The Road to CM9 beta0 for Epic 4G

UPDATE: CM9 beta0 has been released! 

Flashable Bootanimations for the Epic 4G

Customize your Epic 4G boot animation with our CWM5 flashable .zip's below.  These should work on any Epic 4G ROM, BML or MTD, stock Samsung-based, CM7 or CM9 as long as your CWM5 has a proper /etc/fstab.  These are installed as /data/local/bootanimation.zip, which means it persists through future upgrades of CM9 until you remove it.  Below we also provide a convenient add-on boot animation remover.

• CM9 version 2, 24fps (as included in CM9 beta1 through beta4 for Epic 4G)
  md5 7006a66c8c24b31be4df2fc1880b8b2b
• Flash this if you want the old Andy boot animation.  Use the Remover below to revert to the boot animation included in your ROM.
• CM9 version 1, 40fps (TOO BIG AND SLOW)
  md5 9500153830ca6bd31144f8d2cd0a9330
• Full CM9 animation, optimized by Rodderik for smaller file sizes. This matches the boot animation in the original Youtube video.  The frames per second and file sizes are so large that it substantially slows booting your phone.
• This is why we didn't include this in CM9 alpha5.  The version included in CM9 alpha5 is only the last half, and with half frames removed, and at almost 25% the frame rate in order to allow the phone to boot faster.
• ICS stock animation
  md5 8625a2a234d3aadd4b982d849ff7a1a9
• Nexus ICS stock animation (below).

• Add-on Boot Animation Remover
  md5 664c409202708b68163cdd338d8d3e78
• Flash this in CWM5 to remove the add-on boot animation.

Discuss this on the Tips & Customization thread on XDA.

CM9 alpha5 for Epic 4G released

The Epic CM team is proud to announce the release of CM9 alpha5 for Sprint's Samsung Epic 4G. Please follow us on Google+, Twitter or Facebook!

Release Notes - IMPORTANT

• New gapps-ics-20120224-signed.zip is recommended for alpha5 if you choose to use gapps.
• Do not restore backups of core system app data, like for Phone, Contacts, Messaging or Calendar.  Doing so will likely break MMS or Calendar sync.
• Alternate Kernels, Themes or Mods you download from other sites replace arbitrary chunks of the operating system.  If you change the operating system, you are no longer running Epic CM9 alpha5.  If you run into trouble, you need to seek support from the author of that mod. If you reinstall CM9 stock OS + kernel and are still able to reproduce the bug, then you may seek support here. 

Changelog

• Fix to allow Chrome Beta to work on CM9.
• Fix that prevents the modem from crashing in certain conditions.
• Fixed ability to turn off blinking LED during low battery.  Blinking LED causes the battery to drain faster.  Settings > Display > Pulse low battery light.
• Slick new CM9 Bootanimation by Cameron Bezadpour, optimized for Epic by Rodderik.

Links

See the CM9 Status page for more details. Then proceed to the CM9 Install Guide.  Please check if your bugs are already filed in the Epic CM Issue Tracker.

If you appreciate this work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team. Thank you!

Coming soon in CM9 alpha5 for Epic 4G

Update: CM9 alpha5 has been released!

CM9 alpha4 for Epic 4G released

The Epic CM team is proud to announce the release of CM9 alpha4 for Sprint's Samsung Epic 4G. Please follow us on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

Release Notes - IMPORTANT

• You must install the new gapps-ics-20120215-signed.zip after you install alpha4 or some components will be missing.
• Do not restore backups of core system app data, like for Phone, Contacts, Messaging or Calendar.  Doing so will likely break MMS or Calendar sync.
• Alternate Kernels, Themes or Mods you download from other sites replace arbitrary chunks of the operating system.  If you change the operating system, you are no longer running Epic CM9 alpha4.  If you run into trouble, you need to seek support from the author of that mod. If you reinstall CM9 stock OS + kernel and are still able to reproduce the bug, then you may seek support here. 

Changelog

• Fixed the much hated Ringing of Death bug.  This was the short chirp before the ringtone, or constant ringtone that would play during or after an incoming call.
• Fixed ICS multitouch protocol in qt602240 driver.  This should make it possible to play certain multitouch games like Dead Space™.  It also fixes the touchscreen driver with CWM 5.8+ (not released by koush yet).
• LED notifications have been changed to enable significant power savings.  LED notification has been changed to blink every 15 seconds, roughly matching the delay in Samsung's EL30.  This alone eliminates ~71% wakelocks, while previously the CPU was unable to sleep at all while the notification LED is blinking.
• LED notifications may be turned off entirely for additional power savings.  Settings > Display > Pulse notification light.  This allows you to continue to hear the notification chime and vibration without the added battery drain of LED blinking.
• Adjusted heap settings to match crespo.  This is very similar to a popular tweak in the forums.  It prevents some Out of Memory crashes (i.e. NPR News).  You can use these three lines in /system/build.prop to benefit from this tweak prior to alpha4.
• dalvik.vm.heapstartsize=5m
• dalvik.vm.heapgrowthlimit=48m
• dalvik.vm.heapsize=128m
• Dialer will no longer lockup in rare occasions.
• Numeric battery % indicator now works!

