Will Android ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) be available on the EVO 4G?

I have become an avid CyanogenMod user since 7.1 resurrected my wife's Hero. Yes, the years-old HTC Hero running Gingerbread via CyanogenMod 7.1, and running great.

But more than resurrecting obsolete phones, the Cyanogen team is currently working on CyanogenMod 9, and that will bring an unofficial port of ICS to phones such as the EVO 4G, which would otherwise be abandoned by Sprint (and other carriers) from the official system update channels.

From what I have gathered, the biggest issue on the EVO 4G is finding a proper camera driver that works with ICS. Cyanogen has submitted a request to HTC to release an updated driver.

So with a little luck, the hard work of the Cyanogen team, and a lot of patience from CM fans such as myself, ICS will be on the EVO 4G in the foreseeable future.

[update] My experiences with CyanogenMod7 on the HTC EVO 4G

App Launcher
So last night I swapped out the ADW launcher that comes by default with CM7 for LauncherPro Plus.

Speaking specifically of the launcher functionality and appearance, I found LauncherPro looks just a little bit cleaner and less cluttered than ADW. LauncherPro also felt a little bit more snappy and responsive, which is always nice. I also like the subdued look of the icons on the launcher bar.

But the main reason I switched to LauncherPro Plus was for the very nice widgets that get bundled along with it. Most notably, the Calendar widget has a beautiful "agenda" view that is a very close parallel to the Sense UI Calendar Agenda widget.

HDMI out
My daughter loves watching her favorite kid's videos on YouTube, and occasionally I will load up a webisode of The Guild or JourneyQuest for the wife and I to sit back and enjoy. The HTC EVO 4G's ability to output to our HD TV is really a nice feature. So last night I also did some searching for an app that would support screen mirroring from my EVO via the HDMI-out port, since CyanogenMod 7 supports the hardware but doesn't provide the mirroring functionality.

So I found HDMwIn. I had to do some Googling before I actually found it in the market, the actual app name is "Full HDMI Mirroring for Evo 4G" by Team Win.

This app provides full screen mirroring of your phone, so you don't have the limitation of Sense UI to only output from media apps such as YouTube or videos. HDMwIn also supports audio via the HDMI cable for easy audio output via your television speakers (or you can opt use the headphone jack to output to your stereo or sound system).

My experiences with CyanogenMod7 on the HTC EVO 4G

So last week a buddy of mine (who also owns an EVO) said to me, "Hey, when is Sprint going to get their act together and release a Gingerbread update for the EVO?" And I responded, "Well, actually... I just saw a leak of the Sprint ROM go up on XDA recently. Do you want to give it a try?"

And after discussing the possibilities, benefits and risks of rooting and flashing his EVO, we actually decided to ignore the Sprint leak (for now) and give CyanogenMod 7 a go.

The main reasons:
1. The Sprint leak really doesn't seem release ready. Personally, I've played around with questionable leaks in the past on my Hero, but I wasn't about to drop that onto my buddy, who is probably capable of dealing with the intricacies of a not-quite-release version of android, but likely has less free time to screw around with it than I do.
2. I freaking love CyanogenMod. Cyanogen (the guy, not the ROM) and his team has earned a reputation for putting out quality android ROMs, both in stability, performance, and added features.

So last weekend I flashed CM7.0.0 onto my EVO, and this morning I finished flashing the latest update for the EVO, 7.0.2.1.

My thoughts so far:
Gingerbread on the EVO is nice. Generally, the taskbar, menus and other android-specific UI elements have been standardized and given some nice touch-ups to improve the general look-and-feel of the OS. And my phone so far has had far better battery life than I did while running Fresh 3.5 (a Sprint-Sense-UI-based ROM).

CM really adds some nice UI tweaks as well. I LOVE the PowerControl widget in the notification/task bar. I love the new customizable lockscreen (you can set up a shortcut to launch an app directly from the lock screen).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, whenever I venture away from the Sprint Sense UI I do miss their nice calendar agenda widget. I have the CalWidget running in CM7, but visually and functionally you just can't beat the Sense UI experience there.

Some other perks of CM7:
- All of the glory of Gingerbread on the EVO
- Customizable lockscreen gestures
- An updated (stock android) camera app
- An updated (stock android) music app
- A download manager (helps if you haven't installed a File Manager app)
- Improved power management
- built-in over-clock/under-clock support
- built-in JIT compiler support



So I plan to stick with this as my daily ROM for at least a few weeks. If XDA finds a better leak of the pending Sprint update, or any of the ROM developers manage to release a nice GB + Sense-UI variant based on the Sprint leak, I may give that a shot for comparison purposes.

Sprint HTC EVO battery life

While at conference last week I was pleasantly surprised that my beloved android phone kept a battery charge from morning until late in the evening. I was getting nearly 16 hours of battery use without a recharge. I'm not sure if this was due to New Orleans, Louisiana having vastly superior cell coverage than my native greater-Chicagoland-area of Illinois.


Notes:

I do have a task killer installed on my phone, but as an experiment for the past month or so I have disabled the auto-kill functionality. And I really haven't noticed any marked difference in battery performance.

I generally keep the 4G antenna disabled (and 4G isn't available at all in NOLA).

I disable Wi-Fi unless I am going to be sitting in range of a trusted access point.


What tips and tricks have you found to extend your battery life with Sprint's HTC EVO? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments below, and I will follow-up highlighting the best and the brightest, along with my own findings, in a future post.

I will consider buying a Samsung Galaxy tab...

I will consider buying a Samsung Galaxy tab... once the wifi-only version has been officially released to stores.

I don't need yet another data contract. In fact, what I would love to do is to bluetooth or wifi-tether a tablet device like the Galaxy tab to my existing contracted smart phone, the HTC EVO 4G. Why would I actually commit myself to another data contract? For real-world people with real-world paying jobs like myself, it's the only option that makes sense.

I got me a shiny new EVO.

At the beginning of the month my contract with Sprint was up for renewal. And the HTC EVO beckoned to me. Beckoned silently but insistently. I tried to resist for a few days, but it's allure won.

I even did a comparison between the EVO and the Epic 4G. Since I was looking for a new phone, I figured I could give it some fair competition.

The Epic 4G did have it's high points. The screen looks pretty. The flip-out physical keyboard has some appeal to it as well.

But, honestly side-by-side I felt that the EVO screen, while not an AMOLED, actually looked better under daylight than the Epic 4G. And the EVO has HDMI out, which I have actually used a few times already at home with my 720p TV to stream YouTube videos.

The nice clerk at Sprint switched over my 16GB Micro-SD card from my Hero into the EVO. Then she also gave me the 8GB card that came stock with the EVO. And then she gave me the battery from my Hero, which apparently is also interchangable with the EVO, just to have a backup battery. Woah, yeah. Very cool.

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So I've had the EVO for close to a month, and I have been loving it. It really seems in all aspects to be exactly what I was hoping for as a replacement for my Hero.

While there is a place for Cyanogen Mod in my little hacker's heart, until CM can support the 4G WiMax radio I will be sticking with the HTC Sense UI. And there really is no replacement for the agenda widget, anyway. I am loathe to lose that little piece of functionality that I use multiple times a day.

In the meantime, I wish there was a way to install the notification bar control widget without *cough* rooting my phone *cough*. Cause that is probably the #1 reason to root the EVO. If one were to do such things. Right.