The official Nexus 5 thread.

[sweenish]

It could be possible that CM is poorly coded, but what I'm trying to say is that both LED control and brightness control are APIs that are open to developers to access. The difference between CM and 3rd party apps is that they offer an interface to access those APIs. LightFlow and Lux act as intermediate apps that must sit by to overwrite those default system values. So for example, LightFlow listens to notifications and instead of allowing the default notification to trigger the LED which by default flashes white, it overwrites that command with its own command to light a green LED for example.

The CM interface opens up the ability to change those defaults, and so there isn't another process that has to listen to notifications. jimv1983's point that it's still listening to notifications is valid because there is already a notification API. It's leveraging existing APIs. Of course the system is listening to notifications. It's just that LightFlow adds a SECOND listener that has to stay open and is prone to getting killed.

Another example I like to cite is all those kernel tweak apps. Custom kernels come with a bunch of default values in the registers, such as fast charge being off. When you run Trickster Mod or Franco Kernel Updater and set fast charge to 1 or gamma to load a certain profile, what happens is that when you boot up, your system has to load the app which then executes a list of commands to set fast charge to be on and for the gamma profile selector to load a certain profile. By using init.d scripts, you're telling the system to execute the commands on boot without launching an app. Or if you're daring enough, go into the /sys folder and make the changes you want so that by default no script has to run.

It's not that I'm against 3rd party apps, but they do add a level of "bloat" to the system boot. To be able to manage as much of it in the OS is far more efficient.

I also get that jimv1983 doesn't need LED control or brightness curve controls, but I like them. Including them in the OS does't hurt him one bit because it's not an extra process running in the system. Nor does the Android OS need to create an extra process. Those same processes are already running. The only difference is the user has 0 control over them without using a 3rd party app.

What he's suggesting is like if you removed the ability to choose ringtones, notifications and all those selection menus or even volume control. The system doesn't save any processes. Those same options still exist, but you're just removing the checkboxes and pulldown menus and hiding it from the user.

On the same coin, Lightflow is using the sanctioned method of notification interception and the middleman approach is nigh seamless because it's a functionality built into the OS. It's a fine line that you're walking as far as distinguishing the two methods. You address it already, but I think you're not giving enough credit to the API. It's also not prone to be killed off.

I've generally found the way CM exposes stuff to the user to be powerful, but ugly and sometimes hacky. Their Quick Tile arrangment comes to mind especially.

Boot time being affected is a once in a blue moon event. I only ever reboot when something's acting up. It happens maybe twice a month at the most. I definitely had ROMs re-booting themselves far more often than that.

 

[antef]

I do run CyanogenMod, and I have it on all my devices, or at least some flavor of CM. Currently I'm not running stock CM but one of the modded CM ROMs out there because I like PA's HALO.

As for Xposed, I see how some people are replacing ROMs with Xposed, but to me Xposed isn't 100% there yet. Gravity Box is a nice app but in the end it's a bunch of hacked together features. Does it give me some additional settings like disabling the quicklaunch slider shortcuts that I hate? Yeah. So I use it with CM although it's not recommended per the GB developer (I find the chief problem with compatibility because when he first made the app, a lot of stuff defaulted to being on, and not just as system default. therefore when you install GravityBox, there's likely some overwriting of system default settings/CM settings).

The reason I still use a ROM is because my wants are not all covered with XPosed, and even if they are, there's only 1-2 major Xposed projects (GB mainly) that get regularly updated.

I tend to avoid custom kernels as much as possible as well as custom homemade ROMs like Joe's Lightning Fast ROM Deodexed Themed crap. I did use Franco's kernel briefly as he figured out gamma adjustments to better calibrate my screen. I don't really believe that indie developers on XDA are going to do a better job creating a governor/hotplugging driver that beats what LG and Google can do, even if Google cuts corners left and right on the Nexus 5. It's far easier to validate software when you have multiple units testing, and I find it almost impossible to navigate through the junk posts on XDA to actually provide meaningful feedback to developers. It's hard to do apples to apples comparisons when everyone on XDA is just reporting anecdotal evidence.

TBH, CM is pretty damn stable. They might've hit a few bumps with the CAF commits, but if anything I find them to be as good as stock. You don't need to wait for the M builds personally.

Can I ask you a few questions about CM since I haven't run it since CM7 and a little of CM9 and I'm still debating between using it or just Xposed on my N5:

1. Do Profiles let you disable screen security when, for example, on a certain WiFi network? So I can have pattern lock when I'm out and slide lock (no security) when I'm home? Without CM this only seems possible with Tasker + Secure Settings plugin.
2. Is there an option to re-enable notification shade access with lock screen security enabled? Stock Android disables this, totally locking you out from notifications on the lock screen unless you use a widget like DashClock.
3. Any option to change the carrier text?
4. How do you feel about the kernel and battery life? You mentioned not loving custom kernels, and I tend to agree with you, but I have enough inconsistency with N5 battery life that I'd be willing to try one.
5. What is CAF and what are the issues with the Bluetooth commits you refer to? In evaluating CM I checked their forums and BT issues was one of the first things I found. Someone said BT music skip track buttons don't work even in M4.
6. Do you experience random reboots? This is something else I read complaints about in their forums.
7. I see they recently added their own open-source look-up dialer. Can you still flash Google's stock dialer or is that broken?

Even if your anecdotal experience says nightlies are plenty stable, they are still nightlies and not tested at all. I would like to expect with at least reasonable certainty that random features are not going to stop working when I need them most. So I'm thinking about the M builds right now.

 

[antef]

On the same coin, Lightflow is using the sanctioned method of notification interception and the middleman approach is nigh seamless because it's a functionality built into the OS. It's a fine line that you're walking as far as distinguishing the two methods. You address it already, but I think you're not giving enough credit to the API. It's also not prone to be killed off.

I've generally found the way CM exposes stuff to the user to be powerful, but ugly and sometimes hacky. Their Quick Tile arrangment comes to mind especially.

Boot time being affected is a once in a blue moon event. I only ever reboot when something's acting up. It happens maybe twice a month at the most. I definitely had ROMs re-booting themselves far more often than that.

I have to agree, ROMs reboot due to bugs, you tend to deal with it more than normal reboots. I also don't think something like LightFlow affects boot time, it starts its launch after you're booted. Also agree that distinguishing the various methods of listening to notifications is walking a fine line and a little hard to make valid conclusions about.

Can you elaborate on your quick tile comment? Do you mean the presentation of the tiles is hacky or the UI to set them up? Any specific problems?

 

[blairharrington]

To anybody using a Nexus 5 with AT&T, what are you using for VVM? Google Voice? YouMail? Something else?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Replies in bold.

You're rooted right? Just Nandroid and try both. Not too difficult IMO.

Can I ask you a few questions about CM since I haven't run it since CM7 and a little of CM9 and I'm still debating between using it or just Xposed on my N5:

1. Do Profiles let you disable screen security when, for example, on a certain WiFi network? Not that advanced. The profiles is similar to CM9 or CM10 I'd say, but now you get NFC triggers. I don't even think the old BT/Wifi triggers are ported from CM10.2 yet. So I can have pattern lock when I'm out and slide lock (no security) when I'm home? Without CM this only seems possible with Tasker + Secure Settings plugin.
2. Is there an option to re-enable notification shade access with lock screen security enabled? Stock Android disables this, totally locking you out from notifications on the lock screen unless you use a widget like DashClock. I use slide unlock and I get the notification shade, but maybe this is stock behavior already?
   
3. Any option to change the carrier text? No, doesn't GB achieve this? I've seen other ROMs with this feature, and CM kangs sometimes include this as its a popular feature amongst ROMers
4. How do you feel about the kernel and battery life? You mentioned not loving custom kernels, and I tend to agree with you, but I have enough inconsistency with N5 battery life that I'd be willing to try one.My opinion is that inconsistency in battery life is a function of Android. Other times its rogue apps. I don't think the kernel really has anything to do with it. CM is fine. I don't think it's much better or worse compared to stock. Of course I haven't done any formal tests, so what can I say? But I'm also not one to claim a ROM is the king after 1 night of use. There's really only a few things that can cause ROMs/kernels to spiral out of control and those bugs are usually caught in development, if not caught by user feedback.
   
