JKeene Reviews-LiquidSmooth ROM For Galaxy Nexus!!!
In the fast paced world of Galaxy Nexus development there is always another ROM to try out if you have not found one that you like yet(I find that hard to believe). As I was looking around for the next ROM to flash onto my phone and review I kept hearing mention of a ROM named LiquidSmooth that sounded very cool. I went on over to their page and even though it was still in beta I downloaded it and flashed away. I used the ROM for about a week before it came out of beta then I updated to the final version. Let me just say, I came away very impressed.
If you are looking for a ROM that is fast, smooth, light, and full of ways that you can customize then look no further. LiquidSmooth does all of these things and it does them well. I am amazed that this much ROM was squeezed into a 88.3MB download. The ROM features the always nice Imoseyon kernel and uses Apex Launcher as it’s default launcher. The ROM looks like all other AOSP roms when you first flash it. This is never a bad thing but most of the cool stuff is under the hood waiting for the user to set it up. Under the Liquid Control tab is a whole world of options to customize your phone. Just about EVERYTHING can be changed. The entire Navigation bar can be modded out from glow to color to keys its all there. Clock and battery mods? Check! Lockscreen mods? Check! Performance Over/Under Clocking Baked in? Check! Fullscreen Mode Mod? Check!!! It actually took me a couple of days to comprehend how many ways I could change things on this ROM. Truly excellent work from the team! There is also a baked in Propmodder that allows those of you who really like to tinker the ability to edit your build.prop as well. I really loved the notification bar mods. It was really nice to be able to select which short keys I wanted up there so all I had to do was drop the notification bar down and turn what I wanted to do on and off. Now for the review.
1. App Test
Here I ran the ROM through the usual bevy of Apps and games. The high-end games such as Anomaly HD and Dead Space did just fine. Play through was smooth and lag free. Google Plus and Tweetdeck played very nicely with Liquid and didn’t give me any issues. The stock YouTube app did just fine as well, video playback was very nice.
5 out of 5
2. Launcher Responsiveness
This ROM comes with Apex Launcher baked in and for comparison I used Nova Launcher. Apex worked just fine and gave me no issues so anyone that wants to use the stock will be just fine. Nova was another story. I had some issues with reboots and widgets just disappearing on me. It was never consistent and I was not able to pin down the cause but it never happened when I was using Apex so I can only say that Nova did not play all the well with Liquid. It wasn’t that the launcher wasnt usable, it was just a little annoying and happened more than once so I figured I would report it. But the launcher that it was designed to use,Nova, works flawlessly so really no complaints about the ROM itself.
4 out of 5
3, Battery Life
Here I noticed that my battery life was about the same as most other AOSP ROMs I have flashed. The big difference is my area finally got 4G coverage so while battery life was a little bit shorter in no way did this seem to be the ROMs fault. On days when I used my WiFi at work like I normally do I was just fine battery wise. Because of this I do not feel that any difference in battery life can be attributed to Liquid but rather the use of my power-hungry LTE radio.
5 out of 5
4. Sound Quality
This was another win for the Liquid team. Sound was excellent across the board. Ringer and alarm volume was great, the external speak was just fine. Sound during gaming and YouTube viewing was fine using headphones and I can report that I had no issues whatsoever with the ROM sound wise.
5 out of 5
5. Browser Testing
For this I used both the stock browser and the new Chrome Beta browser. The stock one worked just fine. It loaded pages smoothly and swiftly. The only issue I had was a little bit of stuttering during pinch to zoom but that has been a consistent problem with the browser on ICS. I hate to say it but Pinch to Zoom works much better on iOS then Android still and I would really like to see that problem corrected soon. Chrome Browser worked much better in the regard and has swiftly become my go to browser. It worked very well on Liquid and I have nothing but good things to say about it in every way.
5 out of 5
So in regards to this ROM, I think it just may be the best I have used so far. In addition to everything just working the way I want it to this ROM is a modders dream. The ability to change just about everything on it do make the phone my own is something that I can never get enough of. This is why I love Android and why I can’t get enough of custom software. The crew on the Liquid ROM have done everything they can to make this as complete and stable a ROM as any out there for this phone. If this is what you are looking for out of your ROM than look no further than the download link below. Please read all of the instructions as there is any extra step to flash some added software for first time flashers of the ROM. Other then that, I hope you enjoy the ROM as much as I did and happy flashing!
Source-Rootzwiki
JKeene AndroREV Editor
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