Blog log - 2nd half of 2021

Last update : 9/12/2022

25/12/2021

Well, it's the 3rd Grav-Mass / X-Mas / Christmas (or any other holidays taking place at that date) since this site started out, so for the 3rd(?) time... happy holidays. May 2022 not suck as much as 2021, even if there's no hope for it to suck less (and again this could depend on your own perspective of how the times sucks).

10/11/2021 (Last update : 9/12/2022)

This blogpost is going to be my opinions (or rant?) of A12.

Android 12

After trying out several A12 ROMs (and daily driving some of them), here are my personal opinion of A12 based off what I can see :

• First of all, features such as per-app data restriction, app lock, & navbar customizations are missing, but that's expected as A12 custom ROM development at that time was still in its infancy. (at least at the time of writing which is 10/11/2021, now no longer correct as custom ROMs now regain these functionality)
• Speaking of infants, the wobble when you scroll past the end makes me think A12 is developed for some soydev's (or the soydev's boss?) newly spawned creatures instead of actual humans of all ages. I find this too annoying, & the workaround to disable this (disable animations in accessibility or set animator duration scale to 0.0x in developer settings) is just as bad, as it also disables useful animations I've used to see in Android, such as the progress bar.
• More privacy controls regarding to location is cool (you can now permit apps access to precise / approximate location), but a bit (at least 10 years) overdue. Unfortunately, Go-ogle (and app devs) define what "approximate" means & it's opt-in (as in the developer has to add support for this function).
• The play-as-you-download "feature" (18/11/2022 update : neither SotN nor FGO includes this anti-feature, but the former has Play Asset Delivery, which is just as bad. My bad for the wrong info.) is a way to make games online-only & dependent on Play Store & Services. Sure, it's probably nice when you can play a game before its files are fully available to the system, but this is an anti-feature that actually deepens your Goolag (and the overall internet) dependence.
• Quick Settings sucks now, and here's a few examples of it :
• Internet toggle - adding more taps to turn off Wi-Fi and/or mobile data. You could have them back separately, but you'll need elevated privileges (ADB shell / root) & terminal commands if your ROM doesn't provide it. The list below provides an example, tested with ADB shell.
• settings put global settings_provider_model false
• settings put secure sysui_qs_tiles "wifi,cell,$(settings get secure sysui_qs_tiles)"
• Mic & camera toggle - a bit (again, at least 10 years) overdue, but definitely welcome... as long as you remember to turn them on when you need them after you disabled them & disable them when you are sure you no longer need it & don't want it to be active.
It doesn't mean I don't like these toggles. In fact, I like them for what they do, I just don't like how long it took for this feature to make its way in upstream AOSP.


• Oversized drop down menu buttons, with fewer options. I'd appreciate this as I don't use the drop down menu a lot (aside from occasionally enabling Caffeine for long processes that need the device to stay awake if I had them, flashlight, volume panel (if offered), and/or network toggles as necessary), if I had the choice to have it just like A11 (or Pie and/or A10). There's none, so...
• 100% opacity on drag down - I'm used to being able to see what I was doing before dragging down the QS (with background blur disabled, following my preference), now thanks to it being 100% opaque, I'd probably forget if I have to attend to someone in a chat if I ever went to quick settings.
18/11/2022 late update : crDroid (A12 & beyond) is the only one AFAIK to provide an option to change the QS background opacity in Settings > crDroid Settings > Quick settings > Background transparency.


• Material You (a.k.a. monet)? More like Material "You Cannot Theme Your Interface However You See Fit, Papa Goolag Shall Do It For You" You, for these reasons : (and I hate this abomination so much I will make name jokes on Material You until it's optional; and even then, the jokes are staying)
• Theme coloring is arbitrarily decided following your wallpaper, instead of YOU actually having a say over what color you want (ok, maaaaybe you could pick from 4 "basic" colors if you really want to (and if the ROM you're on allows you to), so long as they're blue, green, purple, or orange; all of which will be pastel colors as soon as dark theme is enabled). By default (with wallpaper-based colors), it's all pastel colors, something I don't want to use even in dark theme.
• The analog clock widget seems like something fit only for infants (I'm not sure kids will like this crap). Sure, it might not fit in this Material "Give Most Of Your Theming Rights Away To Papa Goolag" You scope, but then again, its colors change following Material "You Need To Get Your Eyes Checked 1,000,000 Times If You Think It's Pretty AF" You.
• Guess I forgot this one, so here goes : Even the default interface's text color follows Material "insert another we, not you joke because I'm running out of it" You theming shenanigans & gets changed.
• Let's be honest here - if Google wants to focus on personalization, this is not how it's done. Sure, a separate wallpaper & style settings might be fine, but forcing users to use pastel colors they don't want to use while removing a lot of choices (icon styles, fonts, app shapes, profiles, color picker) is not the way to go.
• 18/11/2021 Update : After trying out CAFEX 8/11/2021 (which integrates kdrag0n's monet extension), I can say that kdrag0n's monet extension somewhat improves the experience of using A12, but not by a lot. Some of the letters (particularly the ones in Settings) still changes color following the theme, & I personally loathe it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm still thanking kdrag0n for his effort on A12, it's just that monet enforcement in A12 is so terrible that a developer had to do some work to fix these issues, which might not be included into upstream AOSP.


