The folks at XDA are always hard at work on a hundred different kinds of awesome, but this one is really getting my attention. It’s the first AOSP Gingerbread ROM for the Droid Incredible and we have the r2DoesInc team to thank for it.
Obviously, there are going to be some problems with it since the 2.3 source code was just released last week. But they’re already on version 5 now and big fixes are coming with every update. The three big problems are no GPS, no LED notifications and no camcorder. Now, the first two are pretty big for me, but I’ve had lots of fun with the ROM nonetheless. I also couldn’t get USB storage to work, though the changelog for v5 says it’s fixed.
So what’s Gingerbread like? In a word: sexy. I can’t get enough of this UI. Google has really embraced the black and green for the 2.3 UI. They also seem to have shunned bevel effects a little. Buttons and the lockscreen bar look flatter (pics below), which I like. Basically, everything is prettier. This doesn’t really have any practical implications, I guess, but nobody wants to stare at an eyesore OS all day. Perhaps my favorite piece of 2.3 eye candy is the new screen off animation. Instead of just instantly turning black, the screen now emulates and old tube TV when it turns off.
Aside from the UI updates, some of the other big changes are better copy/paste functionality, native support for multiple cameras (and SIP VoIP) and better performance. Quadrant doesn’t fully work yet in 2.3, but my Linpack (floating point benchmark) went up from around 35 to 38 at stock speeds.
Perhaps my favorite thing about 2.3 so far has to be the keyboard. I know that seems weird in a world of Swype and who-knows-how-many third-party keyboards, but this keyboard is seriously great. It does a good job at word prediction, does a good job at automatically switching from the symbols page to the letters page, and it has a comma on the letters page. I know that seems like a weird thing to point out, but I remember using one keyboard and thinking that it was perfect except that the comma was only on the symbols page. Actually, the keyboard was one of the first things pulled from the Nexus S dump and can be installed on any Android phone if you can’t wait to get your hands on some Gingerbready goodness.
I’ll keep you posted on the Incredible Gingerbread front as updates come out. But let’s stop all this talking and get to the pictures!
Here’s the Gingerbread homescreen. As you can see, there’s a healthy dose of black and green. I absolutely love the notification bar at the top.
The app drawer has a cool new 3D effect.
Of course, I won’t fault you for installing LauncherPro and customizing your home screens until the cows come home.
Check It Out For Yourself!
Head on over to the XDA forums to read about the ROM. Of course, any decision to flash a custom ROM is yours alone and we share none of the risk.
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