Best of Community! Our Top 3 Picks.

We have some pretty awesome people in our community: Android devs, IT consultants, college students with a passion for modifying gadgets, top of the line photographers. There’s so much untapped knowledge from them. So, we figured we’d put the spotlight on them for once. Without further ado, please enjoy our top three picks for this month.

Well, this one is a quite hard question respectively decision. I guess there are many good choices around. My “all-time” favorite Rom was Exodus Rom, but this doesn’t exist anymore unfortunately. Besides, I always liked ResurrectionRemix, as this gave me better battery life than CM back in these days and has been much more customizable. DirtyUnicorns has always been very stable for me as well and kinda customizable on top. On my previous HTC 10, I stayed nearly all the time on stock Rom. So in this post, I’m going to concentrate on AOSP Roms and stock OOS kernels for the OnePlus 5, though I stayed on OOS nearly all the time. Why? Well, there are 2 simple reasons: I don’t want to lose either Dirac or stock camera. Furthermore, I am extremely busy in recent time, that’s why I’m aiming for maximum stability, and I don’t have much time to play with the phone. So I have to say, my favourite Rom on the OP5 is OOS itself. Now I want to have look on some AOSP based Roms:

So I haven’t installed AICP since I owned the LG G4. In these times, AICP was kinda unstable and gave me random reboots, but if I remember right, this wasn’t the fault of the Rom, but of the firmware by LG. The “20g” firmware blobs caused some weird issues, and every Rom had to go back to the “20d” blobs… Due to this, even LOS dropped the support now for the G4. So, what can I say about AICP? If you don’t want to move too far away from LOS, but still want to have more customizations, then AICP could be the right choice. But still, AICP has never been my favourite.

DirtyUnicorns is a very famous and well working Rom. I have installed it on my OP5 as well, I guess it has been the first Oreo RC build. Though it was “only” a RC build, it ran extremely smooth and stable. Only one or two options in the DU tweaks let the settings app freeze, but this has been the only issue and I’m sure, they solved this problem in the meanwhile. Rock solid Rom, enough customizations, here and there some new features, kinda innovative, too: always a good choice and surely one of my all-time favorite AOSP Roms!

LineageOS: For sure one of the most stable AOSP Roms, if not the most stable one. But besides, it’s kinda “average”: not that many customization options, quite “boring”. If someone wants to try something different than OOS, but still aims for the highest stability, this is a good choice for sure. But again, it’s quite “boring”, that’s why, this isn’t my favorite choice.

LiquidRemix: I tried this one on my OP5, too. It worked stable and looked good so far, but it had one major downside: Scrolling has been slow and felt not smooth at all. I tried it back in January, so I’m sure, the developers have improved things since then. If the scrolling is better and on par now to other Roms, this could be a good choice as well.

ResurrectionRemix: I had it running the las time on my former LG G4 and it was one of my favourite Roms, because I liked the large number of possibilities to customize your phone. I haven’t installed it yet on my OP5 though. So, a nice Rom, but perhaps even too much possibilities for the “average” user.

Some of the best places to see include Lisbon’s Cathedral, São Jorge’s castle and Baixa. After a quick lunch, it’s now time to head to Sintra, a pitoresque town north of Lisbon. There you’ll find several places where to make use of your phone’s camera, like the Initiation Well at Quinta da Regaleira or the colorful Palácio da Pena.

It’s now time to head near the coast to Azenhas do Mar, to enjoy the sunset, the best seafood Portugal has to offer and to rest so we’re fully ready for tomorrow’s filled with nature and adventure day.

Day 2: Paiva — Adventure

If the first day was mostly about sightseeing, the second one is all about nature and adventure. It’s now time to travel to the north of country, to the Paiva river where we’ll find the Paiva walkways.

You’ll be able to take advantage of the Portuguese outdoors but, if you’re up for it, there’s a bit more adventure right around the corner. Paiva is also known for whitewater rafting!

For those that survive, it’s now time to head to Porto, finish the day with a heartwarming Francesinha(loosely translated to Little Frenchie), a “sandwich made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with melted cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce served with french fries”. I told you, you’ll put on some weight), and rest for last and final day of this Portuguese tour.

After a few years of programming, I came to realize that the essence of good code writing was keeping it as simple as possible, while satisfying the requirements. Less is more.

Having used smartphones since 2012, and having both read extensively and used (experimented with) many popular apps on the Google Play Store, this is what I have realised:

A lean and light-weight system is an efficient, and therefore, most effective system. Such a system significantly enhances user experience.

Software tips:

1. Installing apps unnecessarily or keeping an app installed when it isn’t being used is a hog on system resources. Uninstall apps that you don’t use.

2. Apps that have to constantly run in the background (read antivirus, boosters, battery savers, etc.) trying to monitor other apps or system functions are the worst category. They drain battery, occupy RAM, use CPU cycles and eventually contribute to slowing the system down. And all these for no real benefits (except for a false sense of security and performance). The smartphone performs best without any of these apps.

3. Think of the software in a phone as a house with lots of stuff. It is not as if the house cannot be kept clean. But the amount of effort required to keep it clean is much more. Eventually the efforts required to keep the house clean takes a toll on your health and mood, and slowly the house begins to get less clean, and eventually dirty. In other words, more apps and features packed in the OS or installed on your device has a similar effect on the device performance, which leads to poor user experience.

4. Let the OS handle everything. Do not interfere with system design and functions. The more you tinker with it (unless you are an expert and know exactly what you are doing), the more negatively it hampers user experience.

5. Reboot your device at least once every week. This will clear temporary glitches and delete unnecessary temp files as determined by the OS. Do NOT use 3rd party apps for these functions.

6. Reboot to recovery and wipe system cache once every month. This is like a panacea for all evils as far as smartphone performance is concerned.

7. Keep the OS and all apps up-to-date always. They often contain important security patches and bug-fixes that boost performance.

9. Before installing apps, check its reputation (number of downloads and user reviews can act as a guide, although they can be manipulated) and be very careful of the source. Sticking to Google Play Store alone is often sufficient and recommended.

10.Remove all unnecessary permissions from apps. (If you like an app and use it, it is always a good idea to support the developer and also support future development by purchasing the paid version of the app).

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