Hawker
Android Expert
I have been dabbling with Hydrog3n and D4 Rom for the past 2 or three days, and I just thought I'd post up my thoughts for anyone who may be interested.
I always had the intention of not even contemplating ICS until JKay+CheckROM hits the streets, so the thoughts of an ICS CM/AOSP/AOKP rom was enough to make me shudder. JKay has always been a must-have for me, and I think his work truely has set the GS2 apart from the rest.
My first attempt was Hyrog3n. To be honest I found this to be so alien to me, I restored my CWM backup of GB CheckROM within half an hour.
I then decided to give these types of ROMs a fairer go, so I put on D4Rom with the intention of sticking to it for at least a day. All I have to say is I am glad I did! I NEVER thought I could live without a ROM without JKay, but these AOSP type ROMs really do it all and more. Having a greater appreciation of this I then decided to give Hydrog3n a proper go in order to make a comparison of the two.
Basically these 2 ROMs are identical, having the same CM9 base with Hydrog3n going one flavour further down the line being AOKP based, so there is little to choose between the two. Coming from a CM9 base this means there are some superb features in both of these 2. Its a shame that the best of the two couldn't be merged into one!
What good features do BOTH these ROMs have?
1. ROM-Specific preferences are accessible via the settings menu. This alows a huge range of options not present on standard Sammy ROMs to be configured. Most of these extra options discussed below are accessible through here.
2. Data usage is a nice feature of ics. no more having to install the rather wakelock hungry "my data manager" any more. This can be split into mobile data and wifi. A time interval that relates to you bill start date can be defined and a data usage limit specified. In both data and wifi, the usage is broken down into the applications that used it. It even shows on a per app basis how much data was used in the foreground and background, so you can fish out any naughty insidious applications! I know, this is a feature of ICS rather than the ROM, but its worth mentioning.
3. Loads of new notifications and ringtones
4. Some nice graphical bar graphs under Storage
5. There is an Advanced section whereby you can adjust general screen ambience for cold,warm etc, along with gamma settings. You can also set it to an Outdoor mode in here for a very bright screen if need be.
6. An extremely customizable notification drawer, with swype to clear. Widgets can be defined (wifi,data,bluetooth etc)
7. Battery icon style can be selected on the fly.
8. The reboot option at the power menu opens up to allow Reboot, Recovery or Download mode.
What does D4 Rom has over Hydrog3n?
1. A Theme Engine. Instructions here This is a bit gimmicky, but ok. It basically allows you to pick individual applications that you want themed. The basis is to create a CWM.zip file, rename it to .d4te, then open it with root explorer or similar. I believe during the last update or two, this has now been implemented properly.
2. Profiles, similar to old Nokia days, allowing profiles for work, home, meeting or whatever. However, these profiles also allow you to select if you want data, wifi, gps etc. on/off. You can even define within each profile, a profile for application groups such as calendar, email, sms allowing you to define ringtone settings etc. These profiles are also accessible via the Power menu.
3. A very nice Honeycomb lock screen can be enabled/disabled. This has a lovely animated ripple-effect lock when touched.
4. Host file can be updated to block adverts from browser/apps.
5. D4rKn3sSyS (the dev of D4) has modded the camera to allow storing to external SD card. This camera.apk file can be used on either ROM if required. I think this mod has now been incorporated into CM9 proper.
6. Has an OTA App that is self updating. Checks if your ROM is up to date. I think it is also used to alter framework settings. Not sure if it checks anything else.
7. Sound Management allowing you to turn off/on a lot of system sounds, such as camera click, focus, low battery etc. Unfortunately, the ringtone itself cannot be changed, only enabled/disabled.
8. Quiet Hours. Allows you to specify a time range (eg. in the early hours of the morning) to keep your phone quiet.
9. Few more battery styles.
What does Hydrog3n has over D4 Rom?
1. An excellent Power Saving Mode. You can specify what to do when the phone is not in use (ie screen is off). You can select to disable bluetooth, wifi, data, all sorts of things. The beauty of this however, is you can specify a time frame to which this is to kick in. Eg. If the screen is off for an hour (or whatever you specify) disable all/some the battery hungry stuff.
