Android 4.3 Based CyanogenMod 10.2 Nightlies Arrive

hypnosec writes "The CyanogenMod team has announced the release of version 10.2 nightly builds, which are based on Google's latest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. The current nightly builds have been released for the Google Galaxy Nexus, HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy S3, LG Optimus G, Sony Xperia Z, and Motorola Razr among others. As always, CyanogenMod team reminds that these are experimental."

Comments

do they fix the play store update bug

[alen]

lots of people are getting "package is invalid" errors when they try to update random apps. sometimes apps update, sometimes not

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but almost no one will have the update for another two years.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Andy Dodd]

How can we fix a bug in shit that isn't ours?

Play Store is part of gapps, which has always been a separate install because it's Google's stuff and not open source. It's a Play Store problem, not a base OS problem (which is why it started happening suddenly on devices that did not receive any form of OS update).

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[spartacus_prime]

I had that problem after flashing the latest Gapps build. What I did that fixed the problem was deleting my Google account from my phone and wiping all that data out, and then reinstalling it. My apps updated like normal.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

lots of people are getting "package is invalid" errors when they try to update random apps. sometimes apps update, sometimes not

It's not just happening with Cyanogen, it's happening to people using the stock ROM's from their Carrier as well.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

It happens mostly to folks that tried the whole "clear data from Google Services, force stop it, then reboot the phone" method to try to get the OTA update to 4.3 right away. I was one of those who foolishly did this (previously, the update to 4.2 had worked like this). I started getting the error right away after clearing that data. And I did have to remove my account from the phone and add it back in order to fix it.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[tepples]

I have two Google accounts on my phone: the one I originally created to use AdSense and YouTube, and the one I created to use Gmail. Some of my purchased apps are under my Gmail account because back when Google Play Store was called Android Market, it would complain that "something@something.com does not use Gmail". Would I need to try removing both?

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

This only proves the closed nature of Android. What makes it really funny is that not only is Android largely closed source, it *still* manages to have the worst fragmentation problem of any platform.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

How so? If anything, it just proves that the Play Store, which is an app, and not part of the OS, is closed source. Yes, you can still side-load .apk files, so the Play Store is NOT necessary.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of not open source stuff provided by Google, do you know why gesture typing on the AOSP keyboard doesn't work without Gapps installed? It looks like libjni_latinime.so, which is part of Gapps, needs to be added to /system/lib for gesture typing to work. I can't find any details about why the Gapps version is needed. Do you know?

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Gapps is more than just the Play Store. It's a whole suite of Google-licious background programs that are constantly phoning home to Google.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you even ask this question? Try it and get back to us.

Re: do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been seeing this lately on my 4.2.2 devicrs.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Gapps isn't android.

It's like discussing the "closed nature of Linux" because Steam exists.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

If Valve developed Linux, managed the entire source tree, and 99% of all Linux installations included Steam... then yes it would be just like that.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Gapps isn't android.

It's like discussing the "closed nature of Linux" because Steam exists.

No it's like discussing the spyware nature of Ubuntu because of the search program, which is perfectly legitimate because it's part of the official distribution just like Gapps is a part of the official Android distribution.

Re:do they fix the play store update bug

[Weezul]

I soo need to switch to CyanogenMod for exactly this reason. Avoid closed source apps!

Are popular Bluetooth keyboards supported?

[tepples]

Do these CyanogenMod builds somehow work around Android 4.3's problem with some Bluetooth keyboards?

Re:Are popular Bluetooth keyboards supported?

[Andy Dodd]

I'm not sure if they do yet, but one of the team members has been working on it and I think found the culprit. They're just trying to determine the ramifications of reverting the change that broke things right now. (They were about to leave on vacation, and I think may have band-aided it before leaving though...)

Re:Are popular Bluetooth keyboards supported?

[Beardo the Bearded]

The problem with BT is that the way the stack handled got overhauled completely.

I call it Linux Developer Syndrome, wherein the new code is technically correct, but practically nonfunctioning.

It just happens -- by conicidence -- to hit every piece of hardware I have.

nice

[stoolpigeon]

I made the mistake of buying a galaxy s3 from t-mobile in the U.S. T-mobile hobbled the thing so badly I switched away from the stock os for the first time. I have to say that there are a few bumps but over all I've loved it. Not waiting on Samsung for ever and ever to get Android updates is probably worth it alone.

Re:nice

[Nerdfest]

I find their hardware is decent, and they have some cool add-on features, but they sure aren't doing Android any favours with the nasty interface wrapper they have.

