Hi everyone,
I have always been a huge fan of Sense ROMs, particularly MikG. However, I have always heard people talking about how great Cyanogenmod is, and the battery life is amazing, etc. etc. So a few weeks ago I decided to really give it a shot and flashed CM7. In the past I tried CM and quickly restored to MikG within an hour or two. This time I gave it a few days, though ultimately I'm back on MikG due to some of the outstanding issues that I outline below.
I'll start with some things that I think CM does extremely well. These might be reasons why it would work well for you. Then I describe some issues I had which I ultimately resolved. Some of these "fixes" are still in use because I'm running GO Launcher now instead of the Sense launcher (so I can no longer use Sense widgets on my home screens). Finally, I outline the reasons that led me to ditch CM7 and stick with MikG.
I hope others find this useful and I hope you try these and many other ROMs. The bottom line is to find one that works for you...these are just my impressions/opinions and won't apply for everyone. I'm not trying to persuade you to use one ROM or the other, I'm just offering up my experience. Use whatever ROM works best for YOU!
Great things about CM7:
1. Theme Chooser. This has to be the best idea I have ever seen. It makes the process of changing themes orders of magnitude faster than backing up in recovery, flashing a zip, and then booting back into recovery and restoring if you don't like it (this process can take like 30 minutes instead of the 5-10 seconds it takes to apply a theme with Theme Chooser). It also saves an enormous amount of space on your SD card by not requiring full nandroid backups!
2. CM7 makes use of the second LED for notifications. The one on the left is used solely for battery indication purposes while the one on the right is used for notifications. Nifty!
3. Battery life, particularly with the Tiamat kernel is supposed to be considerably better than using a Sense ROM. I haven't noticed any significant improvements with the stock kernel in CM7, but then again I have never flashed Tiamat either. I never really had problems with battery life on MikG, but flashing the Aggressive Freedom or ChopSuey kernel has been very successful for others running Sense ROMs.
For some general battery tips, see a post I made on themikmik forums here:
What in the world are you guys doing (or not doing) with your battery? - Page 3
4. Various tweaks and customizations that you can make through the Cyanogenmod settings (toggle widgets in the notification tray, tethering, CPU under/overclocking, etc.).
5. Smaller footprint! The ROM itself is like 80MB instead of the 260MB download for MikG. This helps save space on my sdcard and means smaller nandroid backups as well (I think my CM7 backups are around 200MB smaller than my MikG backups -- which also means it's faster to perform a backup/restore). I have a 32GB card in my phone but with all of my music and the rest of the stuff on there, I only have like 2GB free right now, so every little bit helps. There is also more free space for installing apps in /data. I think that I had like 80MB of additional space in /data/app in CM7 over MikG. It's nice to have that additional space to install more apps if I need it.
Problems I had initially but resolved:
1. GO calendar to replace sense calendar. I was using Android Pro Widgets but their calendar seemed hard to scroll between months because you have to press tiny little up/down buttons on the bottom of the calendar and they didn't always seem to recognize my finger. With the GO calendar you can just swipe up/down on it to change months. Also, you can download the GOWidget transparency theme to make it look much nicer.
Initially I couldn't get the calendar to pull in my Facebook events (which the Sense calendar does) but this can be resolved by simply exporting your Facebook calendar and importing it into your Google calendar. Instructions are all over the internet but there is a pretty good explanation here:
How to Sync Facebook Events with your Google Calendar FAYZANATION
2. Fancy widgets to replace the Sense clock/weather widget.
3. Elixir2 and Elixir2 widgets to setup radio toggles just like I had in Sense. I prefer the toggle widget on my home screen instead of using the one in the notification tray. I just got used to the widgets being on my home screen so I prefer them there.
4. The dialer in CM7 is horrible. If I want to call a contact I have to scroll through the entire list of people to get to the person I want. In the sense dialer you can just start typing their number (or spelling out their name using the letters on each number) and then tap one of the suggestions. GO Contacts EX (which includes the GO Dialer) helps to resolve this issue. Instead of using the default Phone and People apps in CM7 I just use the GO dialer and GO contacts.
5. Swiping between home screens seemed laggy to me. This must have been ADW's fault though. Once I switched to GO Launcher it has been liquid smooth.
