Root ROM questions

[verneir]

I've tried to find these answers but I'm going around in circles. I wonder if by some miracle there is someone here that can answer the following for me, because that'd be just AWESOME!

1) What, if any, is the BEST ROM based on these criteria

a) STABLE

b) supports all features of a NON rooted Droid phone properly - can be v2.0.1 for all I care, I would just re-run this same list at a later date for a custom ROM running the official 2.1 or later equivalent I suppose.

c) while accomplishing all other criteria listed, still allows for overclocking by the USER - i don't mind using another app to do this - allows tethering and other applications which would typically require ROOT access

d) Accomplishes or at least allows for VOLTAGE and/or PROFILE adjustments to help fine tune battery life while balancing performance - again, doesn't really matter to me if I end up having to pay for an app to addon to accomplish this

So basically I have one question with many qualifiers. Quite frankly, live wallpaper to me would be interesting if I could turn it on/off, it was stable, and I could mess around with overclocking, voltages, profiles etc until I found what was acceptable for me - but seriously, whatever. If I can only get live wallpaper in a custom rom today by sacrificing basic official functionality, then it's not for me. That's the gist of where I'm coming from right now.

I want better performance without sacrificing what I've already got and to turn my phone into a mobile internet device to tether to my laptop. When/if I find a sweet Quake3 port, or whatever, then I'd like to run it that much better because I'm clocked at 850 instead of 550, for example.

Can anybody help me out? If the answer is that there is, for sure, NO ROM that does this right now that's fine too I'll just wait.

Oh, and I did check my firmware and it is NOT 2.1.. it is 2.0.1..and I even manually checked for a system update which is NOT available on my phone today. I promise. It's all good as of right now.

Thanks for any help with these specifics that any of you may be able to give.

(PS: I also know about PDANet - just looking for ROOT / custom ROM specific info right now - however, I wonder if it's know whether offical android release 2.1 from verizon will block PDAnet? hmm)

 

[droidpcguru]

Shoot me down if I am wrong.. but I would recommend DroidRom 1.0. Using DMUpdater, it will download the ROM, root for you, install the new recovery and busybox, do a Nandroid backup, and install the ROM. You can select to keep you Data, which will preserve your apps and settings(provided your Droid is running good, this makes things a lot easier). It will let you customize it as you install it, to keep what you want and change what you want. It runs very stable, and has all the features you ask. For Overclocking get SetCPU to go with the ROM. DroidRom 1.0 also has wireless tethering built in, and an app to go with it. It also has live wallpapers that work and can be turned on or off. For them to function fully(as in also have touch interactions), I recommenmd DxTop, which gives you 5 screens(2 of them up and down), and also a whole bunch more customization features.

Battery life will depend on your SetCPU settings and your phone usage.. but can actually improve by turning the clockspeed down when you don't need it.

Droidrom comes with a stock theme. If you want this changed to a darker theme, Metamorph works beautifully for this and there are some really nice "Morphs" to choose from.

Of course after it is installed, it is a good idea to actually learn the basics of rooting and ADB, in case you run into issues.

Just my $.02 ..

 

[justjosh]

2.1 bugless beast. Only had one force close since I installed the rom about 3 days ago. I'm using the chevy kernel with ten slots and I'm oced to 1.25ghz. Live wallpapers working, 5 home screens full of widgets, multi touch browser.

I highly recommend doing a full wipe and advanced nandroid restore to install. My phone is lightning fast and bug free. You can use astro to backup your apps so its not very difficult to getthem back after a data wipe.

@ 1.25ghz my droid is faster loading web pages than the nexus on btw

 

[Fabolous]

Every single ROM out there satisfies all your criteria.

Everyone has their own anecdotes on which they feel is the best.

You'll have to give a few a try to see which one you like the best.

 

[droidpcguru]

Not to argue, but don't all the 2.1 ROMS cause loss of the notifaction LED functionality? I only ask because the OP wants a fully functional phone.

