Samsung Galaxy Note 3 on Lollipop

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ArtooDetoo

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# 157642 8-Dec-2014 10:31

Hey all youze Note 3 punters who are wondering when you'll get the Sammy Lollipop upgrade... as of right now, the answer seems to be sometime in December, but judging by the less than speedy rollout for other more recent handsets from Sammy, I'm not holding my breath.

So it's over to the unofficial sources for me, and as of now, my Note 3 is running an AOSP pre-release based on CWM12. As far as I can tell, the only things broken are NFC (not much of a loss to me) and video recording on both front and back cameras. That's somewhat more of an issue since I do find I use the video capability quite frequently.

There are also a few fit and finish UI glitches here and there, but it's what you'd expect from pre-release and they don't hamper funcionality.

The install was staightforward and the OS found the things needed to complete the network connections without my jumping through hoops, and the PlayStore apps all downloaded automagically with the exception of a couple of paid ones that I re-downloaded manually.

So that's where I am with this at the mo' - the link to the version I downloaded from XDA follows, if you're interested in having a thrash at Lollipop and haven't yet stuck toes in the water.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-3/development/hlte-spr-vzw-temaseks-unofficial-t2953375

And for those brave souls who have already made the upgrade, it'd be great to compare notes.

Cheers,
R2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

ArtooDetoo

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# 1191917 9-Dec-2014 08:22

And at the risk of being accused of talking to myself...

The GPS software in 5.0.1 is buggy. A comparison with KK shows it takes around 3x as long to get a lock and the signal strength reported is consistently lower. As an example, the best KK delivered was 12/18 satellites =>20 while Lollipop showed 4/17, and KK indicates accuracy of 10 feet vs the 46 feet best result for Lollipop. With Lollipop, there were also intermittent and random signal drops to 0 across all satellites while KK's signal was within 2-3 of reported signal constantly and experienced no signal drops.

A note about the audio - there was noticeable distortion with music played through the speaker at levels that were high-ish but not what you'd say were outrageously high, and I suspect that the drivers are poorly calibrated. Via headphones though, there was no distortion audible at the same volume setting.
Update: Turning off the Lock Sound in the Settings>Sound & Notifications menu stops the audio distortion - an acceptable workaround for the monent.
Update 2: There's a policy file that you can flash from recovery which fixes the audio distortion properly and allows you to turn the screen unlock effect back on. You can find it here.

One of my favourite things about the the Note is the S-Pen stylus. However, there is no AOSP support for that function so you'll need to download an app from the PlayStore that facilitates it. CM S-Pen works, for example...

Just as a summary then, although the AOSP delivers a nice improvement in most respects, it's not finished enough to call my daily driver yet. I switch back to 4.4.4 for critical times. No doubt these glitches will be resolved in the coming days.

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

ArtooDetoo

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# 1197220 14-Dec-2014 12:55

Progressive updates have rendered the majority of niggles with the Note 3 "Google Edition" Lollipop build null, and for my purposes at least, the current version, v2.5, is daily driver standard.

The GPS issue was the most frustrating for me because it's something I actually use regularly, but even that's now moot since I stumbled across a flashable configuration which has improved satellite lock to the point that it's working as it did on KK 4.4.4.

Video recording and playback are also fixed in the newer versions of the ROM so I'm happy now.

Papyrus, a free app from the PlayStore, has become my default S-Pen note-taking app. There are others that have been recommended but that I have yet to try, including arty effects and such. I'll update once I've tried a few out.

So everything I need now functions and there are no FCs. I've kept a nandroid backup of the KitKat install, just in case, but going back to TouchWiz certainly feels like a retrograde step now.

If there's any Geekzone interest in this ROM, I'll post again with links to anything that helped me that's not covered on the XDA Dev site. Meantime, I'll continue to use this as my daily driver at least until Sammy unleashes the official Lollipop release for the Note 3 - maybe in February. It'll be interesting to compare the two approaches.

Cheers,
R2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

benokobi

803 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1197251 14-Dec-2014 15:36

ArtooDetoo: Progressive updates have rendered the majority of niggles with the Note 2 "Google Edition" Lollipop build null, and for my purposes at least, the current version, v2.5, is daily driver standard.

The GPS issue was the most frustrating for me because it's something I actually use regularly, but even that's now moot since I stumbled across a flashable configuration which has improved satellite lock to the point that it's working as it did on KK 4.4.4.

Video recording and playback are also fixed in the newer versions of the ROM so I'm happy now.

Papyrus, a free app from the PlayStore, has become my default S-Pen note-taking app. There are others that have been recommended but that I have yet to try, including arty effects and such. I'll update once I've tried a few out.

So everything I need now functions and there are no FCs. I've kept a nandroid backup of the KitKat install, just in case, but going back to TouchWiz certainly feels like a retrograde step now.

If there's any Geekzone interest in this ROM, I'll post again with links to anything that helped me that's not covered on the XDA Dev site. Meantime, I'll continue to use this as my daily driver at least until Sammy unleashes the official Lollipop release for the Note 3 - maybe in February. It'll be interesting to compare the two approaches.

Cheers,
R2

Is there one for note 2 as well?

ArtooDetoo

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# 1197284 14-Dec-2014 16:42

No idea, sorry. I don't have a Note 2 so the subject hasn't arisen. Go to XDA Developers and do a search for Note 2 and lollipop. I'd be surprised if there isn't some dev exploring the possibility.

Cheers,
R2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...