Saturday, September 22, 2012

Initial thoughts on JellyTime R7 (CM)

Check my previous post for more regarding ROMs and Android for the HTC Desire HD. 

Just notes to myself mainly; thoughts on JT R7 (CM) by randomblame from having upgraded from IceColdSandwich 8.4 by LordClockaN

TL;DR - it's REALLY smooth that's for sure. phone feels a lot less lagy. (and more stable than ICS =o)
battery life is pretty much a little bit worse probably by 5-10% but i just came from AOKP and these are pretty early releases, will switch to AOKP soon.
Pretty much everything works fine atm, but video camera .
defs feels like a 4.1 instead of 5.0

Video recorder broken
(even though changelog says 720p OK) -gallery stopped (vid cam illusion works 480p), stock camera app greatly improved, touch focus.
recording audio unbroken. No mic mute problem when speaker turned on in call. 

Screen on when turned off with light bands - saw this once, fixed by turning screen on then off. 
 
Updating Google Play apps not jaggered-frozen/slow anymore, the Play Store app is generally faster/smoother.
A lot less lagyness, not near as frequent force close messages
(prob occured when nand recovered back into ICS8.4).

Toggles work flawlessly, however CM has no powersaver option. Must manually turn off stuff before turning off screen.
Battery life is a bit worse, 3-7mA idle vs. ~10(-80)mA. Battery overall probably lasts 2 hours less, although music with screen off is still ~75mA. Probably a combination of no power saver in CM and project butter pumping my CPU to the higher freqs more often.

CM does indeed have less options than AOKP and lockscreen gestures doesn't work/no option for them, only 5-slider lockscreen. Custom Apps/Shortcuts don't work atm, I think this was in the changelog. 

Apollo music app - lockscreen no artist, widget - only white, has black theme. Luckily still uses DSP Manager. Change to google Music - the one that comes with AOKP. 
Switch to AOKP ASAP.

Revert Exec Assist. lockscreen to non-ad. Possible future android app dev project - lockscreen/widget.
FB app running faster, could be FB devs or FB-JB compatibility. 


USB storage connection with computer breaks regularly, or could be this new cable I'm using, will test with original cable soon. 

Monday, September 17, 2012

Android ROMs on the HTC Desire HD & Flashing Checklist

Most of your DHD ROMs can be found right here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=765

Glossary/Links:
CM - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
AOKP - http://aokp.co/index.php/about
AOSP - http://source.android.com/ (Hurray for FOSS!!)
ROM, Flashing, radios, etc. - Google and xda site search are your friends. (i.e. RTFriendlyM)

Here's a list of the ROMs I've used previously:

- Stock 2.3 Gingerbread with Sense. Yuk. (My opinion of manufacturer Android distributions/overlays - being launcher, widgets, lockscreen - is that they love to make them hard to use and ugly.
- Android Revolution HD (by mike), pretty good Android 2.3 ROM
- Virtuous Quattro, didn't really like it

Current ROM: 
- Ice Cold Sandwich by LorD ClockaN
It's been great, got it before the Camera even took photos without cutting off bits. Then came the 480p video recording mod and my phone was complete =) I mainly upgraded to Android 4.0 ICS because I wanted to be able to access my university's wpa2 wifi network. When I tried moving back to ARHD or any 2.3 ROM I just didn't like all the missing features.
It's more or less stable (with the odd reboot, which could be triggered by certain app versions misbehaving), with great battery life (lasts the day) and AOKP's power saver works well to achieve that. Camera's still no where near as good as the Sense camera (only thing good about sense) but it does come pretty close to the AOSP one.
From the AOKP ROM Control, I use an octo-lockscreen, toggles, custom auto backlight levels, custom clock battery and signal icons/text colours etc. =D
Nova launcher is my preferred launcher, especially now that it has backup and restore function. Good for regular ROM flashing, speaking of which, I'll have a little checklist at the end of the guide that I use to make sure I don't brick my device (check those checksum hashes of the ROM/radios people).
Apparently BFS kernel and smartassV2 CPU scheduler (default is ondemand) yield freeze/boot-free results and better CPU respectively.

ROM I'm thinking of using:
JellyTime, since it's basically the only ROM based on AOKP which you can find updated regularly on the xda forums. ATM I'm thinking of using the CM based build just because it seems to be updated a bit more and possibly more polished. (It's AOKP's fault for being a bit slow on the ball for JellyBean.) I am however, an AOKP fan as it just seems to have all the settings I want so I'll be moving to AOKP soon.
Here's the links on xda:
AOKP-based JellyTime by randomblame
CM10-based JellyTime by randomblame



 

 My ROM flashing checklist (useful if you flash constantly and need to remember stuff so as not to screw up or brick your device).


Pre-Flashing Checklist
SMS log      - SMS BackUp Restore
Call log     - Call log BU&R
Whatsapp etc.- Backup Convos In-App & Account with Titanium Backup
Home Screen  - Nova Settings/Layout Backup
Apps         - Titanium Backup (data),
             - Astro (APK for Easy Installer),
             - APK Batch INstaller [PC]
ROM settings - AOKP Backup settings
(Rebackup Data for SMS/Call/Home Apps)

Nandbackup  !!
--------------------------------------------
Flashing:

Boot Recovery (Nandbackup reminder)
Full wipe (incl. Wipe cache + dalvik cache)
Install/Flash ROM
Flash Gapps if needed

Boot into ROM

(Flash kernel - BFS if needed)
--------------------------------------------
Post-flash:

Reinstall: Easy Installer/Astro/Titanium Backup
Restore all apps (Easy Installer/APK Batch Installer[PC])
Restore all app-data (Titanium Backup/APK Batch Installer[PC])
Restore SMS
Restore Call log
Restore Whatsapp, Viber, Line etc.
Restore Home Screen

Redo ROM settings. - AOKP Backup/Restore




Optional custom DPI:
Restore DPI - 210/220
Flash market/ install GPlay apk (Phonesky, Google Services Framework)
Clear Market Data
Redo DPI method


Saturday, September 15, 2012