Sandvold and his helpers were (until now) the only big organized team in the XDA Forums for some time, developing ICS for the old HTC Desire (“Bravo”). However, a new player is in the race, called “texasice”. Because probably most of you tried out Sandvold’s ROM in the first place (we listed up some ICS builds for all Desires), I decided to review the “Evervolv” ICS ROM.

Before flashing, I read through some pages of the thread andthere seemed to show up some problems according to the calendars-syncing. However, following steps did it for me: unpack the ROM-zip, go to apps and edit “CalendarGoogle.apk” to “Calendar.apk”. Works fine for me (Only syncing with Google Calendars was tested, no ActiveSync). Then zip it again and be ready to flash it. However, before flashing, make a nandroid backup of your old ROM and wipe all your user-data.

But enough of flashing, there are several tutorials out there on how to do that. Let’s come up with what I’ve seen so far: A pretty smooth working launcher, which is nicely editable (=> the dock). Furthermore, the Google-Search bar is removable, but I like it because it fits well to the dock. Folders are also supported (see the screenshots). Hardware-Accellaration is hardly implemented. There seem to be still several issues (at least I’d connect them to HA, correct me if I am wrong). The maybe biggest is, that very many apps get unstable. Some action seem to cause a application-crash after just like 5 seconds, even if you didn’t touch the application anymore. Installing a Gameloft-Game worked fine in the beginning, but while downloading the additional data, the device started to reboot itself. Very strange. Furthermore, camera isn’t working (as in every ICS ROM for the Desire) and the CM7 HBOOT table isn’t supported (yet), but there is a Data++ version. All in all, it might be usable already for everyday-usage. If you don’t play games, can live with random application-crashing and just like the cool design, it might be worth the try. Still consider, this is only for experienced ROM Users, all ICS ROMs for the HTC Desire are still in Alpha. Beware! These might (usually they won’t, but there is still a chance) even brick your phone!

One more tipp: As USB-Massstorage doesn’t work with the ROM only, you have to download this USB Mass Storage APK (click me for link).