Re:nice

[dc29A]

They are also one of the hacker friendliest devices with most having unlocked bootloaders and they publish kernel sources. Oh and SD card slot ... and removable battery.

Re:nice

[jkflying]

How is battery life and camera on CM? I have an S3, and on my old phone I went full CM and loved it, but heard the actual usability was pretty crap on non-stock for the S3.

Re:nice

[Beardo the Bearded]

I have an S3 with CM. The whole process took about an hour, there are guidelines everywhere, but make sure you download everything, including Gapps, before you get started.

Camera works fine in movie and still mode, and lots of options exist. The buttons require long presses to access functionality that I thought was lost when upgrading.

I unplug my phone in the morning, use it for tracking my ride or run with Runkeeper while playing MP3s on PowerAmp. It generally plays MP3s all day long, often while I check FB using Chrome.

Zero problems with phone and text, I have called 911 from my car stereo no problem.

The only problem I've had is that GTA: Vice City doesn't work. For some reason, when you get into a car the screen freezes until you get out of the car.

Oh, and the Bluetooth stack is done different, so I don't get track / album data transferred to my car stereo. Apparently this is because CM is doing BT correctly, which is different than everyone else so it doesn't work. I still get audio transfer. The text did transfer before I flashed to CM.
It will run out of power within 24 hours with that usage.

Re:nice

[JestersGrind]

I had a similar experience with Verizon. Their bloatware essentially crippled the device. Even with a larger battery, I was lucky to get a half day out of it. I installed a minimalist custom mod and now battery life is 3-5 days, depending on use obviously.

Re:nice

[jkflying]

Awesome, thank you. I think I'll wait for CM10.2 to go stable then flash.

Re:nice

[stoolpigeon]

What put me over the edge was that I went to use my phone as a wifi hotspot and it wouldn't let me. It gave me a message about needing to purchase a special plan to do that.

I bought the phone for full price and unlocked. I don't live in the US and couldn't buy said plan if I wanted to.

I was pretty ticked off. My Galaxy S was also from T-Mobile but did not have that issue. Being able to use it for internet access when other options weren't available is one of the major reasons I'm willing to pay for a data plan.

There might have been other workarounds but that was the last straw. My next phone will be a Nexus device.

Update

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been ages since the Nexus 4 got CM10.2 (Stable)

Re:Update

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean 10.1.2 Stable?

Yeah, ages and ages. Or, yknow, a month. Whatever.

Closed source drivers still a bane

[Kinwolf]

I tried CM 10 on my GS3 and sadly I had to remove it. Wi-fi, camera and bluetooth refused to work properly, kept crashing or had awful performance, depending on the revision installed. So I went back to the stock ROM, which isn't too bad thankfully, but still has alot of services and programs that I have no use of and yet are always loaded in memory. Next phone(which should not be before 3 years) I am going Nexus to avoid all that pain.(and hoping that Nexus phones still exist at that time)

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to give it another shot, my s2 works great, my friends s3 works great, could have just been some bad builds. i learned a few things about samsung roms from this. First, they suck, are bloated, and such your battery life fast. If you pay for titanium backup ROOT you can remove built in apps, like the samsung software, and also freeze apps from ever running.

For my S2, the stock radios for the phone and data were crap and constantly dropping, I replaced them with a newer version and they never drop, and in some cases I get a stronger signal than I did on the stock samsung rom.

Here's the thing though, 10.2 with android 4.3 is borked phones left and right, don't install it without a current backup as well as a build.zip on your memory just in case. I got it installed, but all of my radios, gps, bluetooth, wifi, cell/data would connect, but not connect, rendering the phone completely useless. Apps wouldn't open, reboots would freeze randomly, and even clockwork recovery started spitting out errors when trying to restore a backup.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't we just have a front page article about how the Nexus 7 has closed source drivers and some guys stopped maintaining their build?

Waiting for Tuppe666 to tell me why this is good, and how Google is jesus.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

I have CM 10.1.2 on both my wife's GS3 and my GS3. Really no issues here. Prior to 10.1, there were stability issues like you described (including Bluetooth and others). In 10.1.2, they have mostly disappeared.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Kinwolf]

I will gladly retry it then.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Kinwolf]

Didn't we just have a front page article about how the Nexus 7 has closed source drivers and some guys stopped maintaining their build?

Waiting for Tuppe666 to tell me why this is good, and how Google is jesus.

I don't know if google is jesus, , but after googling it I found out that Jesus is ON Google +!

