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I tried to list my general app usage; and am going to try to compare this to apps on Sailfish OS. Will update this post in few days as I find Sailfish OS alternatives. App Categories: Android: Sailfish Archive Application: 7Zipper: ?? Download Manager: ADM: ?? WiFi/Bluetooth PC Share: Airdroid/ ShareIT: ?? Messenger: WhatsApp: WhatsApp(Android) ToDo List: ClearList(F-Droid):?? Compass: Compass:?? File Manager: ZenUI File Manager: ?? Browser: Firefox: ??(Inbuilt maybe?) Food Ordering: Foodpanda: Foodpanda (Android) Mobile Recharge: Freecharge: Freecharge(Android) GMail Client: Official Gmail: ?? Navigation: Google Maps, Here We Go, OSMAnd~: Here We Go Music: Internal(Apollo Music Player, Not Google Play Music):Internal Video Player: VLC: Internal(Will have to check support for various files) Office: WPS Office: Internal/WPS Office(Android) YouTube Client: YouTube Android: ?? YouTube Downloader: Videoder: ??(Videoder android ??)

Specs: Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 SOC 2 GB RAM | 16 GB ROM | Expandable Upto 32 GB Dual Standby SIM 2G/3G/4G connectivity 5 inch HD Display 8MP Primary Camera | 2MP Front 2500 mAh Li-Ion Battery Jolla Sailfish OS v2 Price:  Bought for 4499/- at Tata CliQ Online Store Will share detailed review soon.

Recently I started feeling a bit tired of Google. Then a took a look at the amount of data I'm feeding google via my phone and I was shocked! There's record of every search I have performed, my app usage, my web activity, my location activity. I just thought that I need to decrease this info sharing.  So I started to look for alternatives to the google ecosystem. While ecosystem-wise there is just no replacement. Junking google from my smartphone will probably take out the smarts too. I mean I can minimize the google apps usage, but I can't get rid of play services, the many android apps that I use are very critical to my smartphone experience.  I use google maps/ Here We Go for navigation. I use MX Player for movies, BlackPlayer for music, use WhatsApp for chatting. These are some necessary apps. And if I remove GApps and play store services then I lose all of these. So these are going to stay. But I also need to find some replacements and then start removing some of these...

I have been using Mokee ROM on my ZTE Nubia Z9 mini for last six months. I got started with Android lollipop 5.1 ROM and soon moved to Marshmallow, while the stock ROM is stuck on 5.0.2. Generally this is the case with chinese OEM's but the phone is solid with more than one day of battery life, great camera and overall snappy response.  Anyway few weeks back I started seeing this file moving/ copying issue where the inbuilt file manager won't copy the files correctly. When I copied more than 1GB of files then it would fail to copy 1-2 files to memory card. This was infuriating.  I thought maybe it's the apps problem and tried ES file explorer. But with ES file explorer also I got similar issue. After using ES File explorer for about a month and noticing this issue a number of times, I decided to use some other file manager. Because this is a basic function and if a file manager is failing in this then there's some serious problem with the app.  So last week I stumbled u...

Recently I wanted some task performed for an app which meant I had to type in quite a bit of data on my phone. Now using a real keyboard is always preferable. So I tried to share the screen of my android phone with my PC and tried performing some typing. There are two ways for this: 1. USB Debugging connection 2. VNC I tried to use USB Debugging first thinking it would give better (ala faster) experience. I even found couple of apps on play store. But was soon bogged down in details of supporting apps, rooting etc. So I discarded this approach for another day. Next I tried a number of VNC servers. The problems is most VNC software in play store is VNC Clients. But finally I found Alpha VNC and this is a good vnc server. I started the program. It has a nice round button with Start as text. Tapping this started the VNC server and it showed the connection details. I have the mobile connected to my desktop via USB Tethering so they are on same network. Next I fired up Remmina on ubuntu and...

I bought this INR4k ZTE Blade C totally on a whim. Its an incredibly basic android with a very limited feature set. But it can do one thing that my incredible Xiaomi Redmi 1S couldn't do reliably. Play music. Without any issues. The Redmi is an incredible handset. It's capable, it's got really nice android experience. But it's latest update broke music playing experience. My other once in a while phone, the Samsung Omnia W, is still kicking. But I find windows phone 7 to be completely useless these days. I do use it once in a while as a nostalgia. But it cannot be my daily driver. The ZTE with android 4.2.2 is far more palatable. The applications are all there. It's got almost similar battery backup. I can have the internet on and it won't smoke my phone. After applying the 2GB applications partitioning, I even have enough space for all the Apps I'm ever going to need. So I'm officially back to ZTE Blade C. And yes it's a nice little phone. I...

