[Hero CDMA Android Development] LiquidSolstice:
LiquidSense 2.1

Well, for those of you who know me, I've decided to finally give Android ROM building a shot. It's a learning process, but I'm picking up on it pretty quickly, and I must say it's a ton of fun so far :). I owe my inspiration to the likes of theimpaler747. ASimmons, zenulator, and of course, NFinitefx45. These guys all work hard to bring you great stuff, without their advice, I'd be nothing.

I need beta testers! I've been using this ROM for some time now but I need YOU to tell me if there's anything wrong with it :). Please go easy on me, I'm still learning the ropes of this stuff. Any and all feedback is appreciated! If any of you veteran ROM devs come across this, feel free to drop me some advice :D

Who is this ROM for?

This is for a pretty broad range of people; those who are interested in stock Sense minus the bloat. I've removed a fair amount of bloat, including all the Sprint apps and a few HTC apps/Widgets that I feel are of little value. The ROM is also fully png-optimized, as well as zipaligned. That, paired with the fact it's an ODEXed ROM (might add deodex in the future) as well as Zen's AnyKernel, makes for a quite zippy ROM that only gets faster as you use it.

What is this ROM's base?

This ROM is based off of Nfinitefx45's fantastic rooted .7 ODEX release (link). While we're on that topic, I'd like to say that all the credit for rooting/getting the base of this ROM out the door is ENTIRELY credited to Nfinite. I take no credit for the rooting process, the addition of busybox, the addition of A2SD, and anything that you see in his .7 thread. Nfinite is a genius, and he has inspired me to create this offshoot of his ROM.

So what do I gain by trying this?

Simply put? Speeeed. Lots of it. Check out the tech specs for the full skinny on why.

Screenshots:

Tech Specs

Core:

~ Base: NFX Sprint 2.31.651.7 STOCK Odex

~ Kernel: Zen's AnyKernel with no Perflock (Set to 691 by default, can be pushed to 768 if desired)

~ All apks fully zipaligned and all image files are fully png-optimized. This results in faster performance and smaller size.

~ Free space on first boot: ~140 MB (without using A2SD)

Included Apps:

~ New Marketplace (with Auto-Updating) integrated

~ Wifi Tether 1.6

~ Busybox (Credits for installation goes to NFinite)

~ Apps2SD (Again, credits for installation goes to Nfinite)

~ Quickboot

~ EStrongs File Manager

Removed (Any/All of these can be added back in, see bottom of post):

~ Twitter Widget

~ Google Maps (Can be installed from Market)

~ Stock App + Widget

~ Flickr

~ HTC Footprints + Widget

~ HTC Twitter

~ HTC IM

~ Sprint VVM

~ Sprint Navigation

~ Sprint Nascar

~ Sprint TV

~ Sprint NFL

~ Sprint TV Widget

~ Stock Ringtones

Credits

~ Nfinitefx45 - for the inspiration and the extremely well made base

~ ASimmons - for the excellent optimization scripts. Seriously, I owe a lot of the speed/quality of this ROM to him

~ Regaw-Lenaid - For the excellent zip signer.

~ theimpaler747 - inspiration

~ zenulator - for the kernel as well as his tireless efforts to bring you the best in GSM ports.

Notes

~ None of the framework files have been edited. The theme is stock stock stock!

~ HTC Navigator will not do anything until you install Google Maps.

~ I'm new to the Android ROM cooking game. Please be nice to me :D

Download

Dropbox

Mirror: Mediafire

Addons

I suggest you use Android Commander to push these back in.

Removed System APKs - This contains all the removed Widgets and APKs from System/App. This does not include GMaps/QuickOffice. To use, unzip it, delete what what you don't want, and either adb push it into system/app or use Android Commander to do so. NOTE: If you're looking specifically for Sprint VVM, it's the apk called "sprint_core.apk". It's the only APK that isn't obviously named, sorry about that!

