[XPERIA X8 General] Fortun:
The Return of AtiFroyo.

There. You already know how this post is going to end. However you may want to ditch RAM Manager if you're in it to play games. Wait. What?

In this second batch of testing, a few games come into play: Aby Escape, Ninja Fishing and the ARMv6 ported version of Sushi Chop. Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots was also tested and runs more or less the same on all ROMs with the underdog being GingerDX.

The candidates? GingerDX v28b, LinuXperia Mika v9b (the one with amazing AnTuTu score), GingerCruzt Revision 8.4, LinuXperia FreeDom S1, VivoPrime V01 and AtiFroyo 5.2.

Let's start:

· LinuXperia Mika v9b. One more reason you shouldn't put too much weight on benchmark scores. Aby Escape and Sushi Chop are laggy to the point of making them unplayable. Aby Escape would just close when starting the actual gaming; had to reopen it to make it work. For Sushi Chop, phone just froze when trying to exit the game; had to reboot the phone.

· GingerDX v28b. Aby Escape would close when starting the actual gaming. No apparent solution. Sushi Chop, unplayable.

· GingerCruzt Revision 8.4, LinuXperia FreeDom S1 and VivoPrime V01. Why put the three together? Because they would perform on par with each other. Both Aby Escape and Sushi Chop would be playable. The edge on performance goes to GingerCruzt, which would be a little bit more responsive in Aby Escape. Now LinuXperia FreeDom makes my eyes bleed. So, in looks, the edge goes to VivoPrime. Also GingerCruzt is bloated with a lot of widgets, a few apps, and some manga and anime wallpapers I have no use for.

· AtiFroyo 5.2. Both Aby Escape and Sushi Chop are playable. The difference with the last three ROMs? Responsiveness. Aby Escape would get a little bit laggy in some parts just before a jump, costing you the game. In AtiFroyo, the lags are less frequent and briefer. Sushi Chop is also more responsive, resulting in cutting more sushi. Also, in the last three ROMs, Aby Escape would close if I played for a few minutes and then try to enter the in-game shop. Guess what. In AtiFroyo, it doesn't happen.

So, AtiFroyo is winning... and not in a Charlie Sheen kinda way. If it only weren't for the auto brightness bug, right? Well, now it's solved. Modify the hw_config.sh values in the ROM zip before flashing it. Done.

But if you just have to have a Gingerbread ROM for playing, I'd probably go with VivoPrime V01.

Where does Ninja Fishing enter into all of this? You won't play it. Here's the thing in all the ROMs, it would enter the game, but when you tried to actually start gaming by entering a level it would close. Enter Chainfire3d. In all ROMs but GingerDx, with reduced texture quality and size, you would be able to actually play the game until the end of the level. Then it would close. Winse and repead. The end.

Obvious question now is: can't I just change the looks of the ugly ROMs? Of course. The easy way is with themes. However most themes don't go that deep into the framework to change everything you might not like... especially some colors. Then, a stock look is preferable because its colors won't clash with most themes. Now, if you want you can go the hard way and modify the framework... Too much work.

That's all. Wait. RAM Manager, right? Don't get mad. Here we go.

Here's the thing. If you are with a Gingerbread based ROM, you might want to disable/uninstall it. How come? Remember when I said there was no apparent solution for playing Aby Escape? Well, the "apparent" part was intentional.

After testing GingerDX, I went ahead and installed GingerCruzt. After playing the games, I wanted to see performance with RAM Manager. Aby Escape would close when attempting to start the actual gaming with Balance enabled. Hard Gaming? Same experience. Hard Gaming (Less aggressive)? No luck. Déjà vu. Didn't this happened before with GingerDX? Which, by the way, had RAM Manager enabled? Let's first disable it, the game starts. Time to go back to GingerDX without RAM Manager. Confirmed. The culprit is RAM Manager. Aby Escape starts. Laggy to the point of making it unplayable, but it starts. Sushi Chop would cause less problems, but playing it would make you very angry.

Back to AtiFroyo. The games would behave the same with or without RAM Manager enabled. So, for now, no RAM Manager in the phone.

One last thing. What does AtiFroyo look like? Well, for sure it doesn't look like Froyo, it's modified to look like ICS. It even has a Sensified option... which I haven't tried. The font may upset some people, my brother likes it and I think it's got some flair. This is easily changeable, tho.

I might put some screenshots later to finish up this paid advertising for AtiFroyo...

... At least, I'm hoping Attis112 will give me something.