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Root ok, before i flash a new rom........

D

davo26

Android Enthusiast
.........id like to make sure everything will run smoothly. the thing thats stopped me so far is going to the download page and reading 'make sure your phone has thiis that and the other, s-off, ext 3 or 4 etc etc' and not really understanding it so i wimp out.

for the record, my bootloader screen says im 'ship s-off rl' and im running ARHD with 4-EXT recovery, although i dont know what partitions ive got.

will i be able to just instal any rom whatsoever that i choose? or do i need specific ones? im having a wifi prob at the moment that cant seem to be sorted, so im thinking try an ICS or JB rom. but i dont want to mess up.

ideally something thats not too far from ARHD but looks and works a bit nicer? must be good battery life, as thats why i rooted in the first place. ARHD is acceptable, i wouldnt want a more power hungry rom.

any suggestions please, as to what i have available, and whats good for battery life?

thanks
 
As you are rooted, you should be fine to just go ahead and install any rom you want. Once you've downloaded the ROM you want and checked that the MD5 sum matches what the dev says it should be (where you download it from), put it on the root of your SD card and boot into recovery.

Before you go ahead and flash the ROM, make a backup of your current set up... that way, should anything go wrong (not that it should), you will be able to restore to the way things are now.

Once backed up, perform wipes (cache/data/factory rest) and then install zip from SD card (chosing the correct zip yourself).

That should be all that is needed :)
 
excellent thanks, i just needed to know that roms werent becoming so complicated that i had to do extra stuff to my phone first.

thanks

EDIT: oh, and any suggestions for suitable roms that arent too power hungry?

cheers
 
any suggestions for suitable roms that arent too power hungry?
Click to expand...

When it comes to power efficiency it is hard to beat ARHD.

ideally something thats not too far from ARHD but looks and works a bit nicer?
Click to expand...

Blackout ICS 3.1.0 (Sense 3.6/Android 4.0.4) comes to mind, but that is still a work in progress.

If you are running ARHD 6.3.x you want want to give Virtuous Affinity 2.05 a try. This is a Sense 3.5 GB ROM. Just a note, power saver modes do not work properly with Sense 3.5 ROM's.

But if you want 100% fully working that is ARHD 6.3.3.
 
ral said:
When it comes to power efficiency it is hard to beat ARHD.



Blackout ICS 3.1.0 (Sense 3.6/Android 4.0.4) comes to mind, but that is still a work in progress.

If you are running ARHD 6.3.x you want want to give Virtuous Affinity 2.05 a try. This is a Sense 3.5 GB ROM. Just a note, power saver modes do not work properly with Sense 3.5 ROM's.

But if you want 100% fully working that is ARHD 6.3.3.
Click to expand...

ive got 6.3.2 at the mo, is there a link to 6.3.3? and i assume no need to wipe, just instal over? if no good ill try virtuous affinity thanks. i see you dont recommend any ICS or JB? is this cos theyre too power intense?

thanks
 
Actually CDPlant is the one who recommended Virtuous Affinity to me. It was a very good recommendation :)

Has more of a rooted feel to it. ARHD 6.3.3 is pretty much "perfect" becuase it is really just a tweaked stock ROM. But that is a good thing to have with all the ROM options.

Link to ARHD 6.3.3. Full wipe should not be needed, but given you have WiFi issues I would go with a full wipe.

Sense ROM's are limited to ICS. I did not recommend them not because they are power hungry but they still have a few serious bugs being worked out. If you are okay with a few bugs I recommend Blackout ICS. I have not tried the latest Virtuous Infinity ROM but the last build I tried was good.

I have a post on this thread about Blackout which list the remaining bugs. A bit of tweaking is needed to it more power efficient though. On a default install, Blackout ICS eats your battery like crazy :) Still, It is my favorite ROM in development.

Virtuous Infinity is a good choice, but it is a bit of a slug and I do not like Sense 4. I have not tried Sabsa Prime (also Sense 4), but it looks like a good bet. Nero's touchscreen sensitivity is tweaked to make if feel ultra fast but it is a pain to use.

Basically, they are fine choices if you are willing to go ROM hopping and see which one is easiest for you to live with.

Are you okay with a AOSP/AOKP ROM? Ice Cold Sandwich or JellyTime are good. They are a bit less power efficient IMHO. I think this may be because of drivers? But I do tweak a lot, and can live with them (but I miss Sense and go back to a Sense ROM after a few days).

Right now I am on day 2 of JellyTime.
 
ral said:
Actually CDPlant is the one who recommended Virtuous Affinity to me. It was a very good recommendation :)

Has more of a rooted feel to it. ARHD 6.3.3 is pretty much "perfect" becuase it is really just a tweaked stock ROM. But that is a good thing to have with all the ROM options.

Link to ARHD 6.3.3. Full wipe should not be needed, but given you have WiFi issues I would go with a full wipe.

Sense ROM's are limited to ICS. I did not recommend them not because they are power hungry but they still have a few serious bugs being worked out. If you are okay with a few bugs I recommend Blackout ICS. I have not tried the latest Virtuous Infinity ROM but the last build I tried was good.

I have a post on this thread about Blackout which list the remaining bugs. A bit of tweaking is needed to it more power efficient though. On a default install, Blackout ICS eats your battery like crazy :) Still, It is my favorite ROM in development.

Virtuous Infinity is a good choice, but it is a bit of a slug and I do not like Sense 4. I have not tried Sabsa Prime (also Sense 4), but it looks like a good bet. Nero's touchscreen sensitivity is tweaked to make if feel ultra fast but it is a pain to use.

