Monday, October 15, 2012

Custom Rom Review: CyanogenMod 10

Picture taken from here.
I have recently rooted and unlocked the bootloader of my HTC Sensation and can finally try some new rom other than the stock rom that I've been using for a while now. It makes me really excited and so I thought about sharing the experience I have with some of the custom rom that I tried. I will also talk about the things I likes and also the things I dislikes regarding the custom rom that I tried.

Without further delay, the first custom rom that I will be writing is the ever popular CyanogenMod 10 (a.k.a CM 10) which is running Jelly Bean (4.1.2), the latest dessert from Android. You can see what's new in Jelly Bean here. Here's the official description of CyanogenMod from its official website:-

"CyanogenMod (pronounced sigh-AN-oh-jen-mod), is a customized, aftermarket firmware distribution for several Android devices. Based on the Android Open Source Project, CyanogenMod is designed to increase performance and reliability over Android-based ROMs released by vendors and carriers such as Google, T-Mobile, HTC, etc. CyanogenMod also offers a variety of features & enhancements that are not currently found in these versions of Android." - http://www.cyanogenmod.com

Before I start my review, I would like to also clarify that the custom rom that I am using isn't directly from CyanogenMod itself as they only support up to CyanogenMod 9 for my HTC Sensation. Thus, the rom that I am using is an unofficial port from the original CM 10 by one of XDA Developer's senior member by the name of bruce2728. You can get the rom here if you are interested to try it yourself.

Alright, done with the introduction and clarification and now, here's my personal opinion on this rom:-

What I like
  • Almost everything is working fine. Meaning it's a pretty stable rom
  • DSP Equalizer which gives some pretty good sound enhancement
  • Customization of lock screen such as:-
    • Customizable lock screen shortcuts
    • Customizable clock and weather position in the lock screen
    • Beautiful weather panel in lock screen
  • Lock screen gesture where you can draw a gesture in the lock screen to open an application or do some activity
  • CRT animation when turning off the screen using the power button
What I dislike
  • Picture taken from the camera app is not displayed in full screen (picture ratio does not fit my screen)
  • Too few customization to suits my customization thirst :p
  • Wifi connection is not stable. Keep on disconnecting even though I'm sitting next to my router. Have to off and on the wifi again to be able to connect back to my wifi once the connection is disconnected
  • Some random restarts once a while
Conclusion, this rom is pretty stable and very close to the Stock Android. For those who wants something very similar to Stock Android but also need some of the extra features that this rom provide, then you can go ahead and try it. The only thing I'm not really ok with is the wifi connection where it just keeps on disconnected and wouldn't connect back to my wifi until I off and on my wifi connection again.

Also, I would say that Jelly Bean is really fast and the overall performance is really good. I especially loves the new notification bar too :). However, since I'm coming from HTC Sense, there is some feature from HTC Sense that I miss such as their calendar widget which integrates with facebook's calendar, the people app that integrate with facebook, twitter etc, Beats audio, and etc. Nevertheless, the overall user experience is good and I do recommend this rom if any of you would like to try out Jelly Bean for your phone.

If anyone tried this rom before and have your own comment, or you agree or disagree with me, please feel free to drop a comment. I would love to hear other people's comment on this rom too :)