Develop Bugs

Questions - rooting & ROMs...

I've finally got to the stage where I am completely hacked off at having to keep uninstalling apps due to running out of space in the internal memory.
I'm hoping to do it all in one hit, and what I want is recommendation for a decent, stable ROM - I don't want to have to chop and change, reflashing ROM after ROM.
I used to do this with my old Dream, and it was fun when I had the time, but things have changed for me now and I need a reliable phone.
What I need: Apps2SD, stability
Nice to have but not essential: Better battery life (underclocked kernel?)
Dream stuff, but not at the expense of first two: Speed increase, Froyo goodies
I don't care about SenseUI one bit - in fact I've pretty much removed/replaced nearly every trace of it on my phone, by using Launcher Pro and non-Sense apps/widgets.
However, I'd like to know if it's possible to keep the text selection function contained within the standard browser on my phone? It also works the same in DolphinHD, which leads me to believe it's integrated into the Sense framework? I don't know if I can get that with Froyo though.
If I do go for a Froyo ROM, I'd like to know what won't work. I gather video recording is broken - don't care about that. Is there anything else that don't work?
Any advice or recommendations, pretty please!

If you go to the roms dev section and look at all the roms chefs have cooked you will figure out which ones you prefer and which ones you may like. The chef will either tell you what doesnt work and later if you read the comments members will provide additional feedback.
There is no 'best' rom each one has + and -

[Q] The most simple, most reliable ROM ever?

Hello. Proud new owner of HTC Desire. I am going crazy at how beautiful this phone is.
I come from Nokia E71, BB Bold 9000, iPhone3G (never used 3Gs/4), Windows Mobile 6.
In all of those cases, I could not completely find OS that suits my needs.
I must say though, Symbian on E71 came closest to what I need.
What do I need?
I just need 5 functions, but I want them to work snappy and extremely fast.
Use the phone, send texts, browse the net, watch movies and use Google Maps. That's it.
As you can see, I am not a power user by any means. I don't need twitter, facebook, or push email. Basically, I am looking for simplest and most basic ROM out there that gets rid of pretty much EVERYTHING (think of custom Windows XP with useless features taken out).
I want to conserve as much battery as I can by not using anything that is not related to me.
Could any of you good folks recommend which ROM I should be looking at? I am not also a big fan of eye-candy, so this ROM I am seeking does not need to have the latest UI there's in the world. Just as long as it looks decent, but WORKS!
Thank you in advance. If there's a thread like this, please just link it and I will get info from there.

I use CyanogenMod with ADW launcher(CM6 comes with it), works great honestly. Does not contain any sort of extra bloat apart from the necessities. OpenDesire might be a good alternative to CM6 but I haven't tried it.

If you want a none sense ROM then Opendesire would easily be the most stable and the fastest. For sense, I would go Leedroid

If you want no Sense, go for OpenDesire. If you want Sense, use Pinky Desire (my personal favorite, clean and simple, also gets OTA updates from ROM Manager) or Leedroid (also great, but doesn't support OTA updating, only manual installation). I could also suggest MacLite, but I don't know about how stable it is. Oh, and don't use AuraxtSense or whatever it's called, it's bloated.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

How would cyanogenmod compare with OpenDesire?
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

maclite 0.8 - very basic, stripped down version of sense. but it is odexed so you can't theme it. most, if not all, bloats have been removed so i'm expecting quite good battery life. note that it doesn't support the legacy A2SD+ so you're pretty limited with the internal storage. if you're not gonna theme and not gonna install many apps, this rom will pretty much suits you.

