Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 — Moving from JB 4.1.2 to... what?

Hi, all!

Good afternoon. This is my 2nd post here (1st one was to state Samsung policy of 18 months upgrade for new OS versions), and it's about my last week rooted GT-N7000. 1st root ever.

This is the 3rd Note that I have (1st on Aug 2012, 2nd -replacement after theft- on Dec 2012, and 3rd -replacement by official technical service- on Jan 2014), all of them official stock ROMs from the cellular provider (Movistar, Argentine).

I didn't decide to root it before because of warranty issues and all that kinda stuff. My son told me about kingo dot com, I gave it a try, then unrooted it and delivered to tech service with any excuse, and nothing was detected regarding the rooting & unrooting process, so I finally decided to definitively move to root side, primarily for using Titanium Backup Pro (I'm tired of loosing all my data with each phone replacement or reformat after servicing).

Being a software developer but for mainframes and networks under Windows OS familiy, never on Unix/Linux and neither on Android, I've read about methods of rooting phones, installing apps like CMW ROM Manager, backing up my actual original official ROM, downloading and installing a custom one, and then restoring the original one and unrooting the phone... and everything should be transparent and the root-unroot process would be undetected. Always pointing towards warranty issues.

Maybe because of my tech side, I actually want to know -so I'm asking here- a few things about this process:
a) Which process / method / apps / etc. should I use to accomplish 4th paragraph?
b) I was looking at Cyanogen and found that only CM 10.2 (JB 4.3) is available now for this phone, no CM 11 (KK 4.4) yet.
c) Are there any 4.4 ROMs available that you may recommend?
d) I use a lot my Note for photography and video, and when upgraded to ICS 4.0.4 the new camera worked fine, but when upgraded to JB 4.1.2 it worked fine too, but I noticed that the preview after taking a photo was (is) extremely slow, and sometimes the audio gets out of phase (not synchronized). This happened with my last 2 phones so I discard a hard or soft issue of one of them.
e) Said so, I'd like to know if the hardware of the GN-N7000 is enough powerful (dual core 1.4 Ghz) to handle KK 4.4 since it has slowness issues with camera preview (I suppose that with Gallery in fact). If not, what about 4.3?
f) Is it worth to upgrade it more than the official JB 4.1.2 regarding speed? Are there any benchmarks between the different custom ROMs available for it?
g) In what Note version has been Knox counter introduced? I read about it on Note 3, but I don't know if in Note or Note 2 it's present. If so, which would be a) procedure?

Thanks in advance.

— modified on Feb 10, 2014, 8:59:14 PM

Hi, all!

2 weeks have passed, more than 120 people have read this post, now I'm wondering 3 things...
a) Did I wrote anything off the site rules? If so, I apologize.
b) Did I ask for anything so intricate? Maybe, but that's what I'm asking it at an allegedly reputed forum.
c) Didn't I deserve even a comment from a moderator/administrator or whatever other category of non just simple members? I think I do.

So, here's my humble and last attempt to get an answer to my questions.

Thank you very much in advance.

Regards!

PS: I still read this every day, "Here at the Samsung Galaxy Note Forum you’ll find answers, tips, tricks, and help for your Samsung Galaxy Note."
Hope it wasn't written by the same author of Rod Stewart's Reason To Believe.

— modified on Feb 26, 2014, 3:47:43 AM

[quote=John Farrell]Hi, John!

About forum answers & roles.
I actually appreciate a lot your both fast and accurate answer, thank you very much.
I certainly know about forums moderators and administrators jobs as I have such a role at Chandoo Excel forums (h t t p : / / chandoo . org / forum / members / ...as SirJB7), it just seemed to me that it have passed a reasonable amount of time to bump up the question. Fortunately you appeared.

About warranty.
" - Look the answer to this question is quite controversial, it's because rooting always voids your warranty. But like you and some other users said that they have rooted their device and while taking it to the support centre they unrooted it and the service centre executive have no idea about that, well i'll say it varies from devices to devices. Sometimes no one find out sometimes caught !! as such if i talk about application there is no any app i know that can help you with it. "
When I bought my 1st Note (mid 2012) I was fully amazed of the phone features and the app market. That is explained because I came from a Windows Mobile 6.5 Samung Omnia II, where finding a game other than Asphalt of Bubble was a hard job. As a curious reader I started with the rooted worId stuff and decided to wait a year until the brand warranty expired. But then my phone was theft (end 2012) and I had another year of coverage, so recently (start 2014) I took the decision to enter root. But then my phone crashed and I got a new replacement... with another year of warranty. So I said enough, it's show time, folks. Hence, if I can keep the warranty it'd be ideal, but if not I think I'll assume the risk.

