Since getting my Droid X, I’ve loved installing new ROM’s, bricking my phone, and making it faster. It’s one of my passions, and what drives me to develop (hopefully) cool shit for my Droid. Two of the things that seem to be pretty few and far between on the device are custom kernels and concise how-to’s and reviews. Both of which on Gentoo I take for granted. I hope to remedy the latter issue this weekend. Also, this will probably be pretty dry; I’m going to make revisions as corrections and insight come in from you guys.
Fission ROM Synopsis
Fission was the third ROM I ever installed on my Droid and I continue to run it to this very day, not really because I like it, but because it is minimal, clean, and as of 2.5.x, pretty stable. The ROM is developed by Team Defuse and is available for the Droid X and Droid 2 (Global). It’s a blurless ROM that has two different default theming options: Froyo and Black Edition, with many more available.
Pros
Fission is fast and clean with no added features that you can’t remove. It comes with the Fission ROM Manager, which is a handy utility that allows you to update, patch, install, and overclock. The ROM manager also allows you to batch install hotfixes and addons. It also makes overclocking pretty easy by installing a package and rebooting, although in the more recent versions of SetCPU, the clocks you set don’t actually run. I highly recommend Droid X Overclock by jrummy16 to overclock.
Cons
Fission isn’t super configurable. With some of the more recent ROMs, I have noticed that they have a small utility that safely edits configurations files (like build.prop) safely. Fission doesn’t have any of that. Hell, I had to get a hex editor out to change the notification shade text, which most ROMs have in a configuration file instead of having it in friggin /system/framework/framework-res.apk/xml/eri.xml (note: not technically XML formatted). It also seems to take longer to boot up than most other ROMs I’ve seen, which is a big issue for me because I do quite a lot of patching to the ROM. The Fission ROM Manageralso needs a facility to edit configuration files (like the Liberty Toolbox has) and maybe a way to restore a nandroid backup. It also came with the Blur Multimedia pack, though was a really easy uninstall.
Conclusion
Fission ROM is perfect for those people that really want a good, stable, and fast platform. It doesn’t have much by the way of customization, but it makes up for it with stability. Both default themes are really clean and consistent throughout the phone, something many themes lack. I highly recommend this ROM to app developers and people that want a stable and fast system.
