[Motorola Droid X2] randomKID:
Introduction:

I have been using CM10 for a month and a half now. My review is based on the standard of an every day driver. I understand that Dragonzkiller is the only developer for this ROM and basically for DX2 (as far as I know) but I use my phone with the intention of USING it. With this in mind, I've been struggling with the idea of reverting back to the stock OS or some other rom because of some key issues I have with the current alpha release.

Pros:

Status Bar brightness control: Although you have to disable auto brightness, this is the biggest plus for me, mainly because auto brightness never seems to be good enough. Its always slighty too dim or too bright, even with custom brightness levels. The negative of this would be that if you have a passworded lock screen (swype lock screens don't affect this) the status bar is not click able so you can't increase brightness. This is a big issue if your screen is on the lowest brightness and you need to unlock your phone in the sun. This is mostly for taste. I find this feature highly convenient and puts control in my hands. Although automatic brightness works, it doesn't work well enough for me.

Toggle buttons in the notification pull down menu: This is insanely convenient. This coupled with the long pressing option to open the corresponding settings menu is also one of the biggest things keeping me with CM 10

Swypable notifications: You have no idea how convenient this is until you have it. To be able to pick and chose which notifications to dismiss with the swype of a finger.

Screen Shot and restart option in the power menu: I restart and screen shot enough that these options need to be in the power menu or somehow accessible

Everything else ICS and CM10 provides: I really dislike how Ginger Bread looks. It just doesn't have the nice clean feel. CM10 gets it right with the minimalistic look and design while adding features hidden where they should be hidden. Honestly, this is a HUGE plus. I really like the way CM10 looks and feels over almost every other ROM. I haven't found one that I've liked more than CM10.

Cons:

Most apps that use some form of a web view crash: A web view is a little window that renders webpages for you. Apps like Facebook use to use this and they crashed all the time. Exceptions include the stock web browser and most other web browsers. The reason for this crash is that there is a fatal Out Of Memory exception.

Google Now takes way longer to load: Yes, I already said that apps take a while to load but Google Now seems to take 5 seconds MINIMUM up to 10 seconds. I don't know why. I tried disabling the "Say Google to search" feature as well as the cards and that seems to have cut down on the load time but if Google Now is something you really want/need, this is a huge drawback.

Apps take a long time to load: Long is a subjective term so I'm defining it as between 1 second to just initialize to 3-5 seconds on a bad day. I am very sure this is because our phone has very little ram so the OS has to free some space for the new app and this is an intensive process that take that much time. At first, I pushed this off as some issue that doesn't really need attention but when you are trying to add a contact and it takes 5 seconds to load the Phone app, then another five seconds to load the People app, you're going to start being annoyed. Want to take a picture of your contact, add another 5 seconds to load the camera app.

The flashlight button in the notification pull down will crash: It will crash. You tap the button and it crashes. You long press and it crashes. Don't even bother. That's a big enough con for me to give it a mention and put it in the middle of my list. There have been a few times when I've needed a flashlight only to realize I need to actually open an app for it. I think the next best thing is to put the flashlight app in the swype to unlock menu.

Media Player stutters under load: Remember how I told you that app loading is an intensive process? Apparently, the thread priority for the media player process is lower than the app loading process. I say this based on the fact that as I play music from Pandora, if I press back, switch apps, or open a new app, the music from Pandora starts cutting and stuttering almost like a buffer, but not quite. I have not tried this with other music players but I have done it with another youtube player and I get the same problems. I haven't tried this with Google Music though so you may have some luck with that.

System Crashes: Rarely will my phone reboot on me for some strange reason. It has happened to me maybe 5 times in the last month and a half but it has happened. I don't really consider this a con just because it's so rare but it happens.

Google Maps Street View Crashes all the time: I believe this is related to the problem with Google Chrome. I remember reading that our kernel doesn't support certain drawing textures or drawing APIs so any app that tries to use those methods force close without warning.

Here are the apps I run and why:

Facebook Bookmark: I have a bookmark to facebook.com instead of using the facebook app mainly because the app USED to crash very frequently in the alpha one release (it used to use webviews instead of native code). I haven't noticed it crashing on me recently so I may switch back to using the stock Facebook App.

Go SMS: Simply because I like the look and feel of Go SMS better. It's really your choice on this one. I also like the popup notification when I receive messages that Go SMS provides over the one that the stock Messaging app provides.

K9-Mail: The stock E-Mail app crashed very frequently on me in the alpha one release. I could never figure this one out because it would crash even without the web views open. It may be fixed now but I've gotten used to K9-Mail

Stock Browser: Most other browsers clutter the screen (like Opera). I don't run firefox because I tried the beta release and it was very lacking. Google Chrome crashes all the time because of the kernel issue. I really enjoy using the stock browser with the "Quick Control" feature enabled under "Labs" in the stock Browser app. It cleans up the screen really well.

aCalendar: The widget is better. Plain and simple. I use day view for the widget. I use the widget on it's own home screen.

gTasks: Just something to use. I mostly use the widget on it's own home screen full sized

Conclusion:

Although I cannot recommend this ROM as an every day driver, I have to say that it does provide some serious features with some serious drawbacks. It is really up to you in my opinion because even I cannot decide whether it is a good or a bad ROM. The reason why I would flash a ROM is because I want to increase usability and to clean up my cluttered OS. However, minimalistic ROMs don't provide the features that CM10 provide. Those features definitely come in handy at times. Moreover, I like the CM10 lock screen way more but that's just taste. The reason why I haven't discarded CM10 already is because I can probably live with the longer load times for apps and the spontaneous crashes. The crashes are either rare enough to not bother me or predictable enough that I can avoid them.

My recommendation would be to try it out and see if you can live with it. If you can live with it, then you should definitely run it because it is by far the best app around. This is a good rom but not good enough for a solid recommendation. However, it is amazing it is still only on Alpha 2 considering how well it works for an alpha.

By the way, if you're coming form CM7/9, definitely jump to CM10. The decrease in force closes is worth the increase in app load time.