ROM Picks: Viper4G 1.0.0 for the HTC EVO 4G LTE
Viper4G is a custom ROM for the HTC EVO 4G LTE. I already mentioned that it had made its appearance on the developer channels earlier in the week, but had not gotten a chance to play with it until now. Having played with it, it is really impressive.
One of the neatest things about it is the tweaks application. You have the ability to change anything to suit yourself pretty much however you want. Don’t like the clock being in the top right? Gone. Change the overscroll color? There’s an option for that. But I’ll get into a list of the tweaks you can do in a minute.
So, as a base ROM, this flies. I’ve run it for two days now and had nothing but good to great experiences with it. I had one problem right after installing it, but considering how much stuff I do to a ROM, I’m assuming I’m the only one – my problem was remedied by force closing the Play Store and clearing data, in case anyone else has a hiccup right at first.
The ROM idles like a champ. Theoretically, it should be able to idle for around ten days; however, idle time is not what this ROM is about.
I’ll go through some of the things you can change and tweak on this since they sort of shortchanged themselves with the features list, or mostly the lack thereof. It’s like a great playground ROM and I’m still feeling a bit like a kid in a candy store when I play with it.
Viper4G features the Venom Tweaks. In order (mostly), these allow you to:
- Hide and reorder the Quick Settings options
- Automatically show Quick Settings when there are no notifications
- Change the icons for any item in the status bar by applying a theme pack
- Hide any status bar icon (alarm, GPS, headset, etc…)
- Battery options which include how it looks, MIUI-style bar, color through various modes, manual color management
- Hide a.m./p.m. on the clock, change the style, change the color, center the clock, define custom app to launch when clicking on the clock or weather widgets
- Choose a custom status bar logo
- Icon changes for high speed indicator
- Status bar transparency level when over the home screen or over other apps
- A CM brightness mod that allows you to modify screen brightness simply by sliding the statusbar left and right
- Change the carrier label
- Hide the date from the notification area
- Define a custom background image for your statusbar, or use a specific color
- Change the recent apps display from Sense 4.0 to ICS or vice-versa. Reboot of phone required for me to get this to stick.
- Three levels of Smooth Rosie tweaks
- Unlock animations
- Landscape mode on or off
- Infinite scrolling through Rosie
- Icon packs
- The ability to increase the app drawer to 5×6 or 7×3 depending on if you’re in landscape or portrait
- Ability to change the app drawer background color or image
- Add cube animation to the app drawer
- Three-finger gesture support allows you to define actions based on 3 fingers being detected movingin a direction. You can define custom apps or actions for up, down, right, left
- Capacitive backlight controls
- Actions for longpressing hardware buttons
- Ability to disable the soft-menu bar (useful if you mapped the recent apps press to Menu)
- Ability to switch to the AOSP lockscreen / use incoming call workaround
- Many lockscreen appearance and shortcut options
- Define buttons or actions on the lock screen
- Enable or disable items in the advanced power menu
- Disable password requirements for Exchange email
- Change navigation app in HTC Car
- Disable HTC SmartSync so you can use WiFi from midnight to 7am
- Gameloft compatibility/market
- Fix permissions
- Zipalign apks
- Checkbox to mount system R/W in case you need to write to it via a non-root using file manager
There’s also the Venom HUB, which allows you to download themes for the status bar and icon packs, find useful links, and read news about the Venom team.
There’s not really any news on the Venom Hub, and it seems to forget that you registered from time to time, but the massive collection of icons and themes available more than make up for that.
One thing I’d like to see in the icon selection is the ability to zoom into the preview of the icons. You get a good idea overall, but some of the stuff just can’t be made out.
The themes include both individual elements and entire statusbar icon packs.
I believe this may be the most configurable Sense ROM I’ve ever run across. There’s not much in this that can’t be tweaked, skinned, themed or modded with the options right out of the box.
Now, Viper4G is not without its issues, but they’re fairly minor in the ROM. The link to the development thread in Venom Tweaks takes you to the wrong one, and there are some display issues that seem to pop up occasionally, but overall the ROM is amazing.
Performance-wise, this is probably middle of the road – not the fastest ever, but they’ve done some memory tweaks that seem to make it a lot snappier than stock when swapping between programs.
Here are three things I would love them to incorporate in future releases that are not included currently: a patched Wallet that does not say it’s unsupported, Google Now! (which I’ve added and can’t see running without), and HTML Exchange email.
Try it, you’ll like it. If not, make sure to have a nandroid handy, too.
[xda-developers]
