Guest author Adam Fullerton from iUnlock.com explains in this article how he was able to install a custom ROM on his Samsung Omnia HD (i8910 HD) that reduces background processes, allowing him to run 50 different processes simultaneously. Quite impressive!
Like most i8910 owners, I am patiently impatiently waiting for Samsung’s promised update which will finally bring many features that N97 owners have been enjoying since the v20 firmware release. The Omnia HD is an impressive piece of hardware, but firmware updates from Samsung have been few and far between. To help fill in the gaps, a growing community of developers and hackers have been building custom or “cooked” ROMs for the i8910. Some have worked with the goal of adding features not yet implemented by Samsung, while others have sought to cut out as much fat from the firmware as possible, in order to optimize performance and add storage space. Several days ago I flashed my phone with developer HyperX’s “Speed Build 2.01″ which eliminates many unnecessary background processes and leaves the phone with roughly 190MB of RAM after booting. This is far more than anyone needs for everyday use, but I was curious to see what one could do with this much free RAM available.
Baseline reading after boot (left) vs Average day (right)
While the i8910 (and let’s not forget the Satio) has 256MB of physical RAM, there are a few non-Symbian phones, such as the soon to be released Palm Pre Plus, which will have a staggering 512MB of physical RAM. The website PreCentral.com recently posted a video with their review unit, in which they were able to load fifty simultaneous applications before running out of RAM. After seeing this video I was inspired to determine exactly how many applications my i8910 could handle with its newly optimized firmware.
So how does this Symbian powerhouse compare to its main competition in the multitasking arena? Well, it took several attempts, but I am amazed to say that I too was able to run a total of fifty individual processes on my phone, with only 256MB of RAM to work with. Although many of these applications were very simple, like profiles, clock, or calculator, they also included more resource-intensive apps like the music player, Gravity, several widgets, and three different web browsers. This just goes to show how well our modern Symbian EKA2 Kernel handles the resources you provide it with. Here is a full listing of every running process as well as all Handy Taskman screenshots stitched together:
1. Handy Taskman
2-5. WidgetUI – Listed in Handy Taskman as one application, but actually four: DeviceInfo by Moubail.com, DailyDilbert by Moubail.com, WeatherBug by Weatherbug.com, and AccuWeather by AccuWeather.com
6. Converter
7. Clock
8. Calculator
Home screen – not included in count
9. HID Configurator – Developer Unknown (Olli Hinkka?)
10. Settings
11. Recorder
12. MusicStopper – by masmil.tk
13. Location
14. Compass
15. GPS+
16. Connection Manager
17. RealPlayer
18. Download – Built in client similar to the one found on older Nokia S60 phones
19. Sync
20. Print OTG
21. Data Transfer
22. Call Mailbox
23. Speed Dial
24. About
25. Device manager
26. Skyfire – by Skyfire
27. Web
28. X-Plore – by Lonely Cat Games
29. Adobe PDF
30. Quickoffice – by Quickoffice Inc.
31. Zip
32. File Manager
33. Calendar
34. Notes
35. Messaging
36. Contacts
37. WLAN WIzard
38. ROMPatcher+ – by Marco Bellino aka Il.Socio
39. USB
40. Profiles
41. Bluetooth
42. Log
43. Telephone
44. Music Player
45. RoadSync – by DataViz Inc.
46. Opera Mobile – by Opera Software ASA
47. SMS Preview – by Mobile Nordic
48. Gravity – by Mobileways.de
49. Gig Finder – by Nokia Beta Labs
50. Best ScreenSnap – by Smartphoneware
Download – Not counted as I can’t determine what this is.
NOTE: All applications were allowed to open fully. Any dialogue boxes that came up at application startup were clicked through. All applications that required online access were allowed to connect to the internet and download updates via WiFi or AT&T Internet. The one exception is Daily Dilbert, which would connect to the internet, but failed to download any content. For any of you that are interested, even after running this many applications for roughly twenty minutes, the temperature of my battery never went above 94.5 degrees. The credit for this goes to ARM, TI, and Samsung.
For more information on custom i8910 ROMs, how to install them, or how you can compile your own, you can visit the i8910 Users Forum, or developer HyperX’s Website.
Wow. i could swear that the i8910 seems to tease me behind my back .
“This just goes to show how well our modern Symbian EKA2 Kernel handles the resources you provide it with. “
Actually, what it shows is that Nokia/Symbian should fire their development staff and put the RAM cookers and phone hackers in charge.
yep, i have this Firmware on my phone and it's amazingly fast, when i compare to to my N97mini it's hundreds of times faster, launching App, Opening Menus, switching apps, every thing extremely fast
“Actually, what it shows is that Nokia/Symbian should fire their development staff and put the RAM cookers and phone hackers in charge.”
That's not really true – yes this firmware can run 50 processes, but this was only achieved by cutting out 'uneccesary' background processes. Has this firmware then been run through all the different test scenarios to see how it functions?
Also, leave Symbian out of it – apart from the fact that name now refers to the Symbian Foundation which doesn't do phone firmware, even in the old days they would have had little involvement in determining the final contents of the ROM. And why did you not mention Samsung? They created the device.
94.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which equals 34.7 degrees Celsius. Sorry, I should have been more clear about that. After completing one of my tests I noticed the phone was getting pretty warm. I decided to let it maintain a maximum load for about twenty minutes before I grabbed the infrared thermometer, which may I say is a great toy to have around the office :) I decided to measure the temperature battery because is it has a large surface area in contact with the board, and it would be a good indicator of both how well the board was dissipating heat, and how much power was being drawn. This was by no means a scientific test, I just though it was interesting.
ya, i'm currently on hx2.03 speed
there are a few things that don't work right on the speed fw (ie, ovi maps has weird names on certain fields, others display fine)…but almost all functionality is there…all the bloatware removed which is a definite bonus for me (some would want the 3dtaskman, photo contacts running, 3d navigation, etc)
works great, hyperx, sev7en, symbix, andersson, and others have contributed alot to the i8910 community in general.
hopefully samsung can get this KS firmware finalized and into the hands of the cookers..