[HTC Sensation] DarkPrinceByWWW:
Hey guys, just wanted to share some thoughts and ask you about your opinion. It is about Stock ROMs vs. AOSP Roms.

I've also tested many roms, Sense-based, AOSP-based (cm7 and cm9) and finally gut stucked with the VI rom. After running OpenSensation for last 4-5 days, I was thinking about AOSP projects and I wonder if someone think the same away, but please don't get me wrong ;)

Some words to the AOSP project:

It a nice idea and a quite ambitious thing, which the devs trying to do. AOSP based roms have a overwhelming performance compared to Sense-based roms and also some useful addons. But on the other hand, they are ugly, at least before ICS. Also you can't use your device to its fully potential, since many of the additional stuff delivered by the manufacturer is close sorced. So, for an example, I do not believe, that we ever will be able to run the new HTC One X camera app on the HTC One X, assumed there will be a CM9 rom for this phone.

Of think about SGS3 with it all (useless) new (awful) features, which definitely can't be used with an AOSP rom.

There are also many other issues, which are still not solved and will be taking a long time, since the AOSP projects are done in the free time (MultiCore management, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, MMS).

ICS was released somewhere about November 2011? May 26th today and again, I do not believe, that we'll get any stable full working version (release candidate) of the CM9 rom until Jelly Bean! So the question is: What is the AOSP project good for? Well, as far as I can estimate the current situation, CM roms are the last chance to get Gingerbread/ICS for some older devices like HTC Desire. Maybe the whole AOSP project is also an inspiration for Google for Jelly Bean and the new five Nexus phones.

I think, without any change of course, the CM project will end up in a deadlock. Either we get some serious financing, so the devs can spend much much much more time on this project or we have to convince the manufacturers to work much much more close with the AOSP projects, so many things are not have to be done twice and we don't have to decide between performance or features we paid for.

To sum it all up: AOSP roms/CM roms

+ high performance

+ dealings with resources

+ some nice features and built-in control of hardware like cpu freq, governor and so on (but all this features can be achieved with 3rd party apps)

+ newest Android version (more secure, but because you have to root your device, you also create opportunities for malware)

o design (ugly before ICS)

- you can't use the phone to its full potential (camera app, beats audio, 2 mic video recording and so on)

So buying a phone like the HTC Sensation for about 500€ and flashing an AOSP rom, will castrate your phone to something like Nexus S. Sure, you'll get a huge performance boost, but an older HTC Desire has nearly the same performance with an AOSP rom. So why buying the Sensation then?

So what can we do? Using Sense-based roms like ARHD? Sure, its a possibility, but switching to a Sense-based rom after seeing brachial overall performance of the AOSP based rom will depress you and surely make you upset to the manufactures for their incompetency to deliver a device with proper features AND performance.

So for me, Virtuous Inquisition project is the last reason to keep my Sensation and not switch to a Nexus device or even more to switch to a Windows Phone device (I HATE WP7).

VI:

+ much higher performance compared to the stock rom (actually, I need to have two Sensations wich AOSP and VI before my eyes to really see some performance differences)

+ you can use many features you paid for like the beautiful camera app

o/- no OS updates until the manufactures releases them

In my opinion, projects like Inquisition are more important as the AOSP project, just because some things will never end:

- a free time project will always suffer of to few time people can spare for it

- manufactures will never work close enough with this projects, as they have to earn money and they can't earn money, if people flashing newest features to an old phone instead of buying an new on

The future lies in Jelly Bean and Nexus devices using hardware like the TI SoCs with great documentation and until we get there, projects like VI are the only properly way to live with our devices.

To cut a long story short, this rom is amazing and I wanna thank all people who was working on it! I also hope, that these devs don't drop this rom in assumption, AOSP based roms are the future. I dare to say, that waiting for stable CM9 roms and spending time to track down issues caused by this pojects and at the end to do the same job as the manufactures have done to get the phone working, is greater time wasting as to expand this project little by little like mike is doing it with the ARHD roms. After all there are many mods (like hq camera), new stuff from Qualcomm (new drivers) and so on, which can improve this rom ;)

Please think about it for some minutes before replying. I'm often bored and test many stuff like roms, mods, kernels and so on, but sometimes, I just wanna use my phone like a normal user and until now I wasn't able to to so with the CM roms (WiFi issues, BT issues, GPS issues, CPU management issues, battery drain...). Also there are coming more and more situations, in which I have to rely on my phone (calling, data connection, gps, camera) and VI was the only rom I can rely on (not even to a stock rom).