I installed this a couple of hours ago. I'll report back later on my results. Thanks again guys for all of the hard work. True Heros in the PPC Geek world!

Hows can i put this...

This is NEITHER 2.16 NOR 2.09.

2.16, and 2.09 Used a different OS AKU build than we have here. Fundamentally this is a different BUILD of the Windows OS than has been used on this device {except no2chem's use over the last couple of weeks}.

A build of a ROM comes with two core components. First the Operating System. This comes from Microsoft. The second part are the Drivers and specialized applications that are ADDED to the operating system which are provided by the Vendor and the Carrier.

What we have put together here is a DIFFERENT operating system core {AKU.7} from Microsoft that was intended for a different device alongside the applications and drivers thate HTC and Sprint put out for version 2.09 of their release. This makes up for a very different experience.

Our "feel" for this is that on the 2.09 HTC/Sprint ROM release the drivers and applications were really not "bad" but that they utilized some of the applications from the operating system {from microsoft} that were, shall we say, less than adequate.

Then, HTC/Sprint went off and tried to "compensate" for the issues they saw in the operating system and its implementation on the hardware on HTC/Sprints release of 2.16. This compensations fixes etc, were, to say the least, a fiasco.

We "think" what we have packaged here is a better "match up" between an operating system {from microsoft AKU .7 build 18333} that works rather well with the drivers and applications that were released by HTC/Sprint as part of the 2.09 release.

We "tried" different combinations but pairing the newer AKU .7 from microsoft gave us the same "power" issues that have been seen and commented on. The best combination we found was what we pushed out to you all this morning, and it appears to work rather well.

So, comparing other combinations and results to this test-rom isnt really adequate. We think the core problems in the combination sent out by htc/sprint on the phone and in their flash {2.09} was really pretty decent, it just suffered from two items.

1. The bluetooth voice quality was choppy and would often degrade over time.
2. The phone would not "wake up" for an alarm.

after we spent a long time trying to get the "blue tooth" quality that was resolved as part of the 2.16 release from htc to work without power {connection} issues, by plugging and unplugging drivers and settings from other phones and releases, we decided to punt and try a different attack.

We went back to the 2.09 release of the rom, and tried to find a combination that improved the bluetooth. This was because under the 2.09 rom there were few connection and power issues. At the time we started this part, we noted that no2chem had published a very very nice rom that was very "snappy" in performance. So after we built up a base 2.09 rom kitchen and installation, that gave us a phone that never disconnected, but had "crappy voice quality" we said "what the heck" lets start by stealing the OS version out of no2chems install and get a "snappier" performing phone that doesnt have the voice quality issues.

So.. we did that. we applied the aku .7 from no2chem to the 2.09 drivers. And presto, we had a much "snappier" phone, that had good connection disconnection. Next step.. Find a way to have good bluetooth voice quality.

So.. We made a base line.. Lets test the quality we have on this setup as it sit.

HOLLY SCHMOLLY.. PRESTO.... The voice quality was definately ACCEPTABLE. Good, naw, probably not, but DEFINATELY better than anything seen or heard of from the 2.09 release version....

We tested for 2 days, because quite frankly, we could not believe the results we were seeing.. But indeed the results were consistent via several users.

After that we all discussed it, and decided to push this out to you all for further testing.

So.. Memory issues? well as we have a different OS, all BETS ARE OFF. Time and you're experiences will tell us whether its better or worse.. we look forward to hearing from you.

Alarm issue. Quite frankly we were mostly concerned about the blue tooth connection issue and voice quality. We were/are so excited about that "improvement" that we decided what the heck.. Lets just GO with this for now, and we'll start toying around w/ looking at wheter we can fix up the alaarms. Heck, test it PLEASE, ya might find, like we did, that the issue went away with the AKU/OS verseion swap out, and no further actions are gonna be necessary.

The people involved in testing this will continue to test.. We look forward to hearing you're results... But, all our tests show, this is a **mn sight better than any other combination we've played with.. Give it a go for us..


C-ya.

