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Asus Transformer Pad Infinity
Upgrading to CM-11.0-M12

Jim Carter, 2014-03-17

Now I'm upgrading the operating system to CyanogenMod CM-11.0-M12 based on Android 4.4 KitKat, from 10.2.1 based on Android-4.3 Hyper Jelly Bean. A big advantage of CyanogenMod is that you get updates like this, which wouldn't happen with a carrier image. However, the CyanogenMod team have changed their naming system, confusing a lot of people; the M-series (monthly) releases are a bit less authoritative than the former stable releases, more like release candidates, but they are a lot more authoritative than the nightly builds and former snapshots. Thus I unnecessarily delayed quite a long time before updating 10.2.1 to 11.0-M12.

It takes some work to discover the eentsy version on which a particular CM version is based. According to a post on Phandroid dated 2014-07-08, images starting with M8 are based on Android-4.4.4. This is significant due to a bugfix in the API that VPNs use to set the DNS server.

My plan for CyanogenMod-12.x based on Android-5.0 Lollipop is to wait for the second M-series release and install that; then to upgrade monthly in the M-series.

I'm upgrading both the Asus TF700T (Mica) and the Galaxy S III (Selen) in parallel. Since this upgrade is between major versions (10 to 11), I will need to wipe the cache and data, and so I will need to rely on backups to get my app information back -- selectively.

Procedure for Upgrade

Restoring Apps

See my procedure for Droid-3 to restore apps. It includes two scripts that will make life a lot simpler and less prone to errors. As with the Droid-3, I am going to not overwrite apps already on the device, and will restore the data for only some of the apps.

There are 64 apk files that were saved from the old version, and there are 3 apk files installed during initial setup. The only one in common between the sets is com.android.vending-?.apk (where ?=1 on Mica and ?=2 in the backup). The following apps will not be installed from the backup. Dups means that this app appears to have a similarly named counterpart in /system/app that came with CyanogenMod or Google Apps. 51 apps remain.

The upload speed to Mica was about 1.3Mb/sec; installation is about half the upload time. adbd on the device wants to check on Google for harmful apps; I allowed this. adbd does not put icons on your desktop like Google Play does. No errors; total time: 12.5 mins.

For restoring data I excluded a lot more directories. 150 were backed up; 100 were excluded; 50 remained. I tossed everything named com.android.* com.cyanogenmod.* and com.google.android.*, and all directories which did not have a corresponding app installed (in /data/app, with very few exceptions like Apollo). These would be from apps that I uninstalled previously.

Elapsed time on Mica was 4 mins and similarly on Selen. These directories had issues:

Finally, it's probably important to update every app that needs it, to get the latest version that supports KitKat. Certainly an up to date Google Play Services is required for almost every app (not including Kitchen Timer). It wants to update 23 apps on Mica, 16 on Selen. Server's speed resembles an arthritic snail. The complete update took 2.5 hours on Mica.

Very annoying new feature in Google Apps for KitKat: Google News and Weather claims it wants to see your data on Google which requires logging in. Hitting cancel in the notification and dialog will not shut it up. It turns out that it wants to use your existing Google account record (with password) to authenticate on Google to retrieve news and weather. Eventually I tried out the news reader, and finally gave permission. It connected successfully using the saved password and made no more annoying requests.

If I had really wanted to suppress this, I had a lot of trouble to figure out how. Cancel is not sufficient to shut up the requests. Start the Google Settings app. Click on Connected Apps. Not very helpful, it won't let you revoke access from your mobile device. Help says, connect to https://www.google.com/a/example.com/ManageAccount (replace example.com with your domain name, whatever that is). Under Connected Apps and Services, click Account Permissions. Revoke access for the unwanted service.

Application Checkout

Legend: NT = not tested; NI = not installed; WT = wimpy test. This is a very quick checkout; see the next section for further work that needed to be done.

App Mica
tf700t
Selen
Gal S3
Comments
Kitchen Timer OK OK Simple app, easy to test
Jota+ OK OK Text editor
Phone tester OK OK Tests sensors.
Firefox OK OK Both machines can authenticate by presenting my X.509 user certificate. Functioning web browser indicates that the wireless network is OK.
WiFi Analyzer OK OK On Mica move a few meters from the AP, otherwise the signal strengths will be messed up.
Play Store OK OK Update or buy apps
Phone NI OK Only Selen has it. See below.
Messaging NI OK SMS (text messages); Selen can send and receive.
GPS Status OK Bleah (Shows that GPS does/doesn't work)
Google Maps OK OK (including GPS)
Google Search OK OK
People OK OK Contact list. Can sync
Calendar OK OK Can sync
Gallery OK OK Photo storage
Camera OK OK
Barcode Scanner OK OK
Bluetooth (Settings) OK OK Headphone connects to both
Apollo OK OK Audio player
ES File Explorer OK OK
WPS (Kingsoft) Office OK OK
Amazon Kindle OK OK E-book reader (DRM). Needed data wipe due to missing fonts
Science Magazine OK NI
Host Access Point NT OK Can only test on Selen; Mica has no alternate route.
StrongSwan OK OK Mica talks from the wild side via Selen's AP.
OpenVPN OK OK Mica talks from the wild side via Selen's AP.
SSH/SFTP (Dropbear) OK OK Server accepts RSA authentication.
VX ConnectBot OK OK SSH client. Key agent works.
AndroidVNC 1/2 NI Problem with arrow keys and tab.
Xabber OK OK XMPP client
Skype OK NT Voice/video calls. Selen not tested yet.
RealCalc OK OK RPN calculator
Night Clock OK OK
Clock Sync OK OK
Battery status OK OK Former prob on Mica fixed in CM-11.0
CadreBible OK OK Books and settings survived
CardDAV-Sync OK OK Needed data wipe
iCal Import/Export OK OK Needed data wipe

Application Cleanup

These packages need extra work to be fully functional.

So this upgrade appears to be successful.

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