Mobility Digest » TouchFlo 3D

Elite Series ROM for HTC Diamond Updated

Albert Bunn — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:56:05 +0000

This past July, popular Diamond chef 2 Bunny made a long awaited update to his ever popular Elite ROM series. Updates had been coming rather slowly as the last release had been Spring Break of 2011 and Thanksgiving of 2010. This time, 2 Bunny has made some significant upgrades and fixes in this version of Elite to make it the most complete version ever. The ROM thread tells the story of the ROM’s humble beginnings when 2 Bunny simply could not find a ROM he could depend on and how after asking around a few threads, he found his way to the Diamond OMJ kitchen, and later a special modified version of the Calkulin kitchen that he found by chance on Mediafire. From there, he spent many painstaking hours monitoring countless registry changes in Kheb and fixing them with Agent Ransack. Unlike other chefs, 2 Bunny still talks in the thread and updates the ROM as needed, even after others have “quit” the Diamond ROM development scene. Even to this day, Elite remains a community favorite and is even touted by one PPCGeeker as, “better than Energy Rom”.

If you’re still on the CDMA HTC Diamond and want an excellent Light alternative to the stock ROM, 2 Bunny’s “Elite” may be for you. Head on over to the thread over at PPCGeeks.

::AB

My HD2 Featuring NRG’s GTX ROM

Ramon Trotman — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:13:09 +0000

My daily weapon of choice is none other than the beautiful T-Mobile HD2. Not that this device needs much of an introduction, but I’ll go ahead and point out a thing or two for those of you who have been residing in a cave for the past few months.

The HD2 is outfitted with a huge 4.3 inch multi touch screen, a 1GHz snapdragon processor and the ability to hold the phone however you want to make phone calls. There is a laundry list of other really important features I should be mentioning, but oh well! Huge screen and 1GHz processor sums it up nicely.

Directly from T-Mobile, the phone comes loaded with the latest and greatest version of HTC’s Sense UI. I doubt most will ever understand how big a deal this is, but considering this thing runs windows mobile 6.5, a top notch UI like Sense is more than welcome!

Around here, we have a problem with running things “as is.” It’s just the rebel in me, the need to do exactly what they told me not to do. If I were to buy an iPhone, I would jailbreak it the minute I get home. If I were to buy some sort of android device, it would be rooted in the car on the drive back from the store. And so, my beloved HD2 has been Hard SPL’d and ready for war!

Hard SPL is a little firmware hack that allows us to load up custom ROMs on the device. This is where the real fun begins. Custom ROMs offer the absolute latest and greatest from all aspects, be it software updates from newer devices to new and improved radio drivers for the cell phone radio itself. It’s all available and waiting for you. But you will be warned! You can and will brick your device should you not read and follow instructions! Luckily, there is a wealth of information available on the forums and lots of people willing and able to help out.

After you’ve flashed your first ROM, you will never be able to stop. You will develop a constant need to flash. You will read things like “so much faster than the previous ROM,” and your instincts will get the best of you. And then your mind takes over, you start to tell yourself things like “man, this really is faster!” But its okay, I welcome you! I’ve been waiting for you! We will walk this sad road together! And we will discuss why we think the device freezes when it wakes up from suspend mode. And so on and so forth.

Mental issues aside, I am here today to discuss what I am currently running on my HD2. What ROM I am running, how it’s set up and even an app or two. Not that anyone cares, but I like to tell myself you guys love me, so let’s dig in!

Usually I stick to Dutty’s ROMs, but today I went back over to the NRG camp to see what was going on. NRG is just about the most popular chef there is, mainly because he cooks ROMs for a long list of devices. This is where I developed my love hate relationship with his ROMs. I remember having my Touch Pro II running NRG’s ROMs, and it wasn’t always a nice thing. Some obvious things would be missed up or missing or simply ignored because he didn’t have the time to devote a little more TLC to one device. But none the less, the ROMs for the most part were always stellar and always worked.

So coming home to a NRG ROM would feel very familiar. Then came the exciting part, which version would I select? He cooked so many it is almost over kill! I said almost! After running Dutty’s No frills strictly performance ROMs, I felt like it was time for some eye candy, so I went with the NRG GTX version. Boy oh boy what a choice!

