[XPERIA X1 ROM Development] Howshall:
Views on EnergyROM "Photon" 23504 8th Nov

Many thanks to NRGZ28 for all the hard work you obviously put into all your ROMs, from your reputation and work your ROM was the first WM 6.5.1 that I've tried out and have to say that I'm pretty excited about what's coming for Windows Mobile.

The combination of latest HTC amends plus moving all the action buttons and start button to the bottom of the device in latest 6.5.1 OS definately makes things more finger and one hand friendly.

Great points:

- Loved the look and feel of default theme and setup

- Loved this Manilla, Finger friendly menus, Facebook integration, having current weather as part of Home tab info, and upcoming day's calendar view

- Generally suprised how smooth and relatively stable this was for such a recent build

General comments:

- Appears it is a Finger Friendly menus limitation that you can no longer Snooze reminders for 'X minutes' selected from 4-5 options like you could in older WM 6.1 vanilla UI?

Update: Thanks to Ctrl+A for pointing out a CAB that reverts alert/reminder dialogs back to OS default, restoring variable Snooze times in the process

- Don't like clunky zoomable IE that comes with this version, feels very half and half...now overcomplicated and slower for simpler page browsing, but not as good or clever as Opera at complex pages.

- Prefer FingerKeyboard 2 to default small or XT9 keyboard included by default with this ROM

- Software keyboard kept reverting back to default small stylus keyboard instead of XT9 definately between Soft Resets, but maybe more often than that?

- Would like Opera configured with Max 5 (not 3) tabs by default as this gives more flexibility (But easy to change via 'opera:config' then search for 'tabs')

- Would likeDevice Update by default to ROM to allow simple update of additional programs by less techy (or just lazy ;-) people?

- Something I'm sure MS will get to in later builds, but often currently 'OK'/'Done'/'Connect' type buttons often appear to the left of the bottom button bar, whereas 'Next' buttons are setout as you'd expect to right of the bar. Means you can't currently assume that the confirm/continue button will be the one towards the right side of the bar as normal left to right reading languages would expect.

Issues:

- Connection Setup didn't auto set phone region to UK although network and country was correctly detected during connection setup

- Included Opera prone to crashing out during web page rendering on this 23504 build, was better with upgrade to later Opera Mobile 9.7 35461 off official Opera thread.

- Included Opera was configured with less than ideal default User Agent string:

a) Was sent to mobile info page on www.bbc.co.uk instead of full site that Opera can handle

b) Was told not using a compatible device when trying to access www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer

- On initial setup of new POP3 mail account the phone wouldn't successfully connect and do first sync with connection set to use 'Internet' in advanced settings, had to explicitly change this to 'T-Mobile Internet' direct Service Provider option instead.

- This ROM seems more liable to crashes or lockups where top bar but nothing else will appear when bringing the device out of standby if lock screen and/or password have been setup

Application Issues:

- Included Opera doesn't take advantage of X1 Touch/Scroll pad button to allow page scrolling, instead either have to use touchscreen itself or surrounding D-pad.

- Included Opera doesn't seem to like adding text to form fields in web pages with the X1 physical keyboard, clicking into the field insists on bringing up software keyboard and when you start typing on physical keys this disappears but takes focus away from field so only 1 letter gets entered into the field (May be fixable with use of Null Keyboard - Not yet tested)

- Latest Device Update software selection checkboxes do not behave correctly under this ROM. Clicking them seems to result in double tap behaviour and even weirder behaviour if clicking overall category checkbox and then expanding/contracting it's tree.

Summary:

Currently planning stay with EnergyROM but roll back to recommended more stable EnergyROM_21864_KOVSKY_08.Nov.2009_Standard and see how I go on that.

Really hoping that I can find a ROM that will give me back 'Snooze for X minutes' without giving up all these new shiny toys!

Update: Thanks to Ctrl+A for pointing out a CAB that reverts alert/reminder dialogs back to OS default, restoring variable Snooze times in the process

Thank you