[Hero CDMA Android Development] LiquidSolstice:
LiquidSense 1.1 Deodexed Edition

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. zenulator, and of course, NFinitefx45. These guys all work hard to bring you great stuff, without their advice, I'd be nothing.

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. What differs this ROM from my other one is that this is Deodexed, meaning it's open for a lot of the theming mods. You do lose a bit of speed compared to the ODEX, but this ROM is still quite fast.

What is this ROM's base?

This ROM is based off of Nfinitefx45's fantastic rooted .7 DEODEX 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?

You gain quite a bit of speed, and with this specific ROM, you get the ability to flash third party theme zips. Don't forget to Nandroid before doing so!

Screenshots:

Tech Specs

Core:

~ Base: NFX Sprint 2.31.651.7 STOCK Deodex

~ 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: ~107 MB (Need help figuring out why)

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:

~ Amazon Mp3

~ Learn More APK (As if you really need this :P)

~ Twitter + Widget

~ Google Maps (Can be installed from Market)

~ Stock App + Widget

~ Flickr

~ Facebook App (Sync is still there, the app can be installed from the Market)

~ HTC Footprints + Widget

~ HTC Ringtone Trimmer

~ HTC Twitter

~ HTC IM

~ HTC NaviPanel

~ Teeter

~ 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

~ 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!

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

Download Link

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/345001/Android Stuff/Deodexed/LiquidSense1.1Deodexed_signed.zip

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. You MUST use these, not the zip from my other ROM.

Removed Data APKs (Coming Soon) - 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\.

Mods

~ Go out there and find mods! When you try them, let me know whether or not they work. They will be listed here, with full credit to the author for creating the mod, and credit to you for testing it :)

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, 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 :)

~ 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 :)

~ 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.