[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile ROM Development] Joe Bleau:
Energy RHODIUM 29013 Mar.12 ROM Report

First: thank you NRGZ28 for the continuous updating of your ROMs for our HTC Rhodium/Touch Pro2/Tilt 2. :cool:

Downloaded & unzipped Energy.RHODIUM.29013.Sense2.5.Cookie.2.0.Mar.12 > HTC Touch Pro 2 Cookie.

Turned off my spare Tilt 2, removed SIM & memory card. Turned back on and connected phone via Active Sync and ran task29 to clean the phone and format the memory to guaranty a clean install.

After Task29 the phone was now stuck on the MainSplash screen (normal) so I pressed Volume Down + Reset switch with the phone still on and connected to the PC to go in Bootloader Mode (color bands window).

Flashed the phone with the Mar.12 NRG ROM.

Disconnected from PC while the phone was starting to reboot and after 10 minutes it was still stuck in the Starting Sense window so I tapped on the End key to get to Home.

Restarted the phone for good measure, still w/o SIM nor memory card.

The Tilt 2/Touch Pro2 512 MB total onboard memory is divided in three parts: ROM reserved for the phone itself & not accessible to the user, Storage (that can be expanded w/ a memory card) and most importantly RAM memory needed for running programs and labeled Free Program below.

Out-of-the-box stock Energy.RHODIUM.29013.Sense2.5.Cookie.2.0.Mar.12 w/o SIM and checking data with > Home > Slider to Settings > SD card & phone storage:

Total Storage: 245.60 MB

Used Storage: 64.54 MB

Free Storage: 181.05 MB

Total Program: 185.48 MB

Used Program: 112.27

Free Program: 73.21 >> 70.18 MB after inserting the SIM & restarting the phone. Rebooting was fast, about 90 seconds to get to Home w/o hanging in the Sense is starting window. :)

Free Program: 61.69 MB after inserting SIM, Activesync once to PC (no data syncing > Connect without setting up your device) & disconnecting from PC, locking the phone once, opening once all the folders & sub-folders in the Start Menu including the ones found under the Settings tab, opening once the Home > Slider > Weather and Settings tabs.

As usual with NRG ROMs the phone is ready to go after inserting the SIM, time & time zone and My Location correct & auto network settings worked fine.

Important for those w/o an unlimited data plan or if you want better battery life: by default > Home > Slider to Settings > Data Service > Weather is set to Download data automatically every 1 hour and Download when roaming is enabled!

I did not tweak nor import any settings nor installed any programs and played with it for 20 minutes. Phone is fluid, maybe more compared to Feb.27 or Feb.19 for example.

The U.I. is visually the same as all the other NRG ones that I used since Nov.2010 except for the slider box fix. No new apps, no new themes in Start > Settings > Home. All the visual tweaks found in my signature works with NRG ROM Mar.12 including the custom Action screen in color & Start menu memory saver.

As with previous NRG ROMs, the default Start Menu layout is the big RAM memory hog and MUST be replaced IMO by the cooked-in Panel or Quick Menu layouts (Start > Settings > Start Menu Layout Switch > Panel yields w/ SIM Free Program (memory RAM): 96.70MB vs. 70.18MB after restart w/ default NRG ROM Mar.12 "Normal" layout w/ SIM :eek:). Even better: the free Winstart Start Menu with this cab for RAM memory savings of 20MB+, a neat Task manager on top to switch programs or kill them & nicer & more fluid compared to the cooked-in Panel or the Winstart paid version ($5) if you want even more features like number of columns, easy way to change background, animations, etc. and support the creator of WinStart as he is quite active in his thread and working on updates. :cool:

Interesting: the BattClock app I installed is using less CPU! BattClock is fetching the data from the OS & constantly updates & repaints the info on the Taskbar. With my

exact same settings

you can find here: Battclock Settings I checked BattClock's CPU usage using Start > Tools > Task Manager > CPU Usage on my two Tilt 2 side-by-side and it was much lower on NRG ROM Mar.12 vs. Feb.27! :cool: That could mean faster graphics in this 29013 built or faster Microsoft API calling for data. Sadly adding the CPU % usage data to the taskbar in BattClock is still a CPU hog. :(

The buttons of Total Commander are fine as mentioned above.

I'm glad I skipped Mar.18 & will be installing Energy RHODIUM 29013 Mar.12 ROM on my main phone soon after backing up all the stuff. :)