So finally after so much wait I got hold of the official update of Redmi 1S - that's MiUi6. Its not totally fresh though. Still based off kitkaat. But neverthless a fresh coat of paint with some new shine. I went ahead with clean flashing with formatting everything and got it all working just the way it was supposed to be. Its about a fortnight since I flashed the update on my Redmi 1S. And my feedback is positive. It's not the lightest or easiest skin around. And also there's the free RAM issue, in that the amount of free RAM is still paltry. But the thing looks like its well optimized. And it runs well. i had some issues with more than two-three heavy apps running side by side, but ever since I have come to understand its limits. The internal apps are all new. And it all looks like a fresh experience. There are changes all around. The settings have been totally overhauled. The various transitions have been worked out. The Music app has been overhauled and it...

So the latest news is that I'm back on Adria ROM. Back last month, I used Mokee Lollypop ROM for a while. Then because of deteriorated battery life I shifted back to Mokee Kitkat. That didn't last more than a fortnight since I noticed stability issues. So I moved back to Lollypop. Except the battery life, things were good. But I found audio to be performing not quite good. MiUi rom has much better audio settings baked in. And I am kind of an Audiofile. So I reverted to Adria ROM. And have been enjoying the great Sound quality since. Lesson learnt, Sound matters more than UI and OS experience. :J

In my last post about the Redmi 1S at Jan end, I had mentioned that I was using Adria ROM on it. And it was quite good. But the free memory was not much and after a while I got tired of using the same miui. So for Feb and half of march I dug out my faithful Samsung Omnia W with WP7. And I hung out with it. Then by march end I still didn't have the miui 6 for Redmi. So I decided to try out mokee ROM. And to my surprise found it to be very stable. There was a lollypop version too. So I tried out lollypop for couple of weeks. And found out that the battery life was taking a hit. Otherwise it was fine experience. Then I had an idea about reverting to KitKat mokee ROM and see how good it is. Turned out it was even better. I am getting same battery life as Xiaomi's original ROM. And its way smoother and lighter than lollypop. So I'm using Redmi these days. It's a great little phone. And with Mokee KitKat ROM, its going strong too.

The MIUI ROM is heavy. I noticed severe slowing down in places. I did not use it for more than a few days though. So it could be that cleaning up the system a bit, might have helped. The MIUI looks great, is pleasure to use with great looks, features and a similarity everywhere. But its far too removed from the android experience. Sadly not my cup of tea right now! Link on needrom: http://www.needrom.com/download/miui-os-for-v889s-v807/

This ROM is fastest of the few I tried out. Its really slimmed down, is fast and pleasant to use. The two main problem I noticed were lack of 3G and broken battery charge monitor. The lack of 3G was not much hindrance for me, but the broken battery monitor meant I could not use this ROM. Link to ROM on needrom.com:  http://www.needrom.com/download/slimdroid-mod-v889sv807/

Edit: Links to software added VRoot 1.7.3.4863 (ENG)(6.9MB) TWRP Recovery (IMG)(5.8MB) Scatter file for ZTE Blade C (V807C) (382B) SP Flash Tool 3.1304.0.119 (6.7MB) Misc.: MTK Droid Tools 2.5.3 (11.9MB) ZTE Blade C Root and Recovery Folder (34.2MB) ZTE Blade C TWRP Recovery Flashing Video (Russian) (41.9MB)  My readme file with experience using the above russian video STOCK Rom ZTE Blade C (V807C) - Flashable by SP Flash Tool (280.1MB)   Wanted to flash TWRP recovery on my ZTE Blade C (v807c). After looking here n there, I stumbled onto a video by a Russian guy who showed how to do it. I got the idea of it all. And so I proceeded. Following the video, I got familiar with the process which is as follows: 1. Get the device rooted: using vroot the zte v807c was easily rooted. 2. Then install twrp recovery: In the video the operator performs following steps: a. Install the zte usb drivers from ZTE v807\Drivers for ZTE. b. Install the mtk drivers from ZTE v...

www.needrom.com has a collection of ROMs for this phone. The things to remember are: 1. Always backup the existing stuff! 2. Ensure that phone battery is more than 70% and the computer laptop you are trying out the procedure from has sufficient backup power. 3. Ensure that whatever ROM files you get from the net are from reputed sources and are tested previously by multiple person. Flashing incompatible ROM will brick your phone. So big word of caution here. 4. Also don't forget to check MD5SUM/SHASUM of the file to ensure that your downloaded file is fine and not corrupted. Flashing a custom ROM is dangerous if you are not careful!

