[HTC Sensation] true86no:
Review

Through thick and thin with HTC Sensation, Android and mike1986's ARHD. This is going to be long and not necessary entertaining. :p Skip to the end if you want.

About 2 months ago I finally took the plunge and upgraded my ancient HTC Touch HD (Blackstone) which I bought soon after its release a loong time ago.

As I looked around the phone shop, the Sensation caught my eye as it had huge real estate (large screen) without any of the bulk of the other smartphones. I fell in love with it. I had to have it.

Coming from the Blackstone, I was plenty impressed with the Sensation's speed and Android's capability, which at the time I was unable to separate from HTC's Sense platform.

As was with the Blackstone, I started to study the phone closely. Slowly learning about Android, launchers, s-off, rooting and custom roms through the extremely extensive XDA community.

Throughout the first few weeks I followed XDA Sensation forum extensively, going from silently upset at HTC for not allowing root access, etc to it's sudden reversal announcement in Facebook.

As I eagerly awaited the opportunity to finally gain some control over my Sensation, I stewed over the Sensation Android Development forum over which rom to flash first. The different rom threads was exhausting to read through. Slowly I gained a sense of each rom's merits, etc.

Lo and behold, those clever people at Revolutionary release their amazing software ahead of HTC's rather disappointing rollout (really? void warranty?) a few weeks later. I was ready to get cracking. I didn't immediately jump into s-off or flash frenzy. I waited a few days for comments from early adopters to flood in. As I sifted through the influx of posts, I made my move.

Deep in the middle of the night, after I sent the wife and kid to bed, I began. After going through a few hundreds of posts, the first rom I flashed was ARHD 1.8. The rom removed all the bloat from HTC that I didn't want and allowed me options to customized my phone. All I really needed in the beginning.

ARHD 1.8 was much better than stock rom, end of story. There were a few bugs of which I was well aware of from the get go but I couldn't wait. As I enjoyed my newly empowered phone, I let mike1986 do his work and other more, or less enlightened people (depending on whose judging), to voice and to work out the kinks.

I took my time between updates. Had to have 2.3.4 so flashed 2.1.0 and later 3.1.0 both with superwipe a few days after release without any major problems. Skipped 3.0.0 and 3.2.0 - went straight to 3.3.0.

I guess I must be one of the luckier ones as I didn't encounter any major issues apart from a kernel swap Wi-Fi error which was solved through a stock reflash.

Here's are my steps from the beginning:

1. Without root, going from stock rom to s-off and ARHD 1.8 was a total lost of all settings and app data. I kept Sense. Its the reason I bough a HTC plus I'm too lazy and too noob to customize ASOP to my liking.

2. With root, backup with titanium backup was possible so going from 1.8 to 2.1.0 and later 3.1.0 was generally a breeze.

IMO I think this is important: I gathered and inferred from reading forum posts that Android and Sense 3.0 from 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 was somewhat of a major rewrite, hence Titanium backup's batch restore wasn't really an option. I had to go planned ahead what I needed to restore. In the end I only restored App data, Contacts, Messages and Call Data. I got back my game saves and Phone data - all that I really needed. Customization was a total redo.

3. Flashed 3.3.0 over 3.1.0 without superwipe as the general consensus was that it wasn't needed. No problems there.

Right now, my configuration is:

Stock ARHD 3.3.0 with 0.5 DC patch, APM 2.1.0, CRT 3.0, GingerThyparancy Full Mod and theme.

Throughout all that I learned and experimented a bit with adb, generally through learning to root my wife's Wildfire/Buzz which had the newer non Revolutionary-able hboot. In the future, I wish to venture into the amazing flip screens and such mods but am struggling to understand it so I haven't yet.

P.s. My first experience with Kernel swapping left me with a bitter after-taste as I lost wifi completely during 2.1.0 going from stock kernel to RCmix Sensation 1.0. So I have decided to keep off custom kernels until it's decidedly stable.

P.p.s Battery life is great after a few days of wobbly performance during which I observed the code of wait and see.

Finally, thank you to mike1986 and the ARHD team for your hard work. My phone is much better thanks to all of you. Sorry for the long breath:p