[Defy Android Development] IonAphis:
CM9 Epy3 May 8th review

Just some feedback... I'm using Epy3's May 8th build for the Regular Defy (Froyo Kernel). I did get some FC's in the play store for a while. Tried it a couple of minutes later and it was golden.

All apps tried so far work nicely: ES File Explorer, WhatsApp, Cut The Rope.

All in all this build is freaking incredible, however not without minor flaws...

As said before, at one point I got market FC's. Another thing is for me camera flash isn't working (but it does as a flashlight). Edge and 3G working, however at a few times I was left without connection (most likely because of my crappy Argentine provider). Messaging works fine, standard browser works fine, I did get a couple of FC's in Accounts Settings at first, but I guess it was just trying to sync everything for the first time and didn't respond well. A non-issue I found is that Lockscreen clock, if configured to display 6:00 PM format rather than 18:00, it will not show the AM PM symbol.. Right now it's 6:11 PM and my clock shows 6:11, nothing else. However statusbar clock works fine. The UI and system are definitively smooth, however not butter smooth... At some points it's obvious the lack of full HWA or the fact that the Defy was never the intended target when they developed ICS. Hopefully this will get better, but it's not like it locks up, it just feels as if ICS is a tad more than what our CPU/GPU can handle, not really lagging thought. To be honest, it feels like ICS is more about the feel than the speed. Transition animations take a little longer and a few things take half a second to pop up. A bit different than Froyo or GB, but then again it's as if everything is more deliberate on ICS.

Another thing I came across is when selecting ringtones, the screen kinda flashes, as if it was refreshing or something. On the Settings menu, when you click on some of the options, it will take you to another screen, however there is a light blue selection highlight. This is normal for any android version. The thing is sometimes it can double flash or maybe it just freezes there, so as soon as you get popped up with the new screen, the highlight box can be seen for an instant.

While selecting wallpapers from the CM9 selection, there are a bit of artifacts, really hard to explain.. as you scroll through the wallpapers, the center wallpaper is boxed in, to signify that it is selected. However as some of the pictures move in and out of the center box, it's like they disappear, and appear someways to the side of the screen. There really is no better way to explain this, and since you don't go selecting wallpapers all the time, you can live with it.

Battery seems to be the biggest issue for me... It's not abysmal, but not great. With CM7.2RC my battery can last about 2 days, if I don't play games too often, however with 3G on all the time and WiFi now and then, with Bluetooth audio on in my commute from and to work. With stock Froyo ROM and setting things right (not using live wallpapers or leaving WiFi/Bluetooth on all the time) I could go up to a bit more, but never reaching 3 days... So I felt it only natural battery wouldn't last the whole 45 hours that it did under CM7.2, but right now my battery has about 48% left, and my phone's been unplugged for something over 10 hours and a half... At this rate it will die around 20 -22 hours since charge. However I don't want to give false impressions yet, since I did a battery calibration and have to wait until the batter discharges the entire cycle to be sure. Also, this morning I spent quite a bit of time installing some basic apps (exDialer, ES Explorer and Google Maps, amongst others), this also might account for some loss of battery, but I can't see how installing these apps might have taken away 30 hours of battery life. I usually have a rule of thumb that battery must always last if you forgot to charge one night... That means that if you leave for work at suppose 8:00AM and get home around 10:00PM (after gym or hobby or going out to dinner or something) and forget to charge that first night, it should at least last until the next day when you get home. That would be 24 hours + 14 hours of the day = 38 hours. If I find the battery to last this much (with moderate usage), it should be perfectly usable.

So there you go... This is a great build with just a few imperfections... Hopefully soon this will be even better... Surely ready for everyday use, unless you have a chaotic life in where you need things to work everytime, all the time, and you have not time to go to settings and close an app and relaunch it if it starts working funny.

PD: A relative just called saying they've been having trouble getting in contact with me and haven't been able to for the past 4 hours... I'm inclined to believe this is not a CM9 issue, but a baseband switcher issue, because the same problem used to happen to me in CM7 for a while