[HTC EVO 3D] nhutpham:
I tried out a bunch of roms today, coming from stock rooted and then steel 2.2 which I ran till this weekend. I'm looking for a stable daily driver, but since I was flashing anyways I decided to try out some of the new features out there. Keep in mind I used each rom probably for less than 30 min, so I am really just giving a first impression on what I liked. Also, I didn't take battery into account, which has been great for me stock, rooted, or otherwise.

JoelZ9614 - Runnymede sense 3.5 port v1

Sense 3.5 is great. It runs noticeably smoother than stock sense 3.0, and most custom roms running sense 3.0. By smoother I mean when you swipe screens and the carousel. The beats splash is the coolest splash I've seen, and the beats audio feature has a noticeable difference in how the device sounds, even if it is just eq'ing it fits my style of music to make it sound better. My first install froze up a bunch, requiring battery pulls, that was after wiping everything once. Second time I flashed this rom I wiped multiple times, may have even ran a superwipe type zip. Second time didn't have the lock ups, everything seemed to be in order. Updated widgets and menus make sense 3.5 desirable - even if it isn't much of an upgrade to 3.0. I didn't notice if this rom had the new 3.5 homescreen widgets, it was outfitted with the updated sense clock but that was it. Still very nice, and was my favorite rom of the bunch. It needs camera/3d/4g to be a viable option for me, which I hope is fixed soon with all the people working on sense 3.5.

Virus - Infected Rom Eternity RLS 1.2.2

I was very impressed by this rom as well, I've used Virus's roms on my 4g and like his work a lot. The smoothness through screen on this rom was very comparable to the sense 3.5 rom, more smooth than overclocked roms I tried. Beats audio works well on this rom also. The extra tweaks/options included in this rom make it really great - it's something that us rom flashers really need to appreciate, easy customization is great for me as someone who doesn't want to keep messing with stuff and than seeing how it looks and then having to flash/edit more files to check it out again. This rom is fast and smooth, and has a lot of transition effects that are different than other roms. I wasn't too fond of the way dialogue boxes popped in kinda sideways, but everything else was awesome, particularly the animation when pressing the back button and exiting screens. The animations do make everything feel smoother and more polished, and there's a lot of features added to this rom that work. This rom had less free ram than some other options out there, but similar to stock/stock based roms. I don't think this is a bad thing, as everything ran quickly and smoothly, but may account for lower benchmarks than others if that's your thing. Theme on this rom is friggin schweet. The newest 1.2.2 version looks like a winner.

MIUI.us/Scott951 - MIUI 1.9.23

I'm someone who never used MIUI as my own daily driver, but I've installed it for others. The main reason is 4g, I wanted to have it. I still took a look to see how it was. The Evo3D package is quite nice, there are some nice widgets packed along with it that I don't believe are part of MIUI, like a sense type clock that has easy to configure touch options for the various parts. The rom installed very quickly as it was a small file, and ran beautifully for the time I tried it. The many options and individual theming options seemed quite appealing, and I can see why so many MIUI installs end up so beautifully presented by some flashers out here. I remember not liking the contacts app - it was either slow or something else bothered me. The messaging app stood out to me as interesting tho. I may have been getting it confused with the next rom, as I spent very little time with MIUI.

Vaelek - Vaelpak 3D RC2

Vaelek is another devloper I have experience with from my Evo4g. His rom was the first one I used to have customization options after install, and also the first rom I used that had a non-sense launcher on it. Vaelpak 3D RC2 was my first experience using Go Launcher EX. I've used both Launcher Pro and ADW EX, and found Go Launcher EX to really outshine the two tried and trusted launchers with all the extras they've been adding. Go launcher hasn't exactly been a secret for some time now, but I was still impressed by all it has to offer these days with all the Go apps, widgets and themes it really gives every other launcher from sense to MIUI a run for its money. Go launcher stock looks great, and the themes I looked at looked terrific as well. I also love the screen transition options, they made me chuckle a bit. Vaelpak manages to keep a lot of stock sense underlay/apps, and still has a lot of free memory to spare. Rom ran great and might be calling my name later if I get curious about Go Launcher, but I didn't give it a full try as I wasn't sure I wanted to take time to learn/configure it to be my daily driver.

