whatever function it is they provide. There are many that run at start-up to provide functions that you may seldom (or never) use, and still work fine with run at start disabled. There are also many that run at start-up for no conceivable purpose, other than to perhaps save you small fractions of a second loading when you need it.

This is a good starting place to investigate if the start-up of a specific app could be disabled, replaced with a different app, or uninstalled all together.

When apps like this get killed by a memory cleaner/app killer utility, they just restart only to be killed again. This cycle can seriously diminish battery life.
 
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