Oh, on an additional NOTE. I'd like the WHOLE community to note that this post and explanation includes the words "WE". Most all of the people involved in ROM-Burning and tweaking for the Mogul were involved and contributed to this work.. Bar NONE.. Including DCD, whether they KNEW it or not. The whole community here and over at xda-developers contributed to this, and several people were deeply involved in direct testing but a LOT of people were doing a LOT of different things. The success/failure of these attempts is/should be attributed to ALL OF US who play with this phone. We ALL need to take "credit" for this, and try to stop this petty bickering over credit. Lets get this CLEAR. NONE OF US are writing this stuff from the ground up, and ALL OF US are standing up on the work and HOURS of testing that OTHERS have done. Its a joint effort, and a huge sharing of knowledge in an OPEN atmosphere that makes things like this possible. I'd really like to see a lot more "openness" and a lot less name calling, if I had my wish. So, rather than a DONATE button, I'm gonna ask that we all take a few seconds each time we get readay to push the "POST" button and consider, are we fueling another battle zone with this, or contributing to discussions..

ok.. I'm done with my rant.

great job. It seems pretty stable and sound fairly clear on the BT. I actually used the audiopara changes to make it a bit louder and that made this the most stable rom I've seen since i had the phone.

You should all be commended for the hard work in making this phone usable.

Awesome work guys, now once you get the alarm fixed I'll be switching! (That's a main thing for me)

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your time and efforts. It is greatly appreciated!!

I just upgraded to this ROM, but it shows 2.16 when it reboots. Is this correct? I noticed your post explaining that this ROM is neither 2.16 or 2.09. Should it say 2.16 during the reboot?

Hows can i put this...

This is NEITHER 2.16 NOR 2.09.

Is this why after installing Colonel's Nov18 rom, my 6800 indicates that I have 2.14? Or maybe we're talking apples and oranges?

I did have an odd thing happen this afternoon. I made a long call to one of my sales reps and after i hung up, the phone lost service and would get it back. I soft reset and all was well again. I made another shorter call and hung up and all was normal.

could it have been the rom? Not sure, but I'll see if it persists. I may have been the area, but I doubt it as I usually have service in that area very well.

Thank you and congratulations!
 

Dishe, Sfaure03, and everyone else who was involved building and testing this ROM;

I'd like to thank you for helping to restore some of my confidence in the community here. It's incredible what can be accomplished when a group of smart individuals put their minds to solving a problem without concern for politics or other childishness.

You have done a huge service to this community if you have done nothing other than show that teamwork, sharing of ideas and persistence is what is needed here rather than complaining, arguing, and ego stroking.

My sincere thanks for your hard work on this issue.

the version you see comes from ONE file in ONE directory.

Colonel and the rest of us are using a wide combination of different things.

I think colonel is using a lot of stuff still from the altel {2.14} rom, and that is why you see that. But he's the one to ask that of directly.

thanks to everyone who worked on this rom!

just installed and i notice the backlight flickering/color change is back although it doesn't seem as bad as the original 2.09 rom.

thanks again...

Seems quite good. I can't get the HTC calculator skin to work with the built in calculator on this ROM though.

I thank each and everyone of you PPC Geeks. You all ROCK!!!! I am so thankful for this community and the bunch of intelligent individuals that have pulled this off collectively. At the same time, it's quite a shame that this community has had better success than the manufacturer of this device.

Thanks again to all of you.

So, how's the ROM holding up for everyone? I haven't heard anyone complain about memory issues. How's the memory holding up for you guys? We need as much feedback as possible so we can all work TOGETHER to improve this device. Any feedback/beta testing on these roms is appreciated and will help everyone that is working on this to improve things much faster.

Hasn't done it since. Only a one time occurence. Probably caused by installing stuff just before the call without rebooting the phone.

Overall, my memory seems to be holding up well. I think this is the rom i'll stick with unless some does something to improve it even more.

I'll be honest for a moment here...
The bluetooth works great (finally), but aside from that, I don't feel like this ROM is so amazing.
Like lafester mentioned, I'm getting that screen hue change that certain members used to complain about (SINNN?)... I had forgotten about it because Alltel and the later builds didn't have it.
If I had never tried anything based off of 2.14 or 2.16, I probably wouldn't care so much- when I first switched to the Alltel Rom, I was like "wow, this is smooth", and didn't have as many strange phenomenon... then I got spoiled and used to it.

Coming back to 2.09 for the last couple of days has reminded me about how my phone used to turn on by itself all the time (happens more with this than on 2.14 or 2.16), how the screen would due that hue change thing on random intervals (can't always recreate), and I feel like I had to reset less often with 2.14 and 2.16. Overall, the system response seems to not be as snappy.

Still, for reliable BT, its the way to go... but its not yet perfect.