Links

See the CM9 Status page for more details. Then proceed to the CM9 Install Guide.  Please check if your bugs are already filed in the Epic CM Issue Tracker.

If you appreciate this work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team. Thank you!

EL30 Factory Firmware Image

We have a surprise for you - an untouched, factory EL30 TAR!

Get links and installation information after the break!

Coming soon in CM9 alpha4 for Samsung Epic 4G

UPDATE 2/19/2012: CM9 alpha4 has been released.

CM9 alpha3 for Epic 4G released

The Epic CM team is proud to announce the release of CM9 alpha3 for Sprint's Samsung Epic 4G. Please follow us on Google+.  Read what is coming soon in alpha4.

Release Notes - IMPORTANT

• Help Needed! We have identified a serious but rare issue called the Ringing of Death that a few CM9 users have reported.  We were unable to fix it for alpha3, but we suspect it has something to do with audio routing from the radio.  It would help tremendously if we can figure out a reproducible method to trigger this bug.  Please follow the directions and report here if you have any experiences with this issue and have time to help.
• If you are upgrading from alpha2...
• Go into Mobile Network's settings page and select Auto:Domestic Roaming.  This will make sure that if you unintentionally disabled Roaming in a previous alpha release it will work.  Data wipe does not fix this issue it is stored in the radio NVRAM.
• If you use Sprint VM and are not clearing data go into the Phone app and open Settings>Voice Mail Settings and change the VM number from *86 to your phone number.
• The Install Guide has a new version of gapps-ics.  You really do not need to upgrade unless you want working Picasa sync integrated with Gallery.  It also fixes automatic reinstall of your previous apps from Market.

Changelog

• Battery Related
• Fix automatic brightness setting.  In alpha2 you could save power by turning off automatic brightness and manually reducing brightness. This is fixed by updating the array values for brightness levels to match CM7 and stock.  This reduces wasted power and hot screens reported by some users.
• Capacitive buttons backlights (Menu, Home, Back, Search) now mimic TW behavior by turning off the backlight after a 6 second timeout.  This both saves battery and improves the user experience in darkness.
• Fix the power profile.  Previously battery usage blame percentages were less accurate.
• LED charging indicator no longer turns off after you dismiss a notification.
• Switched to crespo kernel audio driver.  The kernel audio driver (wm8994) now matches the userspace driver (libaudio) we added in alpha2.  Should hopefully resolve speakerphone mic issues.
• Voicemail default number is set to your phone number and not *86 by default on new installs.
• MMS now shows profile faces.
• Fix roaming bug.  Prior to alpha 3 opening Mobile Networks settings unintentionally disabled roaming.  Folks upgrading from alpha2 should open System settings and ensure Auto: Domestic Roaming is selected to enable roaming support.
• Added roaming options.  Alpha3 includes domestic, international, both, and no roaming options as found in gingerbread TW ROMs.
• Fixed the annoying "Data usage warning" that was previously impossible to dismiss from the notification window.
• Removed Chinese and Japanese IME.  Install the better IME's from Android Market if you need Asian language input.

Links

See the CM9 Status page for more details. Then proceed to the CM9 Install Guide.  Please check if your bugs are already filed in the Epic CM Issue Tracker.

If you appreciate this work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team. Thank you!

Epic CM Issue Tracker

We now have the Epic CM Issue Tracker to help us organize and prioritize our development.  Please do not report if your issues have anything to do with:

• Non-standard CM9 kernels.
• Voicemail - already known solutions for that problem. 
• Already listed on the CM9 Status page.

Nexus S 4G KANG to Epic 4G

Today I had an opportunity to purchase a Nexus S 4G with clean ESN from Craigslist at a bargain price of $140.  We wouldn't be able to buy dev phones like this if it were not for Epic community donations.  There is much we can learn from this very similar phone to improve Epic's ICS experience.  Their similarity helps us to be able to compare Epic's behavior, code and bugs to Google's leaked Android 4.0.4 and CM9 Android 4.0.3.

Below are a few thoughts after examining AOSP 4.0.4 and CM9 4.0.3 on how we can improve Epic CM9:

• Sprint PRL and Profile update (and Activation?)
• Auto-brightness more responsive than Epic.  It also seems to be more dim than Epic, saving extra battery.
• Strength of haptic feedback is much weaker than Epic.  Onscreen keyboard seems to be 10% of Epic, just barely enough to feel it.  This points toward yet more opportunities to tune Epic for battery savings.
• CM9 has built-in tuning options for the CPU governor.
• CM9 has built-in tuning for Voodoo color.  It does however seem to suffer from the same ugly color gradients that happen on Epic when we tried a Voodoo color port.  The Epic CM team will need to determine if we can fix the Voodoo defaults to not be ugly, and decide if we want to later include Voodoo color in the default kernel.
• CM9 Nexus S 4G includes overclocking.  The Epic CM team has not yet decided if we will include overclocking in the default kernel, because stability is our top priority.
• CM9 Nexus S 4G uses the 3.0.17 kernel with Kernel samepage merging (KSM), with a convenient menu option to enable it in Settings > Performance > Memory management.  KSM frees up ~2-15MB of RAM but at a heavy cost, constantly scanning memory for pages to unify, eating battery and preventing the processor from sleeping.  Epic's kernel already appears to give ~11MB more RAM to userspace than Nexus S 4G.  We will probably have KSM as an option after Epic ports to a 3.x-based kernel, but we will not likely recommend its use.  There are other approaches like the CMA allocator or hardware accel blacklist that would save us a lot more memory without such heavy cost of CPU.
• We need to port Epic's current 2.6.35-based kernel to 3.x.  It now appears that merging with KalimochoAz's crespo kernel would be a good idea.  jnadke is working on this general issue.

