Evo 3D stock ROM results

It has now been officially one week of using the HTC stock ROM on my EVO 3D.  Here is the TL;DR version in bullet points of my findings.

Pros

• Excellent idle battery life -often lasted two days
• SMS and MMS working
• Calling works without drops
• GPS / navigation works
• Keyboard is acceptable once calibrated and tracing is enabled (Yes, the stock keyboard has trace gestures)
• 3D camera works (Not that I care)
• ROM is smooth overall

Cons

• Battery life is drained quickly my doing anything on the phone (screen on)
• Data speeds are slow ( more likely a VM issue)
• GPS slow to lock on
• Keyboard suggestions are usually wrong, typing on the keyboard is sucky
• Sense is an ugly UI with overly detailed icons, which are all too similarly colored.

Under light loads, this ROM allowed
my EVO 3D to go over a day before
recharging. 

In more words, the stock ROM isn't all that bad.  Other than the fact that many of we power users are not fans of the Sense bloat, the stock ROM performed well enough to get me through the week.
Using the latest radio firmware version, the stock ROM had no problems sending or receiving texts or MMS.  As many of you may be aware, the original radio firmware often produced errors when sending text messages.  The signal indicator frequently jumped from full signal down to 1-2 bars and back however.  Other than slow, data speeds the signal fluctuations didn't seem to affect functionality of the phone.

A small but important issue that bothers me about the stock ROM, is that it holds certain preset associations for apps instead of asking the user each time.  For example, when I click a link in an email, it open the stock browser.  If I want to change this behavior, I navigate through the system settings menu and choose a different app to associate with URLs.  I want to be able to choose each time which browser I use.

The keyboard on the stock ROM out of the box is utterly useless.  It is totally uncalibrated so hit detection is off by an entire key.  I was continually pressing 'O' instead of 'I' or 'M' instead of 'N'.  Once calibrated however, the Sense keyboard is on par with other traditional android keyboards.  Enabling tracing makes the keyboard function much like Swype, except better in most cases.  Although I installed Swiftkey, my favorite keyboard, I was never irritated enough by the stock keyboard to need to use it.

While I hate the interface of the stock ROM, and it lacks power user customizations that I'm used to, I could continue to use it on a daily basis.  The stock ROM is reasonably smooth and gets me through the day with battery life to spare.  Stay tuned for my thoughts on CM10 next week.

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.

Cyanogenmod 10 for EVO 3D

For the past two weeks I have been using an unofficial version of CM10 on my EVO 3D.  (I used it for two weeks because I didn't want to flash my phone while on vacation.)  The build I have been using is the one from December 5th.  Keep in mind that my findings are now slightly out of date.

Pros

• Interface is very smooth
• GPS and  navigation works well
• 4G works (I was in San Francisco)
• Video camera records
• Calls and SMS work fine
• Built in tethering works beautifully
• Battery life is good with moderate usage

Cons

• MMS is totally broken on VM
• Video playback of recorded videos does not work
• Wake locks keep phone awake more than it should be
• No 3D (I don't care)
• Maximum in call volume is often too low
• Stock keyboard blows

After using CM10 for my EVO 3D for two weeks, I would consider keeping it permanently on my phone.  Despite all of it's flaws, CM10 is very stable and smooth.  In over two weeks of use, I have yet to experience any issue too severe to live with.  

Battery life is very important to me as a smartphone user.  Typically I care more about idle battery life; I am a fairly light user on most days.  On most days, my battery life was over 50% by the end of the day (15-20 hours on battery.)  The only time when I came close to running out of juice was during a trip to San Francisco when I used Google maps and 4G all day long.  Even though the build of CM10 I was running seemed to have a wake lock issue, it never seemed to cause excessive battery drain.

Some other thoughts about the ROM:

• The stock keyboard was so irritating to use that I installed my old favorite, Swiftkey.
• Many time when I had to take a call in a loud(ish) environment, I couldn't hear the other person talking because I couldn't turn the volume up loud enough.
• Although I could shoot video on my phone, I couldn't play it back later.  Even MX player failed to play back my videos correctly. However, I could play back all the videos on my computer.
• Since MMS doesn't work on this phone for non Sense 3.6 ROMS on VM, I've just been telling people to email me pictures instead. 

This next week I will test Team Dirt AOKP. I did plan to test Paranoid Android, but the dev has been banned from XDA and the thread was closed as well.

ROM-a-week with the EVO 3D

Over the Thanksgiving break, I got  a new phone for myself, the HTC Evo 3D on Virgin Mobile.  Officially known as the HTC Evo V (I assume the "V" is for Virgin), the Evo V is identical in hardware to the Sprint Evo 3D.  Mine is actually a Sprint branded phone flashed to VM.

Every week starting this week, I will flash a different community ROM to my phone and give an assessment of the ROM.  I will continue this project until I have tested the majority of popular ROMs for this phone.  I will use the stock software from the ROM without any modifications, unless absolutely necessary.  The only third party apps I will use include SMS backup+, Titanium Backup Pro, and the Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Google Search), and Dolphin Browser.

Assessment of the ROMs will be presented in a pros and cons format.  The reasoning behind using this method (instead of a points based system), is that it allows the reader to decide what functionality is important to him /her.  ROMs will be assessed on the following criteria:

• Battery life
• SMS / MMS issues
• Perceived performance (relative smoothness if the UI)
• Overall connectivity issues
• Interface design
• Camera features and issues
• Stock keyboard usability
• GPS issues
• Wireless tethering
• other built in ROM features
• anything else I choose to test

What will not be assessed:

• 4G connectivity or performance (I do not live in a 4G area.)
• Audio playback (I'm not an audiophile, so I can't judge this.)