The official fixes will be out soon.
 

FYI, the official ROM fix will be out end of month, and further goodness is confirmed for Q1 2008

http://forums.buzzaboutwireless.com/...thread.id=2262

"Sprint and HTC regret any inconvenience customers have recently experienced with the Mogul. HTC is working on a new version of the software ROM for the Mogul which incorporates enhancements for Bluetooth performance and corrects issues that were unintentionally created by ROM version 2.16.651.0 (posted on HTC’s website on October 24). Both Sprint and HTC have begun testing the new software and are targeting to make it available for download by the end of November. Once fully tested the download will be made available at: http://www.america.htc.com/support/m...downloads.html

As a short-term solution, customers who downloaded the ROM version 2.16 should download the previous ROM version 2.09.651.3 available at the link above. This will restore previous functionality to the device until a new version is complete.

Additionally, HTC is currently developing a separate ROM update which enables the EV-DO Rev. A and GPS capabilities that are already built into the Mogul hardware. Sprint and HTC plan to make this software ROM available in early 1Q 2008. We would also like to extend our thanks to those customers that have taken the time to identify and report these issues to us."

YAYAYAYAY!?!?!

If it doesn't plug the memory leak, it's still useless to me! I do appreciate the effort and am glad to see some communication. I've upgraded my Mogul ROM threat assesment from pessimistic to anxious.

BTW, I forgot in my earlier post to commend the users working on this ROM project. You truly ROCK!!!

Then I suggest you move on to another device, because that's just how WM6 interacts with our hardware. The only "fixes" being addressed officially are the BT stack, and the freezes/lockups.

The Rev A sounds nice somewhere down the road, but I'm very interested in their official stance on the GPS... there have been so many rumors that didn't make sense, it was considered a pretty much dead concept.

I wonder if all the work done by all you hard working ROM builders made them take notice. If you can/did figure out the problem why is it such a problem for them. I find it interesting that the day after you all come up with a BT fix they annouce they have a fix.

I noticed the GPS also. Question would be is that going to be aGPS? There have been so many people who have po-po'ed the thought of the GPS, I can't even hope,,,,Yet.

I'm not at all surprised this rom looks and acts like 2.09. Many of the things in 2.09 are in this.

There are several other efforts where the 2.14/2.16 are being used, branching off to other directions. Of Note is no2chems work which apparently solves the same issues.

If the new rom gets out this month you can be sure we'll be driving real hard to make use of any fixes from the vendor.

Thanks for the feedback.

I tried the new ROM. BT works much better than other ROMs I've tried, but still a little choppy and compressed. Voices are understandable (for the first time) but still not good quality. It is usable, though - which for this phone is a big accomplishment!

I did a blind comparison by calling my wife (and then listening) from Titan, RAZR2, and Touch. Touch and RAZR2 were clearly better sounding than Titan to both of us. Then left voicemails at home number from all 3 devices. Again, Touch and RAZR2 sounded clear and like a phone call without a headset. Titan sounded artificial, choppy, noticeably compressed.

Headset is an nXZen 6000 (2.0/EDR, DSP).

WOW, that's a depressing statement! I'll still hold out a glimmer of hope that someone inside M$ is not as accepting as you of WM6's memory handling issues. I'm still keeping the Mogul, albeit with Sampson's clean WM5 ROM.

I'm shocked that Sprint mentioned the GPS at all. Maybe a bone thrown for our troubles? Hopefully, it's not a virtual bone!

Just for kicks, I'm going to play with this ROM over the extended weekend. So far the BT performance is fine and I'm not suffering any screen issues or lock ups. Unfortunately, if it dribbles away memory like all the previous WM6 ROMs it'll be back to Sampson's on Monday.

I used this rom for a day and had good BT performance, but it locked up several times by slowing to a crawl and then issuing a popup that said a script was running that was slowing the device down and if it kept running the device would become unusable. then it asked if I wanted to stop the script. I chose yes but performance wouldnZt come back until I soft reset. It would work fine for a few minutes then start slowing down again.

It was most noticeable when browsing the web, and the only thing running was IE.

My BT performance is AT LEAST as good as it was on my 6700. Its actually a tad louder on my end. Overall, I have seen no major issues. I did have one BT disconnect earlier today, but if thats all it does (once in two days), I can live wiht it til the new OE rom comes out.

nosmohtac: umm.. a script was running? Interesting, cause that would have to be launched? I'm gonna bet the script was launched somewhere. We'd love to hear what script was running if it happens to you again.

