Stock With Goodies ROM brings Google Now, Speed to the HTC EVO 4G LTE
Stock with Goodies v1.77 is a custom ROM for the HTC EVO 4G LTE that is based off of the 1.22.651.3 OTA that brings several enhancements to the stock experience.
Among the modifications from stock are the menu remapping mod if you want to change what the hardware buttons do, volume rocker skipping, shutter sound toggle, the advanced power menu, MMS compression disabled, and others.
It also adds the Sense 4.5 camera and Google Now to really set it apart from the phone you purchased. If you haven’t played with Google Now, it’s an extremely useful and somewhat creepy application that predicts drive times, weather, helps with appointments, and many other things without being told to. Mostly it guesses what will help.
If you’ve been craving enhanced functionality without stepping away too much from the stock EVO 4G LTE experience, this might be a ROM worth checking out.
If you do decide to flash it, make sure to clear your Google Wallet settings if you use it, make a nandroid backup, and let us know how it works for you.
[xda-developers]
So, how do you activate Google Now on this ROM? Is it limited to the search bar?
On phones with a capacitive search button (like my EVO 3D), you can activate it from that from anywhere. On phones with the on-screen keys, you can activate it anywhere by sliding up with that. If they added the ability to activate it by long pressing one of the capacitive buttons, that would be a good solution. I’m also guessing it can’t be activated from the lockscreen like stock Android?
i think this ROM along with new viper rom might be best available right now. I might even choose stock w/ goodies over viper right now.
to make google now work just open the app once and your done. It will do the rest itself. It will learn on its own and if you are signed into google on your pc it will link with that as well…ie your google searches.
Yeah. It will learn from your searches on your phone and/or tablet too, as long as you’re signed into the same Google account on those devices.
What I meant was, how do you launch Google Now on this particular ROM. You use the search button or slide up from the on-screen buttons, but since this the EVO 4G LTE lacks a dedicated search button or on-screen buttons, I was wondering how one launched it.
I believe you half press the camera button…..
Does voice search work on this? The google now app from XDA wad never able to get it working.
try mean rom it works fine!!
I have been using this ROM for 2 months and honestly it is the best custom ROM out. The developer of this ROM is very aggressive and innovative and updates this ROM 1 to 2 times a week which you do not need to do a clean wipe to update.
Google Now Works Great. From my experience it is embedded in the Google Browser so you get to it by hitting the google icon. The voice search is waaaay better than the default keyboard recognition. Google Now quickly gets way addictive but “Warning” it is a Battery Hog as it constantly uses GPS for it to work.
Overall this again is the best ROM out there. Definitely the smoothest and fastest ROM that has all the common perks you will find in other ROMs like the wifi tether, no compression to send Pics via MMS. and its tweaked to get the maxim battery life performance.
Locked bootloader,no updates, bending body, etc. Too bad this phone ended up being such a pos. It was very promising out of the gate.
1 update already, second on the way
unlocked bootloader and s-off if you want it
bending body if you sit on it maybe
So the bounty for s off on xda isn’t real? Maybe check the threads over there for bending phones also… it’s a real problem. I still might get one when lte comes to town and they are 200 or less on craigs list…. maybe a nexus instead
S-OFF and locked bootloader are two different things. We have S-OFF with Lazypanda and stock original software, and we have unlocked via htcdev on original and updated. Either way you do it the phone works about the same (except you may have to use HTC Dumlock, Flash Image GUI or something like 4ext when it comes over).
If you’re unable to S-OFF, you have to unlock via HTCdev. As has been reported multiple times if you’re dealing with Sprint this is a non-issue, if you’re shipping back to HTC for warranty work this still seems to be a non-issue.
If you’ve updated to the newest OTA, no, there’s no S-OFF at the moment, there is unlocked bootloader via htcdev. This will continue to be the case – if you update your phone, you’re not going to get S-OFF immediately and might have to wait a while, or you can go to HTCDev 24/7 and unlock the bootloader and go about your flashing business.
There will always be a bounty on S-OFF posted after a firmware update. People don’t want to tell HTC they’re unlocking their phone. I have not seen one for the 4G LTE, but once again it’s a situation where other than flashing radios there’s not a thing you can’t do with S-ON/HTCDev unlocked and a software solution (such as flash image gui). It just takes knowing what you need to do and not believing that S-ON = useless.
As for the bending, the phone is significantly thinner and longer than the 4G/3D. The amount of pressure you can exert on the pressure points sitting on the phone is a lot more than you might think would be added by adding a half inch to the height and cutting .15? from the depth. Add a case that adds .10″ to the phone and you’ve got the same level of sitability you had with the other phones. Or don’t sit on it, which can be accomplished by not sitting on it.
You want a phone you can sit on at an angle, no, this isn’t the phone. 100 pounds of force roughly 2/3rds up the phone will break it. I do respect my tank phone the EVO 3D, but these are different purposes – the EVO LTE is slim and sleek and light. The old EVOs were tanks. This is not a tank.
Really though, much like the 3D before and the original 4G now, there’s nothing you can’t flash using htcdev method and some workarounds.
However, the nexuses can be quite the cool phones… just saying, don’t buy every problem you see as endemic of the phone as a whole.
Oh, and don’t get me wrong, I am not a spokesperson for HTC. Last I checked they disliked me. Just saying they made a good phone and to call it garbage for the wrong reasons – not right.
I mean, good complaints about the phone are the removable battery, which nobody really is complaining much about since release as the life is absurd and the charge times are quick. Or that you would void the hardware warranty by changing the battery (which can be done rather easily.) Or that they shipped a phone with a feature they had not tested or got working at that time (Google Wallet)
Or that LTE isn’t around (which is more of a Sprint issue) or that the glass is not significantly stronger (although it is the same strength and thinner) or the kernel-level faux-battery pull (power, vol up, vol down) does not have a hardware component so you might end up having to drain a battery on a misbehaving kernel.
Or the cheap-feeling plastic antennae casing (which does have it’s purpose but does not feel quite awesome) or how the camera is not configurable for higher-quality (although you can root and get a good ROM)
Those are some good honest reasons to potentially dislike the phone, S-OFF, bootloader, no. Not if you know how to flash a ROM.
oh, as a note, not going off on you, just organizing my thoughts and having major insomnia tonight.
good solid answer thanks.