Removed Data APKs - This currently includes Google Maps and Quickoffice. Both of these can be DLed from the market, and it's probably easier to do it that way, not to mention the ones on the market will always be up to date. However, if you'd prefer to save a bit of time, they are here for you. They do not need to be pushed, simply drop em on your SD card, and enable Unknown Sources temporarily and install using a file manager. HINT: If you don't want to grab a file manager or want to save some time, just copy the download URL, paste it in an email message to yourself, and open it from your phone. The phone's browser will handle the downloading of the APK, and you can just tap the apk from the list of downloads to initiate the install :).

Removed Ringtones - These are all the ringtones that were removed. The reason they are not in the ROM is because they are better off on your SD card, freeing up a whole 2 MB on your system memory. What I suggest you do (to avoid having to adb push all of these) is to simply make a folder on your SD card with the following path :media\audio\ringtones\ . Put all the ringtones in there, and that way, no matter what ROM you use in the future, you'll always have the ringtones in there :). If you'd prefer not to do this, you can adb push or use Android Commander to push them to system\media\audio\ringtones\. NOTE: Your your android.phone process might FC if you have no ringtones present. Either create the path above on your SD card and put something on it, or push the ringtones. A minor service release might have me putting a very tiny "Silent" ringtone in the folder to prevent any FCs from happening. Again, if you store ringtones on your SD card, this won't affect you at all.

Mods

Nandroid before flashing these. To get help with these, click on the user who tested it. He/she was the one who flashed and ran the mod, so their post will help you if you have problems.

Super Circle Battery Mod w/ Percentage

Author Credit: Nfinitefx45

LiquidSense Testing Credit: mozman

Download - This mod has been fully optimized using the same scripts that were run on the Mod itself. You can be sure that it will not slow down the phone in any way. I have also personally tested it for quality assurance :P.

Liquid's Tips!

~ On first startup, sign into your Google account but don't do Facebook sync. Wait till you boot into the ROM, and connect to a wifi hotspot (if you have one). Once the sync icon goes away, and your google account has finished syncing, then get started with Facebook sync. Remember, Facebook sync, at least for the Contacts syncing, happens in tiers. It'll do, for instance, A-E first, wait a bit, and then it will do F-P, etc etc. Have some patience :).

~ Battery! As much as always on sync is useful, there are a couple things you can do to lengthen your battery life. For instance, for Google, I always leave Gmail sync on. But ask yourself, how often are you adding/removing Contacts from your Google account? I don't do that too often, so uncheck contacts. Also, unless I have major changes to be made to my Google Calender, I also leave GCal syncing off as well. Once it finishes its first-time sync, all your events are there anyway. Next up, Facebook! The big deal for me for Facebook is that I run it once and my Contact images sync together. I'm not a big user of the Live feed. So for me, once my contacts' images finish syncing, I leave both unchecked. These two tweaks will save you some juice, because it'll drop the number of things/times your phone checks for at the specified interval.

~ GPS! I've found that using the same fix for faulty GPS locks in CM6 in this ROM actually improves the GPS lock time like mad. Grab "GPS Status" from the Marketplace and reset/redownload the A-GPS cache. After I did this, I had a super accurate lock in under 4 seconds using Google Maps :)

~ Task Killers! In my experience, I've found that task killers tend to do more harm than good. My suggestion is to simply place a shortcut to "Running Services" on your homescreen, and check it periodically. For instance, GTalk Service likes to come up every so often, and when it does, I just end it. For the most part, I've done well without a task killer. Android was designed to manage its memory pretty well! Again, I know this is a debated idea, so take with a grain of salt :) NOTE: Do not end GTalkService while using the Market. GTalkService is also the service that pushes your Google Account credentials to apps that require it, your Market being one of them.

~ Random bits:

I've found that pressing Menu while in the Sense App Drawer and switching to List View makes the scrolling a bit faster and smoother :)

Not using all 7 homescreens? Make sure there's no widgets on the ones you're not using. I've found marginally better performance and battery life from doing so.