ZR3D for EVO 3D Review

Let me start off by saying that I have been very impressed with this ROM as a whole.  The words smooth and stable come to mind.  What this ROM lacks in features, it compensates for with performance and great battery life.

Pros

• Excellent battery life
• Smooth interface under normal usage
• Simple, elegant stock theme
• Stock keyboard is actually usable!

Cons

• Layout forgoes many of the quick settings I have become accustomed to
• Lag issues when installing apps from market
• Stock browser is garbage
• Still not a fan of the HTC Sense UI
• Has quite a few "bloat" apps to begin with

The most noteworthy bullet point of this ROM is the battery life.  I would not consider myself a heavy user of my phone.  Again, I usually do a few Google searches, 10-15 minutes of web browsing, send and receive 40-50 text messages, and talk 5-10 minutes every day.  ZR3D beats the pants off all other ROMs I have tested for battery life.  Most days my phone's battery was above 70% when I plugged it in after 12-14 hours.  Several times the battery was able to hold out for a solid two days.

Another very surprising highlight of this ROM is the keyboard.  While I despise the layout of the HTC Sense keyboard,  I was actually able to hit the buttons I wanted 90% of the time.  The keyboard even includes swipe gestures, which while handy for longer words, often recognized simple words as strange acronyms or slang, making me avoid swipe most of the time.  The keyboard also doesn't auto space after a prediction is selected; I often found myself making up new compound words.  

The layout of this ROM is a stripped down version of HTC Sense.  All of the shortcuts have been removed from the lock screen; the only option remaining is "unlock."  There are no quick toggles in the notification menu either by default, however they can be enabled in the "Tweaks" panel.  Everything else is pretty much HTC Sense with a nice theme.  The same Sense complaints remain.  The icons are overly detailed and distracting.  The homescreen animations are cheesy and useless.  And the glossy 3D button look is about 10 years out of date.

Glossy buttons need to DIE!

Overall, the ROM is very stable and smooth.  One last thing: ZR3D is a 2.3 Gingerbread based ROM.  You wont have Google Now or other modern Android features.  If you don't need a ROM loaded with features and options, this ROM is most definitely for you.

Team DIRT AOKP for Evo 3D

This review is long overdue, as it has been over two weeks since my CM10 review.  It's been hard to find time to change ROMs, but I finally was able to switch this afternoon.  This review will cover Team DIRT's build of AOKP for EVO 3D. Keep in mind that this ROM was intended for the Sprint phone, but I am using an EVO V on Virgin Mobile, and my results may not be indicative this ROM's behavior for Sprint devices.  Version 3.5.2 was used in this evaluation.

Pros

• Working video camera, camera and photo sphere
• Highly configurable
• Stock keyboard supports swipe gestures
• UI feels like AOSP
• Working Maps and GPS

Cons

• Sluggish UI
• Wi-fi connectivity issues
• Keyboard swipe animation lag badly
• In call volume too low to hear in moderately noisy environments
• No MMS support
• Battery life not as good as CM10 or Sense
• Wake locks keep phone awake more often than it should be

AOKP for EVO 3D,  while not an awful ROM, never felt production quality.  There was an ever present lag throughout the whole UI, which was only amplified as I switched between applications or copied files to the phone.   The keyboard worked fine fine when using swipe gestures, but the floating word preview was always laggy, and the font used for the word preview gave the keyboard a hacked up feel.  

In addition to UI problems, on several occasions I needed to pull the battery from my phone.  After pushing the screen-on button, the backlit capacitive buttons would glow but nothing would appear on the screen.  Even after multiple attempts to wake the phone, nothing would display on the screen.  There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason for this to occur.  Apps also crashed on numerous occasions, usually the System UI or messaging following heavy usage.

Battery life was nothing stellar either.  While I was able to make it through normal usage every day, I usually ended up with 30 - 40 % remaining.  Most days usage consisted of 10 -20 minutes of talk, 40 -50 texts (sent and received) and very light web browsing (two or three Google searches).  

Wireless connectivity was also troublesome with this ROM.  Even after connecting to a wi-fi network, the phone would become stuck using the 3G connection, which was too poor in most cases to even transmit data, resulting no Internet connectivity at all.  I experienced this issue with multiple wi-fi networks in multiple cities, therefore, the issue lies with the ROM, not the wi-fi access points.

This ROM suffers from too many issues for me to consider using it on a permanent basis.  Its benefits are far outweighed by its alpha quality feel and behavior.   Anyone who values speed and stability over new features and customization should not use this ROM.

Installing Java JDK 7 (and jGRASP) on Mac OSX

This quarter I am taking a Java class as part of my computer science program at Eastern Washington University.  For the class we are using the jGRASP IDE and Java JDK 7.  However, we are not required to use a specific operating system for the course.  My main OS is of course Mac OSX, as I own and carry around a MacBook Pro.

Apple no longer preinstalls their own version of Java on Macs as of OSX 10.7 Lion.  However, if launch any application requiring Java, or type "java - version" into the terminal, you will be prompted to download and install Java. This however will only install version the older version 6 of the JRE and JDK.  Both will work fine for jGRASP, but I like to have the latest version.

To get the latest version, you need only to download the JDK, as the JDK included the JRE. ( I assume you are doing Java programming just like myself.)  Go to this page, click the "Accept License Agreement" button, and choose the download for "Mac OS X x64". When your download finishes, mount the DMG file and follow the steps through the installer.  Proceed to downloading the jGRASP installer here.  Extract the installer and run it. Congratulations, you now should have a fully functional installation of jGRASP and the Java JDK.

It's worth noting that Java, once installed, adds a control panel to System Preferences.  Use this control panel to check Java for updates and modify Java security settings.  You can also use the Java control panel to enable or disable different versions of Java, as it is possible to have more than one version of the JDK installed at a time.  One last piece of information to consider is that the JRE 7 from Oracle will not work with Google Chrome.  If you must have Java capability in Chrome, then stick with the Apple version of Java.