If you appreciate our work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team.

Fixes coming soon in CM9 alpha3

UPDATE 2/13/2012: CM9 alpha3 has been released.

CM9 alpha2 for Epic 4G released

The Epic CM team is proud to announce the release of CM9 alpha2 for Sprint's Samsung Epic 4G.  The most notable improvements include:

• Improved sound quality and less distortion in phone calls.
• Some Bluetooth improvements.
• You no longer need to reflash gapps after every CM9 upgrade.
• Minor improvements in battery life.
• Less buggy video recording.

See the CM9 Status page for more details.  Then proceed to the CM9 Install Guide.

If you appreciate this work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team.  Thank you!

Important Announcements

CM9 Notes

• Random Timing for New Releases.  Currently CM9 does not do nightly or weekly builds.  We will release new builds of CM9 for Epic 4G when there are worthwhile fixes or feature improvements and we are reasonably satisfied with stability testing.
• EI22 or EL30 modem recommend.  If you are running EC05 modem firmware, you are recommended to upgrade to EI22 or EL30.  If your phone is running CM or any MTD ROM, you will need the temporary CWM BML launcher in order to flash the modem upgrade.
• Broken Facebook Sync, Stop Blaming Google.  I see people in the forums blaming Google for the broken Facebook sync in CM9.  The Epic CM team supports Google's stance that Facebook needs to use the official API to sync contacts.  Google is on the right side of this data portability issue, as it is Facebook that is restricting your ability to easily export your contacts for use in other applications.
• Stop Restoring Backups of App Data.  CM9 natively has almost zero Force Close crashes.  Many reports of app crashes in the forums are the result of restoring old, incompatible app data.  In some cases restored data causes MMS to fail.  Start fresh with CM9 to maximize your experience.  Use AppBak, SMS Backup and Restore, and Call Logs Backup and Restore from the Market to cleanly reinstall most of your apps with fresh data, then restore your SMS and Call history.
• Stop Blaming CM9 for Problems caused by other Kernels or Overclocking.  I frequently see people complaining about weird issues and crashes on CM9 when they are using non-standard kernels, overclocking or undervolting.  If you are using non-standard kernels and experience an issue, please verify that the bug really does occur on the CM9 official kernel before you blame CM9.  If it happens only in the non-standard kernel, please complain to that kernel's author in order to avoid confusing the CM9 community.

CM9 Tips and Tricks

• Screenshot: Hold VolDown+Power and it will take a screenshot.
• Silence Camera: To silence the camera, volume down button in the camera app.
• Flashlight: Tiny Flashlight apparently is the only working flashlight on CM9.  CM upstream did not port the native Torch app yet.
• Update PRL, Calibrate Sensors: For now, you need to temporarily boot EL30 stock from sdcard in order to do these functions.

Epic CM Community

• Epic IRC Chatroom.  Please join us for live chat on irc.irondust.net channel #epic or use webchat.
• Follow the Blog.  Updates like this will be posted frequently on Epic CM team blog. 
If you appreciate our work, please consider supporting the Epic CM team.

Coming soon in CM9 alpha2 for Epic 4G

UPDATE: alpha 2 has been released!

Hardware Purchased, More Progress

It took us a few days to decide what hardware to purchase for the team's build server.  We originally planned on upgrading an existing University's server with an additional Xeon processor, RAM and SSD in order to allow it to build Android very quickly.  Unfortunately, it became cost prohibitive to find a guaranteed-to-work Xeon as it must match the existing processor down to the stepping level.  We then discovered that for little more than the price of the Xeon alone, we can buy an entirely new 1U rackmount server with 2 x 6 core Opteron processors.  This new plan is superior as by late February, we will have this monster build server in Uberpinguin's basement.

Epic CM Team's Build Server

• 2x6 core 3.1GHz Opteron
• 32GB DDR3 RDIMM
• 300GB Intel 320 SSD

Fund Raising Status Update

• As of February 3rd, 2012, $2,568 has been donated from 127 members of the Epic Community.
• We are now in the process of ordering hardware.
• We now recommend donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation as they do good work to protect our digital rights and privacy.  However, if you insist on giving your thanks to the Epic CM team, here is how you can donate to support us.  Future donations will go toward supporting CM upstream, hardware repairs and future dev phones.  Our expenses will be published publicly in this spreadsheet.
• Read here and here for earlier posts about the fund drive.

Status of Build Server Fund Drive

Updated February 4th, 2012:
Please read the Status Update.