OK - I tried touchflo for about a month..
During that month, I convinced my brother to get the same phone. (he's not really a techy, although he knows his way around computers..)
Got tired of hearing him kickng and screaming about the usability of this phone, so ended up doing something about it.. I used spb mobile shell on my old phone, installed it on this one too now.
Here's my current setup - running on the stock sprint rom.
SPB Mobile Shell
multimedia tab has kinoma play/slingplayer/htc audio manager (had to dig to find the htc audio manager since it works w/ bluetooth stereo.. and doesn't 'pause' like other players do when they hickup - sprint music store no longer works w/ touchflo disabled - so had to find this)
internet tab w/ opera mini / opera mobile / google chat client (octrotalk) / skyfire. I spend most of the time in opera MINI
Opera mobile is the hacked version w/ flash embedded and the ati video driver (works better, but opera mini is still way better I think..)
today screen hack to go directly to spb mobile shell
jz smartmort for choosing which browser to open when I click on a link from the rss reader/emails (LOVE this program btw..) - usually I select opera mini - unless I now I need opera mobile or skyfire (for video)
pocketshield (I've tried other locking programs; this one's by far my favorite)
ae button plus with mappings for bringing up the task list, going etc.
Performance hacks/etc
The interface is so much better now then it ever was w/ touchflo 3d!
So basically, when I take the phone out of my pocket, pocketshield shows up w/ the locked phone showing time/etc. If there's light, it automatically unlocks.. If not, I slide down to unlock. If I was in a dfiferent program, this is visible now. if not, spb mobile shell (since it's now my today screen) shows up. Or i can hit the home button to et spb to popup. or hit a button to select a different running program. easy. works. can access everything I need with very few clicks. FAST. for the most part.. The only complaint I have is that when I slide out the keyboard while typing an sms, the keyboard can lag.. (I think disabling t9 fixes this, but I haven't tried that yet..)
My brother looked at it, and asked for the same thing.. He's finally happy with his phone now.
For those of you on the fence, try ditching touchflo - spb mobile shell is so much faster!
Software used -
SPB Mobile Shell -
http://beta.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/mobileshell/
today screen hack to enable spb mobile shell on today screen -
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...1&postcount=11
Pocketshield -
http://www.pocketshield.net/default.htm
Kinoma Play -
http://kinoma.com/play/
Opera mobile version used w/ flash/ati drivers -
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=51483
Java for running opera mini -
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=407667
Opera mini -
http://www.opera.com/mini/download/
-mark