Figure 1 My home screen after setup

GTX is a very attractive skin for HTC’s Sense UI. Just about everything has been retouched to pull together a beautiful white colored experience. It’s done so well, you could swear it came from HTC themselves. On first boot, it’s really a thing of beauty to look at. Even hours after setting up the phone, I can’t help but look at the theme in awe. But GTX shouldn’t have all the credit here, NRG has added some little tweaks and touches of his own as well. He really pulled it all together nicely.

Visuals aside, the NRG performance and stability is very much present here. This ROM is as fast and responsive as they come. There is no lag at all when navigating the UI or when using app in your everyday routine. Also present are NRG’s expert chef choices. Things like using the default text messaging method over HTC’s buggy offering, or the inclusion of ArkSwitch task manger to assist in multitasking.

Figure 2 NRG has included the new lock screen from HTC.

NRG even added a widget of his own that will display the change log in his newest rom, very nice! Because his cooking style and choices are so mature, there is very little tweaking I have to do after a flash. The first is to turn the backlight back to auto; NRG has the backlight set to full brightness by default. Second is to log in to MyPhone to pull down contacts, then off to marketplace to download my apps. And lastly, install the rest of my apps from the .cab files on my storage card. It may sound like a lot, but trust me, it really isn’t. NRG’s ROMs are very usable right from flash. Nice!

Figure 3 My quick links applications

From the marketplace I grab a few key apps I use every day. Personal Assistant from Page One is my first download. This app allows me to add just about all my financial accounts from bank accounts to phone bills. It has a very straight forward UI, and really keeps me in the loop as to where my money is going.

Then I grab my favorite twitter app MoTweet, followed by my second favorite TouchTwit. Please don’t ask me why I feel the need to use two twitter apps, because I don’t have an answer for you!

Lastly I grab Wordy. This is a highly addicting word game, and just in case you want to know, I suck at it! Go figure.

From my storage card, I install my SPB wallet app, which keeps a digital copy of all my cards for reference should I need them. EverNote for all my notes. There are a few more apps, but last but not least I install IMAP Pusher. This is a neat little app to enable push on all my Gmail email accounts on the phone. I simply cannot live without this, and kudos to the developer who took the time to make it happen.

All in all, my setup of this ROM took about 5 minutes, and it was a very worthy flash. My only complaint really isn’t a complaint anymore because I am used to it. For whatever reason, NRG’s ROMs just seem to have some sort of vendetta against the battery. This rom is no different; it eats through the battery like you would not believe. But because it’s so beautiful, I really don’t care! To combat this I have an extra battery with me at all times, so eat away pretty little ROM…eat away! Besides, it could be worse, I could be using a Sprint EVO.

I highly recommend this ROM to anyone running a HD2, or any NRG supported device for that matter. It’s simply a thing of beauty. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me while my HD2 and I go off to fight crime!

Add A Call History Tab to TF3D 2.1

David K — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:01:46 +0000

OK now that you read the title let me start with the limitations. It is for TF3D Sense 2.1 right now and only in WVGA. It is, as the title suggests, a call history tab. It’s a great tab to have and I hope that we can get this in TF3D 2.5 and in VGA. If you’re interested in this you can check out this thread in XDA. Of course, if you want to join in and help to modify the files for VGA or 2.5 I won’t stop you:)

Manila 2.1 Sense VGA Released For Chefs – ROMS Imminent

David K — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:45:32 +0000

Just a few days ago we mentioned that VGA Sense Manila 2.1 was about to be released in its final ported form from kimi_sae_ireba and right on time he’s released it to the public. In short, this is gives you some of the features of Sense/2.5 like weather on the hometab and full landscape support with a lower memory footprint than 2.5 (but read our original post for a point by point comparison). So you lose a little flash but gain in functionality. This is not available as a cab – these are packages for chefs to cook in at this point. And NRG already posted that he is releasing a ROM with these packages tonight so if you’re looking to test this out the wait shouldn’t be much longer.