2. A battery bar can be displayed. This is a thin line (thickness, colour and position configurable) that goes from left to right on the screen, with the line all the way across the screen symbolising battery at 100%, and creeps gradually from right to left as the battery level drops.
3. Battery styles selected on the fly are current instantly on the notification bar. In D4, it patches the new style into the framework, so takes about a minute.
4. Upcoming events can be scrolled through in the lock screen if required.
Other notes
1. Hydrog3n comes bundled with a Netchip kernel, D4 with Siyah 3.x
2. Both come bundled with Trebuchet Launcher. This is ok. Not as customizable as Go Launcher for example, but I wanted a pretty Lite installation, so I decided to stick with it.
3. Swype 3.26 Beta needs to be installed separately on both.
What's Bad?
1. Scrolling. Not a ROM problem, but ICS. However, with the latest Siyah, it has seemed to improved. Its still not up to GB standards in my opinion.
2. The stock browser is not as fluent as the GB one. Zooming in+out is very stuttery. I just seem to prefer the feel of the GB version.
3. The stock Email, contacts, sms and calendar apps look dreadful! Themes are few and far between it seems for these two ROMS at the moment, but the one that is in the link above Re: theme engine is quite nice. However, I would strongly recommend you edit the zip file to only include the apps you want (remove framework and systemUI) as I got a few FC errors after. This theme greatly improves you overall user experience on both these ROMs in my opinion. More themes will surely follow shortly however.
4. Battery life is not great so far. However, I'm a little more optimistic now I'm on the latest Siyah with its "battery" eXTweaks profile, and also now I have ditched the hungrier SPB Shell for Trebuchet. Only time will tell....
Conclusions
There is nothing to choose between these two. Personally I think D4 just shades it, but if it had the Hydrog3n plus points above, it would be a sure-fire hands down winner.
I hated this type of ROM on my initial go, like I already mentioned, but now my feelings have totally been turned on its head. I can honestly say I cannot see myself going back to JKay+CheckROM unless there is some seriously good feedback on it. I am a CM/AOSP convert!
I always had the intention of not even contemplating ICS until JKay+CheckROM hits the streets, so the thoughts of an ICS CM/AOSP/AOKP rom was enough to make me shudder. JKay has always been a must-have for me, and I think his work truely has set the GS2 apart from the rest.
My first attempt was Hyrog3n. To be honest I found this to be so alien to me, I restored my CWM backup of GB CheckROM within half an hour.
I then decided to give these types of ROMs a fairer go, so I put on D4Rom with the intention of sticking to it for at least a day. All I have to say is I am glad I did! I NEVER thought I could live without a ROM without JKay, but these AOSP type ROMs really do it all and more. Having a greater appreciation of this I then decided to give Hydrog3n a proper go in order to make a comparison of the two.
Basically these 2 ROMs are identical, having the same CM9 base with Hydrog3n going one flavour further down the line being AOKP based, so there is little to choose between the two. Coming from a CM9 base this means there are some superb features in both of these 2. Its a shame that the best of the two couldn't be merged into one!
What good features do BOTH these ROMs have?
1. ROM-Specific preferences are accessible via the settings menu. This alows a huge range of options not present on standard Sammy ROMs to be configured. Most of these extra options discussed below are accessible through here.
2. Data usage is a nice feature of ics. no more having to install the rather wakelock hungry "my data manager" any more. This can be split into mobile data and wifi. A time interval that relates to you bill start date can be defined and a data usage limit specified. In both data and wifi, the usage is broken down into the applications that used it. It even shows on a per app basis how much data was used in the foreground and background, so you can fish out any naughty insidious applications! I know, this is a feature of ICS rather than the ROM, but its worth mentioning.
3. Loads of new notifications and ringtones
4. Some nice graphical bar graphs under Storage
5. There is an Advanced section whereby you can adjust general screen ambience for cold,warm etc, along with gamma settings. You can also set it to an Outdoor mode in here for a very bright screen if need be.
