# Worth Getting?



## DemoManMLS

So I see that Newegg has this phone for free right now. Especially after seeing its rooted... I'm wondering if its worth getting the Stratosphere? Coming from the original Droid it would be nice to have something with an QWERTY keyboard with 4G LTE. However the lack of RAM is a bit off putting compared to other devices that come with 1GB of RAM but I'm assuming something such as swap/compcache could help out a bit in that if needed to be, right? Not to mention no kind of HDMI out on it.... unless if the MHL dongles (or is it adapter) will work with the Stratosphere?

Thanks for any answers.


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## Dalladubb

Answering concerns in order brought up. The RAM is perfectly fine, seriously. I've not had a problem with RAM at all. I have no idea is it's compatible with an MHL, but I doubt it.

If you're looking for high end features on this phone you might as well move on up because this phone is a mid-range LTE slider. Nothing more, nothing less. If you can afford an LTE phone with the features you'd like such as HDMI and 1GB of RAM than by all means, however, if having a comfortable 5-row slider is more important this is your only choice in the Verizon LTE category for now.

As for what the phone DOES have, It has a 1.5MP front cam, 5 in the back not to mention the flash. It has a super AMOLED screen which you can read just fine even when directly in the sun. It's fast as hell even in the land of dual-core super phones. It's got a very current version of Android (as of this typing it has 2.3.5) and it's rooted so we'll likely see CM9 eventually (CM-ICS if you prefer). The keyboard is ridiculously nice, even for my fat fingers.

Sure, there's better phones, but I really like this one.


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## DemoManMLS

MHL is an adapter that will give you HDMI output. Seems like most current Samsung phones can work with them so perhaps the Stratosphere can as well?

How is the battery life for you?

Is the screen gorilla glass?

Thanks for answering all this for me.


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## Dalladubb

I don't have one of those adapters so I really couldn't test that for you. Maybe somebody else could.

Battery life is pretty damn good for an LTE phone. As long as I don't have a million live widgets and a LWP I can easily get a day out of it and them some of pretty heavy use, but as always, your mileage may vary.

The screen is not Gorilla Glass.

This phone is essentially the younger brother of Sprint's Epic 4G with a few minor modifications. It has a better front cam (1.3MP instead of VGA), Verizon LTE radio (designed by Samsung for battery life) instead of Sprint's WiMax, a redesigned keyboard, more app space, and Gingerbread. It's essentially the Charge sans .3 inches on the screen and plus one physical keyboard (I'm sure there's a couple more differences, but nothing major). All 3 of the phones mentioned are part of the original Galaxy S line (NOT the Galaxy S II line).

Like I said, this is mid-range all the way.


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## DemoManMLS

Just purchased the Stratosphere this morning from Newegg. Should have it by Friday as I paid for two day shipping. Also ordered the HDMI MHL adapter but probably won't have that until next week. From what I can tell the Epic 4G Slider supports using it so the Stratosphere should as well. I'll most more once I get the Stratosphere.


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## Dalladubb

Remember, this has updated hardware and an updated OS from the Epic.


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## DemoManMLS

That is true so it should work. Thanks for all the help. Hopefully once I get the Stratosphere and its rooted I can help out a bit with ROM testing and what not.


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## Brett6781

IMO this thing is just an OG Epic 4G on Verizon... you guys are much better off going for the Galaxy Nexus, but if money is tight, then this is good too. I should know since I have an Epic now.

sent from the bowels of the interwebz via Tapatalk Pro


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## Dalladubb

Brett6781 said:


> IMO this thing is just an OG Epic 4G on Verizon... you guys are much better off going for the Galaxy Nexus, but if money is tight, then this is good too. I should know since I have an Epic now.
> 
> sent from the bowels of the interwebz via Tapatalk Pro


It is the Epic. Many of us want a keyboard, or can't afford $300 on a phone. I've heard this 'Should have waited for the GN' stuff from people who apparently make way more money than I do. We're not getting this phone because we were tricked into it.we know what it is.


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## yoyoche

My daughter got the stratosphere last week. Paid 40.00 at Radio Shack with upgrade. The screen is great and for a mid phone it is petty fast.


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## DemoManMLS

My first 10 hours so far....

