Modification of stock firmware for Android. Part 3

Continuing Part 1 and Part 2

Just now I’ve come across the opinion of one dissatisfied user:

Better than stock anyway nothing. Labeling firmware in the kitchen is noticeably different from their production in the walls of corporations. I was always sure that by caste - g ... o full. Once again convinced. I'll wait in Svyaznom for a normal device, albeit for a lot of money, but with a normal jelly, and not sawn-scotch makers.

Many do not understand why making modifications to the firmware, and free developer works are overgrown with myths. Let's try today to figure out for what and who needs it and we will debunk many, sometimes stupid, conjectures.

Who needs it and why?

In the modern IT industry, such a modern concept as user experience has appeared . Translated into Russian literally means user experience .

So recently, Microsoft has released a new version of its popular Windows 8 operating system. But! all users spit and with anguish in their eyes they remember the “Start” button, which the manufacturer's company decided to remove after 20 years. Being under the pressure of communities and frustrated users, Microsoft still decided to return this button back to the new version of its operating system.
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Manufacturers of mobile devices also act absolutely, sometimes changing, complementing or imposing new functionality in their graphical shells. Many of us are adherents of the same brand because of the user experience and are ready to get used to innovations, even if they are not entirely convenient. Over time, we put up and, in the end, we forget that something has been imposed on us. But here comes a new version of the device or software, and we are being manipulated again.

So in my understanding, the modification of stock firmware is designed to return or add some functionality that the manufacturer bypassed. There are many examples of this.

So, recently, after the next update, an icon appeared in the status bar of my phone that signals the Internet connection.



First, its meaning (circled in the left yellow circle) is still a mystery to me. Why duplicate the icon if the Internet connection signaling is already available next to the signal quality icon (circled in blue)?
If you expand the slider, you will see the following information:



Which is absolutely useless to me too! It only takes extra space with useless information both in the status bar and in the slider.
We go further. In addition, there was an innovation that allows in the slider to enable or disable power saving.



Now the big half of the screen is filled with some useless rubbish. But that is not all! The manufacturer decided to “simplify” my life and add buttons for quick access to the settings.



80% of the space for important notifications is filled with junk. I do not know about you, but it really annoys me. And by native means these things cannot be turned off. Now let's try to get some kind of notification. For example we will receive mail or the message.





As we see, the place in the status bar has ended and some notifications are not shown and hidden from view. Secondly, to see all the notifications, I also need to scroll through the slider. From such innovations I want to cry. And now let's remove all this and look at the result, if we turn everything off by modifying the firmware (the debug icon is removed via persist.adb.notify = 0).



And lo and behold !!! I can now even manage alerts right in the slider. Frankly, I did not know this until I modified the firmware.
It turns out that if the place in the slider is taken, then the alerts will be very short and uninformative.

I hope now it has become clear to many what user experience is and why someone needs to modify something! Now let's try to debunk the myths.

Myth # 1: stock firmware is faster

Absolutely not the correct speculation. Yes, if you do only DEODEX and nothing else, the firmware will run 5-10% slower. But the purpose of creating modified firmware is primarily to get rid of unnecessary and useless applications that are imposed on the manufacturer for marketing purposes. In my firmware, I delete or replace about 40 applications with less resource-intensive ones. That gives me a performance increase of 1.5 times, since all these applications do not hang in memory and do not eat up CPU time.

Myth 2: Stock firmware works more stable

We are talking about the modification of stock firmware, please note! Porting or developing firmware for your specific device is another topic that does not concern this. So, the firmware is originally taken, designed specifically for a particular phone and created by the manufacturer. If you do not have crooked hands and you know what and how you are doing, then this does not affect stability either.

Myth the 3rd: if the manufacturer has done so, then it must be so

A few paragraphs earlier, I showed with an example how the manufacturer with its innovations killed an important functionality.

Myth 4th: fashion, tweaks, patches, etc. also impose a developer’s vision

Absolutely not! All normal and decent developers allow the end user to enable or disable modifications.
In my firmware, all the developments can be controlled through the application and disabling them all, your firmware will work as a stock.

Conclusion

I apologize for the delay in the article. The state of health did not allow to write an interesting material that promised earlier. One of these days there will definitely be a fourth article on how to search for the necessary code fragment.