All: I AGREE. This is not the "fix" for everything, it is, however, a big step forward with this device. I dont like the quality as well as i did the other combination, but i do like the added stability. However to be discouraged. No2Chem was ALWAYS using this aku and we hear/think he may just have reachede a good compromise place with an AKU.7+216 phone. Last night i reflashed a phone to aku.7 and 216. I will say the QUALITY of the sound of bluetooth was/is better than the combination we're using here. The march goes on. We do need you're testing and feedback, so we can catch things we might not otherwise in the next run. I expect we may have something new for you to test say friday or so.

Thanks for you're help in making this a better phone everybody

Shawn - I'm glad you're taking positive & constructive feedback in the manner in which it's offered!

Again - thanks for all you and others are doing to improve this device. I'm currently carrying both a Touch and Titan, so always eager and available to test stuff on the Titan.

I still suspect that part of the problem with the Titan is narrow HW design tolerances, and that my particular device is tighter than average. Any thoughts on that?

Anyway, I think my particluar Titan along with my nXZen DSP headset will continue to be a challenging testbed!

The WM6 Memory system is not a bug nor an issue. It's the fact that HTC released a WM6 device with only 64mb of RAM. You'll notice the touch is doing absolutely FINE with the "WM6 Memory Leak."

As for the new ROM, hopefully you guys won't have to add stuff from the new rom to this fix it up ROM! Maybe the new ROM will actually solve the problems without adding new ones!

While this might have been possible in the "old days" (and yes, I'm old enough to remember, lol), today's modern handsets process the radio and audio signals almost entirely in the digital domain, ie, the "signal" is just a bunch of numbers that are being manipulated using DSP algorithms like Fast-Fourier-Transforms. Digital electronics aren't as susceptible to manufacturing tolerance problems as analog circuits are. Digital chips either work or they don't, they don't "drift" due to minor variations in temperature, voltage, and other factors.

It is possible to get a bad batch of digital chips, but in that case they would have failed factory go/no-go testing. Infant mortalities (the chip fails shorty after being utilized by the consumer) would manifest themselves as inoperable units.

You're confusing 2 different things. The amount of physical memory a device contains has no bearing on whether the OS and/or apps have a virtual memory "leak". If the Titan had 1GB of physical RAM and no changes to the OS, it would still have the same "leak" - would just not be as noticeable.

So far so good considering
 

So far this rom is working well. No bluetooth disconnects, no lock ups no dpad issues. BT quality on my end is acceptable, people on the receiving end says it sounds choppy at times but they can understand me. I use the Plantronics 510. I have a Motorola 820 that my son has been using but I'm going to get my hands on it tomorrow and test throughout the weekend. All of my usual software that I load plays nice. No complaints so far.
If I have any issues I will update. As to upcoming roms I will be happy to load them and test them. My week isnt complete without at least reloading my software once a week...

Yes - I'm familiar with the 'old days', too! (I've designed & constructed circuits using both tubes and IC's; and written LISP/SNOBOL/ALGOL programs and embedded assembly language drivers) Good days ... :=)

Perhaps the explanation is as simple as the fact that I'm more 'picky' and observant than some others, and work in a building with poor cell reception - which causes frequent switches to roaming, which made 2.16 an absolute phone-killer for me. And perhaps people with good BT experience haven't listened to the other end of calls with the Titan.

Then why don't we make a WM device without a screen...end of battery life issues! The memory leak IS an issue. No previous WinCE/WM release that I'm aware of has ever had this issue. From the end users point of view, the differences between WM5 and WM6 is not that great (a bit more lipstick on the pig) and WM5 has no memory leak. I would expect the graphical enhancements of WM6 to use more ram but that's not an excuse for the OS to bleed out ram over time. Unless there's some absolute bottom limit that I'm unaware of, the devices with more memory will not run out of ram as fast, but without reboot will eventually run out. Personally, I would have no problem if my WM6 Mogul after loading had ~15mb to play in. The problem is that that number will continue to diminish over time till the OS can't shut down any more processes itself. Then it's "poke the hole" time.

I've gone over to the WM5 camp, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't hope (or even expect) that WM6's memory management can be fixed to function at least as well as previous WinCE releases.