 

[verneir]

2.1 bugless beast. Only had one force close since I installed the rom about 3 days ago. I'm using the chevy kernel with ten slots and I'm oced to 1.25ghz. Live wallpapers working, 5 home screens full of widgets, multi touch browser.

I highly recommend doing a full wipe and advanced nandroid restore to install. My phone is lightning fast and bug free. You can use astro to backup your apps so its not very difficult to getthem back after a data wipe.

@ 1.25ghz my droid is faster loading web pages than the nexus on btw

One issue in 3 days at 1.25Ghz isn't bad. Are you using SetCPU or does the build of BB ROM you're using automatically set your CPU to 1.25GHz? I ask because
1) That sounds a little aggressive. I'd rather go 800Mhz - 1Ghz for peace of mind, even if I'd end up on par with or slightly slower than a Nexus
2) I'm ultimately looking for a performance:battery life balance, and I tend to doubt pushing 1.25GHz is going to accomplish that for me, although I intend to upgrade to a larger battery as well before too long.

I just need to get ROOT and custom ROM considerations out of the way before I lose the ability to do so for X number of months/years/infinity/whatever (on account of the security hole patch in v2.1 of the official system software).

 

[verneir]

Shoot me down if I am wrong.. but I would recommend DroidRom 1.0. Using DMUpdater, it will download the ROM, root for you, install the new recovery and busybox, do a Nandroid backup, and install the ROM. You can select to keep you Data, which will preserve your apps and settings(provided your Droid is running good, this makes things a lot easier). It will let you customize it as you install it, to keep what you want and change what you want. It runs very stable, and has all the features you ask. For Overclocking get SetCPU to go with the ROM. DroidRom 1.0 also has wireless tethering built in, and an app to go with it. It also has live wallpapers that work and can be turned on or off. For them to function fully(as in also have touch interactions), I recommenmd DxTop, which gives you 5 screens(2 of them up and down), and also a whole bunch more customization features.

Battery life will depend on your SetCPU settings and your phone usage.. but can actually improve by turning the clockspeed down when you don't need it.

Droidrom comes with a stock theme. If you want this changed to a darker theme, Metamorph works beautifully for this and there are some really nice "Morphs" to choose from.

Of course after it is installed, it is a good idea to actually learn the basics of rooting and ADB, in case you run into issues.

Just my $.02 ..

Are you now using, or have you ever used, this ROM yourself? If so what CPU speeds are you running and roughly what change in battery life have you observed?

I understand that increasing the CPU speeds will, apparently in this case, always decrease battery life as from what I've read in this thread and elsewhere to date it doesn't sound like there are any voltage control to speak of.. but.. that's fine.

For example if 10% battery life is sacrificed for a 33% gain in performance, that's good by me..especially once I switch out to a larger battery and/or get a second battery. However if I get even a 100% increase in performance but I can only use 3G for an hour before the battery is dead, then that's not going to work for me.

 

[droidpcguru]

Are you now using, or have you ever used, this ROM yourself? If so what CPU speeds are you running and roughly what change in battery life have you observed?

I understand that increasing the CPU speeds will, apparently in this case, always decrease battery life as from what I've read in this thread and elsewhere to date it doesn't sound like there are any voltage control to speak of.. but.. that's fine.

For example if 10% battery life is sacrificed for a 33% gain in performance, that's good by me..especially once I switch out to a larger battery and/or get a second battery. However if I get even a 100% increase in performance but I can only use 3G for an hour before the battery is dead, then that's not going to work for me.

I am using Sholes 2.0.6(The predecessor to DroidMod 1.0). The ONLY differences are that in DM 1.0 They removed the Smoked Glass theme and included the live wallpapers, so you don't have to hack them in yourself. DM also has a DroidMod boot animation instead of a SholesMod one. Otherwise, the two ROMs are the same-kernel, apps, functionality, etc. I would be on DM 1.0 if I had installed my ROM 3 hours later than I did, since DM 1.0 was not out yet. As you may have read, there was a fallout with the primary member and server owner of the Sholes team, so the remaining people moved on to become DroidMod. Their ROm's quality did not suffer however.