Basically, they are fine choices if you are willing to go ROM hopping and see which one is easiest for you to live with.

Are you okay with a AOSP/AOKP ROM? Ice Cold Sandwich or JellyTime are good. They are a bit less power efficient IMHO. I think this may be because of drivers? But I do tweak a lot, and can live with them (but I miss Sense and go back to a Sense ROM after a few days).

Right now I am on day 2 of JellyTime.
Click to expand...

thanks for that mate. as for AOSP/AOKP, i dont really understand how theyre different, so cant comment. the only experience of a rom thats different to sense was in my early days of rooting i tried a CM rom and found it too stripped down for my liking. is that the sort of rom you mean? i havent strayed into unknown waters since then, but im willing to be enlightened :-)

thanks
 
On IceColdSandwich myself and love it so far (if 'love' is a proper adjective for one's relationship with their phone's software ... :hmmmm: ). Seems OK power-wise too, it doesn't seem any different from previous ROMs, including ARHD, that I've tried.

One thing I would say though, is that it may be a good idea to figure out your wifi problems before you change ROMs as a new ROM will just add another complication into the mix.

Dave
 
dvhttn said:
On IceColdSandwich myself and love it so far (if 'love' is a proper adjective for one's relationship with their phone's software ... :hmmmm: ). Seems OK power-wise too, it doesn't seem any different from previous ROMs, including ARHD, that I've tried.

One thing I would say though, is that it may be a good idea to figure out your wifi problems before you change ROMs as a new ROM will just add another complication into the mix.

Dave
Click to expand...

oops too late, ive flashed 6.3.3 :-) all seems fine at the moment but ive d/loaded virtuous affinity too if i fancy a change. just one thing about that rom, i was looking at the xda thread on it and it doesnt seem to have a battery percentage indicator which is pretty much essential to me. someone linked to it on there so i thought id download it ready, but my laptop flashed up that it was a malicious file.
is that likely to be the case? would someone put that on the xda site??

thanks
 
as for AOSP/AOKP, i dont really understand how theyre different, so cant comment. the only experience of a rom thats different to sense was in my early days of rooting i tried a CM rom and found it too stripped down for my liking. is that the sort of rom you mean?
Click to expand...

Yes, like CM, though Android vanilla looks much better in 4.0.x and 4.1.x than on 2.3.x.

When I install ARHD 6.3.3, my favorite add-ons are:

  • Ultrasmooth Rosie
  • Quick Settings XL with no recent apps
  • Wake Up on Volume Button
 
I'll stick my vote in for Virtuous Affinity. Cracking rom with good battery life.

Ral....you mentioned the battery power modes dont work with this rom? Maybe I'm wishful thinking here but I've managed to get nearly 2 days out of a full charge on economy setting.
 
BrutalUK said:
I'll stick my vote in for Virtuous Affinity. Cracking rom with good battery life.

Ral....you mentioned the battery power modes dont work with this rom? Maybe I'm wishful thinking here but I've managed to get nearly 2 days out of a full charge on economy setting.
Click to expand...

hmm i was strugling to knock the vibrating keys off my texts, even though i unticked everything, so thought what the hell, ill try virtuous afffinity. wiped, tried to instal, but it aborted saying there was a problem with the zip. good job i did a nandroid :-)
strange thing is, i restored the nandroid and the keys didnt vibrate any more :-D

bit puzzling about the VA zip tho eh?
 
BrutalUK said:
If you can't get it to work I have a zip of Virtuous Affinity that works 100%
Click to expand...

thank you mate, i may take you up on that. however ive just downloaded it again from a mirror site and the file size was nearly twice as much, so hopefully that may be sorted.

ill let you know when i flash it :-)
 
BrutalUK said:
I'll stick my vote in for Virtuous Affinity. Cracking rom with good battery life.

Ral....you mentioned the battery power modes dont work with this rom? Maybe I'm wishful thinking here but I've managed to get nearly 2 days out of a full charge on economy setting.
Click to expand...

The Sense 3.0 ROM's with the Virtuous_OC Deamons gets excellent battery life which I attribute to:

a) It uses ondemand but with a conservative sleep setting.
b) The ROM is tweaked to be under volted by 10-15% across the various clock speeds.
c) Tweaking auto brightness in Virtuous tweaks also gets excellent battery life.

The economy mode basically allows you to access power saver settings. Basically, allowing you to turn of certain services when you hit the pre-defined low power threshold. In my case I have it turn of vibration and auto-sync.

On a stock HTC ROM or ARHD 6.3.3 it will disable vibration, set a low brightness setting. and auto-sync but enable them once I plug it back to the charger. With VA, it does not automatically enable the services again so I have to go back into settings and enable auto-sync, auto-brightness and vibration.

I use sleep mode to predefined sleep time when data would be off - 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM. When I did this the phone was receiving emails two hours after it was supposed to disable data, and they next morning a 7:00 AM, data was still off.

Flashed VA a second time (full wipe) same issue.

Basically, I just left the phone on normal, with sleep disable after that and was happy enough with the ROM. Only bug I detected with that ROM. After that I used it till I went on to try Blackout ICS and now an testing trying JellyTime. I don't think JellyTime is panning out in terms of battery life. Not sure if I will go back to VA or ARHD 6.3.3 while waiting for Blackout 3.1.1.

I did not notice any difference between performance and normal settings. I think the OC Deamon basically overrides this.

The XDA VA thread is basically dead so I confirmed with the ARHD 7.0.4 guys and one person confirmed it was a ported Sense 3.5 issue.

If you guys can re-confirm, would appreciate it.
 
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