I know this isnt the thread to be having this conversation. But my point was that there is no leak that this is what WinMo6 was designed to do, and I believe it was designed that way because MS assumed the latest phons would be 96mb of ram or higher.

LOL- see this is why we have so many angry mogul users... jph8tr, that's not how the "memory leak", as you call it, works. I don't know how many more times we can discuss this... there have been countless threads dedicated to it, yet I'm a sucker and I'll just say it again and again...

You're wrong- It does not just suck more memory over time for no reason! It caches a certain amount of information, so the "problem" is more apparent when you close a bunch of apps and notice that your memory hasn't been reclaimed yet.
However, if left to its own devices, I've seen my ram go from 11mb free to 18mb free, without doing anything other than just leaving it alone for an hour (eventually, it WILL give up the cached ram when it realizes it doesn't need it for anything at the moment).
So why will the ram drop when you're not running anything at all?
Well, whether you're aware of it or not, WM6 does have some tasks running in the background which use some memory (activesync, battery managment, tower negotiating, data connection, Bluetooth, alarms, etc), and the caching system will start to eat a bit of memory to make those processes run smoother.
It will NOT eat all your memory like a black hole over time as you describe it! The reason some of us have issues is that the 64MB that the mogul has leaves less than half available to the user in the end for applications. However, with 128mb, situations that would normally leave us with 3-4mb running would now leave us with 68mb.

Oh - so you're saying that it's not a memory leak, but that it's WM6 doing the normal caching that a virtual memory OS is designed to do? Perhaps ... I really don't know.

I haven't really experimented much with it (since my Titan normally gets soft resets often for other reasons), but I tend to disagree with that for the reason that I've had "out of memory" errors from the camera app only if my Titan has been running for awhile (days). If WM6 were just doing normal caching, it would release either the least recently used or oldest cached pages immediately to the camera app. Instead, it appears to think the cached memory is still actively allocated to a running process - i.e. either a mis-behaving app or an OS memory leak. Or maybe WM6 really needs more physical memory. Again, without the proper monitoring tools, I just don't know. I certainly speculate that if it's not a leak, then the problem will be worse with WM 6.1 when EVDO-A and (a)GPS are released since it's safe to assume WM 6.1 will be at least a bit more memory-hungry.

** Any WM developers out there that have access to process/memory monitoring tools in the SDK or at MSDN?

I could accept that M$ allowed WM6 to use more memory because that ASS-U-ME-D that the devices would have more RAM. That just means we have less RAM to use at start up. What I can't accept is a LEAK as a design feature. There is a flaw in WM6's memory management that doesn't recover all the memory used by various second party programs when they quit. For many users this will mean that they will eventually run out of RAM no matter how much RAM the system has. 128mb helps matters greatly, but it doesn't fix things at all.

WM5 phones generally start out with ~30mb and settle in at 20-24mb, WM6 starts at ~24mb and fall steadily to ~3 when a reboot is required.

Getting back to the ROM in this thread. Rock solid so far! Easily the best BT performance I've seen on my Mogul. The problem is my RAM is now at 5mb after last rebooting ~11:00PM last night.

To second this, the Mogul is NO different in this aspect than the T-Mobile MDA, which I had for well over a year. It exhibited the exact same behavior and that was mostly with WM5 which, despite popular misconceptions, is more or less the same as WM6. Further, if you set specific max cache values, as opposed to the default dynamic cache, memory usage appears more predictable. You don't do the system any favors by setting those values, however, and they can easily become counterproductive. This takes me back to the early Windows NT betas. Technically, you should have NO memory free at all times. Did you buy ram to not be used? Those first task managers showed no (or almost no) memory free. But people freaked out when they put 256mb of ram in their computer and saw zero bytes free, so Microsoft would omit cache values from the "free memory" count. That made people happy and today we're still stuck with some nearly meaningless, arbitrary value called "free memory". Sure, the Mogul could probably have done better with another 64mb, but I have yet to get a low memory warning and between iGuidance and Slingplayer, it's not for a lack of trying.

I wonder why I bother posting at all... ya know what? fine. you win. wm6 clearly sucks and we're all morons for even suggesting that you use it since it was clearly designed by monkeys, or possibly terrorists to mess with our social fabric.

Happy now? Go use your WM5 rom and stop bringing up the "leaks".

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dude... you have an attitude problem... but it's funny....

"OMG.... Chloe.... get Jack Bauer on the phone, NOW!"