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of microSD card slots on the Nexus crap is why I refuse to buy one. The morons responsible for creating that hardware would have us believe that the lack of microSD Card slot is a GOOD thing. Well, they're wrong. Jerks.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[MightyMartian]

It's a pretty small quibble. I use Dropbox, Google Drive and a USB connection to my computer to move data on and off my Nexus 7. I'd wager even if I had an SD slot, I'd rarely use it.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[evilRhino]

It seems as though the microSD medium is now depreciated. Don't expect any of the new phones to have removable media slots.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[dc29A]

My SGH-T999 works great on CM 10.2 nightlies, before I was on 10.1.2+ nightlies, never had any issue with BT, WiFi nor camera.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[dc29A]

Maybe it's a way for Google not to compete with their partners, especially Samsung.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[tepples]

I use Dropbox, Google Drive

Which take 500 MB of one's monthly cap to move a 250 MB video file (250 up + 250 down) and don't work if there's no Internet connection (such as on a bus or in a bowling center). What works for me more often is sharing a folder over the network and using Rhythmsoft File Manager on my tablet to copy files out of the shared folder.

and a USB connection to my computer

Nexus 7 uses MTP protocol to move files on and off. Should I upgrade my laptop from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 12.10 to 13.04 to get the new Gvfs that supports MTP out of the box, or is there another good MTP client for Ubuntu?

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[bprice20]

I second that. I have a gs3 with ting and cm10.1.2, it works a treat.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[TheGratefulNet]

its NOT a small problem!

there are many times when I don't have net access (maybe I'm in my car and not getting signal; and if I want to play back mp3's it has to come from local storage).

cloud sucks. I won't ever COUNT on cloud shit being there.

no local storage == no phone purchase. its that simple.

soldered in battery also is a showstopper for me, even though I can unsolder and do my own repairs. if I need to swap batteries to get extended runtime (or any other reason) I'm not going to be told 'no' by the phone maker.

my ancient N1 still gets me by even though its buggy as hell and won't upgrade past cm7.x. but it does have sd-card and a user swappable battery. until I see a phone that has these 2 must-haves, I'm not going to re-buy hardware.

tell the unwashed masses to 'live in the cloud', but I'm not buying that weak-assed excuse for hardware hobblement.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[TheGratefulNet]

they won't .... until they do!

I can't believe they'll all join the group of hobbled-hardware-by-design. one has to break from the pack and think on its own.

that one will be my next purchase. I will skip all the others that force cloudiness.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the LTE version of the Galaxy S4. The 3G-only model (GT-I9500) has a crippled Exynos CPU that won't be fully supported by CM in the near future, while the LTE model (GT-I9505 and all US variants) has a more standard Snapdragon and is always among the first devices to get any new CM feature. Ticks all your boxes too, SD and removable battery.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

MicroSD cards, they still make them? Who needs it?

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[IndustrialComplex]

Which take 500 MB of one's monthly cap to move a 250 MB video file (250 up + 250 down) and don't work if there's no Internet connection (such as on a bus or in a bowling center). What works for me more often is sharing a folder over the network and using Rhythmsoft File Manager on my tablet to copy files out of the shared folder.

How often are you swapping SD cards on a bus?

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[clgoh]

The battery is not soldered in in the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Crudely_Indecent]

You must've done something wrong. CM10 works fine on my GS3. Everything - camera, gps, bluetooth, wifi, tethering - it all works fine.

Looking forward to the new camera app in CM10.2

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

Nexus 7 uses MTP protocol to move files on and off. Should I upgrade my laptop from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 12.10 to 13.04 to get the new Gvfs that supports MTP out of the box, or is there another good MTP client for Ubuntu?

Install Airdroid and transfer using your wireless. Much better than MTP IMHO.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[tepples]

Wireless as in WLAN (Wi-Fi) or wireless as in cellular? If cellular, refer to what I wrote above about caps. I'd have to buy a MiFi and tether both my laptop and my tablet to it.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[snadrus]

I tried the MTP clients and they're all buggy. Since 13.04's got it built-in, it's nice & fast. It also has been bug-free for me, and I regularly push multi-GB files to SD.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty small quibble.

It is not. It is a major problem.

I use Dropbox, Google Drive and a USB connection to my computer to move data on and off my Nexus 7.

Good for you. The rest of us use local storage because it is faster, more reliable, cheaper, more secure and isn't advertising invested.

I'd wager even if I had an SD slot, I'd rarely use it.

The only devices that don't have SD slots are the companies aiming for lock-in. If you're happy to be locked in and monetized fine; the rest of us want more choices and more competition.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[dfghjk]

"no local storage == no phone purchase. its that simple."