Likes:

- Screen is very nice. Its bright and vivid. Not to mention despite it not being gorilla glass the screen feels very solid.
- The phone itself is very snappy and responsive. Virtually every thing I have thrown at it so far has run very fast. Yeah its not going to be as fast as some of the upcoming dual core phones but its pretty fast enough as is.
- The keyboard after a little time is pretty solid. I'm already getting used to the key positioning. Especially coming from the Droid 1 I'm really loving having the numbers having their own buttons.
- 4G LTE speed is as expected... fast.
- Again coming from the Droid 1... I love having the micro SD slot on the side of the phone.
- A pretty nice desktop dock. I like that it has an audio out on the back compared to the Droid 1 dock. On the other hand....

Dislikes:

- I have to take off my case entirely to put the phone into the desktop dock. Not just the back part of the case like I had to with the Droid 1 but both parts of the case. You would think by now that companies would build these docks in mind for cases but in this case they did not.
- Speaking of the dock the way its design puts the volume controls on the BOTTOM. Kind of counter productive if you ask me.
- TouchWiz went bye bye very quickly. Sorry but I'll stick with my current favorite Go Launcher EX.

Once I get a few more days with this beast then I'll comment on battery life and other things. So far I'm really liking this phone... especially when I get it rooted so I can remove the junk bloat along with being ready for any cool ROMs for this beast. I'll say so far that if you are looking for an mid-range LTE phone with QWERTY this is a good pick.


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## knightcrusader

DemoManMLS said:


> Screen is very nice. Its bright and vivid. Not to mention despite it not being gorilla glass the screen feels very solid.


Actually, I think it is Gorilla Glass.


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## DemoManMLS

MHL adapter arrived today. Upon plugging in for whatever reason it turns on the car dock. So either the phone is incapable of HDMI via MHL or... Samsung messed up and didn't include the software needed to run it on the phone much like some phones lately haven't included the FM radio software despte the FM radio hardware being in the phone.


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## b16

So how does it feel? Is it nice?


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## Dalladubb

It's very nice. I like it. Also, I've looked all over and nobody else can confirm if it's Gorilla Glass or not.


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## DemoManMLS

b16 said:


> So how does it feel? Is it nice?


Now one week in with the Stratosphere I'm really liking it. The keyboard is still taking me a little getting used to. The worst thing for me is trying to find the @ key which on the Droid 1 was easier to find compared to the Stratosphere. That's just me however. Battery life with the stock battery seems reasonable so far once I trimmed down on what's running in the backround. I'll have the extended battery within the next day or two so I can see how much of a difference it makes.


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## knightcrusader

Mine is still going strong, despite killing it twice while trying to root it and clean up bloat.


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## Eazy

Anything negative to say about this one? My wife wants a physical keyboard & there aren't many choices.


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## Dalladubb

The only negative I personally have is that my sliding mechanism is quite wobbly for a new phone. But it works just fine.


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## DemoManMLS

Dalladubb said:


> The only negative I personally have is that my sliding mechanism is quite wobbly for a new phone. But it works just fine.


It seems a bit less wobbly with the extended battery due to the extra weight.


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## nitsuj17

do you guys have recovery yet? i havent seen it mentioned


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## Dalladubb

No. We had a guy working on it but work is more important than the phone. The devs for the Charge and the Epic 4g are helping us along. Right now we can only Odin/Heimdal stuff and can't make full nandroid backups. I've been playing around with a dump trying to remove Touchwiz et all without breaking the damn thing, but even if I got it I wouldn't flash it because I can't make a nandroid.


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## nitsuj17

Dalladubb said:


> No. We had a guy working on it but work is more important than the phone. The devs for the Charge and the Epic 4g are helping us along. Right now we can only Odin/Heimdal stuff and can't make full nandroid backups. I've been playing around with a dump trying to remove Touchwiz et all without breaking the damn thing, but even if I got it I wouldn't flash it because I can't make a nandroid.


ah ok...actually saw the phone in person the other day and was pretty impressed with it for a mid range phone (kb aside i dont like physical ones)

if it had recovery and i could find one cheap or something i would consider working on it (roms only, im not a kernel or aosp guy)


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## Dalladubb

We can't really do custom kernals anyway aside from root due to the LTE chipset being under lock and key. If we can figure out out a way to do a full back/restore without CWM then we can just go ahead and start making/porting ROM's to sit on the stock kernal.


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## Armada

So would we be able to get ICS running on the stock kernel? Also, would we still have to work around Samsung's LTE binary when the Galaxy Nexus LTE source drops? I'm hoping that because ICS supports LTE natively (right?) without the need for an OEM to make it work with proprietary code, we'd have a way to work with it from source.

