Virtuous Unity - Sense 3.0 For Those Left Behind

Virtuous Unity

Virtuous Unity is a built-from-the-ground-up Sense 3.0 rom. As they state it is the first custom Sense 3.0 ROM scaled for WVGA screens. It's based on an official release from HTC. So basically for those HTC phones that didn't make the cut for Sense 3.0 and fancy 4.3" qHD display it's a definite upgrade.

The Lockscreen


When I first installed VU I was using 1.31.1 which for the Inc 2 was buggy. Mobile Data was sparse but wi-fi worked perfectly. I have since then upgraded to VU 2.35 which has fixed a bunch of the bugs. The first thing I noticed was the all new lockscreen (below) that had a new ring that you drag up rather than swipe down. You can drag one of four icons into the ring and the phone will open up that respected program.  You can change information displayed on the lockscreen. I personally had the weather option set. I don't know why but I like seeing what the weather is and the temperature is going to be when I turn on my phone.

Set-Up

After unlocking the phone I was greeted with the HTC phone setup. Basically if you ever have bought a new phone you're brought through a series of screens. Wifi setup, Google Account sign up/in and so on. Afterwards I spent some time letting my phone download and install all my apps I previously had installed. What's nice was that this process was relatively painless because the software automatically did this for me. The only software I had to manually install was anything I bought with the Amazon Appstore.


Visuals & System
After that I was humming along. The VU team has made this one polished piece of software. However a few bugs arose. MMS messages don't seem to work (sent or received) from the get go. But 10 minutes of searching the forums and a fix was found. Speaking of messaging the new app has the popular chat bubbles similar to that of the iPhone as seen below.

After every unlock Sense shows off its 3.0 polish with a rotating zoom through your widgets to your homescreen. Following that the famous Sense flipclock flips to the right time and the weather animations play, creating one amazing opening. One thing that I noticed was the EvDo icon rather than the 3G icon. While they are the same thing I missed my 3G icon. Like I said before, a few minutes in the forums and a flashable mod fixed that.

HTC made it easier to download sounds, wallpapers and widgets by including the HTC hub. It's a one-stop source that combines every aspect of customization downloading into one area. The usual superuser, ROM Manager and various other rooted apps were installed as well. ROM manager makes it easier to update ROMs or to download other ones. The Verizon bloatware is gone which saves storage space and gets rid of the apps that are seldom used.

Another small aspect I love, even though it's not a deal breaker for using this ROM or another one is, the task buttons (home, menu, back, search) rotate when you rotate the screen. Other ROMs for some reason can't make this function happen and when the Incredible 2 came out this was one of its sponsored points. So the fact that this ROM is able to do so makes it have a little more polish.

Performance & Battery Life
After noticing the visuals the next thing I noticed was the speed and performance. Added to the ROM and most custom ROMs is the ability to overclock or run your processor beyond its normal running capacity. This can cause instability but adds performance when needed. I haven't done much with overclocking have taken to sticking with the stock overclocking kernel. Blazing through widgets is snappy and quick. Switching between apps is a breeze and the best part is that through out the day this doesn't change like with some phones.

With smartphones these days battery life is extremely important. Most phones these days can't go a whole day of moderate use without being plugged in at some point during the day. To me moderate use is 2-3 phone calls, texting throughout the day, reading various emails and surfing the internet. With this ROM I was able to do all that over a 16 hour period and still have 40% battery remaining. So whatever they streamlined works and works well.


Conclusion
The Virtuous Unity team has created something amazing here with their custom Sense 3.0 ROM. They add polish and gusto without sacrificing performance and battery life. Moving through the OS is a breeze and the polish of Sense 3.0 is seen everywhere. I would recommend this to those who missed the Sense 3.0 bus and want to climb aboard. While there are some bugs in the software they are few and far between and there is usually a fix hiding somewhere in the forums. For those curious about Sense 3.5 don't worry, the VU team has said via tweet that they will be coming out with a 3.5 ROM sometime, but until then VU 2.35 is an amazing ROM. So give it a try by clicking here.

An August Break Down

Hello Readers,

It has been quite a busy few weeks over here on the east end of the great state of Montana. I had a few people quit so finding replacements and covering 3 peoples shifts (theirs + mine) has been quite exhausting. Don't worry, part two of my short California getaway will come, with pictures.

So what's been going on here? Well loads of thunderstorms, see the pictures after the break, we've had fires, and still do! Here is an article for one just north of Laurel. We went to the fair, that was a hoot. I ate more greasy food in a single day than I do from fast food all year. But I'm eating healthier don't worry. I'm going back to school for my Bachelor's of Applied Science with a Thematic Concentration in EMS Management. I turned 26 a week ago. It's ridiculous how fast these things happen. I went to a baseball game, had cake, and relaxed. Overall it was quite nice.