Zte Blade c (v807/v889) can be rooted by using vroot application. This is a windows program, so you need a windows PC for this. You can follow this process: Enable USB debugging mode on phone and connect to PC. You need to install USB drivers. You can get these from the phone itself. When you connect the phone to PC, you get an option in notifications about connection type. Here if you select CD-Rom, then a mounted CD-Rom appears in your computer which contains the drivers. Otherwise you have to search on the internet to get the debug drivers. Once the drivers are installed, you will see a MT6513 device in system tray. Now start vroot, and wait for it to detect the phone. Once phone is detected, clicking on 'root' button will start the rooting procedure. After files are copied to the phone, it will restart the phone and rooting will continue. Afterwards phone will restart again and load android. You will see a Superuser app in app drawer. If you open root checke...

This tablet belonged to one of my relatives and I took it with me for updating the apps on my home WiFi. Once it was connected, I started updating the apps one by one. Then in between the updates, a notification popped. This was about a system update availability. I was frankly intrigued. Seeing an android update. So i stopped app updating and instead went for the update. It was ~92MB and took some time to download. Then another dialog popped up asking me if i wanted to update now or after some time like 30mins, 90mins. I selected to update now. The tablet rebooted and updated. After it was done, it rebooted. Once we were connected to WiFi, another update popped up. This one saying it was memory related and it will wipe out all user data. So I went through and checked the partitioning. So it had a 512 MB system partition and 2GB internal partition. Ok. So I went through that update. Now after some time in getting the user account set up, I'm running through so many apps install, bu...

So I am using the ZTE Blade C as my daily driver now. It's almost a fortnight since I started using it. The main point for me to go for this one instead the latest crop of cheap chinese kitkat phones from Micromax/Karbonn/Xolo etc or Moto E was the price it was offered. The price was INR4000 i.e. ~$68. Thats dirt cheap. And whatever features it provided are more than enough for me. When compared to my previous android phone - Karbonn S1 Titanium - INR7600 /~$127, the blade c actually shines. The Karbonn handset had following shortcomings: 1. It's touch response was sub par. The capacitive keys were terrible. Plus it's touchscreen used to go crazy when it was charging. Also there was a bad touch spot which made typing slightly painful. 2. The 5MP/720p camera was average, even though it was touted as a main feature. 3. It's chipset is Qualcomm S4 play - not the best when it comes to power consumption. And it's couple generations old by the time I got the phone. ...

Here are some more benchmark scores

These are scores in nenamark 2 and geekbench

I have been a WP user for last two and half years. The samsung omnia was my first smartphone and it has been wonderful hardware so far. Even after so many years of rough use the phone still feels solid in hands. And the software has been great too. But all software ages. And so has the old WP7. Mind you, its still has the performance. The UI smoothness is there, the OS is responsive as ever. The hardware is solid, the phone has not rebooted of its own accord. And whatever features it provides it excels at them. For me though the first blow was losing gmail support after upgrading to WP7.8. And recently Whatsapp outage was something else I could say was most significant for me to start considering something else. But the problem was I had sunk almost INR16,000 in this one back then. Thats about $320 back then. And right now I am weary of sinking so much hard earned dough into a smartphone. But thankfully the smartphone prices have also come down dramatically. I was looking for a kil...

Yeah! I never thought I would professionally develop for Android! But the powers that pay me, have decided to port our product on to Android and so being the sole person available as of this moment I have been tasked with this enormous task! Hell, I have even got a time line for this! 15 Days! Now, I did visited the washroom afterwards and laughed my arse off!!! Some statistics for the task: Approx 17000 LoC C++ STL/Qt 4-5 shared libraries being used by the project Cross-platform code (Written for Win/Lin as main platforms) PostgreSQL database being used To top it all, the code has never been reviewed, forget about a proper audit. I have worked on parts and I have done my best to clean up about 4000LoC but remaining all is three-four year old crap that would give me nightmares if I dipped my toes in it... Suddenly life has become a war for survival...:D