ROM Picks: Dark LIGHT v4.0 for the HTC EVO 4G
Team D.I.R.T. has released a new version of their Dark LIGHT AOSP/AOKP-based ROM for the HTC EVO 4G running Android 4.0.4/Ice Cream Sandwich. We haven’t covered any of the previous Dark LIGHT series, so this is our first look at the ROM.
Since it’s an ICS ROM and there are no fully-functioning ICS ROMs for the EVO 4G yet, the list of what doesn’t work is 4G/WiMAX, the camcorder (although you can grab a third party app and that will work), barcode scanners, and Netflix.
The first thing you’ll notice about DL is that it is a very subdued black and white ROM. All the included apps and widgets are themed and look quite the stark contrast to most ROMs’ colorful pallets. This theming goes beyond a simple color reduction down to the choice of the screen brightness. It’s really well crafted.
Unfortunately, the neat B&W theme of the ROM is sort of thrown out the door once you download any app and have a bright colorful icon sitting amongst a field of uniform gray. It seems like there should be a modification for the launcher to strip colors out of the icons in order to maintain the theme.
The lock screen is pretty cool on this ROM. Unfortunately, I couldn’t grab a screenshot of it, but evidently it’s the Honeycomb lock screen and it goes well with this.
Looking around under the hood of the ROM, there are options to change your LCD density should you want to utilize the higher resolution capabilities of your EVO; there’s a startup tweaks section which allows you to select which tweaks you want to run at boot; a list of CPU governors that more than takes off the screen; a kernel Fast Charge USB option; and color gamma tuning (which seems like it should go hand in hand with the B&W look of the ROM).
All of the apps I played around with were themed to a nice black and white noir style, which was pretty neat except when web components popped out in bright colors against a charcoal backdrop. But it’s probably better that way than gamma correction to get to black and white.
The ROM flies, is pretty stable, and as long as you’re not addicted to Netflix or need to record a lot of video in the stock camera app, it’s probably a good candidate for a full-time use ROM.
One of the fun things about this ROM that I found was that there’s just a lot of little changes here and there that you discover. It did become like a game to figure out what all had been added above the AOKP/CM base.
Anyway, give it a try and let us know what you think of the ROM. If I still used my EVO 4G daily this would be the ROM I’d run with.
[TheMikMik]