Other than that, there is nothing exciting going on. My sweetie is diligently studying and working through her first year of PA school. I'm sad that summer is almost over. It was a balmy 55 and rainy today. A taste of an early fall to come? It's quite possible.

So there we have it, the past month in a nutshell. It's been quite busy. But I survived another year. Here's to a wonderfully awesome 27th year! Talk to you soon and don't for get to click read more to see the pictures!

~ Jack

My Vacation - Part I

Hello! Welcome to my first real post of Marked as Read. Today I will be sharing my trip to California that happened just this past weekend. I will be giving you Part One today as it's a lot to go through. How can a quick weekend trip to California be broken down into multiple parts you ask? Easy, read on. It was a quick but fun trip to say the least. So without any further stalling, here it is.

Last Friday my sweetie and I got our bags packed and headed off to the airport. We were both excited for the trip. She was excited because a.) She got to see her family and b.) she got a much needed break from PA schooling. I was excited because a.) I got to see my sweetie's family b.) managing a small ambulance shop equates to being a glorified babysitter/mechanic and I was exhausted from weeks of that and c.) I get to see my sweetie for more than a few minutes a day.

We get to the airport and get in line to check our bags as we had already checked in the night before. Thank you Al Gore for your creation of the internet. Well we have a long line ahead of us. Good thing we came early. Then as if the powers that be read my thoughts a lady at the desk asked if anyone had checked in online. We were the only ones that raised our hands so we got to cut in line. We get our bags checked. The lady asks us where we were going, why were were going and made small talk about weddings (in case I forgot to mention it, we went to California to watch Maddie's cousin get hitched) then mentioned that there was a weather delay in Denver.

I asked what kind and the lady said fog. We asked how long we were looking at for a delay and she said she didn't know, she couldn't predict the weather but apparently the plane that was supposed to be picking us up in Billings got diverted to Colorado Springs to wait out the fog. We got our baggage receipt said thanks and proceeded to the TSA checkpoint.

We followed the ritual of removing our shoes and such, giving our DNA sample and moving through the metal detector. I went through and the alarm went off. Confused as I thought I had removed all metal on my body I looked at the TSA agent. I was randomly selected for an additional screening of my luggage. Hooray me. At least they didn't have to feel me up. I wasn't allowed to touch my bags for a bit until their machine said I was good to go.

Maddie gets through the screening point just fine and we get our stuff. After finding our gate and getting water and some gum we find our gate. Not hard with there being 3 of them. That is where our trip started taking a turn for the worse.

One minute the delay was 11:45, an hour over when we were supposed to fly out. I checked back again and it was at 12:45. So we decided to hit the ticket counter again, which meant leaving the safety of the secure area. We get to the counter and after waiting in line we get to the counter, the conversation with the clerk is as follows.

Clerk: How can I help you?
Me: Well our plane is delayed 2 hours and we are trying to make a wedding at 5pm in California, is there any other planes that are flying out so that we can make that.
Clerk: Well United, but they are booked. You can fly out of your flight as scheduled, and hope that you make the flight out of Denver.
Me: Well what time would our flight get into Denver now?
Clerk: 2:30p sir.
Me: Well as our flight leaves at 1:15p I would rather not take a chance on hope. So can we get on a later flight?
Clerk: Well, we have one with 2 seats left at 6:09pm sir if you would like.
Me: Well I guess that will have to do.

So after that cheery conversation Maddie and I begrudgingly went through security and waited 2 hours for our flight. We flew relatively painlessly; had warm in flight cookies; touched down in Denver; waited 3 hours and finally flew into California.

For the actual vacation part of the trip. Stay tuned for part II.

Something New...

You're eyes don't deceive you. This is yet a new blog brought to you by the same author as Smoke Before Fire. Now don't worry I won't be getting rid of Smoke Before Fire, far from it. In fact I have 3-4 blog posts in the works over there. This, however, is something different. Something personal. I just felt that I couldn't justify putting my personal quips, issues, or rants on a blog I have dedicated to my life in the fire service.

So with that understanding I have created Marked as Read. A personal blog on whatever I feel like ranting about. And no, there will not be personal information about my relationship on here. I feel that, that is taking personal a little too far. Nor will there be things like "I ate toast and it was delicious." To be honest I can't rightly define what's going to be on here.

So in a nutshell, sit back, relax, and follow along with me on a journey to see what this evolves into.