ROM Review: The Collective Presents Absolution 3.5 “A Touch of Gray”
Alright guys I have an inspire ROM review for you today as it is one of my favorite ROMs on any device for a number of reasons I will go into later in the review. As always the AT&T Wolfpack is not resposible if you royally mess up your device and all that jazz. This review will have a bit of extra meat to it so strap yourselves in and let’s get started.
The History:
This ROM, well rather the team of Developers that make this ROM, have a history. It all started back in the Samsung Captivate XDA forums around this time last year wit ha ROM called Phoenix and a dev named Adam Holden. His ROM quickly became a hit and well known as a great ROM with great support. After that, Team Phoenix was born and an assortment of different ROMs were released. Fast-forward a few months and a few ROMs later and Team Phoenix had turned into The Collective. This was simply a name change and all standards of Team Phoenix ROMs carries over. Now The Collective makes ROMs for a number of devices including the Samsung Captivate, HTC Inspire 4G, and Samsung Infuse. All of these ROMs have a huge following, and for good reason. And now onto the ROM!
General Overview:
This ROM is based on the latest CyanogenMod7 sources that are available at the time. So at the time of writing the Android version is 2.3.7. It also comes packed with a special kernel tweaked and modded just for this ROM. This ROM also has some very cool tweaks done to make it extremely customizable and overall a great ROM.
The Looks:
First thing you’ll notice about this guy once you set it up is that it does not look like the usual AOSP (Android Open Source Project- which means stock gingerbread with no manufacturer UI installed, such as sense) gingerbread experience. And if you thought that, then you’re right because it isn’t. Just about everything you can think of has been themed from head to toe with a kind of minimalistic black and white take on the usual blue Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) look. This was done by Collective member NunHugger who is a fantastic themer in this reviewer’s opinion. Not only does this ROM have an awesome theme, but comes with its own custom wallpapers too! With wallpapers ranging from Star Wars to zombies and from Bacon to flapjacks (a homage to one of the developers working on this ROM). Absolution has had a few different looks since its inception and each have been masterfully done.
Performance/Stability/Battery Life:
If you thought this ROM looked good, you’ll be blown away with how well it runs. This ROM has a history of being, and still is, extremely fast. Not exaggerating this thing is smoking. It can almost keep up with my Galaxy SII with its 1.2 GHz Exynos processor. In fact this ROM is one of the only reasons I still use my Inspire on a regular basis. It’s that good. As fast as this ROM is, it’s stable too, no crashes, no nothing like that. Add to that some of the longest battery life of any inspire ROM I have ever used, we have ourselves a winner here.
What Separates This ROM From the Others:
This section is unique to this ROM because there are a bunch of extra tweaks you won’t find in regular CyanogenMod7. If you head on over to your settings menu you will see two extra sections that you may not have seen before. One labeled “Battery Bar” what this enables is a MIUI (Chinese based ROM you can go here for more information/research on the ROM) style battery bar that goes across the top of your screen and will deplete as your battery life decreases just like any other battery meter. The other section is called “Absolution Tools.” Select this and you’ll be greeted with the option to open up either the Absolution OTA app which has new releases, new kernels, keyboards, themes, etc. It’s one of the most unique parts of the ROM and adds a lot of value and customization to the ROM. You’ll also have the option to open up the Absolution Tools app which is chock full of awesome options to really make your phone your own. Just some of the things you can do with it are: install differentGPS scrpits, apply performance scripts (set your phone at a certain clock speed/governor to maximize battery life), apply sound mods, replace stock apps with replacements, and so much more. You really have to look for yourself at all of the options that are available.
The Verdict:
This is my favorite ROM for the Inspire 4G due to the massive amounts of customization, the speed and stability, the looks and due to the camaraderie of the developers and users alike. I highly recommend at the very least to try this ROM out. I can almost guarantee you’ll be blown away by it.
To download and try this bad boy out for yourself you can find the XDA Developers thread here
Here are some screenies for you guys:
