Sunday, May 22, 2011

End of Treo750 ROM development


Well, it's here. The beginning of the end. Due to personal reasons, I've decided to end Palm Treo 750 development, for many reasons actually. It's not a lucrative investment of my time, and with my Treo operating at half it's production capacity (Send button dead, keyboard over-stressed, battery now half its mAh), I can no longer flash and flash like I used to. Not to worry though, I made some promises and I'm going to deliver. Hermann 2.1 is now stable, and perhaps the fastest 6.5 ROM you will ever experience on your Treo.

I hope everyone understands, as at first I started out a complete newbie, and I'm going out with a bang, as one of the few Treo 750 experts left out there who knows everything there is to the phone, both hardware and software. I've made some discoveries others have wringed their hair over, I've done a lot for the Treo that some have tried and failed, but more importantly, I didn't leave unexpectedly :p

It all began with a "is it even possible for our Treo's?" ended with a "I did make the impossible possible." Navenedrob tried his best, but mysteriously disappeared before his perfected release went live. Mietas actually did it but when push came to bug, Mietas no longer had a Treo to test on. 6 months went by before I decided if no one was going to do it, then maybe I can. Maybe it is possbile, and maybe, just maybe Treo750 users can have something to smile about before they eventually move on to their next phone.

What happened that day in December of 2010 was a day for Treo750 users to remember, as the first fully functional WM6.5 ROM without the dangers of a beta expiration, a working power button, and the removal of Palm's Messaging application which paved the way for more stability. That Version 1 ROM came with some interesting stuff, like a mapped side button and renamed drive arrangement. But it was just the beginning, and I didn't want it to end, despite the health setbacks of January and March of 2011.

The Version 2 ROM was to be quite the revamp, of my lessons learned, culminating to the impressive successful cooking of HTC's Touch2 ROM bits into a bootable ROM for the Treo750 hardware. Renamed "Hermann" (after having learned a lot from the HTC Hermann, aka CDMA Touch Pro), the V2 ROM was impressive as ever, such as the first ever customization of the Splash screen, the additions of key programs like Microphone AGC and Clear Storage, and for the first time ever for the Treo750, the usage of Bepe's Big Storage. For 3 years it was a myth to have the ExtROM joined with the Main Storage, but it happened, and it's here.

But all things have an end to them, and it only saddens me that the end of Hermann's development is because of time (age), and not of me having a new phone and retiring this Treo750. It's not that I didn't get anything in return, but you gotta admit, not many Chefs survive if their work isn't appreciated, despite my work being highly appreciated enough to spawn 2 chefs for the Treo750 after my December 2010 debut. It probably would have been better if I was heading over to the Touch Pro to cook for that device, but that doesn't even seem feasible now. Still though, I breathed life into the Treo750 when many had gone to despair of being teased of a WM6.5 ROM, only to have development suddenly stop leaving users high and dry. This is what it's about: I made Treo750 users have closure on the possibilites. We did it, guys. You can retire your Treo's with a smile, instead of a "it could have happened" sigh.
[XDA post]
My my, what a storied run this has been. Around the end of November, I thought, 'What if I can actually make a good ROM for this Treo if I'm going to be stuck with it for a while?' and it was that time at my first attempt, I removed my cast on my right hand, placed my hand on the mouse and tried the Ervius kitchen. It was a horrible experience, all the clicking was too much for my hand, and trying to optimize Nav's 21828 ROM was all of a miserable time.

It didn't stop me though, as I'm known for just barreling through trouble and looking forward to the happy side of a consequence and not the bad side. Against the logical idea of taking an existing ROM and boosting it, I switched to a smaller mouse (friendly for use with a cast), and set out to make this project entirely from scratch, using new, ingredients. Thanks to OS Kitchen Zero, looking at Nav's Ervius layout, getting lucky in extracting Mietas's ROM (in the end I never needed it), and not giving up till the end, we have the ROMs you see above. So this was not a solo effort from start to finish. I started out alone, and came out in the end a winner thanks to the great cast that is XDA-Developers, and it brings great happiness to be one of the few chefs to have gone from start to finish for the Palm Treo 750/750v. [End of XDA post]

-Thanks to everyone who knows me, and gets a laugh at my antics.
-Thanks to Navenedrob, wherever you may be, may you live a long and prosperous life. I hope you don't mind me using your Chess EXT package for 23563 fans, since they don't have BubbleBreaker ;)
-Thanks to MietasSR, for showing that WM6.5.3 is possible on the Treo, despite the antics of the Palm OEM applications.
-Thanks to Chaimd and his WM6.1 ROM, as it shows that taking out Palm applications while leaving the Today plugins alone is actually possible (I had to figure out Messaging on my own, though)
-Thanks to Da_G for the rollup thread, and MobileUnderground for the actual location of the builds.
-Thanks to the Chinese Treo chefs for the most unique Treo750 ROMs I have ever seen (yes, more so than the English ones). It showed me that it's possible to do things Palm should have done on the usability scale.
-Thanks to OS Kitchen Zero, and the utter simplicity of building and importing Builds proved to be the decisive factor in preventing me from fully breaking my right wrist.
-Thanks to Fjtorsol for the kitchen parts used for Hermann 2.1. My kitchen was a convoluted mess of about 6 different builds, 6-7 different devices, and 3 OEM package test folder copies.
-Thank you Naoe Kanetsugu. You go girl, as you brought smiles to my face with your hammer and twintails.
-And for the final thanks, thank you, Palm, for having this Treo 750 produced. Its rather low cost among the second hand market enabled me to have it as my first ever WM Smartphone (not my first WM device though). I don't know if it is funny or not, but am I really a Palm fan? Is there a reason for me to be using Palm devices since their Tungsten? (I still use a Palm TX to this day) :p

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