5. What is CAF and what are the issues with the Bluetooth commits you refer to? In evaluating CM I checked their forums and BT issues was one of the first things I found. Someone said BT music skip track buttons don't work even in M4.Here's an explanation. It's more bleeding edge, but I presume still relatively stable. It's not like these are Qualcomm test builds.
6. Do you experience random reboots? This is something else I read complaints about in their forums.Like once every month tops? I find it's more because of this kanged CM I use. Back on CM, practically never. I don't think I've used stock long enough to analyze reboots, but how often do you see those? Plus I can't guarantee that it's CM only. It could be a root app I use or Gravity Box. IT could also be Franco Kernel although I stopped using that since March.
   
7. I see they recently added their own open-source look-up dialer. Can you still flash Google's stock dialer or is that broken?I think you can but I'm not 100% sure. I believe PA Gapps already includes the stock dialer which you can use.
   

Even if your anecdotal experience says nightlies are plenty stable, they are still nightlies and not tested at all. I would like to expect with at least reasonable certainty that random features are not going to stop working when I need them most. So I'm thinking about the M builds right now.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

To anybody using a Nexus 5 with AT&T, what are you using for VVM? Google Voice? YouMail? Something else?

is VVM a paid service?

 

[blairharrington]

is VVM a paid service?

No. Visual voicemail. AT&T has a dedicated app that is incompatible with the Nexus 5. The consensus online seems to be using Google Voice for VVM.

 

[jimv1983]

No. Visual voicemail. AT&T has a dedicated app that is incompatible with the Nexus 5. The consensus online seems to be using Google Voice for VVM.

The Google Play Store might say that the Visual voicemail app is incompatible with the Nexus 5 but that isn't true. I downloaded the APK from a XDA post when I first got my Nexus 5 and it worked fine. However, with the 4.4.2 update it does freeze up sometimes but I got the updated APK and it works fine.

If you are interested here is the link to the APK:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/goo...tt-visual-voicemail-2-7-1-57-3-19-14-t2692219

 

[blairharrington]

The Google Play Store might say that the Visual voicemail app is incompatible with the Nexus 5 but that isn't true. I downloaded the APK from a XDA post when I first got my Nexus 5 and it worked fine. However, with the 4.4.2 update it does freeze up sometimes but I got the updated APK and it works fine.

If you are interested here is the link to the APK:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/goo...tt-visual-voicemail-2-7-1-57-3-19-14-t2692219

Thanks. I'll use this if I have any issues with YouMail.

 

[Sunburn74]

Hey my wife is having poor battery life on her nexus 5. She can barely get 8 hrs out of it with minimal use. I read about a bug that Google is trying to fix but that bug involves Skype which she does not have installed at all. Is anyone else experiencing similar issues?

 

[Ravynmagi]

Hey my wife is having lost battery life on her nexus 5. She can barely get 8 hrs out of it with minimal use. I read about a bug that Google is trying to fix but that bug involves Skype which she does not have installed at all. Is anyone else experiencing similar issues?

I was having the Skype issue. But seems to have gone away after the Skype update. However this bug could potentially exist in other apps as well. If you look at your battery details and see something like mm-qcamera-deamon causing a lot of the battery drain, then you have some app that has access to the camera and is affected by the bug. So if that's happening, you'll need to figure out which app it is.

Supposedly there was an Android update coming soon to address this issue for any app. It might have been one of those transparent background updates I wouldn't see, so dunno if the issue has already been resolved or not.

 

[Sunburn74]

What kind of battery life are you getting out of your nexus with daily use?

 

[shabby]

What kind of battery life are you getting out of your nexus with daily use?

Daily use as in playing candy crush until the battery runs out? 2 hours tops.
Otherwise it'll last 1.5-2 days without playing candy crush.

 

[blairharrington]

What kind of battery life are you getting out of your nexus with daily use?

