It's finally arrived

After being stuck in Custom for a week or so,  the white T6S was delivered to my house this afternoon. I haven't root it yet since I'm thinking of making a video of the whole process.

Do you think it's necessary to have a video of the process? Let me know. I'll do it if there is enough request.

Update : My mother in law had snatched the phone so.. the video will most probably feature the black T6S.

My 4 years old son peeking at the white T6S

Approval Permit for the THL T6S

This evening, I had obtained the approval needed for my T6S which is currently being held by the Malaysian Custom.  Below is the e-permit which I received from the SIRIM officer via email.

The e-permit for the T6S

So, I can now expect the T6S to arrive at my doorsteps tomorrow or the day after that.

CyanogenMod 11 for Xiomi 1S

I had replaced the ROM for the Xiomi 1S from the official MIUI flavoured Android Jelly Bean 4.3 based to the CynogenMod 11 (Android Kit Kat 4.4.4). I actually had flashed the Mokee ROM (another custom rom - based on the CynogenMod 11) but later decided to use the pure CM ROM.

So far, the ROM is preety stable and the 1S is performing well. One thing that I need to highlight is that if I changed the CM11's runtime from Dalvik to ART, the 1S does not receive any carrier /operator signal nor any wifi signal. Maybe it's just me but some users on the 1S MIUI forum reported that they are able to run CM11 with ART.

Below are some screen capture of the ROM.

Home Screen - CM 11 Default Launcher

Free RAM - around 300MB

About 18K - score in Antutu Benchmark

Banned!

I had registered myself at the myphone.gr forum a few week or so ago and guess what? I'm now banned form the forum for using bots. What bots?

As you can see above, the banned period is almost a lifetime so..

What am I doing peeking at the forum? Well, to read the comments and help where ever I can.

Thanks for banning me.

Problem with stock THL T6S ROM

I had read many users at the various forum such as the 4pda.ru, myphone.gr, androidforum.cz and htcmania.com complain about the T6S's stock rom being unstable and unable to sync with Google servers. From my previous experience, I found this is not the fault of the stock rom in general.

Google's Play Store

The stock rom that came with my T6S was not having any of these problems. Well, a 4 yrs old doesn't complain much about his contacts or gmail account doesn't sync right?

Two possible cause to this problem.

1. The google server was busy at that particular moment. Give it some time to sync properly. I found that the play store tends to be the hog when you add a Google account to be sync. Also, check if the picasa account is also setup be be in sync. If you have a lot of photo residing in your picasaweb account, it will also cause problems in syncing your contacts and mails.

2. The gapps that was installed is not the best one. Downloading either this modular mini gapps (150MB) or this modular micro gapps (98MB) and flash it in the cwm or carliv recovery. Be sure to create a nandroid backup before anything. After you had flash the gapps, clear the cache and dalvik cache.

Hope this will helps.

Stuck in customs - Part 2

I had inform Lazada about the T6S being stuck at customs. Below is the reply that I had received from them via email.

And below are the courier tracking activity.

It's good to know that Lazada or the company that is actually selling me the T6S is taking care about the problem for me. Now, all I have to do is wait for it to show up in the next few days.

Tempered glass from the Xiomi 1S

Oh.. and I had install a used tempered glass screen protector from the Xiomi 1S onto the T6S. Well, it'll do for the time being. Still searching for a suitable armour case for it as well.

*Miui Lite (MIUI 6) express launcher is used as the default launcher.

Stuck in customs

Literally, my 2nd unit of the THL T6S is now stuck in customs due to regulation/import duty clearance.

I was contacted by the forwarding company asking me to contact a person in charge of goods clearance and taxes. Well, this was unexpected since the first unit that I ordered was delivered without any fuss.

This will mean that I would need to pay some money for getting it through to me. Luckily, I learn that the fees are not that expensive but still, money is money.

THL T6S and OTG Support

This post might spark some debate but I had tried various methods and apps to get the OTG to work on the T6S but in the end - no joy.

I had even tried by pushing the required xml file (copied from the other phones) into the /system/etc/permission but it simply will not work. From my understanding, we need both OS and hardware to support OTG for it to work. The T6S seems to lack the required hardware.

Below is the screen capture from the T6S to conclude this post. Again, we cant get everything from such a cheap device. For me, its worth every Ringgit/Dollar/Euro we had paid for it.

 

Optimizing MIUI

Now I own a few phones with different specification and rom running on each one. The Lenovo A766, Xiomi Note and Xiomi 1S are running different version of MIUI, a highly customized Android.

Since 50% of my blog readers are from chinaphonearena, the chances of you, the readers are already or had or considering of flashing MIUI are very high. So, Im going to share one simple and fast method of improving the MIUI,which are known to be a little bit laggy (even with a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM).

Disclaimer - As usual, you are responsible if anything bad happened to your phone. I had tested this methods on all the three models stated above with success.

What you need

1. A rooted smartphone running a MIUI rom (in my case, the 1S, with JHCMIBF37 firmware).
2. Any backup software capable of freezing apps (especially system apps) such as the Titanium Backup Pro (TB). I would recommend you to freeze the apps first before deleting them. If your phone behave normally (and with better performance), go ahead and delete the apps, if necessary.

I was inform that the App Freeze can also get the job done for free but untested by me.

Steps

Lets freeze so apps!

1. Reboot into your custom recovery (CWM or Carliv or TWRP) and do a nandroid backup. Safety first. You can fall back on this backup if anything goes wrong.
2. Boot into MIUI and launch the TB app.
3. If you are connected to the Xiomi Cloud service, go ahead and log out of the Xiomi account.
4. Search for "Mi Cloud Framework" and press on it. A popup menu will be displayed with various options. Select the Freeze option.
5. Repeat the freezing process for "Sync with Mi Cloud" and "Xiomi Assistant".
6. Reboot your phone.

Find and freeze those apps

Optional apps to be frozen

1. All the live wallpapers & live wallpaper picker (if you dont use them).
2. Home screen tips.
3. System (MIUI) launcher - make sure you have other launcher such as the Nova/Apex Launcher installed and set the them as the default launcher first!
4. Other apps that you dont really use (such as Google Play Movie, in my case, at least)

Before freezing the apps - 17+++ mark

Good luck!

MIUI for the THL T6S

I have a MIUI rom baking in the oven for the T6S. Its 90% completed. Lets just hope that everything will turn out alright.

Photoshopped.. :P

Don't put too much hope on this build as there are a few required files missing from the T6S source that I/we have. I borrowed those missing files from somewhere and kind of cheat on a file.

Cross your fingers guys. I will update the result in around 5 or 6 hours due to work commitment.

Update.

Well, not everything will work out the way we wanted. The whole installation was fine but it just stuck at a garbage looking screen.

Anyway, I had learned a 2 important things.

1. The wiping of data on the T6S is about 5 whole minutes.

2. The Carliv recovery works. It can create and restore backup succesfully. With that in mind, I will try again.

The loading/boot image of miui (in a non successful port)

Update : I had tried 5 different ports and none works. Until a kitkat MIUI is released on a similiar device, a port is impossible. Until then, download and install MIUI express launcher for a taste of MIUI on this device.. 

Xiaomi / Redmi 1S

Yup.. another phone to play with. Behold, the Xiaomi / Redmi 1S.

Xiaomi / Redmi 1S

Specification wise, it's almost the same as the THL T6S. In the next few days (If I can resist myself not to do it sooner than that), I'll be comparing it with the T6S.

My early observation are the Redmi wins in terms of screen quality & after sales support. In terms of stock OS performance & value for money, the T6S wins.

Image of Masjid Zahir, Alor Setar taken with the 1S