About KK 4.4.
" - Well as for you I have a good news, CyanogenMod 11.0 [OFFICIAL][NIGHTLIES] is available for download. You can get it downloaded from the developers site, I am sure you can find that out....."


About camera & photo.
" - Well, here i don't get that wether it work fine on 4.04. or not because you have said that on 4.0.4 and 4.1.2 it works fine while on 4.1.2 you noticed some synchronisation problem. So, I am assuming that there is no synchronisation issue while you are at 4.0.4, and this issue pops out when you're updated to 4.1.2, here what I will suggest you is it look the problem is with the update, there's nothing much you can other than waiting for the next bug fix update or you can root your device and install some other ROM's like you said you were planning of trying other ROM's out."
I think this is the main issue that makes me change the OS version. My 1st phone came with GB 2.3, and camera worked smoothly; when the official upgrade to ICS 4.0 arrived, the performance (preview with no delay and video sync) didn't change. With the last Feb 2013 upgrade to JB 4.1 preview delay changed from response time to delivery time and sync issues are noticeable, not always but enough times to worry about. And being the 2nd phone to behave alike and not being able to receive any more official upgrades (Samsung doesn't plan to upgrade N7000 farther than 4.1.2), well, I'm between the sword and the wall.

About hardware power.
" - Yes, your device support KitKat and it will give perfect performance... you don't need to worry about that."
It was my 2nd greater doubt.

About upgrade.
" -Yes, upgrading worth it, I am sure that you know that upgrading comes with a collection of new features and tweaks, Yes there are different benchmarks available some of the good ones are Cynogenmod & Slimbean they have less buggy ROM's but again i'll say stock ROM is the best. But i am sure if you are a developer or technology geek some experiments can always be entertained......."
As an IT guy I know that there are mainly 10 type of users (me too): those who never do an upgrade unless they're forced to, and those who always upgrade to the latest version of everything. My IT side says 2nd group, my user side says 1st group... but this time I created the 11th type of users: if it works fine don't touch it, if it doesn't test changes in other people systems and then apply to yours... and here is where I am, trying to find out how to do things in the best and safe way to avoid not principally losing the warranty but bricking the phone instead.

About Knox.
" - I don't know much more about it but by doing simple Googling... I've found they introduced Galaxy Note2 and Note3 . And about this part I don't get what you are trying to say"If so, which would be a) procedure?""
I read about that too, but didn't get clearly if it was just for the Note2/3 features of for the Android versions which they come with, so I wanted to check that it wasn't a whole Note family feature but available only with later OS versions, in which case moving to JB 4.3 or KK 4.4 perhaps might affect my Note 1.
Regarding my "g) In what Note version has been Knox counter introduced? I read about it on Note 3, but I don't know if in Note or Note 2 it's present. If so, which would be a) procedure?", the "a) procedure" referred to "a) Which process / method / apps / etc. should I use to accomplish 4th paragraph?", being the 4th paragraph this:
"Being a software developer but for mainframes and networks under Windows OS familiy, never on Unix/Linux and neither on Android, I've read about methods of rooting phones, installing apps like CMW ROM Manager, backing up my actual original official ROM, downloading and installing a custom one, and then restoring the original one and unrooting the phone... and everything should be transparent and the root-unroot process would be undetected. Always pointing towards warranty issues."
So the point here intended to get an answer like this:
I - Installing a new custom ROM, preserving the existing official one
1) Download and install, apk 1, apk 2, ...
2) Backup your actual official ROM with apk X, following these steps (step 1, step 2, ...)
3) Reboot your phone in recovery mode, following these steps (...)
4) Check <this>, following these steps (...)
5) Do <anything>, following these steps (...)
6) Reboot your phone normally, following these steps (...)
7) Check <this>, following these steps (...)
II - Restoring your saved official ROM
Same kinda steps as 3) to 7)
Was this an extremely delusion?

About netiquette.
I always try to follow the rules and expose the problem clearly providing all the available background, even if this last compliance ends in building frightening posts.

Again, John, very grateful for your advices and thanks for spending the time to go through the monster I posted.

My best regards.

— modified on Feb 26, 2014, 6:25:52 PM