Thanks both of you for quick reply.
It's extra needed especially since i am waiting to root my phone because I have a flight tomorrow afternoon, so wanted it rooted in airplane.
Just read features of maclite 0.8....almost had nerd-gasm reading this:
Removed space and battery wasting applications/widgets are (see posting #2 below on how to restore):
- AppSharing
- DCSStock
- Facebook
- FriendStream (broken since Twitters change to OAuth)
- FriendStreamWidget (broken since Twitters change to OAuth)
- Flickr
- Footprints
- FootprintsWidgets
- GenieWidget
- Google Search
- Google Talk
- HtcFacebook
- htcmailwidgets (do not work with the new Email client, use app instead of widget)
- install_flash_player (latest Flash player included instead)
- Learn More
- Maps (replaced, see below)
- NewsReader
- NewsReaderWidget
- PDFViewer
- Quickoffice
- Sim Toolkit
- SocialNetworkProvider
- Stocks
- StockWidget
- Teeter
- Twitter (broken since Twitters change to OAuth)
- TwitterWidget (broken since Twitters change to OAuth)
- VoiceSearch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Open Desire for a non sense ROM and and Lee Driod if you decide to go Sense.
OD is my favourite ROM - No bloat, just usefulness
G

so far, really liking maclite.
but can't seem to find file explorer.
looked practically everywhere!

OpenDesire's flies....(literally)

I has a phone said:
so far, really liking maclite.
but can't seem to find file explorer.
looked practically everywhere!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to download/install that from the market, as all other 3rd party software.

try all the roms and choose your favourite.
personnaly i use opendesire

seeing you've just got your Desire I would suggest just using the stock rom for a while (yes, boring - but practical). The stock 2.1 rom is really pretty good and meets all of your criteria.
you can suss out what you like/don't like then choose a custom rom accordingly. all you are getting here are what other people like/use.

[Q] Your feelings on the new Sense

Hello all,
Whilst it hasn't been confirmed 100% that HTC Desire users will get the new Sense software as currently seen on the DesireHD - I just wanted to put across some of my opinions and ask if other feel the same way as me.
There's some DesireHD ROMs in the Desire Android Development section, which for the most part are based fully on the ROM found inside the HTC RUU, but moving most of the system applications to a EXT partition.
This means that the software itself on the phone is pretty much all of HTC's work, there's no added applications by the ROM chef.
This means, if (and that's a big if seeing as the Desire's /system partition is smaller than that of the DesireHD's) the Desire Sense 2.0 software we're apparently going to get will be very similar to the custom ROM's we're seeing now.
If this is the case, I'll be extremely disappointed by some of the direction that HTC have taken. They seem to have completely moved away from creating a better user interface for their consumers and instead, tried to find ways of making a quick buck or two.
For example:
SoundHound Trial - Installed to /system, so for those who do not root, this is uninstallable. I have Shazam with unlimited tagging due to installing it before a certain date
HTC Locations - A link to enabling Premium Navigation from Route66
AmazonMP3 - Tied into the music player
So I assume they have some deals in place with the developers / owners of these services, so they get some investment for distributing this software with their phones?
I don't want my ROM to be infested with trial ware, I bought my HTC Desire SIM free so I've given them my bloody money.
Okay, so I can remove these easily as I do root my phones and know my way around ADB but I just don't like the fact HTC are doing this after how clean the WWE ROM for the HTC Desire was.
Does anyone share the same opinion or see where I'm coming from?

I'm sure all users would feel the same way as you do if HTC only included some trial-ware stuff. But this is hardly the case. The new Sense has a lot of significant improvements. Just to name a few:
-pinch in browser to access tabs.
-new interface in Mail (allows you to quickly select multiple messages to action)
-new widgets
-offline maps
-HTCsense.com
-fast boot
-themes
etc
Now, if those included softwares actually get in the way of the day-to-day operations of the phone, then sure, users would be pissed. For example, in the US, there are Android phones sold where it forces the user to use Bing for search and maps. HTC certainly doesn't force you onto those apps. You can choose to ignore them if you wish.
Sometimes, you just got to weigh the benefits with the drawbacks. I personally don't like having trialware on my phone. But the advantages of the new ROM far outweighs the minor inconvenience of me having to ignore the trial stuff...

I haven't had a chance to look into the new sense much (but i like the sound of the htcsense.com stuff) - but I would find it annoying having trialware that can't be removed - whenever I get a new laptop the first thing to go is all the junk (usually by a fresh re-install of the OS in some cases!)
at least with a PC it can be removed - I'm hoping that any extra junk that is installed can be ignored as the new features of Sense 2.0 seem nice!

