[Review] iNew V3 Plus stock rom V09 (CXQ_V3A_INEW_V09)

[Exeleration-G]

iNew has just released V09 of its stock rom, called CXQ_V3A_INEW_V09.

You can't download this ROM manually yet. If you want to upgrade, you first have to firmware flash to CXQ_V3A_INEW_V07, after that, you can do the OTA upgrade to V09. Note that you can't do this trick from V08 (yet).

V09 is definitely faster than V07 and V08. One downside of upgrading though, is that the upgrade comes with a lot of extra bloatware compared to V07 and V08. These apps are:

- FlashLight: a flashlight app
- inew manager: a maintenance app. Interesting: it contains a 'root mobile phone download tool', which would allow you to root your phone with 360 Root, a Chinese rooting app that you can find [Only registered and activated users can see links Click here to register] as well. I've tried rooting V09 with it, unfortunately without success.
- iNeW security: another maintenance app. Contains: 'Junk Cleaner', 'Memory Boost', 'Traffic Monitor', 'App Manager', 'Virus Scan', 'Harass Blocker'. I honestly don't know why they didn't just create one app instead of dividing it in inew manager and iNeW security.
- iNew Xender: an app that allows you to create a local WiFi network to share files between mobile phones.

All the forementioned apps are so-called system apps. That means that you have to root your device to remove them.

As soon as I found the system files that contain the bloatware, I'll add them to the list that you can find [Only registered and activated users can see links Click here to register].

Also, the system apps use a 'light theme instead of the old 'dark' theme. I've uploaded a photo [Only registered and activated users can see links Click here to register].

The NFC function doesn't work yet.

Another thing that I've found is that you can't install CWM and root your device by flashing the custom recovery file, like you could with V07 and V08. The flash will seem to be successful (a green checkmark appears in SP_Flash_Tool), but you can't boot into CWM Recovery. Instead, you'll get the stock android recovery. That means that you can't flash UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.02.zip, which was necessary to root your device.

I have rooted my device with the computer application iRoot, but it uses an old su binary and the root just didn't feel like it worked 100%.

I'll probably wait until somebody compiles a CWM Recovery image for V09. Or maybe I'll flash back to V08. I'll see.

TL;DR:
Upsides: faster
Downsides: bloatware pre-installed as system apps, CWM not yet available. Root only works partly. Light system theme.

[Chips35]

There is a script which reinstall original recovery at every boot (/etc/reinstall-recovery.sh)
Deleting it in update.zip should help.
Otherwise i did following:
Flash CWM as previously, but when finished don't let android boot but remove battery.
Then boot into CWM directly (without let android boot) using page up and power and reinstall root zip.
After root installed, the recovery stays at CWM on my side... but it's strange :/