• 27/5/2023 Update : Personally, I actually liked the icons A12 brought along, compared to previously more colorfully diverse options - the former's looking more mature to me.
• Overall verdict : A12 is not truly "all about you" as claimed by most "tech enthusiast religion" sites. In fact, A12 has removed many user-facing customization options & replace it with some arbitrarily-decided (using colors based off the wallpaper's "primary" colors) half-assed options that gives very limited rights to the user (monet), while also adding unwanted cruft (from the wobble while scrolling past the end to the revamped & bloated quick settings). Maybe A10 (and A11 if we don't count the less ideal power menu) is truly "all about you" (as far as UI & UX goes), even if neither had a perfect color palette (better than Pie & older AFAIK, as every ROM uses their own theming implementation at that time).
• If your first thought is to escape to a custom ROM, I hate to say this but I'll still say it : With most developers constantly dropping support for older Android versions, you're still not evading this issue. Sure, you could build your own ROM (based on whichever AOSP version you prefer), but you'll need a lot of resources (overpriced overpowered computer, a ton of RAM & SSD, fast internet with unlimited quota, plenty of electricity, etc.), especially if you're looking to maintain it. There's always the option to stay at older unmaintained builds as well, but security could be an issue.
9/2/2022 late Update : With A12 & beyond deleting iptables for eBPF (which doesn't seem to have an effect on AFWall+ at the moment of writing), most devices with 3.x kernels cannot run latest Android, unless their kernels get upstreamed to 4.x. Of course, that does come with its own issues.

23/8/2021 / 27/8/2021

Well, here goes a blogspot with actual content about the X3s I got, I suppose...

And thanks to the viewers for the 100k views!

Interchangeable parts on the Poco X3 series

When I obtained the X3P, I would never realize that it would have some issues with the display, such as dead (or slow-responding) touch zones on some parts on the corner & most, if not every screen protector attached on the display ends up having some issues with sticking itself to the display (27/8/2021 Update : another attempt at attaching a hydrogel screen protector ended up successful). However, almost 3 months of using it & having to contend with said issues eventually drove me mad enough to take apart both the X3N & X3P, despite the X3N not having issues with the display - all in order to see if the X3P could use the X3N's screen. Here are some results I found.

• Modules traded with each other & are confirmed to work :
• Earpiece / front speaker
• Display
My X3N originally came with Huaxing, whereas my X3P came with Tianma.


• Battery
• The buttons, including the fingerprint scanner
• Vibration motor
• SIM/microSD tray (not the reader themselves, which are soldered on the motherboard)
• Modules not traded with each other :
• Bottom speaker
• Daughterboard with the charging port & headphone jack
• The connector cable for motherboard & daughterboard
• The cameras
• Current result after more than 24 hours (23/8/2021) (replacements done at 22/8/2021, 12:00 GMT+7) : So far, the X3P isn't exhibiting any issues with touch. However, neither does the X3N - despite using the X3P's "troublesome" display.
27/8/2021 Update : The touch issues on the X3P returns - Xiaomi / Poco might have used a questionable software touch driver for the X3P (probably to make it look terrible before the already terrible Poco F3 & Mi 11 series), while leaving the X3N with a decent one (probably because despite the availability of the "better" Redmi Note 10 Pro, Xiaomi / Poco somehow couldn't be bothered to downgrade the X3N's drivers).

28/8/2021 Update : Somehow the touch issues aren't present on MIUI (xiaomi.eu). Tested MIUI version is 12.5.2.0.

15/9/2021 Update : No Gravity Kernel somehow (mostly) fixed the touch issues I had. Welp, credits to NGK's devs!

2/12/2021 Update : Reverted hardware module swaps & found both Mochi & Moonbase Fury kernel to fix my touch issues, as both shared a similar touch-fixing git commit (although I prefer Moonbase due to smaller kernel size). Neutrino should also fix touch issues as it also includes Mochi's touch commits.

Mounting partitions as rw

Finally found a solution to mounting partitions as rw in TWRP for dynamic partitioned PDAs like the X3P (maybe X3N as well, if not using brigudav's TWRP with the convenient mountrw script). The workaround is listed below. (27/8/2021 Update : A slightly more detailed guide is available here.)

• In TWRP, browse to Advanced > Terminal.
• Type in "mount -o rw,remount (a partition to modify)".
For example, to modify /system, type "mount -o rw, remount /system_root" .

9/7/2021

Got too hooked into playing Skyrim on Windows, so I'm probably not going to be able to update the site every now & then. Well, here's hoping there's custom ROMs worth trying out as well...

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