Review: NexusHD2 ICS 4.0.3 CM9 v1.2

Ice Cream Sandwich

All the flavor, none of the calories

I couldn't resist the allure of an Ice Cream Sandwich.  I just had to have a taste of Android 4.0.  After a little bit of research, I decided to tryout tytung's NexusHD2-ICS-4.0.3-CM9 v1.2.  I based my choice on tytung's reputation as developer of custom Android builds.  This build is based on CyanogenMod 9 Android 4.0.3.

Installation was rather easy thanks in large part to the HD2 NAND Tool kit. This handy utility is a God send to frequent flashers.  Right out of the box I was impressed with out quickly it booted.  Normally on the first run it takes about 10 minutes, sometimes as long as half an hour. It already gave me the feeling of a light weight build despite it's required 200mb partition.

I had to resist the urge to start playing around with the various menus to see what was hidden behind the scenes.  I always try to give a new ROM a chance to "burn" in for at least a half hour before I start installing applications and personal touches.  It helps provide a more stable experience in the long run.  The temptation was strong though after seeing how smooth the screens transitioned during my sneak peak.  After my eternal half hour I got right to it.

Widget Drawer

After flipping through the various home screens I was immediately impressed with how smooth and fast it was.  My real astonishment came after I dug into the application drawer.  From home screen to the drawer was eye candy enough, but then as I kept going, I got to the widget drawer.  Widget drawer?!   With the Trebuchet launcher included in this CM9 based build, the application drawer transitions into the widget drawer.  Or simply hit the Widget tab at the top of your app drawer.  Where you can simply drag and drop your desired widget anywhere to your home screen of choice.  Very, very nice and intuitive.  A more simple way then long pressing on your home screen, then scrolling through a pop up to find the widgets, then scrolling through the widgets to find what you're looking for.

Appholes!

Organized neatly together.

Another nice feature with the Trebuchet launcher is being able to group applications together into a "folder" of sorts on your home screen.  It's more like a hole in your screen that you simply dump apps of your choice into.  Very similar to what MIUI has done.  By the way, here is my short review of MIUI:  Installed for less then 8 hours.

The data connection was very stable.  I did not experience any drops from the time I installed.  Call quality was excellent.  I did not test the blue tooth, simply because I do not have any blue tooth devices.  At some point I'll have to remedy this, just not sure when.  Wi-Fi was rock solid as well.  Battery life was what could be expected from a custom Android build.  6 hours at best under normal use.  My normal use is email push notifications, texting, social networking, internet and some gaming.  Under very heavy use, I might have gotten 4 hours.  Not bad in my book considering the age of my beloved HTC HD2.  I honestly never had any complaints in regards to battery life on any build I've installed.

Quadrant Score

This being a relatively new build it does have some issues.  Namely the stock camera is very buggy.  tytung does have a work around that requires flashing another camera modification from another developer.  A rather simple process that I decided not to due.  The Gallery application does have a tendency to freeze or simply force close and I was never able to get it to work. This is a known issue related to incomplete hardware acceleration.  The workaround for this issue is to simply install QuikcPic, which is an application I primarily use to begin with.  The quadrant score came out quite a bit lower then I would have expected from such a fast and smooth ROM.  The quadrant score is really a bench marking tool and is not indicative of the quality of the build.

Overall this is a very functional daily driver for your HD2.  It has some great features that I am excited about.  It is a very smooth and very stable first generation CM9 based build.  If your looking to get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich then I would highly recommend giving this build a try.

HyperDroid v5.3 - Jumping Jaguar

Warning: Phone Geek Lingo Ahead!


This is the latest installment from the HyperDroid Team.  It's based on Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) & Cyanogen Mod 7.1.  What's different in this version?  The biggest change is that they switched from ADW Launcher to LauncherPro.  According to one of the developers when I asked about the change, he stated that it runs smoother and faster with this build then ADW.  They also spent some time skinning the launcher to fit the theme of the build.  My take?  At first I was a little perturbed by the change.  For one, it doesn't nearly have the stock options that ADW (free version) has.  Mainly being able to re-size widgets after you adjust your columns and rows to your taste.  Typically I like to run a 6x6 grid on my desktop.  With LauncherPro you have to purchase the unlock code in order to use this feature.  I do like LauncherPro after I tinkered with it for a few hours and I eventually purchased the unlocked version.  I now can place some of the built in widgets that come with this version, such as messaging & bookmarks.  All very nice features.

Some of the other big changes, at least for me, was that after the installation it started to install apps automatically that I had had on my previous HyperDroid version.  Even down to the wallpaper that I had.  I still had to download quite a few other apps, such as Beautiful Widget and XDA Developers.

It seams like the signal strength and data run a bit stronger than the prior version.  I seem to be hitting a few more 3G spots where I wasn't getting them before.  I'm not sure if it's because the kernel is working better with the radio version or if T-Mobile is upgrading the coverage area where I live.  As far as speed goes, it's a slight edge to the prior version.  There have been complaints from other users that they have been experiencing dramatic signal and data drops and only doing a restart fixes the issue.  I have not experienced any of that yet.  Your mileage may vary.

Installation was easy.  I started from a complete wipe with a task29.  Overkill I'm sure, but I want to make sure there are no prior versions lingering in NAND that might hamper the new install.

If your not happy with the stock theme, then by all means feel free to change it to any one of the many CM7 themes floating out there.  If you choose to go with a custom theme like Anastasdroid then be sure to do a full backup of your NAND prior to themeing.  On my phone I am using Anastasdroid and I absolutely love it.
Keep in mind when you use a custom theme that it might actually drag down the performance of your phone.

Overall I give this a hearty two thumbs up.  It does run very smooth, fast and stable.  It does run an older version of the Android Market, which I do not have a problem with.  They developers do this because of the various display densities that flashers use.  The new market checks the density and will limit the amount of applications you can see based on that feedback.  Most have a personal preference.  I myself like the stock 192 this version comes with.

Link to HyperDroid v5.3