Again, a big round of applause to kimi_sae_ireba and his team (yozgatg, Captain_Throwback, TMartin03, dharvey4651) for all of their work in porting this as well as NRG for already getting to work on this (even though he’s on vacation:)). Not a bad holiday gift at all…

VGA Sense Manila 2.1 Makes a Debut

David K — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:03:39 +0000

Until now the HTC Sense interface only existed in TF3D 2.5 which was problematic for some because it lacks landscape and it’ uses a lot of system resources so it sometimes ran slow (because it was intended for phones with 1ghz processors). Well kimi_sae_ireba has been working on porting Sense 2.1 to VGA and Captain Throwback has made a Touch Pro/Fuze ROM that incorporates Sense 2.1 in its current state which is almost complete.

Captain Throwback also provided a list of differences between Sense 2.5 and Sense 2.1 as follows:

The main difference, of course, between Sense 2.1 & Sense 2.5 is that 2.1 supports Landscape, while 2.5 does not (and yes, I am aware that rotatstrain has created a landscape for 2.5, but that is NOT as designed by HTC).

Home tab:
Sense 2.1 – Home tab includes World Clock w/Weather under time & Animated Weather wallpaper. Quick links to Call History & Calendar under time. Scrolling up will reveal several calendar entries.
Sense 2.5 – Home tab includes World Clock w/Weather under time & several choices of Animated wallpaper, including Weather. Quick link to Calendar under time, one Calendar entry shows. Scrolling up reveals 6 Quick Link shortcuts that can be customized to add a Program shortcut, Contact shortcut, or Bookmark.
People tab:
Sense 2.1 – People tab is the same as previous versions of Manila. Features 3D shortcut to Contact card for Favorites, selectable using bladelist along side of tab. Contact numbers are listed underneath selected Contact picture, and can be dialed with a single press.
Sense 2.5 – People tab features a grid view which shows 6 contact shortcuts at a time (scrolling up reveals additional shortcuts). Each shortcut uses Contact Picture for identification, and can be customized to View Contact Card, call a selected number, send a text or email (an icon in the bottom right of the picture will indicate the selected default action). The shortcut is actually 2 buttons – the picture acts as a direct shortcut to the default action as selected previously, and the bottom portion (which displays the contact name) opens the Contact card for that person. If there is an unread notification from that person, it will show up as a green icon on the bottom right of the button.
Messages tab:
Visually, this tab is identical in the two versions. However, when pressing the tab, in 2.1 it opens the Manila SMS interface, while in 2.5, it will open the Messaging Client interface (in the Manila SMS tab).
Mail tab:
This tab is also very similar in both versions. Both feature a bladelist on the right that shows the unread e-mail count of any Mail accounts. The main difference is the size of the e-mail preview. In Sense 2.1, the old preview, with a 3D envelope with mail emerging from it, is used. In Sense 2.5, there is a flat, full screen preview that allows more viewable area, and an easier to read preview.
Internet tab:
Sense 2.1 – Uses Opera 9.5, and includes shortcuts to add "Push Internet" links. These can be added from existing bookmarks, or can be input manually. The user can select a frequency for the pages to be downloaded, so that there is zero wait time when opening the shortcut.
Sense 2.5 – Uses Opera 9.7, and includes "Visual Bookmarks". These can be added from existing bookmarks, or can be input manually. A visual representation of the bookmarked page is shown on the shortcut.
Calendar tab:
Sense 2.1 – Shows Month view as default. A triangular block appears in the corner of a day where an appointment is scheduled. Pressing a day will open day view, listing all appointments for the day. The Calendar will also show the current weather for your Location, or another location specified in the world clock. Pressing on an appointment will open the appointment in the standard MS Calendar app.
Sense 2.5 – Shows Month view as default. A triangular block appears in the corner of a day where an appointment is scheduled. Pressing a day will open day view, listing all appointments for the day. The Calendar will also show the current weather for your Location, or another location specified in the world clock. There is also an option for "Agenda" view, which shows all of your current meetings/appointments for several days, and a "Year" view, whcih allows you to see the entire year right on the Manila page. There’s also Week view which displays any appointments for the week, and shows all available time slots in each day. Pressing on a specific appointment in either Agenda or Day view will open an enhanced Appointment Editor which allows you to contact the meeting organizer or recipients, and review other meeting information. This feature also requires the HTC Messaging Client.
Stocks tab:
I don’t personally use this tab, so I’m not entirely sure, but this appears to be just about identical in both versions.
Photos & Videos tab:
At first glance, the tabs look the same. There’s a stack of pictures, and the user can flick up and down to go through them. Pressing one opens Album. The difference is that when rotating the device to Landscape. for Sense 2.1, you basically get the same interface. In 2.5, however, there’s an animation, and you get a full-screen interface that allows you to scroll through the pictures. Pressing on a picture will animate it until it is fullscreen.
Music tab:
Sense 2.1 – Shows 3D Album art, "Shuffle" and "Repeat" indicators, scroll up & down buttons & play button on right side of interface. Rotating keeps these same elements, just moving their location.
Sense 2.5 – Shows Album art, Play/Pause button, forward, backward buttons underneath Album art. "Shuffle" & "Repeat" indicators at top right are pressable, and in top left there is the option to download Album art using Gracenote. When rotating the device, you get a fullscreen, enhanced interface that allows you to scroll through albums quickly. Pressing an album will bring up a list of all songs from that Album on the left side of the screen, and this list is scrollable. Pressing a song on this list will play the song, with a speaker next to the title indicating the selected song is playing.
Weather tab:
This tab is very close to identical in both versions. Both feature "My Location", which uses Google Location Service to pinpoint your location using cell-phone-tower triangulation. This information links back to the World Clock in showing the Weather at your current location. The only discernable difference between 2.1 & 2.5 that I saw is that 2.5 features fullscreen Weather animations on this tab based on current conditions (not just on the Home tab).
Other tabs:
Sense 2.5 also features 2 tabs that Sense 2.1 doesn’t: Twitter, and Footprints. "HTC Peep", a.k.a. the Manila Twitter tab, shows all your current Tweets, and notifies you when you get any new ones. The Footprints tab allows you to take photos and save them with specific GPS information so that you can ‘Show them on Map’ (requires Google Maps), or navigate to them using GPS Software (the Leo comes with NaviPanel software & CoPilot GPS Navigator). This tab has limited functionality on our devices, since it is dependent on the Leo hardware.
Settings tab:
This tab is probably the biggest difference between the interfaces.
Sense 2.1 – Offers options to:

Sync data
Open Comm Manager
Change Wallpaper
set sounds & notifications
customize tab order
open Contact Card
toggle Location Service
Enable Auto-rotation.

Sense 2.5 – Using HTC’s "Settings Improvement" package, this tab integrates directly into the system, bypassing almost all MS versions of Settings. There are options to:

"Personalize" (Set wallpaper, customize tabs)
Wireless Controls (Comm Manager)
Sound & Display (includes changing notifications, Backlight, & calibrating G-sensor)
Data Services (includes Activesync, Stocks, Weather update frequency, Internet Time sync, Social Networks, & E-mail)
Security (Encryption, Phone lock & reset)
Application (Manage Applications, i.e. Remove Programs)
SD card & Phone storage (shows Storage capacities/options in enhanced interface)
Date & Time (set date, time, time zone & format)
Locale & text (Set Language, region & text input options – shows enhanced interface for regional settings, & text input settings require EzInput 2.1)
Updates & feedback (feedback/error report)
Other (miscellaneous settings – this lists settings not linked to any of the previous ones)
About phone (view battery status & device info – enhanced interfaces).

In 2.1, pressing the "All Settings" (left softkey) will open the MS Settings; in 2.5, pressing "Menu" gives you the open the option to open "All Settings".

You can check out Captain Throwback’s ROM here.As for a complete port of 2.1 Sense, that project is not complete on its own yet but it’s supposed to be this week and we’ll keep you posted.

iPhoneToday TF3D Tab (WVGA)

David K — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:28:29 +0000

XDA extraordinaire bbonzz quietly release an iPhoneToday TF3D tab optimized for WVGA. So this lets you run iPhoneToday from within TF3D as a native tab which is pretty neat. You can even toggle through multiple screens of iPhoneToday. The instructions and download are located here.