Outstanding issues that I still have:
1. Voicemail is a pain to setup. One possibility is to use Google Voice and setup conditional call forwarding. You can see some info about that here:
http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-all...oved-sense-cm7-few-questions.html#post3490729
Or you could use YouMail or any other app. I ultimately just pulled the .apk file from MikG and installed it in CM7. You also have to block text messages that come from 9016 in your messaging app, otherwise you will get a bizarre text message along with every voicemail.
2. The default Android keyboard is terrible. I hate the default Android keyboard and have become accustomed to the HTC_IME keyboard. Yes, I can flash the modified HTC_IME keyboard but it doesn't include the arrow keys so the keys are wider and it's like using a whole new keyboard. It also didn't seem as responsive as it should be for some reason. I tried SwiftkeyX and Smart keyboard and I could probably get used to Smart -- my only complaint was that the key to toggle symbols was on the left side of the space bar instead of the right side (which is where it's at on my HTC keyboard). I could probably live with that though, it's just not what I'm used to. Between the 3 I would use Smart keyboard and then maybe send them an enhancement request to move the symbol key to the right side.
3. This is nit picky but I use the HTC Flashlight app quite often and it's just better than Torch. There are 3 different intensity levels and you don't have to turn it off and then agree that you might break your phone every time you want to change between them.
4. Contacts don't seem to sync and join properly in CM7. You can go into edit a contact and then hit Menu > Join but even when doing this I still had issues where it wouldn't pull in everyone from Facebook. It pulls in suggestions that it thinks might match, but several times the suggestions didn't include the actual person that I wanted. I could use SyncMyPix from the market to pull their pictures over but this is a huge pain. It works flawlessly in Sense ROMs.
5. The Android dialer sucks. I have to use GO Dialer and GO Contacts to mimic the Sense versions but they are very laggy when entering/exiting them.
6. I prefer the Sense 3 lockscreen with 4 configurable shortcuts on it. I setup some gestures in CM7 but it seemed pretty picky -- I had to draw them perfectly for it to work properly. I prefer just dragging an icon to the lock ring.
I have always been a huge fan of Sense ROMs, particularly MikG. However, I have always heard people talking about how great Cyanogenmod is, and the battery life is amazing, etc. etc. So a few weeks ago I decided to really give it a shot and flashed CM7. In the past I tried CM and quickly restored to MikG within an hour or two. This time I gave it a few days, though ultimately I'm back on MikG due to some of the outstanding issues that I outline below.
I'll start with some things that I think CM does extremely well. These might be reasons why it would work well for you. Then I describe some issues I had which I ultimately resolved. Some of these "fixes" are still in use because I'm running GO Launcher now instead of the Sense launcher (so I can no longer use Sense widgets on my home screens). Finally, I outline the reasons that led me to ditch CM7 and stick with MikG.
I hope others find this useful and I hope you try these and many other ROMs. The bottom line is to find one that works for you...these are just my impressions/opinions and won't apply for everyone. I'm not trying to persuade you to use one ROM or the other, I'm just offering up my experience. Use whatever ROM works best for YOU!
Great things about CM7:
1. Theme Chooser. This has to be the best idea I have ever seen. It makes the process of changing themes orders of magnitude faster than backing up in recovery, flashing a zip, and then booting back into recovery and restoring if you don't like it (this process can take like 30 minutes instead of the 5-10 seconds it takes to apply a theme with Theme Chooser). It also saves an enormous amount of space on your SD card by not requiring full nandroid backups!
2. CM7 makes use of the second LED for notifications. The one on the left is used solely for battery indication purposes while the one on the right is used for notifications. Nifty!
3. Battery life, particularly with the Tiamat kernel is supposed to be considerably better than using a Sense ROM. I haven't noticed any significant improvements with the stock kernel in CM7, but then again I have never flashed Tiamat either. I never really had problems with battery life on MikG, but flashing the Aggressive Freedom or ChopSuey kernel has been very successful for others running Sense ROMs.
For some general battery tips, see a post I made on themikmik forums here:
What in the world are you guys doing (or not doing) with your battery? - Page 3
4. Various tweaks and customizations that you can make through the Cyanogenmod settings (toggle widgets in the notification tray, tethering, CPU under/overclocking, etc.).