Obviously with our stock kernel it isn't really AOSP. I'm just not too versed in porting and building Android in general (let alone how the radios work) and I wanted to know if that's even possible.


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## nitsuj17

Dalladubb said:


> We can't really do custom kernals anyway aside from root due to the LTE chipset being under lock and key. If we can figure out out a way to do a full back/restore without CWM then we can just go ahead and start making/porting ROM's to sit on the stock kernal.


i havent seen anything about this phone being encrypted in any way...in fact most samsung phones are pretty open...the charge is a similar lte sammy phone and there is no issue

primary problem i see is that no one has successfully built recovery or source kernels


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## Armada

nitsuj17 said:


> i havent seen anything about this phone being encrypted in any way...in fact most samsung phones are pretty open...the charge is a similar lte sammy phone and there is no issue
> 
> primary problem i see is that no one has successfully built recovery or source kernels


I think he's mentioning that we have to reverse engineer the RIL somehow because we have absolutely no useable radio at all (not even calls or 3G/1X). See the Droid Charge for our general situation (minus the fact that our device shipped with 2.3).


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## nitsuj17

Armada said:


> I think he's mentioning that we have to reverse engineer the RIL somehow because we have absolutely no useable radio at all (not even calls or 3G/1X). See the Droid Charge for our general situation (minus the fact that our device shipped with 2.3).


that would only apply for aosp, shouldnt prevent recovery and touchwiz roms/kernels in anyway


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## Dalladubb

We'd have 3g and voice as those radios have long been open since dumbphones showed up. However, Samsung has *THEIR* LTE radios under lock and key. Without reverse engineering it and cracking it we can't use any other kernel aside from our stock. It's the same issue the Charge devs are having.

Yes ICS will support LTE natively as long as the radio firmware talks to it, however the radio firmware is what Samsung is keeping to themselves. In fact, the only way to build ICS from source now is with proprietary code mixed in which you can verify by checking the official Android blog. However, we can modify the Samsung stock kernel all we want.

As far as recovery, the stock ROM isn't what was stopping us, it was an updated bootloader that was bypassing CWM from loading unless manually evoked from ADB. The guy we had working on it was damn close, just some trial and error, but since he didn't post everything he had in that regard before leaving anybody who wants to try now will be starting from scratch. He was damn sure he missing something stupid, a 'duh' moment, but I guess we'll never know.


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## nitsuj17

Dalladubb said:


> We'd have 3g and voice as those radios have long been open since dumbphones showed up. However, Samsung has *THEIR* LTE radios under lock and key. Without reverse engineering it and cracking it we can't use any other kernel aside from our stock. It's the same issue the Charge devs are having.
> 
> Yes ICS will support LTE natively as long as the radio firmware talks to it, however the radio firmware is what Samsung is keeping to themselves. In fact, the only way to build ICS from source now is with proprietary code mixed in which you can verify by checking the official Android blog. However, we can modify the Samsung stock kernel all we want.
> 
> As far as recovery, the stock ROM isn't what was stopping us, it was an updated bootloader that was bypassing CWM from loading unless manually evoked from ADB. The guy we had working on it was damn close, just some trial and error, but since he didn't post everything he had in that regard before leaving anybody who wants to try now will be starting from scratch. He was damn sure he missing something stupid, a 'duh' moment, but I guess we'll never know.


the charge has had source built custom kernels since the beginning...when gb source is out they will have those as well (ext4 voodoo as well)

that wont affect lte (using source kernels) nor has it...only aosp


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## imnuts

You can easily build custom kernels for the Stratosphere, how do you think the root kernel works?


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## Dalladubb

I meant building an AOSP or CM kernel for it. I know how the rooting process worked for this. KC made sure we knew every beat. I also hear you're partly responsible for that insecure kernel. Thank you for that.


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## imnuts

There is a CM7 kernel for the charge, no reason there couldn't be one for the Stratosphere as well. And, the biggest thing holding back CM7/AOSP is the RIL source from the framework, but that can be reverse engineered to work


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## Dalladubb

Hmm... the more you know.

Did you get my /system/usr dump in the other thread?


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## knightcrusader

Hey imnuts, glad to see you here!

Now that I got my personal life straightened out, I want to get back into some dev work on this phone... so I might be annoying you soon about some recovery things again. Just a fair warning.


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