[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] BAoxymoron:
Hello, first off I'd like to say I'm sorry if this is in the wrong section, but anyways, I'm trying to get things situated the way I like on my phone and I'm currently trying to figure out how best to achieve what I want while simultaneously having some fun learning and coding. In short my goal here is to combine my favorite aspects of AOSP roms and specifically the LiquidSmooth rom as that is currently one of my favorite AOSP roms I've tried on my s3. Also just fyi I'm currently running CleanRom right now because there are a couple features within touchwiz I'm having difficulty losing and as such I would like to start designing several modifications for a Rom.

The primary thing I really love within touchwiz is the lock screen. I like how I can swipe from anywhere on the screen to unlock my phone as well as the app shortcut mechanism, and while within cleanrom this has changed I also really liked how the sms and missed call notification was separate from the app shortcut bar in order to make it stand out. I'm also a really big fan of the swipe left and right for phone and messages within any samsung app that displays a contact or contact's thread (I wouldn't mind just having this within the people app but either way it'd be nice). There are also a couple motion actions I really like, particularly: direct call (call contact currently open in sms thread or contact card), smart alert (alerts you when you pick device up after a missed notification), and smart stay (attempts to detect if eyes are currently looking at the screen (this one I really just want more in depth look even if I can't incorporate it since it’s rather fascinating). And I also like the power saving profile that is within both the system settings and notification bar that is tied to an on/off switch instead of a change of actual profiles (just a preference here not really a necessity).

On the AOSP/liquidsmooth side of things the first thing is just the clean crisp and quick feel that AOSP roms seem to have (and no I’m not ruling out placebo effect but it does seem to feel less clogged). One of the main areas that I really love within Liquidsmooth is its notification bar. It is a very clean yet still attractive notification bar that is full of features (many AOSP but others that are more attributed to liquid). For example, something missing in CleanRom and potentially other touchwiz roms is the expanded notifications that include buttons such as reply, call etc. Though, one area in which I do prefer touchwiz is how they separate ongoing and notifications. Another thing that liquid has that I haven’t really seen elsewhere is the LTE toggle which I’d like to put in any and all roms I’m running just due to the battery drain caused by LTE radios (also wouldn’t mind adding longpress hidden menu to the toggle). Also I really like the quick reply function in liquid that shows a popup to quickly reply to text messages without leaving your current screen. Another area I feel Liquidsmooth really shines is its integration of settings into a sub menu within system settings because it just feels more natural and organized.

I’m listing all of these things because I’m trying to figure out how you guys would recommend approaching the rather large, for me at least, task here. Of note, while, I understand coding principles, debugging, style, the importance of commenting etc. I’m fairly new to setting up plans of attack on larger projects (my most recent project, designing an audio analyzer on fpga board using vhdl took several weeks to get anywhere major due to a difficulty of mine in finding where to start). That isn’t to say I don’t think I can do it, but I like to be as honest as possible so you know where I am personally. But yeah I would really appreciate any help or direction in achieving these goals. I know these things could probably be achieved by various hack job methods, but I’ve always preferred clean, from the ground up, complete and stable solutions but that by definitely doesn’t mean I’m against building off of previous work and improving the open source community. With all of that said what do you guys think? Should I start this project with a CleanRom base or a LiquidSmooth/AOSP base and modify them from there or start from a more blank slate and compile an entire Rom. Also, I really would like to start getting more and more into the android development scene as well as further my knowledge and skill base. I’m currently a computer engineering student with the intentions of heading into mobile computing either in operating system design or processor design though obviously the specific specialty could change a little though it will likely stay within mobile devices. I would consider myself generally proficient in C (and by corollary C++), VHDL and VB (cue VB flame comments ), but I would consider myself very good at learning new things and I have a very base understanding of other languages. Like I said my main goal with this post is guidance in how to start and in general go about accomplishing the above tasks. This is honestly one of my few forays into larger scale projects and my first android project, so any help, criticism, reference suggestions or advice is more than welcome.

Sorry for being so long winded but I’ve never been very good about keeping discussions about my favorite things short or to the point… especially when the topic is android… But I digress; Thank you those who read this and again sorry for the length…