5. Smaller footprint! The ROM itself is like 80MB instead of the 260MB download for MikG. This helps save space on my sdcard and means smaller nandroid backups as well (I think my CM7 backups are around 200MB smaller than my MikG backups -- which also means it's faster to perform a backup/restore). I have a 32GB card in my phone but with all of my music and the rest of the stuff on there, I only have like 2GB free right now, so every little bit helps. There is also more free space for installing apps in /data. I think that I had like 80MB of additional space in /data/app in CM7 over MikG. It's nice to have that additional space to install more apps if I need it.
Problems I had initially but resolved:
1. GO calendar to replace sense calendar. I was using Android Pro Widgets but their calendar seemed hard to scroll between months because you have to press tiny little up/down buttons on the bottom of the calendar and they didn't always seem to recognize my finger. With the GO calendar you can just swipe up/down on it to change months. Also, you can download the GOWidget transparency theme to make it look much nicer.
Initially I couldn't get the calendar to pull in my Facebook events (which the Sense calendar does) but this can be resolved by simply exporting your Facebook calendar and importing it into your Google calendar. Instructions are all over the internet but there is a pretty good explanation here:
How to Sync Facebook Events with your Google Calendar FAYZANATION
2. Fancy widgets to replace the Sense clock/weather widget.
3. Elixir2 and Elixir2 widgets to setup radio toggles just like I had in Sense. I prefer the toggle widget on my home screen instead of using the one in the notification tray. I just got used to the widgets being on my home screen so I prefer them there.
4. The dialer in CM7 is horrible. If I want to call a contact I have to scroll through the entire list of people to get to the person I want. In the sense dialer you can just start typing their number (or spelling out their name using the letters on each number) and then tap one of the suggestions. GO Contacts EX (which includes the GO Dialer) helps to resolve this issue. Instead of using the default Phone and People apps in CM7 I just use the GO dialer and GO contacts.
5. Swiping between home screens seemed laggy to me. This must have been ADW's fault though. Once I switched to GO Launcher it has been liquid smooth.
Outstanding issues that I still have:
1. Voicemail is a pain to setup. One possibility is to use Google Voice and setup conditional call forwarding. You can see some info about that here:
http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-all...oved-sense-cm7-few-questions.html#post3490729
Or you could use YouMail or any other app. I ultimately just pulled the .apk file from MikG and installed it in CM7. You also have to block text messages that come from 9016 in your messaging app, otherwise you will get a bizarre text message along with every voicemail.
2. The default Android keyboard is terrible. I hate the default Android keyboard and have become accustomed to the HTC_IME keyboard. Yes, I can flash the modified HTC_IME keyboard but it doesn't include the arrow keys so the keys are wider and it's like using a whole new keyboard. It also didn't seem as responsive as it should be for some reason. I tried SwiftkeyX and Smart keyboard and I could probably get used to Smart -- my only complaint was that the key to toggle symbols was on the left side of the space bar instead of the right side (which is where it's at on my HTC keyboard). I could probably live with that though, it's just not what I'm used to. Between the 3 I would use Smart keyboard and then maybe send them an enhancement request to move the symbol key to the right side.
3. This is nit picky but I use the HTC Flashlight app quite often and it's just better than Torch. There are 3 different intensity levels and you don't have to turn it off and then agree that you might break your phone every time you want to change between them.
4. Contacts don't seem to sync and join properly in CM7. You can go into edit a contact and then hit Menu > Join but even when doing this I still had issues where it wouldn't pull in everyone from Facebook. It pulls in suggestions that it thinks might match, but several times the suggestions didn't include the actual person that I wanted. I could use SyncMyPix from the market to pull their pictures over but this is a huge pain. It works flawlessly in Sense ROMs.
5. The Android dialer sucks. I have to use GO Dialer and GO Contacts to mimic the Sense versions but they are very laggy when entering/exiting them.
6. I prefer the Sense 3 lockscreen with 4 configurable shortcuts on it. I setup some gestures in CM7 but it seemed pretty picky -- I had to draw them perfectly for it to work properly. I prefer just dragging an icon to the lock ring.
