Root Virtuous ROM vs Rooted Stock

[phillygator]

I have been running Virtuous ROM for the past couple of days, and it seems to be the most stable of the half dozen I have tried, but still has it's occasional hiccups. All in all it doesn't seem to offer a whole lot other than being more stable than say CM or Skyraider. Are there any advantages to running Virtuous over the rooted stock ROM that I am missing?

 

[ericDylan]

Virtuous is basically stock sense with a few tweaks. Mainly, there is a lot of bloatware removed. Also, adding and removing the stock apps are made easier by tools that come with the ROM. IMHO it is better than stock for those few reasons.

 

[hgoldner]

The Virtuous ROM is very close to stock HTC Sense for the Incredible, so by flashing it, you are closest to stock, but by doing so, you also now have the ability to make slight changes to the interface, such as:

1. The icons in the notification bar (e.g. "Conservative" color icons)
2. How you interact with the notification bar (e.g. "Powerwidgets" pull-down menu)
3. What kind of unlock screen you use (e.g. Rotary Lockscreen)

Plus, you can switch your kernels from the Virtuous-supplied kernel to other kernels that either enhance battery life, or allow you to overclock, or both, or some other combination (for instance, I use HeyIt'sLou's #4 kernel with Virtuous 3.2).

In other words, it's a good place to start, with the ability to make incremental changes.

With Skyraider Sense or Myn's Warm Two Point Two you make more drastic changes (although I believe both are also very stable ROM's).

 

[JSS12]

The Virtuous ROM is very close to stock HTC Sense for the Incredible, so by flashing it, you are closest to stock, but by doing so, you also now have the ability to make slight changes to the interface, such as:

1. The icons in the notification bar (e.g. "Conservative" color icons)
2. How you interact with the notification bar (e.g. "Powerwidgets" pull-down menu)
3. What kind of unlock screen you use (e.g. Rotary Lockscreen)

Plus, you can switch your kernels from the Virtuous-supplied kernel to other kernels that either enhance battery life, or allow you to overclock, or both, or some other combination (for instance, I use HeyIt'sLou's #4 kernel with Virtuous 3.2).

In other words, it's a good place to start, with the ability to make incremental changes.

With Skyraider Sense or Myn's Warm Two Point Two you make more drastic changes (although I believe both are also very stable ROM's).

First - what is this "powerwidgets" in the pull down menu you speak of??
Second - can u describe what HeyIt'sLou's #4 does? does it work with SetCPU or without it?

thanks!

 

[jayochs]

lou advises against using setcpu with lou's #4 kernel, he says the kernal does it's own power management.

the power widgets, i believe what me means, is that when you pull down the notif bar, built in is hte wifi/bluetooth/gps/3g data/brightness etc buttons

 

[phillygator]

lou advises against using setcpu with lou's #4 kernel, he says the kernal does it's own power management.

the power widgets, i believe what me means, is that when you pull down the notif bar, built in is hte wifi/bluetooth/gps/3g data/brightness etc buttons

I dont have those built into my notification bar with Virtuous. Any free apps that do that?

 

[WBMc36]

for me when i was using CM i found myself missing htc's browser and messaging app, as well as its contacts, calendar and integration with facebook. I have been running virtuous with LPP overtop, and while it may not give me any performance increases other than a little better battery, i have no screen redraws form LP while using virtuous and everything runs very smoothly. CM is a great rom and there are plenty others out there that offer more bells and whistles but with them i found myself missing something, vanilla android just doesn't do it for me, basically htc has spoiled me, and as much as i hate that stupid sense bar at the bottom the rest of their softare is flawless, hence why i use launcher pro.

 

[jayochs]

i'm not sure; lou added this into revolution, it was someone elses work and he was able to merge it in

 

[hgoldner]

First - what is this "powerwidgets" in the pull down menu you speak of??
Second - can u describe what HeyIt'sLou's #4 does? does it work with SetCPU or without it?

thanks!

See the screenshot below for an example of Powerwidgets. It's activated by pulling down on the Notification Bar. I integrated the mod into my Virtuous setup. The mod file (which include other mods, such as Conservative icons, a tabbed unlock screen, etc.) is located here.

