Iodé OS experience coming from Samsungs system

Operating System
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Hello, since switching to iodé on my Samsung s10e happened some weeks ago, I thought it would make sense to tell of the experience coming from Samsungs system to iodé OS from a near normal user perspective on usability. (My previous system wasn’t rootet or tuned in some way, but I debloated some apps via adb.)

Android - Samsung vs Iodé

  • toggle modes: silent, vibrate, loud - but that may be due to LineageOS
    • but one can tap to display a selector of which profile to use - this takes a lot more taps, but it’s also a bit more capable since it’s setting profiles and not only ring modes.
    • in the other hand: how to know which mode the phone is in? Is there really no way to add ringer mode to the quick shortcuts bar?
  • green indicator for location is over battery percentage - that is not useful when switching the device on and the weather app for example is refreshing - I simply would like to know what percentage is left.
  • app switcher:
    • screenshot button is in the way, close all apps button is on the side, only visible after extra scrolling to the left, (why not put both buttons besides each other?)
    • app switcher just zooms away but doesn’t move to previous app, no option to do so
      • ah, I found out that tapping the button again moves directly to the previous app in app switcher (as could holding the ‘back’ button longer)
  • launcher: cannot save icons (positions as a backup for example for restoring only this at a later time)
  • Notification on display:
    • is it really not provided to have edge lighting? Maybe that is a Samsung thing, but it is quite useful to have something a bit more unobtrusive than whole screen flashing.
    • Edge lighting (Phones) does not hinder to read the notification from screen, and takes some more seconds than full screen flashing, which is also quite helpful.
  • Battery use:
  • Bixby button
    • can be set to some useful actions - that is totally nice. On Samsung, I used button mapper and uninstalled all Bixby stuff in order to get press-and-hold to activate the flashlight. It seems that for doing this I still need button mapper.
  • Power button
    • sometimes does not switch the screen off, especially when pressing it with the thumb and having the rest of the hand over the device. Sometimes it needs multiple tries to get the screen off.
    • I found out that setting the power button to digital assistant seems to mitigate a lot of this, but not completely. (That’s a bit counter-intuitive, as it sounds :person_facepalming:)
  • Power Menu / power off / restart
  • Camera app
    • feels also like lo-fi, compared to Samsung, but that’s also due to LineageOS, I presume. I will try out gcam and other things…
  • Gallery app
    • as it seems this app uses mtime to sort images. That’s not helpful, now all of my photos are from the date I restored them.
      • I also was unable to set mtime to the values of ctime via adb :person_shrugging: (at least now I know the difference between mtime and ctime)
  • Screen brightness
    • ootb when set to automatic, it is much too bright for me indoors. This also adds to less runtime since the battery is used more.
    • Is there somewhere a kind of offset to be set?
  • Aurora Store doesn’t have a checkbox to disable updates for each app? Previously I had Google Maps at an older and snappier version, but now I cannot opt out of updates.
  • App Icon shape: isn’t there a setting to leave it as is without enforcing a circle, square or whatever shape?

Of course there are also a lot of things that are better ootb in Iodé compared to Samsung stock ROM :+1: (That’s why we are here :rocket:) This is not to lament on bad things but rather to inspire easing the transition for users coming from other systems like Samsungs. Maybe some tiny things can be tuned… :star_struck:

Funny thing is that the Google Maps and eBay app both seem to not work.
The Here Maps app works mostly, but Gmaps doesn’t get to download any maps, even when totally unblocked and signed in with my account. Maybe I broke something here?

greetings

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Thanks for sharing this! I’m also using iodé on different S10 models but the S10e is my favorite and also my daily driver. I came across some of your points but got used to LOS-based Android real quick. And now I’m loving it. The biggest downside for me rn is to be still on Iodé 4.x bc there is no OTA-update to A14 available.

What still bothers me are:

app switcher: hate that the close all button is on the left side, it should definitely be where the screenshot button is)
launcher: i think you might be save those with seedvault - the integrated backup solution
camera app: I tried a lot with gcam versions from bsg and msg and others but could find none that was stable, with working selfie cam and easy access to gallery. I went back to aperture and in the meantime open camera.
app icon shape: no, just one shape for every app i guess…

maps works with me. have no problems with it at all. maybe just keep it updated? :smiley: or better just switch to organic maps :world_map:

regards

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I really wonder what could be the reason having misery shutting off the device.
I now have disabled double-tap power button and disabled assistant for power button (which makes no difference as there is no assistant).
So there is nothing on the power bottun left as functions except

  • one tap: switch on/off
  • press and hold: power menu.

Still, it happens quite unexpectedly often that after pressing the power button, even multiple times, the device won’t shut off. Then, after pressing again, again, and again, it somehow does shut off, and instantly on again since I pressed the button faster and didn’t see it switching off and couldn’t stop pressing the button.
Before flashing iodé, there was exactly no problem with the power button, The system could even very precisely distinguish between pressing for shutting off and holding for starting the camera app.
Is there some way to find out more via log files?
Or is there some way to reset system settings limited to that in some way?

On the other hand, I would not use GoogleMaps regularly, but from time to time it’s quite handy, for example if you are on holidays and need to look at fotos from ratings for finding something to eat. I also looked around in order to find a modded Gmaps app…

I whish there was some automation app that could also switch the built-in profiles as the Bixby app could :person_shrugging:

greetings

4

funny thing happened last evening: I got Google Maps working completely as it should. (It is super helpful for example in holidays as you can see photos etc. of food stands or other interesting stuff that’s not yet opensourcely available).
I was reading those posts:

so I went to microg settings, and checked/unchecked some settings just in order to set them to the settings they already had. I also changed the ping interval of cloud messaging when on Wifi from 15 to 10 minutes.
And I also gave permissions via adb for location.
Afterwards I reinstalled Gmaps, and voilà, it works now.
In hindsight this shouldn’t make sense because I really did not change some crucial settings. But maybe some part of microg was hung up or something like that, and that got it working again… :person_shrugging:.

For shutting off the screen I have now added a quick shortcut that can be accessed via swiping down the notification bar. That works 100%.

So to sum it up: most problems can be solved by the technical savy user, but for the average user, some things should be solved before we can speak of a flash-it and use-it directly ROM, I would say :+1:

greetings