[HTC EVO 3D] snokarver:
This will likely be a long post, so I'll start off with short summary:

After years of being excited about the android OS, I've now grown very tired of it and can't find a good solution to solve the issues.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and provide feedback and insight.

Background

I've been a web developer for ~15 years, even worked on a very popular android tablet before it was released. I currently have the title of "SDE" but I also deal with a lot of UI/UX work. I'm pretty tech savvy, love control, love to hack (eg my main machines are hackintoshes). I bought an EVO 3D shortly after it came out as it was dual core and had the most RAM. A friend is an android enthusiast and it sure seemed like android, while lacking polish, offered the flexibility and community for me to be able to have the level of polish I want.

Problems

Over the past year+ I haven't had much spare time. While other phones on other carriers are easy to root and mod, the EVO 3D on Sprint has been a PITA. My recent attempt at a custom PRL was a great example of how this "open" phone was more difficult to work with than a "locked" iPhone. There's been no easy way to root this phone and turn s-off. Yeah, I know there's two methods but both of them require more time than I have right now at any given time. And the bigger issue for me is that they're much bigger kludges than I think an "open" OS should be.

I waited for the ICS OTA update and am disappointed. While it solved some issues, it created more. And I feel like I've got both arms tied behind my back since almost any fix requires root. I hate reading that some of the fixes are in jelly bean, yet there's no easy way for me to upgrade.

Specific issues

- Llama doesn't work in ICS. I <3 Llama

- Battery usage is often horrible - yesterday I checked my email a couple times and the battery lasted all of 6 hours. I tried killing all tasks, but those who say that's useless since froyo are right. This issue keeps happening... it's like the CPU gets stuck at 100% for some reason.

- Network sucks. I don't understand why I can get 10Mb down and 2Mb up with speedtest.net, but the responsiveness of any app that uses the internet is sluggish. Even with my own tests on my own web servers, it' still sluggish. And latency is fairly low... seems like there might be a lot of packet loss for some reason.

- Camera sucks. The camera on my wife's EVO 4G works better but still sucks. All I've found here are threads confirming how much it sucks.

- App specific issues:

-- I have my sync settings set not to link contacts with LinkedIn, but it still frequently asks me anyway.

-- Contacts are duplicating: I had them all on my phone, and all synced via my gmail account. Then the other day it decides they're all different and duplicates my contacts.

- It unlocks itself. Sometimes I pull my phone out of my pocket and the phone is unlocked, even though I had a PIN set. I can use it for a minute or two, then suddenly I get greeted with a lock screen (or sometimes just half a lock screen.)

- I don't like having to set a lock screen in order to change the wifi password. Seems really odd to me. It wasn't like that in gingerbread.

I also have a hard time finding information. Seems like half of what I find doesn't apply to the EVO 3D, though may work for many other phones (even other HTC phones) and the bulk of the rest no longer works because of some other issue (or is just outdated.)

Anyway, I could go on, but I think you get the idea. If I had time, I'd see what I could to do contribute to a ROM project, but that just doesn't seem like it's in the cards right now. Am I just not a good fit for android? Is the bigger issue this phone? Would I actually be able to solve the above issues if I did go ahead and root it fully... perhaps with the wire method?

Thanks