An Android Thread

[DarkAudit]

For phones. For rooting. For ROMs. Apps not so much.

I've got an Evo4G. Took me about a week before I broke down and rooted it so I could use more than just the stock Sprint experience. Android Central is a good place for basic information, but to really get into dissecting what your phone is capable of, check out XDA Developers.

Once you're rooted (follow the procedures without fail. Skip or miss a step, and well, I cannot be held responsible) the world is your oyster. ROMs and mods and themes to make that Apple fanboi green with envy. Updates to make your phone far more secure than your mobile provider or manufacturer is willing or able to give you. For example, the Cyanogenmod 7 ROM is nearly complete. RC2 just hit last night. Unless you own a Nexus S or Nexus One, it (or other custom ROMs like it) is the only way to have Gingerbread on your phone before June at the earliest. After the recent market malware scare, something to think about. Especially when providers and manufacturers refuse to update hardware even in the face of their security holes.

Enough intro. Do you have an Android phone? Is it rooted? What ROM are you running if it is? I'm a fan of Cyanogenmod and Myn's Warm2.2 series. Cyanogen is the closest non-Nexus owners will get to the pure Android experience. Warm2.2 is the epitome of the Sense ROM for the Evo4G. There are some ports of Sense 2.0 ROMs from other phones, but I'm not all that impressed with them just yet.

 

[Ravenpoe]

I ran bugless beast on my Moto Droid, which was a great mod. My current Droid X is rooted, but I haven't bothered with running a custom mod on it, as Motorola's new locked bootloaders make it more time consuming than I really care for. The first Moto Droid was a plethora of openness, everything else from Motorola is not. As much as I love my X, I think I might move to HTC for my next phone. I'm waiting to see what the mod community does for the thunderbolt.

 

[DarkAudit]

hopefully they'll work on better battery life. Reports were coming in to Android Central and Engadget of Thunderbolts lasting only three hours or so on a full charge, which is rumnored to be why the release date keeps getting pushed back.

The Evo guys at XDA have gotten their hands on the Thunderbolt ROM, and are working on a port. I'm looking forward to seeing a CDMA port of Sense 2.0. Everything ported so far has been off of GSM phones. Not everything works quite as it should from those just yet, but there seem to be many more of those than ports from CDMA phones.

 

[klew]

I still enjoy my stock Nexus One with gingerbread. I lost the Google Voice app with the update, and I can't get it back yet because I need to send the confirmation sms to a US phone, and I am overseas for at least another 5 months.

 

[GasBandit]

I ran bugless beast on my Moto Droid, which was a great mod. My current Droid X is rooted, but I haven't bothered with running a custom mod on it, as Motorola's new locked bootloaders make it more time consuming than I really care for. The first Moto Droid was a plethora of openness, everything else from Motorola is not. As much as I love my X, I think I might move to HTC for my next phone. I'm waiting to see what the mod community does for the thunderbolt.

I'm still running the stock version of froyo on my Droid... Is an alternate rom really that much better? I don't have too many complaints about it as it stands - just that sometimes my home screens take a long time to reload my widgets if I change orientation or run a memory hog of a program.

 

[Ravenpoe]

I'm still running the stock version of froyo on my Droid... Is an alternate rom really that much better? I don't have too many complaints about it as it stands - just that sometimes my home screens take a long time to reload my widgets if I change orientation or run a memory hog of a program.

The rom I used included a lot of tweaks and optimization for running a custom kernel and overclocking, both of which I enjoyed tinkering with. Aside from that, there really wasn't a huge reason to run a custom over stock, especially when stock froyo works so well.

If I were to go through the trouble of getting past the x's locked bootloader to install a new rom, it would be to install stock froyo (or gingerbread). Why phone manufacturers think we want their shitty roms instead of stock is beyond me.

 

[Covar]

HTC Aria running cyanogen 6. I might update now that RC2 is up.

Androids not a bad system, but it's not yet great by any means. The battery life is atrocious if you actually want to use your phone, I might try windows phone 7 once my contract is up, or go back to the iPhone.

 

[DarkAudit]

HTC Aria running cyanogen 6. I might update now that RC2 is up.

Androids not a bad system, but it's not yet great by any means. The battery life is atrocious if you actually want to use your phone, I might try windows phone 7 once my contract is up, or go back to the iPhone.

Best to use the latest nightly instead of RC2. A few bugs were fixed just after the RC hit.

 

[Ravenpoe]

re: battery life

I've used a lot of different phones. In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, android phones don't drain their battery any faster than other smartphones with the same power battery. My X actually holds a charge significantly longer than previous smartphones I've used, and I don't pull my punches in what I demand from it, either.

If you know enough to load custom roms, then you more than likely already know this, but I'll go ahead and say it for the benefit of anyone else reading. For the love of god, stop using task killers.

 

[Ravenpoe]

please enlighten me, whats wrong with using a task killer? I find that if I don't go through and close my contact, kindle, browser etc through my task killer they stay open the entire time and kill my battery faster than a boy on prom night.

They will remain in memory, but they won't use battery. The only time apps use battery is if they're putting a strain on the processor, or (this is the big one) accessing the mobile network. Android uses memory differently than windows or other operating systems most people are used to. Windows wants to keep as much memory as free as possible, but the opposite is true for Android. Android will hold apps in cache to improve speed and performance, but it takes no more battery power to hold 20 apps in memory than it does to hold nothing in memory. By using a task killer and constantly clearing the cache, you're forcing android to rebuild that memory list, and this will drain your battery faster than if you leave it alone.

This isn't to say a task killer is -never- useful. It can be useful to close a specific app that's become stuck or frozen, but most people use them as a sledge hammer, or set them to 'auto clear' which will destroy your battery life.

 

[DarkAudit]

Word from XDA is CM7 RC3 is imminent.