It has been a whole month now, since the upgrade of my Nexus S to the new Android 4.0.3 aka ICS ...
So, it's time for some feedback on how it has been running so far. Let's start by jumping to the conclusion: it's great, it runs really well and is the best official Android version so far (on this phone at least).
Let's start with stability, it's very stable, app crashes have occured very rarely (and if they do, you can ask yourself if maybe the app needs some work), in fact when I check my phone's Status, it shows my that the last time I rebooted it was over 422 hours ago (and I'm not intending to reboot it soon).
Also in terms of speed or smoothness of apps running, the upgrade has had no negative impact, maybe even a slightly positive one, but to be honest, when things run well, you don't notice really, do you? And if you need/want more speed, consider a faster model (hardware) ... I don't need it.
Then one of the more critical items ... Battery Life ... I admit, I was concerned at first, when looking at the different processes consuming energy, unlike previously not the "Screen", but the "Android-system" is usually on top of the list ... but again, what really matters is: does it work well? And yes, it does. Most days I have WiFi enabled the whole day, Bluetooth whenever I drive in my car and when I need it, I turn on Edge/3G (GPS is always enabled, but only kicks in at an apps request) ... the Google Apps are always syncing (other stuff I tend to turn off the auto-sync and refresh manually, that's how I like it) and the result? The phone get's disconnected around 7:00 in the morning and doesn't get any recharge until around 23:00 in the evening and that's fine ... only on days when I really have been using it actively for many hours, which happens maybe once every two weeks or on an occasional travel day which can start as early as 4:00 in the morning, it might need some additional juice during the day, but to be honest, I'm ok with that ...
Then the general look & feel, settings and options of ICS ... well, anyone who has ever tasted a custom ROM will know that official ROM's like these never offer you as much options, but to be honest, I don't need or miss them at all ... When people using an iPhone tried to explain to me in the past that sometimes simplicity is actually better sometimes, I didn't understand them, I always believed more was better ... but to be honest, this ROM has what you need and nothing feels redundant about it, it's not cluttered with additional options and settings, that are only savoured by a handful of übernerds. No, it's simple and efficient. A clear illustration of this, I experienced when I used an alternative launcher during the holidays (with a fancy christmas theme and extra widgets), as much as it adds more possibilities and options, I was relieved to switch back to my stock version once the consumption of too much food and drinks was over ...
So, to conclude is ICS the best Android version so far? Yes, it is. Can it be improved further? Without any doubt, it can be, but I hope they are able to keep the nice clean feel which they have achieved now.
HTC Desire: stock 2.3 + Revolutionary Root + ext2-partition for Link2sd
Even if the HTC Desire is not one of the latest Android Smartphones out there, it's still a very good one ... but as with many older devices there are some drawbacks, the main one on this particular phone being the lack of space to install apps ...
Especially if you're running HTC's stock 2.3 ROM, which includes Sense and a lot of other system apps, leaving you with very little breathing room to install additional apps.
To solve this, I decided to use the same method I applied earlier on my HTC Hero: apply Root-access, create an ext2 partition on the SD-card and use Link2SD ... fairly simple one would think ... well, yes and no. Basically, that is all I did and it works ... but no because this Desire had been flashed with the official HTC 2.3 stock ROM from http://htcdev.com/ and that means your bootloader also gets updated to a higher version making it resistant to a lot of the earlier methods to achieve root-access ...
But there is a solution, the one a used is: http://revolutionary.io/
Just follow all the steps as clearly explained here and you'll be fine: http://theunlockr.com/2011/08/02/how-to-gain-s-off-flash-a-custom-recovery-and-root-your-android-phone-using-the-revolutionary-method/
Just follow all the steps as clearly explained here and you'll be fine: http://theunlockr.com/2011/08/02/how-to-gain-s-off-flash-a-custom-recovery-and-root-your-android-phone-using-the-revolutionary-method/
Then I removed some apps to get some room to install both ROM Manager and Link2SD from the Market.
The first one I use to partition the SD-card (copy everything first to your computer, because it gets completely wiped ofcourse, so you can copy everything back afterwards) and the second one to actually mount and use that partition on the SD-card ...
Note that if you had used the normal move to SD from within Android for some apps, you are better off removing those first and installing (and linking them with Link2SD) back later ... with such limited free space, it's rather difficult to shift them one by one (through the internal memory), but it can be done as well ...
Anyway everything seemed to work fine ...
Until the first full reboot of the phone, suddently the ext-partition was no longer mounted and trying to recreate the mounting script with Link2SD didn't solve it ... I looked for the issue on the web and there are many issues on different devices regarding the mounting script, but not quite this one ...
Until I got aware that the phone was booting incredibly fast, not preparing the SD or anything, so obviously the mount script was skipped as well during startup ...
Until I got aware that the phone was booting incredibly fast, not preparing the SD or anything, so obviously the mount script was skipped as well during startup ...
I then used the "fast restart" option in the Link2SD menu and the first time it did boot more normal again and I got an error message in the notification bar from Link2SD telling me that the script was not mounted and I should retry by (again) applying the "fast restart" option in the Link2SD menu ... which I did and everything works well again ...
Not sure if a complete reboot of the phone (using the normal power-off method) will recreate the issue ... even if it does, it's not that big of a deal that you then have to "fast restart" twice afterwards to get everything up and running again, as this is something you probably only do once or twice a month (if that) (for normal users that is).
So let's wait and see, but so far so good!
UPDATE: Since the previous intervention, the phone seems to reboot completely normal now, including the ext-mount script. So, no issues anymore and no more need for "fast restart" or other funny business.
UPDATE: Since the previous intervention, the phone seems to reboot completely normal now, including the ext-mount script. So, no issues anymore and no more need for "fast restart" or other funny business.
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