What phone has no local storage? I guess it's not that simple.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[dfghjk]

SD in phones is "hobbled-hardware-by-design" and always has been. It does not transparently expand the storage that exists on the device, storage that you seem to think doesn't exist. With such ignorance on display, why should anyone listen to you?

Once upon a time, smartphones didn't transparently switch between cellular and WiFi. Then the iPhone came along and did it right and now it's taken for granted. Expandable storage on phones works poorly because talented people aren't committed to making it work well. If Apple supported SD in iOS, which they wouldn't, it wouldn't be the crippled POS that it is in Android and people would want it. Never underestimate the value of actually getting it right.

Customers won't demand something that works poorly when there are better alternatives. For most users adequate internal storage IS a better alternative because it just works.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[dfghjk]

Went to the Google store and saw this here: https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=samsung_galaxy_s4&hl=en

"1) MicroSD card only compatible with select third party applications. Not compatible with Google services. "

By "select third party applications" they mean almost nothing.

The problem is that SD cards in Android devices suck and few applications support them. Meanwhile, most users are satisfied with 16-32 GB and it's better in many ways to simply integrate that and leave the nerds to bitch and moan. You don't need more than 16GB to carry plenty of music with you.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Miamicanes]

I have to second that. CM10.1rc5 was a mess on the AT&T GS3, but a lot of that mess sorted itself out once I managed to get my hands on the new I747UCDMG2 radio modem. Apparently, 4.2 needs some new extensions to the radio modem to work properly, and most of them unfortunately had to be kludged for 4.2 to work on d2att/i747 until the new radio modem finally got released into the wild.

Re:Closed source drivers still a bane

[Miamicanes]

It's not so much that Google is Jesus, as "Qualcomm has fucked up licensing policies". For example, the REAL reason why every carrier in the US -- including our two nominally-GSM ones -- impose "LTE Lock-in" is due to the way Qualcomm licenses its radio modem firmware. Basically, if you're someone like Sony, Qualcomm will sell you the chips, but they insist on licensing the LTE (and CDMA) firmware directly (and ONLY) to the carrier itself. So, it's basically impossible to build a phone with carrier-agnostic LTE using a Qualcomm chipset and sell it in the US.

The good news is that Qualcomm's monopoly on top-shelf American LTE-capable chipsets is almost over. The Renesas MP5232 was announced last December, and phones built with it (including the new HTC One Google Play Edition, which happens to be pretty much the only non-AT&T-blessed phone capable of doing LTE on AT&T). With a little luck, by this time next year, the floodgates will start to open, and there will be at least a few top-shelf imports capable of doing an end run around AT&T and using LTE without having to kiss their ring first.

Interested but will wait

[rikkards]

I have 10.1 on my S4. I had it on within 24 hours of getting the phone. I find the Samsung ROM too busy and flashy. But I am waiting for the issues around the camera to be dealt with before trying it out.

Still waiting for S3 Mini Stable

[Tukz]

When I read this story, I immediately checked if they finally made a CM for Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, but alas they haven't.
According to what I can find, there should be a very early alpha around, but certain important things are still not working in that build.

However, someone made a custom CM build from that alpha build, that should work.
http://maclaw.pl/2013/06/26/release-cm10-1-s3-mini-2/

I just don't feel like messing around with my phone with a custom-custom ROM.

Hopefully CM will release a stable CM for SGS3 Mini soon(tm), as I grew quite fond of CM on my HTC Desire, which prolonged the life of it substantially.
Only replaced it when I had enough of the extremely low internal memory.

Re:Still waiting for S3 Mini Stable

[Anonymous Coward]

Go and build it, if you're that interested.

Now, for the non-troll part of the answer... The people who build CM for are the people who have or a closely related device (for example, people who have an Exynos 4412 Galaxy Note 2 work on the Exynos 4412 Galaxy S3. And before you ask, your S3 Mini is very, very different from the S3). If nobody who owns the device is interested in building for it, nobody will build for it. In other words, you can't expect someone who can't test a ROM to build it. Find out about your phone's internals, try to find a similar phone that is supported, talk to the maintainer, and see if you can interest them to work on your phone. Or, talk to people who own your phone (or who are interested in buying a phone at that price range) and try to find a possible maintainer.

Re:Still waiting for S3 Mini Stable

[Andy Dodd]

S3 Mini is NovaThor based, and I am not sure if a single NovaThor device is receiving nightlies.

Some NovaThor-based Sonys got unofficial weekly builds from FreeXperia, but the platform was a nightmare to work with and I think jerpelea gave up on NovaThor after either CM9 or CM10.0

And yes - there are platforms even worse for a CM maintainer than Exynos4. NovaThor and MTK65xx being two of them.

what about the i9100?