I have added in the live wallpapers, plus Morphed my theme such as I wrote in my first reply.

This is the most solid ROM I have run to date. No force closes(unless I am just asking for it by running iffy software).

Battery life is quite decent, all things considered. I usually run a 1GHz overclock, with SetCPU set to ondemand so the CPU only ramps up when needed. I also have profiles set up to ramp down the processor when the phone "sleeps". Let me stress that the battery life when overclocked will depend on what you are doing with your phone. The live wallpapers will not make it take a bad hit, since they stop running when in the background or the phone sleeps. But if you have your OC set to 1G or higher and you do a lot of CPU-intensive activities(Videos, fancy camera apps, games, etc.) for extended periods of time you will see the battery drain faster. For an average phone user without constant fiddling such as myself, battery life should actually improve becuse of ramping down the processor when not needed, even with the live wallpapers activated. Of course screen brightness and on-time are the absolute biggest factors in battery life.

For me, having the screen on and using the phone for texting and playing around an average of 30-40 minutes out of every hour, my battery will last about 6-7 hours at 1G OC. Ob a boring day where nobody is bothering me and I'm not taking pictures or watching videos all the time, my batery will easily last all day, still with the 1G OC. I would say this meets your 10% loss for ~30% gain. The performance gain from the OC(even an 800MHz OC) is VERY noticeable and surprisingly easy on the battery.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that your recorded videos will look better since they are saved at a higher bitrate in this ROM, plus the YouTube player is defaulted to HQ in this ROM. I recommend running at least an 800MHZ OC for these, especially video recording.

Hope this helps

 

[OMJ]

Every single ROM out there satisfies all your criteria.

Everyone has their own anecdotes on which they feel is the best.

You'll have to give a few a try to see which one you like the best.

+1 to this. You really gotta just try them and see what works for you.

When I tried droid mod 1.0 my battery life was beyond terrible but other people have no problems with battery life. I am currently using BB 2.1 v.4 cause I was having some problems with BB 1.1 Right now for me bb .4 is the most stable and best in terms of performance for me but you results might differ.

 

[droidpcguru]

May I ask what kind of usage your Droid sees through the average day? My battery life is actually better thank it has ever been, all things considered..

The biggest factor in battery life IS usage..

 

[OMJ]

I installed dm one day before work. Did a clean nandroid install and hardly used it at all the rest of the work day other than some google talk and light web browsing. By the time I left work it was at 20% battery and its normally 60% or 70%.

 

[verneir]

The average day with my droid - well.. since I've had it in my hands for about 16 hours now, I couldn't tell you. But of course me knowing me and having had an iPaq in the past, etc, etc..I can probably guess.

Most of the time I will use it to tell the time. Occassionally there will be a phone call. The vast majority of the phone calls will not go past 30 minutes, if even that long.

I will ocassionally use the internet, much more so in the next few weeks just to get used to the device and the abilities in terms of using the web. I will probably find some apps I want, such as weather, a game or two, a few other things.

I will tether my phone to a laptop but in the immediate future the use of which will be limited to making sure it is working and seeing what kind of throughput I get. After that it'll be limited to when I actually need it and as I don't travel much, this won't be happening too frequently - probably - I am getting into some other things, so I may use it more than I think, but that'd be with a travel charger anyway in the car via the cigarette lighter. Either that or maybe I'll buy a converter/transformer to save the battery a bit? Not sure on that detail at the moment. I hear car charges are quick chargers and eat batteries.

Basically I'm a geek with a new toy that I won't go nutso with. I got it because I have a 20% discount with Verizon and my old regular voice/text plan was something like $70 a month anyway, whereas right now with unlimited data, 300 minutes nationwide voice, 500 text messages and full insurance coverage I'm only payin $83/month (before taxes).. so I figured, what the heck. Get this, get PDAnet or hack the phone for tethering, and when I get my Asus G73JH-A1 laptop later this year I'll be good to go.