My battery life is solid. Screen at half brightness. Wi-fi and bluetooth remain on. Continuous on-screen use eats the battery. This is the case in most smartphones.

The Boston Herald app was consuming a lot of battery and I didn't know it until I checked the battery stats. I wasn't using it much so I deleted it.

I have Skype up and running and it doesn't seem to show up in battery stats.

 

[Capt Caveman]

What kind of battery life are you getting out of your nexus with daily use?

I think my battery may have gone bad. In 7 hours, I'm down to 36%. Wifi used 11%

I'm planning on running RunKeeper when I run the Boston Marathon on Monday so people can track me live but I don't think the battery is going to last. On a 21 mile run, a few weeks ago, I had 22% left.

I bought a small battery charger pack and I guess I'm going to have to plug it in and have it charging from the start of the race when I turn on Runkeeper.

 

[zerogear]

Did 4.4.3 drop?

 

[MrSquished]

Did 4.4.3 drop?

not yet. android central announced that sprint was dropping an update for the nexus 5 so they are assuming 4.4.3 will be dropping soon for all of us soon.

http://www.androidcentral.com/sprint-nexus-5-update-pushing-out-added-spark

 

[jimv1983]

This is more of a general Android question but I have a Nexus 5 so I think it find of fits here.

I'm having trouble with group texting. The other day my sister sent out a group text. The initial message came in under her individual thread and all the replies from other family members came in under there own respective individual message threads. Anyone else have this problem? Any way to fix it so that they all stay grouped together in their own group thread?

 

[zerogear]

I personally use Textra, so I haven't had an issue with Group Messaging, It might be some issue with the way it handles group messaging in the default app.

 

[Zxian]

This is more of a general Android question but I have a Nexus 5 so I think it find of fits here.

I'm having trouble with group texting. The other day my sister sent out a group text. The initial message came in under her individual thread and all the replies from other family members came in under there own respective individual message threads. Anyone else have this problem? Any way to fix it so that they all stay grouped together in their own group thread?

If you want group SMS messaging, you're always going to have a hard time sorting out heads from tails. I'd really recommend using a messaging protocol that actually handles group chats properly, such as Hangouts or Whatsapp. I'm sure there are other options out there, but those are the two that I use.

 

[jimv1983]

If you want group SMS messaging, you're always going to have a hard time sorting out heads from tails. I'd really recommend using a messaging protocol that actually handles group chats properly, such as Hangouts or Whatsapp. I'm sure there are other options out there, but those are the two that I use.

The problem with things like Hangouts and WhatsApp is that all the involved people must use it as well. Personally, I don't know anyone that actually uses either of those.

As much as I like Android I think this is on major flaw of a feature that should be pretty basic.

 

[cronos]

The problem with things like Hangouts and WhatsApp is that all the involved people must use it as well. Personally, I don't know anyone that actually uses either of those.

As much as I like Android I think this is on major flaw of a feature that should be pretty basic.

You definitely need the people involved to use them as well, and someone who's smart enough to be annoyed with the ridiculousness (i.e. someone like you) need to start coercing your contacts to change their way, otherwise they wouldn't know better and you will always get annoyed. Because of this, I'm hoping that they never 'fixed' it the way you wanted it just to make it easier for people to finally get sick of using SMS/MMS for (heavy) personal and group conversations and quit using them altogether for those purposes, and start using other, much better featured applications. It really doesn't even matter which one you prefer, as any of them are way better than SMS. Simple text messages here and there are of course completely fine, especially if it's absolutely needed because the other person is using a non-smartphone. But depending on SMS/MMS for heavy/group conversations? That's just silly in the day and age of the existence of a handful of really good apps that are meant to do just that. This is why I'm actually disappointed that Google decided to copy Apple's iMessage and merge Hangouts and SMS. It basically allows people to continue with the silliness without even having to realize that they're being silly.

