Initial Setup:
Ah, a new boot animation. I take it that's the Droid 2 ani, as stealing other Droid's boot anis and changing the colors seem to be the thing to do . I personally liked the Droid Does into the Droid X, but that's not really relevant. It beats the stock animation. Like usual, it didn't take but maybe a minute to load. Then I was surprised when my password was incorrect. Yeah. That was the Droid 2 keyboard, and issue already fixed by Liquid w/ the LFY1.41 patch. Market synced within 30 minutes (probably less, but I sat the phone down for about a half hour before I remembered I usually time that...sue me).

Appearance:
I've tried Blueberry and Smoked in the past, so I wanted to try two I never have, the Tangerine and Watermark'd. Very nice look with both of these. If you're a fan of orange, you'll love Tangerine. Also, it gave me an excuse to use the Prodigal Sun skin for Weather Widget Donate, finally. Then, there's Watermark'd, and I fell in love with the 3D app icons. Both offer themed pull down notification bars, lock screens, the works. Just about everything appeared to theme with just some small issues.

The issues I noticed were mostly with Watermark'd. If you change your LauncherPro icons, not every single icon has been themed. It's usually not an issue as the default app icon usually is, as is the case w/ the Market, Maps, Navigation, and Calendar. However, the Google Voice icon has been changed in the LauncherPro icons, but not the default icon, which has been annoying me for a while now. Again, small issues.

Performance:
I've seen a steady decrease in perfomance of this ROM from the first build. LFY1.0, while extremely buggy, was incredibly fast. It was evident in every aspect of phone navigation and population. This ROM continues the trend of a decline in performance on my Droid. I tried so many diff kernels, and my benchmarks were at best par for the course. Until...

Finally, a kernel that got me over the hump. slayher's 1.2GHz kernel is the fastest kernel I've used to date, finally getting me over 1600 on Quadrant (set only at 1.1GHz, mind you). I posted a screenshot elsewhere in the thread if anyone needs convincing. This, however, seems more evident of the kernel and not so much the ROM, considering I could barely score over 1500 with any of my normal kernels (and I've scored as high as 1569 with the first build).

System and App Function:
Battery life seems more stable with this ROM than the previous build (1.3 wasn't as good for my Droid as 1.2), running cool and lasting adequately. The Market worked fine, GPS, Wifi, the usual suspects. I did have an issue with Swype FCing, but uninstalling it and reinstalling it seemed to do the trick.

I did want to note that just about everytime I rebooted this for any reason (flashing diff kernels, fixing permissions, etc...), I saw the M logo at least twice, sometimes more. And everytime it came back, it took a full 20 secs before my Droid was actually useable. Usually, LauncherPro would FC, and then everything would go back to normal. This happened on each theme I tried.

Goodies:
It seems almost unfair to add this section when I haven't in my other reviews, but I'm going to start from now on. There was a time when it seemed only CyanogenMod ROMs were the only ones that provided those little extras. Now, it seems every ROM has something unto it's own, and let's face it, we want them. The only real extra here is the Reboot and Reboot into Recovery options from the power button, which are starting to become the norm.

Overview:
This ROM really does what you want it to, but is somewhat lacking wow factor for me. It's a very solid ROM that's worked out most of the previous issues, but doesn't bring to the table the level of customization that I can be OCD about. I know Liquid and his team are working hard on getting this ROM to top of the food chain, and I look forward to him taking this constructional criticism and blowing me away in builds to come. Until then...

Rating:
3 of 5 stars