We have already looked at Macnut 10 and Jason just showed us all how to use ODIN to install the Officially Unofficial Vibrant 2.2 Firmware. For those of you that are like me, ODIN is sometimes a larger pain in the neck then the end results. Lets take a look at Team Whiskeys latest release Obsidian V2. This ROM is much like any other regular ROM as it is flashed using Clockwork Mod instead of ODIN.
This ROM is based off of the JK2 2.2 Froyo package. Same as Macnut 10 and the ODIN update from above. Team Whiskey took this and modified it much like they always have to give as much speed, stability and battery life as possible. V2 was released on 11/8/2010 so if you happen to be running V1 I suggest you hop on over and update to the latest.
First of all you will notice my font is changed. The font I love to use is Tim Burton. You can locate that and many others HERE. Stock layout for 7 screens and as always can be modified to your liking. Slightly clear background in your application drawer, helps your wallpaper stand out behind your application drawer. Of course being a 2.2 this ROM has the Market Widget and the updated Youtube application.
There is of course the an auto rotate option build into this ROM as well. If you have never dealt with this function take a look.
You will also notice Car Home and Desk Home applications in my drawer. These were actually part of the ROM.I don’t use the Car Home as much as I probably should but the Desk Home looks good sitting next to my PC while I write. These are 2 applications I never saw in Macnut R10, I am not sure if they were available in the ODIN release or not.
They are both very useful applications. Even if you don’t have the accessories.
On to battery and performance. I gave Macnut 10 about 2 days worth of testing. I was able to get about 12 to 14 hours of battery life both days. Which is not to bad really. I have been running Obsidian V2 since last night and as you can see from the image below I was able to be up almost 9 hours with 71% battery life left. I have not had a chance to run it solid through a day yet. Although with 4 hours of that 9 hours being actual usage of email, Gtalk, twitter and GPS testing, a 19% drain is really not a big deal. I can easily see this ROM out lasting Macnut R10. The linpack scores are consistent with R10 but with Team Whiskey not pre installing a lag fix the Quadrant standards are lower. I have been doing a lot of ready in regards to that application and its actual readings. I know some of you like to see the higher numbers for simple bragging rights. Although this ROM comes in at just over 900 to 1000, I can still attest that it is extremely fast and snappy.
I am not exactly sure what adjustments that have been inside this kernel compared to Macnut R10. I can say this, I have only had minor lag once when loading my app drawer. This is most likely my fault due to 7 different home replacements that I have installed and change between. If the lagfix that has become so common to elevate your personal numbers is what is really causing battery drain I suggest you don’t even worry about it. I would much rather get 15 to 20 hours out of my device then be able to say “I benchmark at 2200”.
GPS is fully functional and was able to lock on with in a matter of seconds. I know in the past this was a continuous issue for the Vibrant and for 2.2 RoMs that were being messed together for us. With that being said I am sure there are going to be some of you that may have issues. Nothing is perfect. If you think back to the stock phone. some people had great GPS and others had horrible GPS. I’m sure this will continue forever with the Galaxy S line of devices as well with any and all phones.
Other applications included are Titanium Back up, Rom Manager, Allshare, MediaHub and all your other standard applications.
Now for the bad. Not to much to report but things that you may run into. When your device is connected to your computer and you attempt to transfer files to your MAIN phone memory, you may run into a situation where it will state that it is locked. Meaning you can’t transfer anything to it from your PC. The memory card works fine and no issues reported on transfering to the external SD. I never ran into any issues with transfering to either location. V1 seemed to have this issue more then V2 does. Other people have been reporting that when trying to access the recovery through the RM manager that it defaults to the standard Samsung recovery. Simple solution is to select option 2 which is “Reinstall Packages” and then Clockwork Mod Recovery will come up.
In the Macnut R10 post I had a few individuals state the video recording feature didn’t function. I never ran into an issue with it. I did test it out on Obsidian V2 and had no issues there at all. I was able to send and receive MMS, make and receive SMS and calls. BT is reported to be working but I can not test as I do not have anything to test with. All other things that I use had no issues. Team Whiskey does state that some application may not function at this time since the Vibrant isn’t supposed to have 2.2 on it yet. So that would be a modification that the app developer will need to make. Most likely that won’t happen till the Official update is out.
I think I have covered just about every concern I can think of. If you have any issues please let me know and Ill try and duplicate your problem. As for right now Obsidian V2 in my opinion is running better then Macnut R10 did for me at least.
Here are a few steps that I always do when flashing these new ROMs that you may want to consider doing your self:
- 1) Wait a good 5 to 10 minutes after first boot to allow everything to go through and the media scanning to complete before you sign in.
- 2) I always skip through the set up and connect to Wi-Fi before I sync my Gmail and contacts. 3) once everything has been synced I reboot the device.
- 4) after reboot I will give the ROM a couple hours before I start to run Titanium Backup to restore my applications.
- 5) Once all my applications have been restored I reboot once more.
- 6) Fully charge the battery and then wipe battery stats to gain accurate drain.
That is my normal routine. You can of course do what you wish. As always Team Whiskey and I are not responsible for breaking your phone. If you don’t read what is placed in front of you and jump to flashing the file  that is your fault. For full install instructions and download head on over to XDA and get going. I hope you enjoy this ROM like I have so far.
Instructions and Download file can be found at: xda-developers
