[ Enhancements included in ShinTo Kernel ]

–== ShadowLED ==–

By linking the Note 3’s RGB LED to the different activities of the OS, we can know in real time what is going on, even when the screen is off, and the phone is seemingly “deep sleeping”.The brightness of the led light is proportional to the instant workload; the brighter the color, the higher the workload.

BLUE:    All things related to WIFI networking activity [Upload/Download].
GREEN: All things related to internal “SD” (MMC0) activity [Read/Write].
RED:     All things related to external “SD” (MMC1) activity [Read/Write].

You can disable ShadowLED if you go to ShinTo Features in Synapse app.

–== ZRam ==–

RAM is a precious resource that we can never have enough.
ShinTo Kernel uses state of the art functionality to intelligently manage and optimize RAM for peak performance.

Our NOTE 3’s, running Samsung’s Android Kit Kat (4.4.2), have a huge amount of background apps and services that, most of the time, sit idle waiting for some event to fire.
All these background apps and services are sapping precious RAM, and some will never do anything.

ShinTo Kernel uses ZRam very moderately (only 256Mb) to compress sleeping background processes and apps to free precious RAM for other interactive processes (the ones most important to YOU).
The compression ratio achieved is at least 3:1 (256->85) and up to 4:1 (256->65) while not affecting performance or battery at all, as the size of the compressed RAM is only 256Mb (do not go above that!).

Some people would argue that there’s no need for this as we have plenty of ram but from my experience with ShinTo Kernel, the more “free” ram, the more apps you can have in ram, even if they are not currently active and this amounts to a better multitasking and more fluidity.

The final argument is that even Google have activated ZRam in their Android and Chrome OS.

I have included a very nice, simple and clean app called “ZRAM Status”

You can disable ShadowLED if you go to ShinTo Features in Synapse app.

To know more about ZRam

 –== UKSM ==– 

UKSM by KernelDedupe.org is a state of the art intelligent memory management system that achieves great ram saves by using two techniques:

(1) ZeroPages

When we launch an app, most of the time the app will allocate more (or a lot more) memory than it really needs. The extra memory is allocated exclusively, zeroed and sits idle till the app decides to use it.
That could happen sometime in the future or never…

ShinTo’s UKSM kernel service detects these kind of “ZeroPages” and intelligently remaps them to the ZeroPage manager and then frees those pages of ram.
Once the process really asks for these “ZeroPages”, the ZeroPage manager takes care of everything.
All this is transparent to the normal user’s workflow and it doesn’t affect performance or battery life.

As a matter of fact it might enhance battery life and performance as a lot more can fit in ram so there’s less wasted time and energy fetching data from SD (MMC0).
That should also help with multitasking fluidity.

My daily workflow can see up to 400Mb of ZeroPages, which means about 400Mb of ram saved and allocated to running processes that need them.

(2) SamePageMerge

There are some processes that create many copies of the same memory contents (same pages).
Some of these (same page) content’s never change so it is a waste of memory.
One clear example could be a web browser.

ShinTo’s SamePageMerge manager detects these identical pages and “merges” them, so they only occupy one page instead of many.
If a process needs to change the contents of one of these “identical” pages, the SamePageMerge manager detects that and takes care of everything.
All this is transparent and seamless, with no performance or battery penalty.

I routinely hit about 50.000 pages (around 200Mb saved) (50.000 * 4k) and have hit about 90.000 pages with heavy loads.

To disable UKSM you need to issue the following command with root :
echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/uksm/run

To know more about UKSM.

–== DriveDroid ==–

“DriveDroid allows you to boot your PC from ISO/IMG files stored on your phone. This is ideal for trying Linux distributions or always having a rescue-system on the go… without the need to burn different CDs or USB pendrives.”

ShinTo Kernel includes the necessary patch and functionality to be able to switch from CD to USB mode, so you could create rescue USB keys directly on the mounted image in DriveDroid.
For people that are in the tech support and have to reinstall different operating systems or boot recovery cds, it is a godsend as they don’t need to have different usb keys, cd, dvd, etc…

It’s a great tool and I recommend everyone to check it!!!

To know more about DriveDroid | DriveDroid XDA Forum

  –== Fix / Performance Enhancement Patches / NEW STUFF ==–

This new release of ShinTo Kernel includes the following :

• Own boot up “init.d” system: that doesn’t touch your init.d folder in any way and can survive flashes, formats, backups, restores, etc. It gives you the ease & flexibility of choosing what to enable/disable from the comfort of Synapse.
• Hardened resiliency to internal crashes: that allows ShinTo Kernel to continue in the face of adversity, even if some part crashed. It will try to recover/continue till it can’t anymore.
• Impervious to MODEM/BASEBAND crashes: if the modem subsystem crashes, ShinTo Kernel will NOT crash but instead will slap the modem for it’s rude behaviour by rebooting it and continue as if nothing happened. Recovery time from crash to online is around 1 second, so you might not even notice it ever happened.
• Enhanced all the Note3 sensor’s reaction times: Should theoretically enhance any program that depends on sensors.
• Enhanced general performance of code thanks to more aggressive compiler flags and specific fine tuning on a per device level (GPU subsystem for example).
• Enhanced sleep by leveraging an adapted and finely tuned freeze/suspend mechanism and analysing other code that might interfere with it.
  I am achieving a freeze/suspend success ratio of 97-98%, so it means the phone has more chances to actually sleep.
• An all new CLAMPING mechanism to make sure that stray & unauthorised frequency changes don’t happen behind your back unless you authorise them.
• FIXED boot charge animation; now it will work regardless of the filesystem you use.
• (should be) FIXED permissions problems: for some of you when using ext4/f2fs with internal sdcard. (Need confirmation from the ppl that have the issue).
• Synapse enhancements/tweaks/updates : have a look there to see the new stuff.
• Other stuff I have forgotten and can’t remember right now xDDD
• GIFT/SURPRISE #1 : LiKWiD video playback.
  Say goodbye to video stutters as now any video plays liquid smooth with a perfect frame rate, with a low cpu usage. It doesn’t matter if it is low res or 4K, it will play smooth as butter if the source has been encoded correctly.
  (Facebook needs to improve their in app player and browser).
• GIFT/SURPRISE #2 : eXpanD Speaker Stereo Sound.
  Hello Stereo!! Now your Note3 will play videos & music in true stereo sound by using both the ear piece and the speaker. Balance levels have been finely tuned to give a great stereo image. You can still use normal speakerphone when in voice/voip calls. Disable/Enable from within Synapse. (I take no responsibility if you blow your speakers by trying to use insane amplification so PLEASE don’t go crazy with the volume!!!)
• GIFT/SURPRISE #3 : Precognition Governor (AlphA) sneak peak.
  I wanted to let you get a feel of the work in progress. Right now PrecoGov can sense that you are going to interact with your Note3 & react BEFORE you even touch or do anything. It also self adjusts in a dynamic way to it’s environment and tries to save battery while giving MAXIMUM performance where it counts and is more important to you.
  Please disable all other touchboost and frequency boosting if you will use PrecoGov as there’s no need for them and they actually do more harm than good.
  Please also bear in mind that fluidity has it’s price & now, your Android OS & UI won’t be starved to death like with other governors. With time you should see all the available frequency steps being used.

It is compiled with latest available LINARO Toolchain GCC 4.9.3 compiled by the great Christopher83