Of course, if you like his work you may want to buy him a beer;)

TF3D 2.1 Automatically Detects Location And More

David K — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:45:10 +0000

The other day Herg released his latest Fuze ROM running build 23412 which I’ve been happily running. Today I turned on TF3D (which I usually have disabled) to see how it runs. When I scrolled to the weather tab I was greeted with a Google Maps ‘accept or decline’ page requesting permission to use ‘My Location’ to locate me. Once accepted it automatically loaded my local weather (so I never needed to scroll through the ridiculous list of cities). Better yet, I was on the road today and when I went to the weather tab, without any key presses, it automatically found the town I was in and loaded its weather. I’m happy enough that I’m leaving TF3D running for now:)

So, where did this feature come from? It’s from the version of TF3D Herg loaded which is the Gen.Y Manila Revolution R1.5 VGA Port from Yozgatg of XDA. As Yozgatg explains, he worked off of a final release of TF3D to complete the work of xboxmod who previously released TF3D2. Here are the changes to TF3D2.1 over TF3D2:

- New add push page dialog: you can enter your own push page manually, no longer needed to first add it as a bookmark to opera (see screenshot below)
> Also, now a warning will pop up when enabling push page (extra data transfer etc.)
- New messaging screen: thumbnails have been removed to create more space for the messages themselves (see screenshot below)
- Calendar auto-adapts to regional settings: calendar now starts on Monday if your regional settings are right (see screenshot below)
- Complete facebook integration: no more connection errors
- 6 more program icons available in start menu/programs tab (+ it’s adjustable, so you can even get more/less)
- WM6.1 & WM6.5 compatible!
- Numbers / web links in SMS messages are now pressable
> clicking on a number will open a new screen where you can add to contacts, make a call or send SMS
> clicking on a link will open the web browser
- New text message font in Message tab (Helvetica LT35 Thin)

- New "My Location" in Weather Tab
> uses Google Maps to automatically locate your position and adjust weather tab & world clock accordingly
- Weather Tab now takes date into account and adjust accordingly

I want to note that while the post mentions that GPS is in use to find your location it’s actually Google’s LocateMe which is pinging cell phone towers to find your location and not GPS. While slightly less accurate than GPS, it’s faster and uses less battery so for a job like this it’s a better fit.

So, where can you get TF3D2.1? Well you can download it from XDA (follow the instructions they provide to load it) or just flash a ROM that has it loaded…like Herg’s.

And don’t forget to thank your porters and chefs for their work in bringing the latest to your device.

Add An Orb Tab to TF3D2

David K — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:38:19 +0000

We’ve mentioned Orb in the past but for those of you that don’t know, it lets you stream media from your desktop to your phone and one of its specialties is live tv. So, there’s no need for a SlingBox or other hardware (provided your computer has a tv tuner if you want live tv) and this is free software and it’s really great. That’s old news – the new news is that you can now have a dedicated TF3D2 tab for your Orb channels to put them all at your fingertips (so you can get live tv and even recorded media). This hack is courtesy of Heartisall from PPCGeeks who modified Manila TV Player (which adds a TF3D tab for streaming web content that’s pretty neat itself).

You should know that because of the way that Orb works it looks like Orb v1 (and not 2) needs to be used since v2 updates the links too frequently to be practical. The directions are located here and there’s a step by step guide located here. The setup is a little manual but for those of you who use Orb it’s likely worth the time. Just take a look at this video to see what you get:

Nice work Heartisall!

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Backup/Restore of TouchFlo Favorite People

David K — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:41:54 +0000

Zenkinz of XDA has been busy lately. He’s released Back FavPeople Up! an application that restores your TF3D favorites in the people tab. He also notes that this is advantageous over backing up the file pim.vol (where your contacts information is stored). I have tried restoring using pim.vol in the past and had some issues with it (as do others) but reports of Back FavPeople Up! seem to suggest it’s running as planned. So Flashing Whores rejoice once again!

TouchFlo3D 2.5 Previewed

David K — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:29:44 +0000

PocketNow has provided a link to the German website UDK which got their hands on the upcoming Firestone along with the new version of TF3D that comes along with it. Notably, it has a better today screen (that includes an app launcher on the home screen without needed to go to another tab), a footprints tab and enhanced settings options (more finger friendly and it hides WM better).

And if you’re really into it you can watch a little video preview (also in German).

So, do you think TF3D will keep evolving or is it a lost cause? This doesn’t seem to be a huge leap from TF3D2 but nonetheless there are some welcomed improvements here.