[HTC One S] FunkyELF:
Went from a G2 to this One S yesterday. I'm not too impressed.

No dedicated menu button

There is enough room for one on the bottom but they only put 3.

What happens now is that Android (or Sense or something) detects when there are menu options and puts a button on the screen for it taking away real estate from the application.

No trackball

I used this a lot on my G2 especially on web pages with small links that I didn't want to missclick. I already miss it. I also used the trackball wake feature in CM on my G2. Now there is only one way to turn the screen on and its a little hard to do one handed. The trackball was in a very natural position to turn on with your thumb. Now without it, it is very awkward to power on with your thumb, you have to hold it very high and I'm affraid of dropping it. Alternatively I could turn it on with my index finger but it spreads my hand way out and still feels weird.

No folders

I'm not sure if this is an ICS thing or a Sense thing (because this phone is an unholy bastardization), but I can't figure out a way to create folders on my home screens. I'm not talking about the Sense folders for applications either. In normal Android builds you can add shortcuts, widgets, folders. The Pandora application shipped with a folder called "My Stations" or something like that. I used this because it only took up 1x1 on a homescreen and let me choose which station was opened. Without it, you need to open the application and it immediately starts playing the last radio station. This is annoying.

Resolution

The DPI isn't any better than my G2, its just a bigger screen. This is pretty disappointing. I would like a crisper display in a flagship device.

Bloat

Its pretty bad. I know most users want Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, etc... but how about you let us select what we want during the phone setup.

Misc

This is my first Sense device and my first ICS device so again, not sure where this crap is coming from.... When you install an application it creates a shortcut for it on one of your home screens. Putting a shortcut is the simplist thing you can do in Android, why not leave it for the use to do if they want to do it.

On my way to work I was listening to I Heart Radio and while the live streams were okay when I went to the "pandora"-like functionality it would only play one song and then stop. This never happened on my G2. Don't know whats going on here.

I don't care for the browser (which they stupidly call "internet").

I don't care for all of the account options. I went to share a page in the browser, I wanted to email it to myself. So when I went to share page it let me select how to share it. I got "Facebook for HTC Sense", "Mail", "Twitter for HTC Sense", and "Dropbox". I did set up Facebook, but I did not set up mail, twitter, or dropbox. What I wanted was GMail which I had to select "See all..." Then I saw a plethora of garbage bloat that they bundle with the phone and had to scroll down to get to GMail. After I went though this experience I went to share another page to see if GMail showed up at the top... it didn't.

I'm sure I'll have more complaints the more I use it. I used my fiance's upgrade for this one but I get an upgrade in 3 months. If CM9 isn't out by then she'll be using this phone and I'll upgrade to a SGSIII or that yet to be named quad-core LG phone.

Summary

CM9 can't come fast enough.

EDIT

I'll add some good things here.

Good things

Again, this is coming from a G2 so in 2 years things should be better anyways....

It is very thin, and very light.

It has a front facing camera which my G2 did not.

The flashlight, though not as bright as the "High Brightness" Cyanogenmod setting on the G2, is still pretty bright.

The speaker seems to put out a lot of sound. Can't attest to the quality yet but the volume is there.

EDIT #2

Some more good and bad....

Skype Useless

... probably related to Wifi crackling. One of the things I was looking forward to with this phone was the ability to make video calls via Skype. My fiance has an iPad2, my in-laws each have a G2X, and my brother has a SGSII. Skype is useless on this device. There is echoing / cracking and video lag even when on Wifi. I called my brother with this One S and it was useless. I then called him on an iPad2 and it was great. I'm wondering if the problem has to do with Beats Audio. We'll have to wait for an AOSP ROM without Beats to find out.

So I unlocked/rooted/ROM'd ...

I am now running Black Dragon 4.0. I LOVE the menu hack to get rid of the stupid 3 dot menu on all the screens. I like that they kept the ability to longpress home to get the default behavior as well. The launcher seems nice though I haven't played with it too much (which is a good thing, means they have good defaults).

Can't wait for the kernel sources to be released so we can make some more CM9 progress. I really miss the buttons in the dropdown for wifi, brightness, bluetooth, etc. Now I have to dropdown, click settings, scroll down and find brighness.