I don't think a lot of people realized how strange it is for me to see people complaining about SMS this and that and how this MVNO doesn't support MMS and therefore should be avoided, etc....in 2014! A couple of years ago I looked at these types of complaints and thought "what? people still use those for heavy conversations? why?", and now I just simply skipped over all those comments and be thankful that none of my contacts are that silly. I received maybe ~20 text messages in the past two months and pretty much 100% of them are two-factor authentication related messages. Maybe there were one or two that are random spam-type, but absolutely none came from an actual person. This is compared to a total of several thousand messages a week from personal and group conversations in WhatsApp and Telegram. SMS definitely has its use and I won't want it to go away completely, but it's definitely not meant for extended chatting sessions or heavy group conversations.

 

[Zxian]

The problem with things like Hangouts and WhatsApp is that all the involved people must use it as well. Personally, I don't know anyone that actually uses either of those.

As much as I like Android I think this is on major flaw of a feature that should be pretty basic.

But it's not something you can control on your end. Depending on the receiving device, the "group" information gets stripped upon arrival. When they reply, they reply only to you. This is particularly apparent with "dumb phones" like the one my mother uses.

A chatting app/protocol that natively supports group messaging (i.e. forces all clients to acknowledge the group) is your best option. Both Hangouts and Whatsapp are free. If the people you're chatting with are already on Android, Hangouts is the most seamless option. If you're mixing Android and iOS, Whatsapp might be an easier option.

 

[tsupersonic]

I used GoSMSPro and had no problems with group messaging. I didn't even know this was an issue... All my friends with iPhones (and anyone) who sent messages to multiple people worked just fine to my phone.

 

[jimv1983]

You definitely need the people involved to use them as well, and someone who's smart enough to be annoyed with the ridiculousness (i.e. someone like you) need to start coercing your contacts to change their way, otherwise they wouldn't know better and you will always get annoyed. Because of this, I'm hoping that they never 'fixed' it the way you wanted it just to make it easier for people to finally get sick of using SMS/MMS for (heavy) personal and group conversations and quit using them altogether for those purposes, and start using other, much better featured applications. It really doesn't even matter which one you prefer, as any of them are way better than SMS. Simple text messages here and there are of course completely fine, especially if it's absolutely needed because the other person is using a non-smartphone. But depending on SMS/MMS for heavy/group conversations? That's just silly in the day and age of the existence of a handful of really good apps that are meant to do just that. This is why I'm actually disappointed that Google decided to copy Apple's iMessage and merge Hangouts and SMS. It basically allows people to continue with the silliness without even having to realize that they're being silly.

I don't think a lot of people realized how strange it is for me to see people complaining about SMS this and that and how this MVNO doesn't support MMS and therefore should be avoided, etc....in 2014! A couple of years ago I looked at these types of complaints and thought "what? people still use those for heavy conversations? why?", and now I just simply skipped over all those comments and be thankful that none of my contacts are that silly. I received maybe ~20 text messages in the past two months and pretty much 100% of them are two-factor authentication related messages. Maybe there were one or two that are random spam-type, but absolutely none came from an actual person. This is compared to a total of several thousand messages a week from personal and group conversations in WhatsApp and Telegram. SMS definitely has its use and I won't want it to go away completely, but it's definitely not meant for extended chatting sessions or heavy group conversations.

In theory your idea of switching away from SMS is a great idea and I would fully support it. However, it is highly unlikely to happen. How easy do you think it would be to get everyone I know (or even a large percentage of them) to not only switch to a different service (especially when they are already comfortable with SMS) but to all switch to the same service especially when not everyone uses the same platform.

But it's not something you can control on your end. Depending on the receiving device, the "group" information gets stripped upon arrival. When they reply, they reply only to you. This is particularly apparent with "dumb phones" like the one my mother uses.

A chatting app/protocol that natively supports group messaging (i.e. forces all clients to acknowledge the group) is your best option. Both Hangouts and Whatsapp are free. If the people you're chatting with are already on Android, Hangouts is the most seamless option. If you're mixing Android and iOS, Whatsapp might be an easier option.

Like I said in my comment to cronos, getting everyone to switch to a different service for messaging is almost impossible. I can only control what I do not what others do and as long as I am dependent on other people to use a service it is a service that I likely won't use. I don't personally know ANYONE that uses Hangouts or WhatsApp for messaging instead of SMS.