[Anonymous Coward]

posting anonymously, as i am at work.

so they came out with a new android 4.3-based cyanogenmod?

that's nice.

but galaxy s2 (i9100) owners still don't have a stable 10.1 release...

yeah, i know the fault resides more with samsung than with the cm team, but it's still frustrating to see other phones getting stable updates and not us.

(sorry for the short rant)

Re:what about the i9100?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, the Exynos team decided they can't call a release "stable" unless they have the sources for some binaries and are able to remove some dirty hacks they had to add. This doesn't mean the nightlies are not stable, though.

Re:what about the i9100?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time i checked the xda forums for the i9100, they were still having some issues with the gps and display (i think); are recent builds good enough that only very subtle bugs remain? i mean, i know smartphones are computers with phone hardware bolted on, and as such, will expect the occasional times when the phone goes snake on me. but from what i was reading, basic reliability was still eluding the i9100 dev team.

if there is a recent nightly build that can be viewed as fairly solid, i'd very much like to know.

are you using one? if yes, which build is on your phone?

Re: what about the i9100?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also disappointed by this as Bluetooth audio streaming broke with the 4.0 upgrade and now I'm hearing Samsung won't fix this back to how the phone shipped! I've heard if these issues, but never with a citation to the actual problem. Do you have one?

I was about to try sentinel ROM myself to get a newer version in hope of finding solution to the audio bug Samsung introduced.

Re: what about the i9100?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm currently using cm9 ("9.1.0-galaxys2") and never had a bluetooth-related bug.

fwiw, i never tried bluetooth audio streaming in cm, so can't comment on that issue.

i guess i can try the _last_ cm10.1 nightly for the i9100, if i want to upgrade to android 4.2 ... hopefully i won't brick my i9100
or make it so unstable it becomes unusable.

Hmm...cannot find .zip

[dtotheatothevtothee]

I downloaded the latest update and gapps 4.3, but when I boot into recovery it says the .zip cannot be found. Would this have anything to do with my phone being encrypted?

Re:Hmm...cannot find .zip

[dtotheatothevtothee]

On my Nexus 4 ClockworkMod Recovery v6.0.2.3 Finding update package... E: Can't mount /sdcard/0/cmupdater/cm-10.2-20130814-NIGHTLY-mako.zip Installation aborted E: Can't mount /sdcard/

Re:Hmm...cannot find .zip

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. You encrypted the sdcard partition (I know, I know, the N4 doesn't have an SD card, it's just called that) and recovery doesn't know how to read it.

There's a way to install it in a different manner but I forget how.

Re:Hmm...cannot find .zip

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you've encrypted the drive so recovery doesn't know how to look at the file, so it says it's not there. You can get the clockwork mod app from the playstore, i think it's rommanager? i dunno, whatever, you can install from zip from those but it's sketchy.

you can also use heimdall which is a free app similar to "odin" and try installing the zip that way, from a PC, but that's prone to catastrophic error.

Do you have an SC card? Did you encrypt the whole device or just your storage partition? Gapps.zip is tiny and could even be placed on your internal memory to get it installed.

Re:Hmm...cannot find .zip

[dtotheatothevtothee]

I used the built-in encryption, so guessing the whole phone (it's the Nexus 4 with no external SD.) I can't find anyway to get the files downloaded to the root dir. I tried redirecting the download folder in Firefox to root. I can't seem to find out how to change it on Chrome or Dolphin. I have ROMmanager...it boots into Recovery mode & then I get the stuff posted above. I'm at work now so I can't hook it up to the computer. I'll mess with it when I get home...worse comes to worse I just do a clean boot.

Re:Hmm...cannot find .zip

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is not a support forum. We don't know, and those who do know are just as likely to troll you as give you useful information. Ask the Cyanogenmod forums.

Re: Hmm...cannot find .zip

[cnj]

use the sideload option in recovery

correct that please

[DragonTHC]

LG Optimus G is not one of the officially supported devices.

Great for ARMv7 devices but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For many owners on Qualcomm ARMv6 device they are stucked on Gingerbread thanks to Qualcomm refusal to release all the libraries...
Opensource indeed !

I'm waiting

[LanMan04]

I dirty-flashed my Nexus 4 (mako) with the new 4.3 nightly over the last/latest 4.2.2 nightly (and flashed the new gapps) and it was a disaster.

--Play Store broken, errors on every download/update even after clearing data/cache/etc
--No audio on phone calls
--Practically every Google app crashed
--No photosphere in the camera app

Bleh, I'll wait until it's stable.