ROMs to be tested:

1. Stock ROM rooted (Sense based)
2. CyanogenMod 10
3. Paranoid Android
4. MIUI
5. Midnight ROM (Sense based)
6. Harmonia (Sense based)
7. Any other ROM I feel like testing or a reader request

I will test all ROM with the following low level software versions unless otherwise specified:

• PRL: 61009
• PRI: 1.53_145
• Radio (Baseband): 1.09.00.0706
• Hboot: JuopunutBear 1.57 or ENG version 1.04
• Recovery: TWRP 2.3.10

Again,  keep in mind, that I will be testing the Evo 3D on Virgin Mobile.  The phone I received was likely an Evo 3D flashed to VM.  I will refer to it as the Evo 3D anyway, because "Evo V 4G" is a stupid name.  Next week around Monday I will report my findings for the stock ROM and move on to testing the next ROM.  

Root, Recovery, and ROM on a classic Droid (A855)

This week I picked up an original Motorola Droid from a co-worker who had upgraded to a Droid Razr. Since I use Linux, most of the rooting and recovery flashing we completely useless to me.  After piecing together enough information from various sources, I was finally able to perform a manual root of the Droid, followed by a bootloader upgrade to install clockworkmod which will allow me to install a new ROM.  I will document my procedures here, so you don't have to go through all the hassle that I did.

First things first, this tutorial is for LINUX users (it may also be applicable for Mac users).  If you have Winderp, there are plenty of other tutorials out there for you.

Prerequisites:

• Motorola Droid
• adb installed on you machine

Downloads:

• Super One click [xda] -- You will need to grab version 1.9.5 from the OP
• SBF file for flashing bootloader
• Clockwork mod recovery
• SBF flasher tool

Rooting the phone:

1. On the phone itself, navigate the settings menu to Applications > Development and enable "USB Debugging."
2. Back up one level and enable "Unknown sources."
3. Plug in your phone and open terminal.  Then type adb devices .  You should see a string of characters.  If you see nothing, then you need to troubleshoot adb.
4. Extract the contents of superoneclick on your computer and then upload the psneuter file from the "exploits" folder using adb push psneuter /data/local/tmp .
5. Jump into adb shell by typing  adb shell, then run chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/psneuter .
6. Change directory and execute the psneuter exploit.  cd /data/local/tmp,  ./psneuter
7. You will be disconnected from adb shell.  Run adb kill-server and adb devices on your local box.
8. Reconnect to adb shell and you should see the # sign instead of $.  If you dont see #, you don't have root.
9. Remount the system partition: mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system
10. In another terminal, copy the su and busybox binaries to the system bin folder: adb push su-v3 /system/bin/su and adb push busybox /system/bin/busybox
11. Switch back to the adb shell terminal and run the following: chmod 4755 /system/bin/su  and chmod 4755 /system/bin/busybox .
12. Type "su" in adb shell. If you get a blank line then you are good to go. If you get an error, you may need to push a different version of busybox.
13. Install SuperUser.apk by typing in adb install SuperUser.apk in the other terminal.
14. Remount the system partition as RO in adb shell with: mount -o remount,ro -t yaffs /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system .
15. Reboot the phone with adb reboot in the local terminal.
16. Dowload the root tester app from the Market and test root access.  If all went well, you have full root access.

The recovery installation portion will come at a later time, when I get a chance to develop the topic fully.

Nook Color hacking update: Video

I have been using my Nook Color for over a month now, and I have still not settled on a specific ROM that I like.  When I first bought the NC, I went for the simple root which opened up the possibility for me to install Android market apps.  The problems that the stock rooted firmware presented, such as the ugly interface, led me to try using custom ROMs. First, I flashed a Froyo (2.2) ROM to an SD card and used that for some time.  Later I installed a Honeycomb (3.0) based ROM to my internal memory. I quit using Honeycomb because the interface was too laggy, and apps tended to crash often.  At that point I moved to Gingerbread (2.3) based ROM including Cyanogenmod, Ultimate Droid, and Phiremod.  All of these had their good and bad points.  Unfortunately, none of them could do video playback correctly.  YouTube either didn't work at all, or had unwatchable frame rates. 

A smart phone for the cheapskate: LG Optimus V

Is it an iPhone? No.  If it's not an iPhone, why would I want it?

Having to pay your own cell phone bill is a double-edged sword.  Finally I can get whichever phone I want on any network I choose.  Oh darn, all the good phones are on the Big 4 carriers with plans starting at an organ donation per month.  So what did I do?  I chose option three.  Virgin Mobile.  For only $25 dollars a month, yes that says $25 a month,  I get unlimited text and data along with 300 minutes.  Did I mention that it's only 25 dollars per month?

"Surely a prepaid carrier can only have the bottom bin of crap phones" was something I used to think all the time.  I was wrong.  Finally catching up into the 21st century, VM is offering two Android phones on their network.  I selected the LG Optimus V to be my new phone for two reasons: Price and usability.  Firstly, the Optimus V was cheaper than the alternate Samsung phone offered on VM by at least 50 dollars.  Second, the LG Optimus received much better reviews for usablility than the Samsung phone.