I agree with the OP on this. First of all the Desire has a very limited internal memory. They wanted to cut costs on that and now they realize 512MB is not enough for everything and have increased it for Desire Z and HD. Thanks to all the mods here we are able to root and move some portion of rom to sd giving us more freedom to install apps.
Loading the system partition with bloat/crapware like this is going to bring down the useful data partition size and making it uninstallable makes me go what the *&^%
I paid my money and so "I" should decide what app are installed in my phone not "them" making those crapwares uninstallable is not good at all... they didnt give the phone for free or @ discounted rate...
Including trialwares is one thing... but making them non-removable completely puts me off. Being locked out of doing what I want with my device is what made me hate Apple... Android is open.. users do what they want or like.. it must be kept that way..

Why should I use CM7?

I am currently using CR OTA Froyo... whats the real benefits of CM7 I flashed it while it was pre-RC and just went back because of minor issues... but now since in past RC1 what are the Pros...Cons...

Everthing is better more options n speed n customize more space looks trust me ull nevrr go bak.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA Premium App

What kind of issues did you have? Maybe they've been resolved?
I like CM7 a bunch, Stable is great... although my wifi is acting up.

i went from cm rc1 build for a few weeks to OTA for half a day then got the cm7, gotta sasy CM7 > RC1 > OTA all the way, the only thing is no gps but who cares

I tried CM7-RC4 and honestly, I missed Sense. I want a phone that is completely stable, I don't want to have to wonder if my wi-fi or bluetooth or gps is or isn't gonna work today. I'm using the rooted official 2.2.1 that was released along with Dark Tremor's a2sd which lets me move all my apps and the dalvik cache to the sd card, giving me amazing amounts of memory on the phone and it is super fast. And everything works perfect: wi-fi, bluetooth, gps, websites with flash.

Well I installed cm7 again... And it works ok... Randomly reboots periodically. Still don't really see the point, only benefit I get its I don't get memory low errors as I did with OTA 2.2.1
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using Tapatalk

I agree with these statements so far, cm7 is great, with amy rom there is going to be some pros and cons. In most cases gps and/or wifi doesn't work. Hence why I stick to sense, also for me the theme is a negative for me, lack of support for sense widgets which most people tend to grow accustom to. As of now I'm running the rooted ota, modded by me. gold carded 8 gb sd, custom boot animation. No longer s-off. That was my own fault on my behalf of user stupidity, applying the update from t-mobile. Anyways, if your willing to lose sense and its widgets, and to-my-knowledge cm7's gps won't work, for more internal storage and possible performance reaction wise, cm7 other wise stock with sense.

use CM7 cause its coool...
Lol sorry im bored here at work atm but why its on all personal preference
I use cm7 on the slide cause i dont like all the bloatware on others/or lack of deving /support, and CM roms are most supported rom for themes and fixes/and ports,
and considering seems to be the rom that has most of the stuff in it working fully or to a degree where it is usable
thats things i can only think of now..

Imo there is no reason to go with cm7. I hear stuff about less bloatware but, there isn't much bloatware to begin with. I have about 20 apps installed and still have 130mb of free space on the phone. Just use aps2sd cachesd and a class 6 card and be done with it. I get the beutiful sense weather clock widget, the very pretty and functional htc sense mp3 player, and everything works with no issues and the phone is just as fast as cm7. Just make sure you update the kernel to the one nbetcher requests you use. I just wish he would have left myfaves in as I liked being able to quickly select the person I wanted to text or call. I also still have the myfaves account with tmobile.

icoman said:
Imo there is no reason to go with cm7. I hear stuff about less bloatware but, there isn't much bloatware to begin with. I have about 20 apps installed and still have 130mb of free space on the phone. Just use aps2sd cachesd and a class 6 card and be done with it. I get the beutiful sense weather clock widget, the very pretty and functional htc sense mp3 player, and everything works with no issues and the phone is just as fast as cm7. Just make sure you update the kernel to the one nbetcher requests you use. I just wish he would have left myfaves in as I liked being able to quickly select the person I wanted to text or call. I also still have the myfaves account with tmobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try this one, it is the stock final OTA ROM but is already rooted and retains the older HBOOT (not the new 1.0) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1042472
I'm running it with apps2sd and a Class 10 card, with /data and dalvik cache going to the ext3 partition. It is super fast, and still has all the goodies like faves and genius functions.