+1 to the above poster who noted that Lou's #4 does not require SetCPU, and in fact discourages its use. Personally, I use the Seidio 1750 mAmp battery and the gauge drops from 100% down to 85% precipitously when I power up at around 6:30 a.m. - 7 a.m., and then the Dinc stays above 35%-40% until nearly midnight. I actually uninstalled SetCPU.

 

[jayochs]

hgold, so yours does it too with lou's #4? literally, the second i unplugged it, even after a small bump, it dropped to 99..98..97..96..quite fast! sometimes however, i'm not making it through the full day. i'm unsure whether or not lou's #4 really has battery conservign stuff built in, as i'm not seeing any difference from my unrooted phone. i use the HTC 1500 mah battery

 

[hgoldner]

hgold, so yours does it too with lou's #4? literally, the second i unplugged it, even after a small bump, it dropped to 99..98..97..96..quite fast! sometimes however, i'm not making it through the full day. i'm unsure whether or not lou's #4 really has battery conservign stuff built in, as i'm not seeing any difference from my unrooted phone. i use the HTC 1500 mah battery

Yes, it's pretty weird. I almost never see it at 100% with the Seidio battery, and it drops very quickly in the first 10-15 minutes off the charger, but then it is rock solid with very slow change through the rest of the day. For instance, it was at 75% at 9:30 a.m. this morning, and is down to only 65% now, some 8+ hours later.

I haven't tried it with my stock battery yet, and I have 2600 mAmp and 2150 mAmp batteries I'll be testing in early February during some travel.

 

[jayochs]

see, mine drains just as normal. do you use the phone between 930 and the 8 hours later often, or no? because mine will just drop %'s, i barely get the 13-14 hours outta it

 

[Medion]

One drawback to running Virtuous over stock is that RMK is a bit behind on Sense apps. The current Virtuous 3.2.0 is still using the Sense apps from the August 2.2 OTA, not the NOV OTA. This isn't a big deal until you try using the stock music app with Google's navigation and find out you've still got the music-resume bug.

While only a few apps had noticeable updates in the NOV OTA, the only one that affects me is the Music one, so I re-zipped Virtuous with the updated APK.

 

[hgoldner]

You are right, Medion. Klittle's mods which I show above included the updated music and mail apk's as well into Virtuous to bring it up to date.

Jayochs, yes I use the phone during those work hours. I get calls; messages (like just this second). The Lou's kernel #4 underclocks it to 245 when the screen is off and sitting by my workstation in the office.

One downside is that Battery Left, a widget I very much like, is completely unreliable.

 

[JSS12]

What does VIRTUOUS BUDDY do??

 

[ericDylan]

What does VIRTUOUS BUDDY do??

allows you to easily add and remove stock apps and tweak other settings. it is kinda like cyanogen mod settings.

 

[Medion]

You are right, Medion. Klittle's mods which I show above included the updated music and mail apk's as well into Virtuous to bring it up to date.

Jayochs, yes I use the phone during those work hours. I get calls; messages (like just this second). The Lou's kernel #4 underclocks it to 245 when the screen is off and sitting by my workstation in the office.

One downside is that Battery Left, a widget I very much like, is completely unreliable.

It's a shame people don't give credit where it's due (not you, btw). I still have the PM from klittle on my XDA account asking me how to get those APKs. I send them to him/her, and a few minutes later, he had that zip up.

I was in the process of asking RMK if he would be cool with me doing that, because I didn't want to steal thunder from his work (but he never responded).

 

[hgoldner]

I don't fault rmk for not being immediately responsive. Most devs are doing this stuff in their spare time because they love doing it, not because they have to, and sometimes the real world intrudes into their hobby time. I though klittle showed great initiative and I'm glad he did the mod.

Occasionally you'll find a developer rolling something "new" out who is amazingly responsive, but I generally don't expect it. (An example is the developer of the new ROM "Incredibly Re-engineered," which sounds fantastic but for the fact that v 2.0 does not have bluetooth audio working yet, which is a deal killer for me.)