What I generally like to do with my computers and such is look into them a great deal, figure out what works well for me, get it done and forget about it. Then a year, two, three years go by and I rinse and repeat with the next device.

Oh and I'll check email (gmail) from time to time, but as I don't read/write 20 messages a day that is also light use. Maybe later this year or next I might use it for corporate email but I doubt it as most companies frown on that and I don't want to mess with most companies policies, have my phone wiped, or any of that BS.

Also since I don't have much experience with Linux I thought.. why not get a phone running Linux and hack it. Sounds crazy, but any experience/knowledge helps at some point when you're in the IT sector.

 

[droidpcguru]

I still stick with my recommendation Opinions vary but I believe you will be happy with DM 1.0 for now, until the DMUpdater prompts you that there is a new ROM from them, and you get curious.

One of my reasons is that the DroidMod team has stated once and again that they are dedicated to only releasing stable(take-to-work type) ROMS, and so far by me they have lived up to that, save one release a few weeks ago that they very promptly fixed. I have messed with the Bugless ROMS, and *personally had bad luck with them(FC's galore), plus I have been constantly reading other people's comments on them, which makes me stick with DM. The DM ROMS are currently the only ones I know of that come with the touchscreen fixes built into the kernel that you may have read about, also. If you are a fast typer, these are nice to have.

I can't honestly say I have any idea why the above poster's battery life was so terrible..

Of course I am speaking from my personal experience(I actually have a thread in this section on the subject if you'd care to read it-just click on my name to find it). Other's opinions will of course vary..

 

[verneir]

Yeah I was leaning toward Bugless Beauty, just because of how many people mention it, but it also spurred me to write this thread. Whether user error or other technical issues there may be, generally ROOT/custom ROM threads are like this,
"It's awesome, except.."

Which after awhile made my head hurt.

I'll most likely go ahead and give DroidMod 1.0 a try this evening. All I've done with my Droid at this point is activate it, surf the web a tinsy bit, and entered some contacts as I got tired of trying to use Verizon Wireless Backup Assistant (not sure it's supported on the Droid)

 

[droidpcguru]

Sounds good.

First go into Settings-Applications and make sure Unknown Sources is checked.

Then, Go here for Droidmod(from your phone's browser):

DroidMod - Everything Droid doesn't, DroidMod does.

Scroll down and you will see the link for DMupdater. Click it to download it, then install and run it- should be smooth sailing from there. It will recommend "No" for every step along the way(A deterrent to people who might not know enough about rooting), but it is quite self explanatory.

Feel free to ask questions is you are unsure about any of the steps along the way. Two common things- Wiping Data will cause you to have an "Out of the box-like" but rooted and ROMed phone-you will lose all your apps/settings/contacts, etc. Of course contacts come back by re-syncing. If your phone is running properly right now, and isn't all cluttered up with junk, you should have no problem saying NO to wiping Data. Also if you like the 2.0.1 lockscreen and don't want the old archy-style one, make sure to uncheck it in the options when your phone reboots to install the ROM. Navigation in the recovery console is by hardware buttons only(it tells which ones to use).

Good luck!

 

[verneir]

Going through process now. Phone is rooted, flashing recovery image now. Yea it's pretty easy with their process so far.

What's funny is I'm not actually taking much risk. I have full insurance. I get a new phone if mine is stolen. I can just report it stolen if it were to become a brick.. I just can't do it more than once a year or something like that. =)

 

[verneir]

I installed dm one day before work. Did a clean nandroid install and hardly used it at all the rest of the work day other than some google talk and light web browsing. By the time I left work it was at 20% battery and its normally 60% or 70%.

Well I had my phone on for 10 hours today and it didn't even register any drop in battery charge. But I didn't use it other than to check the time a few times either. That is with a mostly factory settings phone, I setup gmail account and left settings at default, and it was running the official 2.0.1 firmware.