I tried 3rd Sense ROM (I hate T-Mobile's crappy Sense mod) and went back to CM 7 in a week. It has a whole lot of options that can make your phone actually yours. The T-Mobile Theme Chooser is great and there is a decent amount of themes for it on XDA and on the market. It is a whole lot smoother and I prefer stock over Sense. I hate bloatware and CM 7 has no bloatware (unless you think ADW.Launcher is bloatware). CM 7 is a ROM that is actually constantly updated and everything works 100% for me (Nightly Build 42 has the wi-fi drivers that HTC release so wi-fi works great and GPS was never a problem for me).
Sense Widgets are great but you can find something on the market that looks like the widgets and usually behaves better (you can skin them, etc.) I use Beautiful Widgets for my clock/weather needs.
Also the flash lite thing, it doesn't work for anything "major" I tried to run some embedded youtube videos when I was on a website and the youtube video was jerky and laggy. Better to use the actually youtube app and unless you enjoy watching choppy, laggy videos that drain half you battery in like 15 min, go ahead and use flash lite

UberMario said:
I tried 3rd Sense ROM (I hate T-Mobile's crappy Sense mod) and went back to CM 7 in a week. It has a whole lot of options that can make your phone actually yours. The T-Mobile Theme Chooser is great and there is a decent amount of themes for it on XDA and on the market. It is a whole lot smoother and I prefer stock over Sense. I hate bloatware and CM 7 has no bloatware (unless you think ADW.Launcher is bloatware). CM 7 is a ROM that is actually constantly updated and everything works 100% for me (Nightly Build 42 has the wi-fi drivers that HTC release so wi-fi works great and GPS was never a problem for me).
Sense Widgets are great but you can find something on the market that looks like the widgets and usually behaves better (you can skin them, etc.) I use Beautiful Widgets for my clock/weather needs.
Also the flash lite thing, it doesn't work for anything "major" I tried to run some embedded youtube videos when I was on a website and the youtube video was jerky and laggy. Better to use the actually youtube app and unless you enjoy watching choppy, laggy videos that drain half you battery in like 15 min, go ahead and use flash lite
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My experience has been very different from yours. The Sense ROMs perform very well here without an issue. That's the beauty of Android, we can have different versions to suit our individual tastes. You like CM7 better, I like the Sense ROMs, and we both win.

CM7.0.2 wins for me
I put off rooting my Slide for months because I was afraid of losing all the Sense UI stuff. But there were some things that became intolerable for me.
T-Mo puts that faves button next to the app drawer. My hand would hit it all the time on accident. I hate Faves. I think the concept is like making a redundant speed dial that is really slow and buggy and adds duplicate notifications when you get a text. I hated it.
It didn't help my opinion that the T-Mo apps broke every other month.
The HTC widgets are kinda cool but the animated rain gets old. The weather reporting was sub par anyway since about every third day the forecast would be completely off. I was, and still am, looking for a widget that pulls data from wunderground.com.
So, I finally made the jump when I saw CM7 released a stable. I got it. It worked really well. My phone got a lot faster overnight. T-Mo released the official update 3 days later and I put it on the wife's slide.
I am happy to report that side by side my slide is faster. I get all the same stuff she got but I can modify a lot of things she can't. CM7 settings makes really simple changes and tweaks easy. Like changing the notification pull down. Can't do that with Sense. You get what they give you.
Lastly, if you want some really good looking widgets try Minimalistic Text. Great looking, highly customizable and available to anyone.

