Been using Kang ICS rom for more than one week now. Would wana share my experience with everyone. Let you guys know what to expect from the ICS upgrade. Of course there are some pros and cons. Lets start with the good part.
The GOOD:
-Overall UI is smooth, no longer have lags. Swipe through menu is smooth. Animation speed is closely related to your finger speed, swipe fast for fast animation, swipe slow for smooth slow animation.
-screen rotation improved. Even with lots of widget, it can rotate fast. Unlike in HC, after rotate, each widget struggle to resize and appear one by one. In ICS, all appear same time after a brief disappearance. (hope you know what I mean). Rotate 90’ is probably 0.5seconds slower than ipad2, but rotate 180’ is faster, due to ipad slow rotate animation for the 180’ turn. By the way, the ics rotate animation is as such, afer rotate, screen fade into blank black, then reappear, and a very fast rotation animation occurs. although its fast, but feels not natural, would prefer the ipad style, but anyway, still ok. as long its fast
-scrolling is much more sensitive and easier to control. Flick your finger very fast, and the page scroll very fast, flick slowly and page flow slowly. Previously on hc, even if I flick very fast, the maximum speed is too slow. If I am in a bottom of a long long webpage, previously need to flick my finger >5 times, now maybe less than 3 times to reach to the top of page.
-browser is much more stable and smooth (scrolling, as mentioned above). In HC, if I open >5 tabs, and some of them being youtube video, easily FC and return to home screen, reopen browser again, and all tabs lost. Now in ICS, browser never FC for >5 tabs, worst case is just browser becomes slow and laggy (acceptable type, during changing tabs and scrolling). So far browser only FC once, but reopen it, it will recognize it has FC, and load back all my tabs. (very neat)
-able to make folders in home screen, no need to rely on apps or launcher for that.
-the back, home, recent app buttons, have good animation, makes you certain that you have pressed it. the whole button glows very obvious when you tap it, nice and smooth glowing and fading animation. No lag at all. Press home and instantly transported to home.
-recent app becomes the task manager. The MOST convenient feature of ics. Just press it. Even with lots of recent app, it loads instantly, no lag like in HC, and a swipe can close the app. (left or right also can) If you want to exit an app after using, just press home then recent app and swipe away the most bottom one. (all 3 steps in one smooth rapid move, its like tap, tap, swipe, and the app gets closed, super cool and easy)
-I notice one app, performed much better in ICS. Called “touch racing” (got for free in amazon free app of the day), in HC, it was so slow. (cant consider it as lag, it can run normally, but everything is just much slower, like slight slow motion) but in ICS, it runs equally smooth as my sgs2. Maybe more apps benefit from this, but I don’t have much 3d games to test.
-gallery is nice. Its quite smooth In HC already, in ICS also very smooth, but the pictures are bigger. On landscape, it can display 2x4, on portrait, 3x4. Thumbnails are much bigger. Not sure if this a good thing. Takes some getting used to.
-all widgets can be resized, even to ridiculously small or ridiculously big as you pleased.
-no touch widz, kiss the mini app tray good bye. Hurray!!
-notifications can be swiped away to close them individually. (believe me, the swiping is really fun)
-small bug in the recent app style task manager, if you exit an app properly by pressing back, it will still appear in recent app. recent app displays both previously opened app and currently app. this is actually quite confusing (fail as a task manager). also it is not multitouch, means have to swipe one by one. despite the drawback, still glad to have this feature
-there is a data usage monitor in the settings, but useless for me since I’m a wifi version, the usage always remains 0 in my case. Don’t have 3g ma…hahaha.
The BAD:
-folder has limitation, cant hold more than 8x7=56 apps. Very silly limitation
-Some apps not compatible. Example jelly defence works in HC, but on ICS, the games loads, but cant register your touch, in other words, useless. sygic also cant work, but update to latest version settle the prob. Should not be a big deal as most app have update to support ics. (wondered why it was not compatible in the first place.)
-flv videos have no thumbnails in gallery. They appear as blank black picture. Sad for me cause 90% of my video collection are flv. No way to identify them in gallery, they all look the same. Have to rely on file manager to find video I want to play.
-touch widz is missing. Being very accustomed to it, I miss some of its features. The stock notification bar is really stupid, the quick toggle are wasting a lot space, and extra taps are needed to adjust screen brightness (very annoying, but have to get used to it)
-missing touch widz task manager. Long press home button and nothing will appear. How much RAM used will forever remains a mystery. But then again, maybe this is good also, no need to worry about ram.
-in app tray, after rotate, the alignment change, in portrait is 5x7, in landscape 8x5. Weird. I remember in HC, the alignment remains after rotate.
-honey bar cant work in ics. Stuck with the task bar forever in every screen.
-wifi direct, a feature I miss a lot, is not working yet. There is an option for it, but tap it and it says wifi direct couldn start. Sigh. Miss this a lot.
Some of the features not working, such as camera. Other than that, it’s a complete rom I would say, a very accurate idea of what ICS will be, almost everything works (just hope the wifi direct works at the final cyanogen 9 build). Enough for daily use. In conclusion, ICS is kindda like an major bug fix that should’ve been there since day 1. But if you compare HC 3.0 to it, then it’s a huge upgrade in terms of stability and smoothness. For extra features, no much, other than some nice change in the ui that introduce swiping motion. highly recomend if you can live without camera and wifi direct.