HTC Desire HD + CyanogenMod 7.1

OK, not strictly a new phone, but I figured it was worth mentioning this.

I recently had a little accident with my Desire HD. 2am, stumbled out of cab a little worse for wear, went to get my keys out of my pocket and lo and behold my DHD decided to follow them. Onto the pavement. Face down. Astonishingly, even with cracked glass the screen still worked, but it needed to get replaced so I stuck it in the post to my insurers and settled in for a few weeks of misery with my backup Galaxy Europa.

On Saturday I was woken up by the doorbell and ran down to find a package with my repaired phone in it. Christmas had come early. As I had wiped it before posting, I thought now was as good an opportunity as ever to get it rooted and stick a new rom on it. Before the accident I had found myself getting increasingly frustrated with lag on the phone and poor battery performance and I also wanted to get it ready for ICS. After a browse around, I settled on CyanogenMod and got going. The process isn’t easy for the non-tech savvy - I think it’s a debate for another time as to whether this is a good thing™ or not - but soon I was running a clean install of CyanogenMod and could get my account synced back up and my apps installed.

So, why am I posting this in the Android Devices section? Well, to put it simply, I’ve been amazed by the immediate noticable difference in my device. Ignoring the functional enhancements, the performance just strikes me as better. Screen transitions and movement is smoother and I haven’t noticed any stuttering. More importantly, I can now leave my phone un-connected on my bedside table at night without it draining most of the battery. For some people this may not be a surprise, but I think many who have not yet tried this approach may not fully appreciate the possibilities. This is much like when I finally bought my own ski boots: many people had told me how much better it would be to own my own rather than renting, but until I did so I hadn’t believed how much better it would be. I had that same apprehension before moving to CM but now I have done so I wouldn’t go back.

In conclusion, if you’re comfortable with backing up your data and the risks involved with flashing your device (always some, but maybe not as likely as the warnings would make you think), give it a go. You can always find a stock rom to revert to if you don’t like it and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find that you have a “new phone” like me.

I have the original HTC Desire and am running CyanogenMod - I have to report the same experience. Everything is better. One of the biggest flaws with the original Desire was the woefully inadequate space for apps, but with S2E and CyanogenMod I can partition my SD card and the phone treats parts of it as internal memory. That alone makes it worthwhile - the performance improvements, increased battery life, better control of the homescreens, etc are all just an added bonus!

I have to agree with you there, I have an Acer Liquid Metal and it had the same problems with space as the Desire HD. I got sick of it, so I installed Gingerounay (CyanogenMod was still in beta at the time). It made my phone heaps faster and more customisable.

Before I had the Liquid Metal, I had a little Huawei X1, it was the same, so I put CyanogenMod on it and it ran heaps faster than its stock ROM.