I'm installing DM 1.0 right now..so.. I shall see how tomorrow compares in that regard, though I imagine it will depend on the overclocking and profile settings, etc as well.

Having said that, obviously I will try BB or another mod if I can't get the DM1.0 I'm installing now to have decent battery life, or experience any other issues that are unacceptable.

 

[verneir]

Well here's an interesting one.. which music to install
1) 2.1
2) Milestone 2.0.0
3) 2.0.1 (Stock)

Trying to google Milestone to see WTH that is, without spending an hour getting a straight answer, and so far... not so great results on that effort.

Ehm.. Ennie Meenie Minnie Moe..

 

[verneir]

Well I chose Music 2.1, Gallery 2.1 (Picasa) and when prompted what apps to remove I selected none - or rather unselected all the apps that were selected by default.

 

[verneir]

And right off the bat the car navigation crashed, which I find amusing because it even asks this during the ROM installation if that's an issue. I guess I have to go back into the rom flash, select yes and then reinstall that app.

 

[verneir]

still working on getting google maps to work and hoping car navigation won't instantly crash once that's done

edit: and now google maps is back & car navigation appears to be working again. I just installed motorola 32 bit drivers on my 32 bit winxp pro sp3 laptop (which i didnt need to do when I was running the official software, but thats ok) as windows was like "wtf did you just connect to me?" while running droidmod1.0. I'm going to stop spamming this thread quite so much and tool around with this for a bit and post an update later tonight.

 

[cdmta]

I think the milestone music app adds coverflow ability when landscape. i used it in some rom, can't remember which.
I, myself had nothing but problems with the droidmod rom. it froze the phone repeatedly and i had to battery pull and reflash it.
I am using the Smoked glass 4.5 and love it, only because i really like the 2.1 launcher. i do miss the live wallpaper from BB, but that seemed to only slow you down anyways. Try them all to see which you prefer. i did.

 

[cdmta]

.....random post just to get to 200 posts........sorry

 

[justjosh]

One issue in 3 days at 1.25Ghz isn't bad. Are you using SetCPU or does the build of BB ROM you're using automatically set your CPU to 1.25GHz? I ask because
1) That sounds a little aggressive. I'd rather go 800Mhz - 1Ghz for peace of mind, even if I'd end up on par with or slightly slower than a Nexus
2) I'm ultimately looking for a performance:battery life balance, and I tend to doubt pushing 1.25GHz is going to accomplish that for me, although I intend to upgrade to a larger battery as well before too long.

I just need to get ROOT and custom ROM considerations out of the way before I lose the ability to do so for X number of months/years/infinity/whatever (on account of the security hole patch in v2.1 of the official system software).

i am using setcpu, if you want to know the exact profiles i can let you know.

btw i had a lot more issues with sholesmod/droidmod than with a clean install of BB 2.1. try it out you won't be disappointed.

 

[verneir]

I may end up trying BB 2.1 at some point, dunno.. I don't have any known issues as of this moment, now that maps/car nav is working again, however I just discovered the root/ROM tethering thingy.. DOESN'T SUPPORT USB!! Which.. to me.. is the only way to tether. LoL, less than full broadband speed + risks of carrier saying "WTH are you doing?!" going over the air (anything over the air isn't as reliable as wired as far as I'm concerned) only to go over the air a SECOND time? FFS..

Guess I need to fork over $30.00 for PDANet anyway.. I failed to mention that I specifically want/expect USB tethering support when I said tethering, holy crap. Well, such is the life of hacks, cracks and open source I guess.

I even donated $10.00 to the open source wireless tethering project. Ah, well. What's spending $40.00 for an illegal internet connection that may randomly get terminated permamently.. =D

This is certainly going to be a learning curve. Honestly, I'm going full bore towards getting done with this. In the future I doubt I'll bother with a phone like this at all unless it supports what I want out of the box. Too much headache already. Dunno, maybe by the time I'm done with all this I'll think I over reacted. I shall see.