ROM Picks: ZR3DX 1.1 for the CDMA HTC EVO 3D
ZR3DX is a Sense 3.6/Ice Cream Sandwich based ROM based off of the Virgin Mobile leak. It's been modified to be 100% Sprint, with fully functional Visual Voice Mail, Sprint Account Info, and functional roaming toggles.
Highlights of its feature list include Beats Audio, the Sony Bravia engine, 4G, camera with HDr and Panoramic Scenes, dimmed capacitive buttons, TVout, Tilt-3D homescreen, FM Radio App, and HTC Notes.
As it's based off of the VM leak, if you've had problems with other ICS flavors on the EVO 3D, you'll have problems with this one if you're not using Chad's ICS patch kernel or the hboot that came with the Unlimited.IO S-OFF method.
It's interesting after flashing somewhere around 200 ROMs now to see an installer that doesn't really say anything. This was one such installer. Plain Jane, no progress, it just installs and you wonder for a while whether it locked up, but nope, it just was doing its thing.
The initial boot was fairly quick, perhaps because there are not a lot of preloaded applications and perhaps because it's a fairly quick ROM. As the kernel is still stock, there's not a lot of evident Quadrant benchmark improvement, it runs in the low 3000's and most ICS on the 3D will until a new kernel is written. Framerates vary from around 30 to the mid 60's.
My first experience with the camera resulted in a soft lock when I switched from 2D to 3D. The phone was unresponsive and stuck in some sort of small screen 3D mode. It did respond to an ADB reboot command, and after that I once again attempted to switch between 2D & 3D and had no issues. I'm always a bit skeptical whether the first boot of a ROM leaves the phone in a completely working state, so this sort of cements that idea. No lockup issues afterward.
The camera features list includes HDR and Panoramic. I'm used to those being in the "effects" menu on the camera, and as such was about to write about how one ought not to advertise what one doesn't include, but quickly discovered those options are available in the "scenes" menu. They only work for 2D photos though, which is sad because an HDR 3D photo would most likely be awesome and a panoramic 3D photo might make your eyes explode.
The camera app doesn't feel quite stable in 3D. I've used it a few times and noticed it seems to get lost sometimes between 2D and 3D. Sometimes the switch will have to be switched a couple of times before it sticks in 3D, and sometimes pressing an option can kick it out from 3D to 2D. Not too big of a deal honestly as I take 3D pictures rarely, but I thought I would mention it.
I miss the 4×5 Rosie mod from other ROMs. Once you've got that extra row you just miss it and feel the home screen is wasting space. The 3D homescreen tilt function is slightly amusing, but will be rendered much less interesting if you access any of the smooth Rosie tweaks in the LeeDroid tweaks menu. Get up to ultra smooth and you now have tilt-3D cardboard.
With no additional tweaks, mods or anything one of the things you first notice about this ROM is the lockscreen to unlock is nearly instant. I'm a little blurry on what it's missing but it appears one of the half-second animation routines may have been dumped. Whatever it is, it's noticeable.
There are a couple of things left out of being configured in this ROM, one of these is although WIFI Tether is included, it's not set up by default (choose generic ICS, router fix,) also GPU rendering is not enabled by default. Forcing GPU rendering speeds the ROM up significantly, and there's no reason for it not to be enabled.
None of these issues result in a ROM that's unusable, however first impressions are that there are some issues. If you're fairly proficient at flashing, these are not really a problem, but it does feel kind of odd that it's not completely ready to go right out of the box. Still, it's a keeper.
To make this the perfect ROM, it needs the 4×5 Rosie Mod, WIFI Tether configured from the start, GPU checked, and XLoud working (it's in there but not working at the moment.) My bet is this will all be default in future releases.
[TheMikMik]
