Recently we took few Galaxy S3 kernel to compare in therm of performance , Modded kernel just like ROM improve phone battery life , image / sound quality , add more feature such as overclocking / under-clocking and a lot more , Ours last review : Samsung galaxy S3 undervolting/overclocking and battery was based on SiyahKernel v 1.39 , We clearly showed how big impact has over/under-clocking on battery life , Today review include also SiyahKernel but in its latest version 1.4 . Also today as bonus we also tested the new Android JellyBean and compared it to the 4.04 version in term of performance/battery life .
Now here the list of used kernel :
- Omega V11 Stock kernel : Kernel Stock XXLG8
- Omega V11 SiyahKernel v1.4
- Omega V11 SiyahKernel v1.4 Tweaked : CPU undervolted by -100 mv , GPU under-voled by -50 mv , CPU overclocked to 1600 MHz .
- Omega V11 SpeedMod v1.3
- Omega V11 Franco Kernel R12
- Android 4.1.1 JellyBean - BUILD 3
Let's pause a bit in each kernel special feature :
It is based on samsung original , supposed to be the most stable (according to the author). There is no special additional feature to note.
Omega V11 SiyahKernel v1.4 : XDA Dev Thread
Supports both Samsung and CM9/CM10/AOSP/AOKP with a single kernel image
CPU over/under-clock: 100-1800MHz 18-steps
CPU under-clock (600mV-1500mV). vdd_levels and UV_mV interfaces.
Insecure adb even though we have ro.secure=1
optional smooth_scaling for those who wants to limit fast scaling of governors (such as ondemand)
triangle-away app support
added hotplug governor and modified it to support quad-core
Auto-root. You can also remove root via STweaks app and install it without rebooting your phone again. Auto-root can be disabled as well.
You can completely disable android logger using STweaks app
Adjustable charging speeds for AC and USB
Cpu governor optimizations
governor-aware stand-hotplug for old conventional governors
Available CPU Governors: Pegasusq (default), Hotplug
CIFS as module
Available I/O schedulers: CFQ(default), noop, Deadline, SIO, V(R)
init.d support
ARM topology support (SCHED_MC)
default idle mode is IDLE+LPA (highly recommended). however you can change the default to AFTR+LPA using STweaks.
Automatic EFS Backup
Samsung proprietary ExFat modules are loaded
Lots of I/O tweaks and filesystem optimizations via some parts of thunderbolt scripts.
NTFS automounting for USB sticks. When you plug in an NTFS formatted USB flash it will be automatically mounted to /mnt/ntfs folder.
Almost everything is configurable such as scheduler features, hotplug thresholds, GPU voltages, arm topology modes... and they are configurable via simple and free STweaks (included in the kernel) or ExTweaks App from Google Play
mDNIe negative effect toggle with home button (press it four times). the purpose of this feature is to inverse the colors especially when the background is white or bright. making the background darker will make your battery last longer.
sound boosting for great headphone experience (partial-port of wm8994 based implementation from project-voodoo since our wm1811 is mostly register compatible and almost the same)
and some more not worth mentioning as separate items such as disabling mali state tracking and disabling some unnecessary debugging etc...
Root:
- Automatically installs root (SuperUser and su) but can be disabled
Screen and misc tweaks:
- Auto-brightness increased slightly (in low-to-mid light)
- MDNIE screen sharpness and color tuning (improves text readability)
- init.d, TUN, CIFS, IPV6 Privacy support
Performance:
- CPU governor tweaks: increase responsiveness
- IO tweaks
- Read ahead tweaks
- Compiled with optimizations using Linaro GCC toolchain
- Optimized GPU DVFS
- ARM CPU topology support
- SCHED_MC multi-core aware scheduler
Turned off unnecessary logging for better smoothness and efficiency:
- Disabled Android Debug Logger / logcat
- Disabled Samsung debug
- Disabled various kernel debugging, statistics and tracing options
Omega V11 Franco Kernel R12 : XDA Dev Thread
- Tree RCU + RCU_BOOST
- IO patches all across the board
- Config stripped of debug for a lean kernel
- SLUB memory allocator
- CRC32 lib updated (important for some core features of the kernel)
- NTFS + NTFS write support - useful for USB OTG
- Module to change Wi-Fi power management policy on the fly (check second post)
- Module to enable/disable fsync() calls on the fly (second post)
- Sound Control V2 based on Supercurio Voodoo Sound - Volume Boost feature
- Much more to be seen on my repository
- This kernel is for Samsung roms only. No plans to make it work with AOSP or CM9
Android 4.1.1 JellyBean - BUILD 3 : XDA Dev Thread
- Android ICS 4.1.1 (JRO03H - Android-4.1.1_r3)
- Latest CM Source Compiled Kernel
- All JellyBean Features and Apps (Nothing excluded from AOSP)
- No Visual Changes!