If you want to know what rmk is doing, follow his Twitter feed. He's mostly working on bringing his Vision ROM up to speed now that he's got Virtuous for Incredible running solidly.

 

[Medion]

If you want to know what rmk is doing, follow his Twitter feed. He's mostly working on bringing his Vision ROM up to speed now that he's got Virtuous for Incredible running solidly.

I'd still like him to do a "3.3" or whatever that zip's in all of the changes in the NOV OTA as well as updates Virtuous Buddy for those changes, but let's be honest here. I can get the same effect by "downgrading" to the OTA while keeping root and S-Off, downloading the SDK, and just disabling the apps myself. I don't use DSPManager or ROMManager, and Wireless Tether is available free on the Android Market. This also has the benefit of giving me more user available space on the internal storage (about 5-10MB at most, though).

So, like you said, he's got it running fine. My main concern is whether or not HTC will ever get around to updating the Incredible to the New Sense. They leaked on their Spanish Twitter that the Incredible and Evo were slated for it, but I've heard nothing since.

 

[hgoldner]

Medion, I suspect if we get the "new" Sense (with the online linkage) on the Incredible, it's going to be via a ROM that somebody cooks up and not from HTC directly or Verizon OTA.

We ought to see Gingerbread at some point, too, but, again the ROM developers will have cooked that into their ROMS long before Big Red pushes an OTA out.

 

[XXXdc5]

good info here

 

[JSS12]

HTC Droid Incredible
ROM: Virtuous 3.2
Mods: Conservative Color Icons; Tab Unlock; Powerwidgets pull-down menu
Kernel: HeyIt'sLou's #4
32 gb microSDHC

Can you tell me:
1) What Tab Unlock is?
2) How and where you went to get the Powerwidgets pull-down menu to work?
3) How does HeyIt'sLou's #4 compare against SetCPU?

Thanks

 

[hgoldner]

Can you tell me:
1) What Tab Unlock is?
2) How and where you went to get the Powerwidgets pull-down menu to work?
3) How does HeyIt'sLou's #4 compare against SetCPU?

Thanks

1. Tab unlock (it's what I called it, it's probably called something else by whomever developed it, I just didn't notice) looks like this screen shot:

2. See this link. There is another mod by Spence, but I think it's more involved, and I had no problems flashing klittle's version (which also updates some apps in Virtuous 3.2.) Klittle offers 3 versions. You can see what his #2 looks like above. Those are the color notification icons by Conservative.

3. I completely disabled SetCPU. Most current kernels being cooked have better battery life management than SetCPU does, as they build-in governors. For instance, HeyIt'sLou's #4 (and pretty much all of them after 4) automatically underclocks the Incredible to 245 mhz with screen off.
The one anomaly I can't wrap my head around is that with my Seidio 1750 mAmp battery, I never see 100%, and it drops from about 95 to 85 in the first ten minutes or so off the charger. Then it gives me fabulous (i.e. 14-18 hours) life off the charger the rest of the day.

 

[wayrad]

You are right, Medion. Klittle's mods which I show above included the updated music and mail apk's as well into Virtuous to bring it up to date.

Thank you for mentioning these mods, I really like them. But does anyone else notice them making the keyboard on the security screen (where you enter the PIN) go all whitish?

 

[Medion]

Medion, I suspect if we get the "new" Sense (with the online linkage) on the Incredible, it's going to be via a ROM that somebody cooks up and not from HTC directly or Verizon OTA.

We ought to see Gingerbread at some point, too, but, again the ROM developers will have cooked that into their ROMS long before Big Red pushes an OTA out.

I think it's in reverse. HTC has to go through two processes. First, they port Sense to a version of Android. Secondly, they they port that package to a phone.

Sense has been ported to 2.2. "New" Sense was ported to 2.2.1. So far, HTC has not completed porting any version of Sense to 2.3, and doesn't look to have it done anytime soon (Thunderbolt launches with 2.2.1, no update plans announced for Desire HD or desire Z to 2.3).

I see the Incredible getting an official update to 2.2.1 and New Sense (given that HTC already unofficially confirmed this), but a 2.3 update would have to occur after the Incredible's end of life, making it highly unlikely. But again, that's speculation on my part.