well lets put it this way good sir its really up to you and what you want out of your phone for someone like yourself crmod might be better its just as stable as offical just allows you to keep root. i myself love cm7 and call me really lucky or whatnot i have no issues with cm 7 and never have my wifi is always flawless wifi hotspots are always working with pc bluetooth works great phone raido everything i have never had any issues. i did loose my s-off for being a dumbass and trying the new offical 2.2 tmob software that lasted mmm 2 hours and i had to re root that wasnt fun and now happy again. cm is good for me because i never had any issues some folks do though but much more options in cm that stock ever will have and my phone runs so much faster but i would check out cr mod you would like that and be able to keep root and all

[Q] Stupid questions about flashing stock on HTC

Sorry about this, it could well be obvious-
I'm used the the nexus way of thinking, where I started on pure android, so anything 'on top' of that (custom roms) would never lose anything, simply gain things. I'm getting an HTC One tomorrow (M8), which brings questions I've never had to think about, as I've always live in Google's bleeding edge of updates lane:
Now, obviously HTC runs sense which has various features, battery saving mode, blink feed etc, camera app specifically designed for duo, etc.
If I flash it so it's effectively the Play edition, does it keep any of the HTC apps? (I suppose what I',m asking is where is the line between HTC apps and HTC's "ROM"). Same goes for if I flash a custom ROM like Carbon or CM...
Also, and again sorry about this, but I don't understand how it works- if Carbon ROM (for example) is up to 4.4.4, and 4.4.4 hasn't been officially released for this HTC phone, does that just mean that the ROM developer has ported the 4.4.4 features and code to be compatible with the HTC in that ROM?

BlinkFeed, battery saving and the camera are integral parts of the ROM. They require Sense, they require a sense based ROM. They're not standalone apps. You will lose then if you don't have a sense based ROM and they cannot be added after.
Maybe there is a decent camera app for the Google Phone Experience edition.
You kind of have to choose whether you want Sense or not.

tmorterlaing said:
Sorry about this, it could well be obvious-
I'm used the the nexus way of thinking, where I started on pure android, so anything 'on top' of that (custom roms) would never lose anything, simply gain things. I'm getting an HTC One tomorrow (M8), which brings questions I've never had to think about, as I've always live in Google's bleeding edge of updates lane:
Now, obviously HTC runs sense which has various features, battery saving mode, blink feed etc, camera app specifically designed for duo, etc.
If I flash it so it's effectively the Play edition, does it keep any of the HTC apps? (I suppose what I',m asking is where is the line between HTC apps and HTC's "ROM"). Same goes for if I flash a custom ROM like Carbon or CM...
Also, and again sorry about this, but I don't understand how it works- if Carbon ROM (for example) is up to 4.4.4, and 4.4.4 hasn't been officially released for this HTC phone, does that just mean that the ROM developer has ported the 4.4.4 features and code to be compatible with the HTC in that ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kinda following on from Ben, the Sense-based ROMs have all of HTCs proprietary apps, such as BlinkFeed and their camera app. It's what you'll see when you get.
The Google Play edition (GPe) is basically like a Nexus device - it'll have none of HTCs visual changes or apps and will use all the Google apps like a Nexus device. You do get the motion gestures to turn the screen on with a swipe, and it does still use the depth camera and boom sound but other than that it'll behave like a Nexus. Some HTC apps can be downloaded from the Play Store but not many...
I tend to float between the GPe ROM and Sense depending on my mood, I'm on Sense right now

Check out this videohttp://youtu.be/8q3gGWn6HwM. Guy goes into quite a bit of detail explaining the differences of GPE vs. Sense 6. I actually used this video as a reference when I decided to try out a GPE Rom on my M8 a few weeks back.
Sent from my vR:M8

Thanks so much all- that really simplifies it. So I guess it's best to view sense as just another ROM with it's own features- just in the same way Carbon rom has it's own battery saver modes, which I assume work a little differently again.
Next question then, the things I like from sense are the camera app and the battery saver modes- purely because theyre designed specifically for my device. Is there anything remotely similar? Is there a way of getting those APKs from sense or soemthing?
And finally, my phone has a carrier (O2) splash screen on startup- if I need to sell this in future, is there a version of the images I can get hold of or even just the latest version of sense? (As if it's come straight form the factory)- I can't seem to see how to fully factory flash this phone anywhere :s