- Stock JB Look and Feel
- This will turn your Samsung Galaxy S3 into a JellyBean'ed Galaxy Nexus
ROM Features:
- Fully Deodexed
- Zipaligned APKs
- Rooted (Super SU)
- BusyBox Installed
- No 3rd Party App
- ZERO Bloatware
- Official JB Boot animation (From Official Galaxy Nexus Android 4.1.1 Factory Image)
- Init.d Support
In our test we used 2 of the most popular android benchmark software : Quadrant and Antutu Benchmark , In order to reduce error margin we run each test 3 times and wrote the avg result . in addition to full battery life test : we loaded the smart phone with 2 burn-in test , first was fast discharge (CPU load only) the second was stability test v2.5 (CPU + GPU load). We have also used multimeter for exact battery drain and Quadrant benchmark test . Each time the smart phone was recharged full then loaded with stress test , we monitored the battery drain level , All other application on the phone were disabled to reduce error margin , the screen brightness set manually to minimum and room temp was kept at 25 c during all the test .Average load observed was usually in 22-26 , which good enough and mean that the system is heavily loaded .
Enough talk let's check the results :-)
Quadrant :
Fastest score is for the tweaked SiyahKernel since the CPU was running at 1600 MHz which pretty regular , All other Rom's show about the same result .
* . Android 4.1.1 JellyBean is the slowest of course this still a beta version , but in sprite of low result it was the most responsive , all application open almost instantly and the touch screen was super smooth , when ready this ROM should be really amazing .
One more word on SiyahKernel (stock) and SpeedMod , the only 2 ROM which scored over 6000 , they are faster by 2-4% than other .
Interesting figure Android 4.1.1 JellyBean show some huge CPU performance , the stock kernel is not bad either .
Almost all ROM here are about equal with 1-2% difference only , the only exception is the overclocked SiyahKernel and JellyBean which need some additional work in this segment .
Once again SiyahKernel (stock) and SpeedMod show highest result , the overclocked kernel lead while JellyBean lag in performance .
All kernel score the same here , except JellyBean .
Another impressive score for JellyBean , the result was even higher than the overclocked kernel ,
Antutu Benchmark :
Note : SpeedMOD kernel in this test switch to 800 MHz for some reason , this explain the low result observed .
For the first time here we see high score from Franco Kernel ,SiyahKernel lag a bit after with the stock kernel .Nothings special from JellyBean .
Almost same picture here as in Quadrant benchmark , except SuperMod kernel which has some issue with this test .(JellyBean).
Same picture , All kernel show same performance in 2D application .
In 3d all kernel are about the same too .
JellyBean scored one of the highest with the overclocked Siyahkernel (Tweaked) .
Same as above .
Battery life / Temperature :
The test above show the battery life in minutes from 100% to 0 (Until the phone turn off) . The stock kernel has the highest result with almost 3 hours of battery life , followed by the tweaked Siyahkernel , then Franco Kernel R12 , The lowest battery score was for JellyBean , the ROM is definitely still not optimized for battery life .
This picture confirm the result we got above , the highest battery life should be coupled with lowest battery life and this is true in the case of JellyBean. Most efficient result is for the stock kernel and speedmod v1.3 .
Conclusion :
If you look :
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for highest performance : Siyahkernl is your choice . There is also possibility to further increase the performance since the kernel support overclocking .
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for highest battery life : You should stick with stock kernel or FrancoKernl ,Siyahkernl is good alternative if undervolted .
We can't close this review without note about the smoothness of JellyBean , this ROM still beta and it will improve with time , we had almost the best touch screen responsiveness using Android smart-phone.