6. An extremely customizable notification drawer, with swype to clear. Widgets can be defined (wifi,data,bluetooth etc)
7. Battery icon style can be selected on the fly.
8. The reboot option at the power menu opens up to allow Reboot, Recovery or Download mode.
What does D4 Rom has over Hydrog3n?
1. A Theme Engine. Instructions here This is a bit gimmicky, but ok. It basically allows you to pick individual applications that you want themed. The basis is to create a CWM.zip file, rename it to .d4te, then open it with root explorer or similar. I believe during the last update or two, this has now been implemented properly.
2. Profiles, similar to old Nokia days, allowing profiles for work, home, meeting or whatever. However, these profiles also allow you to select if you want data, wifi, gps etc. on/off. You can even define within each profile, a profile for application groups such as calendar, email, sms allowing you to define ringtone settings etc. These profiles are also accessible via the Power menu.
3. A very nice Honeycomb lock screen can be enabled/disabled. This has a lovely animated ripple-effect lock when touched.
4. Host file can be updated to block adverts from browser/apps.
5. D4rKn3sSyS (the dev of D4) has modded the camera to allow storing to external SD card. This camera.apk file can be used on either ROM if required. I think this mod has now been incorporated into CM9 proper.
6. Has an OTA App that is self updating. Checks if your ROM is up to date. I think it is also used to alter framework settings. Not sure if it checks anything else.
7. Sound Management allowing you to turn off/on a lot of system sounds, such as camera click, focus, low battery etc. Unfortunately, the ringtone itself cannot be changed, only enabled/disabled.
8. Quiet Hours. Allows you to specify a time range (eg. in the early hours of the morning) to keep your phone quiet.
9. Few more battery styles.
What does Hydrog3n has over D4 Rom?
1. An excellent Power Saving Mode. You can specify what to do when the phone is not in use (ie screen is off). You can select to disable bluetooth, wifi, data, all sorts of things. The beauty of this however, is you can specify a time frame to which this is to kick in. Eg. If the screen is off for an hour (or whatever you specify) disable all/some the battery hungry stuff.
2. A battery bar can be displayed. This is a thin line (thickness, colour and position configurable) that goes from left to right on the screen, with the line all the way across the screen symbolising battery at 100%, and creeps gradually from right to left as the battery level drops.
3. Battery styles selected on the fly are current instantly on the notification bar. In D4, it patches the new style into the framework, so takes about a minute.
4. Upcoming events can be scrolled through in the lock screen if required.
Other notes
1. Hydrog3n comes bundled with a Netchip kernel, D4 with Siyah 3.x
2. Both come bundled with Trebuchet Launcher. This is ok. Not as customizable as Go Launcher for example, but I wanted a pretty Lite installation, so I decided to stick with it.
3. Swype 3.26 Beta needs to be installed separately on both.
What's Bad?
1. Scrolling. Not a ROM problem, but ICS. However, with the latest Siyah, it has seemed to improved. Its still not up to GB standards in my opinion.
2. The stock browser is not as fluent as the GB one. Zooming in+out is very stuttery. I just seem to prefer the feel of the GB version.
3. The stock Email, contacts, sms and calendar apps look dreadful! Themes are few and far between it seems for these two ROMS at the moment, but the one that is in the link above Re: theme engine is quite nice. However, I would strongly recommend you edit the zip file to only include the apps you want (remove framework and systemUI) as I got a few FC errors after. This theme greatly improves you overall user experience on both these ROMs in my opinion. More themes will surely follow shortly however.
4. Battery life is not great so far. However, I'm a little more optimistic now I'm on the latest Siyah with its "battery" eXTweaks profile, and also now I have ditched the hungrier SPB Shell for Trebuchet. Only time will tell....
Conclusions
There is nothing to choose between these two. Personally I think D4 just shades it, but if it had the Hydrog3n plus points above, it would be a sure-fire hands down winner.
I hated this type of ROM on my initial go, like I already mentioned, but now my feelings have totally been turned on its head. I can honestly say I cannot see myself going back to JKay+CheckROM unless there is some seriously good feedback on it. I am a CM/AOSP convert!
