[EVO 4G Android Development] nYdGeo:
I wish that I could get the Golden Monkey Kernel to work on my phone. I've tried it on this ROM, Synergy, Kinged Kingdom and three others. Every time I install it, when it comes up I'm missing most of the apps that I've installed. Very strange.

The problem with Quadrant scores is the same as any synthetic benchmark. You are correct in that they are not meaningless. They can be an indicator as to how fast a given device can perform certain, specific tasks. They can also be foiled.

I recently experimented with three different ROMs, all of which employ a feature dubbed Godzilla Mode, or godmode for short. You can search to find out how it works. What it does is substantially increase the I/O speed inside the device, which then raises Quadrant scores significantly since the I/O performance is probably the most limiting performance measure in most Android phones.

He lies the problem. Were any of the three godmode ROMs that I tried any faster in normal operation, multi-tasking or gaming on my phone? Absolutely not. They were all three very sluggish and laggy as they come. I ran the V6_SuperCharger script on all three. That helped two of them go from ridiculously sluggish to just annoyingly sluggish, while it made the third almost livable.

None of them multi-tasked any better than any standard ROM on my phone and I usually have three at any one time. Two of the three couldn't play the Avatar game without constant stutters, while the third only experienced frequent stutters.

The one of these that performed the best on my phone is also available without godemode. That ROM has squat for Quadrant scores in comparison, but is much quicker responding, handles daily multi-tasking operations, and plays Avatar with only the rarest stutter. My huge, overweight, really-too-big-to run-on-an-Evo-4G Sense 3.0 Kingdom port also runs like a scalded dog and other than the occasional low memory warning (it is huge!) it has been my favorite since it came out. Also scores squat on Quadrant.

My AOSP ROM smokes all of them in gaming, multi-tasking, response to user input, and everything else, but of course has a correspondingly dismal bling factor. It isn’t nearly as pretty or as feature filled. It scores 1450-1500 in Quadrant without being modified specifically to score well on benchmark tests such as Quadrant. This is nowhere near as high a score as one can get on a much bigger, heavier, busier and truly slower ROM using a system such as godmode or CM's old Snap-Turbo, which basically did the same thing in a different way.

So, for me personally, modding a ROM, not to be confused with tuning a ROM, modding a ROM to score higher on Benchmarks scores lower in most every other way. Please note that this is my experience with my phone only. I have heard from a friend or two that started out, "No, man, its faster!" talk to me a few days later and I learn that they're back on their previous favorite ROM, and then hear something like 'yeah, I was blinded by those Quadrant scores at first, but after a while it was just too laggy or too unstable or just too quirky to use as a daily driver'.

Repeat: this is just my experience with my phone, and what I've heard from a few friends. I posted this not to talk bad about any ROM or about benchmarking, but only to offer a perspective based on my experience. I know that there are others that have posted experiences both similar and disimilar, but I'll let you interpret those for yourself.

Thank you for your time.