What makes a good candidate for porting?
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While I am working on a N5 at the moment, I would like to understand what makes a given device a known good candidate for porting with UTouch? For example, it appears we are required to unlock the bootloader on the N5 in order to install the port onto the N5. Should I interpret this literally to mean that in order for any device to be suitable for porting we must be able to unlock its bootloader? I suspect the answer is yes.
Second, it has been conveyed to me that knowing a device has a good Lineage port is also desirable. This makes some sense but, I see many more devices supported with Lineage that UTouch. I realize this may be popularity, resources, etc., and not indicative of a legitimate comparison of Lineage and UTouch.
There are some devices I would love to work on for UTouch yet, would need to purchase these in order to make the effort efficient. Each of us can only afford so many "development devices!" A few notable devices that have had my attention for years are the LG G Tab 8.3 Google Play Edition, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S line of tablets and even a Microsoft Surface Pro or suitable clone. Sorry, I realize these are not phones and this is the specialization of this group at large but, I need to find my creative outlets too!
I think Android version is also an issue but, I cannot recall the details.
Anyway, please respond. I came here to learn...I love that!!!
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@rvan while we wait for someone with porting experience (I don't have any) to answer your questions you can get the general idea reading http://docs.halium.org/en/latest/porting/first-steps.html (porting to Halium is the first step to then try to port UT)
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@rvan that is a great question, my porting experience as of this writing is limited as I have a half finished port for a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. I saw you mention that unlocking the bootloader might be a requirement, that is purely based on a device to device basis cause not all android devices are created equal, my Note 4 doesn't have an unlocked bootloader (at least I never unlocked it) but my Asus tf201 tablet does cause I had to unlock it for installing Custom ROMs. I believe the realistic view would be (setup device for custom ROMs) cause as I said, each device is different. I do apologize for that but on to the main part of your question, what makes a device a good/great candidate for porting, I believe this may vary depending on who you ask, but for me a great candidate device is any device that can run Lineage OS14.1 with any reliability and speed, cause if its not reliable on LOS its likely not going to improve if you port UT to it, and if its slow as a tortoise, same thing, other than that if you have something that meets that criteria and you'd like to see UT then by all means, try porting it. My Note 4 runs both Lineage and UT in a somewhat manual dual boot method done with TWRP, let me know if you would like to discuss this further as this could be a great topic of discussion.
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@advocatux, @tigerpro - I think this is important for us to develop these ideas well. No one would want to waste their time. However, it is also likely to be impossible to offer guarantees for every machine that ends with fruitful results even if it looks a good candidate initially.
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@rvan I agree, having a productive discussion about a topic like this helps people get a better picture of what people look for. I wanted to port my Asus tablet, but when I out it back to stock (the custom ROM that was on it was causing bootloop issues) it still had reliability issues. I might try just doing Linux on it, but that is gonna be after I get UT working better on my note 4 and maybe one other device. What would you consider to be a good candidate for a portable UT device?