toastcfh - CyanogenMod 7 VALPHA3

I knew I wasn't going to daily this but just wanted to test it out. Thought it was going to be super smooth, which it is, but the nexus LWP used didn't seem to be running the best or wasn't the best version of it, cuz it looked a tad laggy to me. Having used CM7 before, it's a rom whose reputation speaks for itself with options/speed, and I'm sure this version is no different.

scrosler - Clean Rom Developers Edition

My first taste of Evo3D overclock. Found the screen transitions to be less smooth than Sense 3.5/Infected, but was better than stock though. There was a lot of free memory to work with on this rom. I tried using the rom updater to change some of the theme, but after flashing some of the zips in recovery I didn't notice any change, perhaps I did something wrong. I find themes/icon sets in other roms to look better, although this rom had a very "proper" look to it, and stood out as sort of an "HD" version of a stockish rom. I think I would stick a theme on this and call it a day. The overclock made for some good benchmarks, I didn't take the time to install games and test out differences there. This does seem to be a choice overclocking rom though, keeping sense but making it far less of a hog. . Ran solid for me, no bugs in short term testing.

SteelH - SteelRom v2.62

Coming from Steel v2.2, I hadn't updated previously because I didn't have any problems and everything was just great - I was running the Honeycomb theme by mayfield with zeus mods and didn't really cave in to the new rom features till I saw sense 3.5 on my friend's tbolt and saw how smooth it was compared to my phone. I hoped I would find another stable release from Steel, which has so far been the case. The rom has a few aesthetic tweaks over stock which I like, and runs well. I kind of want my zeus mods back, which I may try to get thru the honeycomb theme if it lets me. The notification icons are a little like Clean Rom in that they are stockish, but I prefer the honeycomb/stock gingerbread type ones over both. Everything about this rom feels solid, and the black sense clock I've preferred since my evo4g is included here and looks great. I actually have been trying to get a black sense clock with no background - might even try Shogun just for that reason. Beats audio in this rom really isn't what it is in sense 3.5/infected roms, it feels like less of an improvement and more like the stock eq settings. I feel at home running SteelH's roms, as he fits the niche that I look for - stability and the more important new features you would want in a custom rom.

Things I noticed testing all these:

Roms with Beats Audio/DSP Manager - I had been using DSP Manager to up my handset speaker volume by doing custom EQ and all the levels. The roms with Beats Audio from the XE port sounded about the same without using the DSP Manager EQ, and when I turned the EQ on it actually LOWERED the handset speaker volume, even with the EQ levels turned up. On roms with the beats audio that wasn't the ported version like on SteelH's rom, using the DSP Manager EQ makes the speaker volume louder and better IMO.

Transparent Notifications/app drawer - I strongly prefer transparent notifications, and found it implemented a little differently in various roms/themes. There's some more opaque, some more transparent, different color fonts. I didn't have too many issues reading them, I just liked it more when it looked consistent, like with the rest of the drop down and the quick settings.

Customizable quick settings - This should be a must for every rom! If you can put them in a different order someone tell me cause that would be perfect.

Remapping the personalization button - why doesn't HTC let you do this? I mean, it is the "personalization" button. Just slap some generic shape on there or something. One rom let me change this to broswer but it didn't work. I don't remember which one. Another let me change it and it worked fine.

Infected Eternity/ SteelRom win best dialer award

Would like to see more custom lock rings/lock ring docks out there!

Lots of interesting splash screens out there

Cameras - ISO1250 seems to make noticeably different pictures, nice to have this option. I have no idea if 8mp did anything, I guess if I pull a pic to the PC I could check it out. Touch screen shots work better than the camera button, but I use the button anyways because it just feels nicer to do. Anyone have any idea why the button lags and if it can be fixed somehow? Haven't looked to see if the compression fix for images changes anything either, maybe a comparison is in order.

Everyone who worked on removing the HTC spyware stuff has to be commended. I feel like that is the biggest difference in rooting this phone, removing that stuff makes the phone run so much better and has been less buggy for me as well. I believe Treve was a major player in this.

Support for these roms has been phenomenal. All these roms had threads with constant updates and feedback between developers and users, making them some of the many standouts on these boards.

I don't know if me writing this up helps anyone as tests were so short, but maybe it gives you an idea of what to check out. I haven't gotten around to trying out roms until lately because my phone was running great and it takes so long to try out all of them, and there's still more I wanted to test.

All the roms I tried surprised me, except MIUI and CM7, which I had varying experience with before and always feel polished. It feels like Evo3D development is picking up quite a bit, and is getting very good. Major ups to you guys cooking up these roms.