[Captivate Android Development] ajm786:
Update:

Some headway is being made on this. See here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=907659&page=8

Ok, here's the damage report.

Serendipity ROM: animated GIF broken AND checkerboards

Phoenix ROM: animated GIF broken AND checkerboards

Firefly ROM: animated GIF broken AND DOES NOT checkerboard (with latest version ONLY)

Cognition 3.0x:

animated GIF WORKS AND DOES NOT checkerboard

ROM Kitchen: animated GIF broken AND DOES NOT checkerboard (with XWJS3 w/2.2 browser ONLY)

Perception 10.x: animated GIF broken AND DOES NOT checkerboard

di11igaf ROM: animated GIF broken AND DOES NOT checkerboard

Ultimate ROM: animated GIF broken AND checkerboards

I have tested all ROMs released that were developed based on JPY Froyo 2.2.1. This includes the latest Phoenix, Perception, Serendipity, Doc Gingerborg, and others. I spent 2 entire sleepless nights doing complete flashes from scratch, without any data on the phone, and came up with this out of all of them.

While in general they are good, fast, and stable, there are a number of issues they are having that I believe are inherent to the base firmware. Some are fixable, such as the Wifi battery drain bug; others, I'm not sure. The main one, in my opinion, are general issues with the internet/browser rendering of Froyo.

The problems are as follows:

1. Animated GIFs do not render properly. They are very random and sometimes to not work at all. You should try it and see for yourself.

2. Trying to type into fields are VERY hit and miss. For example, when browsing to a forum, such as this one, when responding to a thread, try clicking in the field where you type the response; what happens is that the cursor goes WAY up the screen, while you are left staring at the bottom of the blank white space. This happens in any forum. Some forums do not have apps developed for mobile, so it renders it useless.

3. Tapping and holding (moving) the page around in general is very iffy. Most of the time you can see a checkered background when this happens, instead of it being seamless, like it is in Froyo 2.2 ROMs. It's easy to see this on the Google homepage when it opens.

We all know that Android OSes use a cut down version of the Dolphin browser. So I installed Dolphin HD. Same problems. Only when I installed mobile Firefox as well as mobile Opera, do the problems disappear. It seems that if you open these browsers, go to a page that has animated GIFs, it sort of "kick starts" the rendering engine, from which point animated GIFs start working in the Dolphin based browser. However, the moment you close mobile Firefox or Opera, the animated GIF problem returns. Also, the issue is that using those browsers are not a solution, since they are not fully featured, underperform, slow, and are in general underdeveloped, and not suitable for daily use. I also tried taking the browser from the older versions and putting it in the new ones, but it didn't help.

That's basically all I came up with for now. That made the experience a break-it deal for me, so I simply moved back, in this case, to Perception 9.5, which works flawlessly. Any of the ROMs based on the older 2.2 Froyo firmware work perfectly.

If anyone has anything to add to this thread, that's great. This is mainly to see whether or not the ROM devs here can actually fix such a thing, or if it's something lower level. Some input from the ROM devs would be great.

If mods do not think this is the proper place for this topic, please feel free to move it.