ROM Picks: Olympus Trinity XE for HTC EVO 3D
Olympus Trinity XE touts itself as having more features than any other ROM currently out there for the HTC EVO 3D, and the list of features is quite impressive.
The developer took elements of both the CDMA and GSM versions of the EVO 3D, along with items from the HTC Sensation XE, and made a 3D ROM that includes Beats Audio by Dre, HTC Beats boot animation, freeza's stock dual-core kernel, panorama camera, 3D home screens, battery percentages, Beats wallpaper, 6-in-1 reboot menu, and plenty of other goodies.
There are also many Ice Cream Sandwich versions of software including Maps, Street View, and Google Music. Additionally there are 3D game demos included like Need for Speed Shift 3D, SIMS 3 3D, and Spiderman 3D.
Coming in at 408MB, this is by far the largest ROM I have ever installed and yet it's still missing some features to make it complete in my opinion (go ahead and throw in Titanium for us flashaholics and the Amazon Appstore if you're going to be 400+ megs).
I tested out the Beats Audio on a pair of busted $13 earbuds I had laying around. Having experienced some $160 headphones at a store and been a tad unimpressed, I was not expecting there to be much improvement on my cheap earbuds. I was wrong. Evidently Beats by Dre was made specifically to bring life into the worst earbuds.
There're a lot of little small changes here and there, but basically it's a solid stock-feeling ROM with a lot of extras.
One thing about the kernel it includes is it does not go out of its way to impress. 1.18GHz is about where you're going to top out, so if you're feeling the need for some serious overclocking, you'll need to go out and grab a new kernel. I don't really notice any lag with this kernel, and dual-core was working when it came up without any issues.
The tracking HTC spyware is gone, but the Accuweather clock that sends your exact location is still included (and there are still no reports on whether removing the weather removes the tracking).
Olympus Trinity XE also includes a widget called FriendChannel for Facebook 3D that I do not recall being in the stock EVO 3D ROMs (widgets > FriendStream > option three). It appears you can select a few friends to stalk and single them out in a widget; it's not working for me, but perhaps I just do not know how to use it. The FM radio widget also appears to not function correctly at the moment, which I actually would not have known if it weren't listed as the only known bug.
All in all it appears to be a fine, stable, zippy ROM. It's possibly the fastest installing ROM I've ever flashed, but right about normal speed for anything other than installing. The dev specifically says to give it 7 minutes (which is a good average wait time), so I timed it and was more in the ballpark of 4 minutes.
There's also a Beats-less version of this ROM if you're not into Dre's stock-player DSP enhancements and branding.
[Olympus Trinity XE]
