I am using the 24th September HyperDragon ROM with no problems. As I said it does have Manila but I have turned it off.
Not sure my Exchange server is syncing as often as it should, but the rest seems OK.

I will get round to cooking my own once I decide on a suitable base and kitchen. I think the ported roms are not stable enough for me, might use the last kaiser one.

I am running an earlier HyperDragon Rom (ie from the second thread) - the ROM is good but I assume what the opening poster is raving about is the manila interface, which can be added via cab not just be these ROMs - there are other ROMs with Manile over on XDA as well.

Personally, I have switched off the Manila interface, as Phone Alarm is more important to me, and I have a full screen phone alarm skin. I get to contacts and apps using the 'cube' on touch commander.

I might try and modify my phone alarm skin to work with HTC home - but this Manila doesn't really do it for me.

I would prefer a non contract phone, but cost wise cannot run to it, Given that I got my Kaiser free on the phone tariff I would have bought anyway - cannot complain.

If you are happy to upgrade again in say 9 months or so, (and happy flashing your phone with a new ROM) then maybe get a kaiser and run with it for nion emonths whilst they come up with new roms for the Raphael (Touch Pro).

I like my Kaiser. Obviously the Touch Pro is the better and newer version, however just check if there are any GPS lag issues - thought I heard something about that? And for me, I actually like having a few hard keys rather than all via the touch screen.
Depends what you want - I would have thought that price wise the Kaiser should be relatively cheap now, and cooked roms are coming out left right and centre. For performance however the Touch pro is better specced (screen etc as well). If you are going to be tied to a contract for example, then the Kaiser might be out of date a bit too soon for you.
I am not out of contract for another year, and am hoping to bypass the Touch Pro completely and see what comes out after that. (Just cos otherwise the Touch Pro will probably be old hat soon in to my next contract.....)

I believe that PhoneAlarm will do this.

I should check the site more often - when this question gets asked i am always beaten to it by Wearthefoxhat

I use Phone Alarm with a custom full screen skin. It is the only thing on my today screen. I do use the Touch Commander cube as well tho, for access to contacts and applications.

There were problems with the early versions of HTC Home with the profiles. Try running the latest version?
I have never used it as PA is far better - as was said, I think the free version will do what you want, and you do not have to use all the options, it is really quite simple to set up and is highly skinnable.
I do have HTC Home on my Today screen however, but I only have the Home, Music, Contacts, and applications showing. When I get round to it I will probably just move to a PA skin that does all that as well.

I can only suggest you look at PhoneAlarm......

I would second this - take a look at the various different skins, it is so customisable its great. I run a very cut down today plugin skin with only 3 buttons, bluetooth, wifi, and profile change.

It does have advantages to have it built in - my brothers is part of the car and has all the advantages you mention. In my circumstances my car is not new and has a factory fitted radio, as does the wifes car (which is actually the family car). The advantage of this one is that when needed, I can simply put it in the wife's car and I'm off. I do have to adjust the stereo up and down when I make calls though. The visor thing works well for those of us that need a cheaper portable option - I have two daughters and wife to support! (What is it they say - Fathers have photos where the money used to be.....)

I don't leave my bluetooth on all the time (battery saving) and so use phone alarm to simply change profiles to the car mode, with bluetooth on and changed volumes etc. one button press changes back to normal and deactivates it.

There are a number that look similar - I got the one from usemymemory I think it was.

As I said, am not entirely sure what I did to make it work, but hey, did not take that much messing around - quite intuitive. Can be charged rom the Kaiser charger as well.
The magnetic attachment to the visor clip is such a good idea.

Haven't posted for a while, so thought I would add a small success story.

Have just got a car to drive to work, and so purchased a Supertooth Voice from Amazon for around £40. This is one of those little handsfree speaker phone things that clips to the sun visor, and connects via bluetooth. (Its actually marginally bigger than my phone)

As I am running the original XDA stellar ROM, it kind of worked well. It could nto download my address book, but I could save individual contacts over. It paired OK and tried to read the contacts names when they called.
Thats fine but I wanted the voice dialling as well. In the end installed a version of Microsoft Voice Command, and now hey presto, I push the green button on the device, and say CALL BOB SMITH for example, and it looks in my contacts, asks me to confirm which number (eg mobile/home/work) and then dials! (I dont even need to have recorded a voice tag - it reads the contacts name)

When a call comes in, I just say ACCEPT CALL" and it answers it.

Fantastic - never paid much attention to bluetooth or voice dialling before this - but when you use a car for commuting it is so useful!

Just thought I would share my experience

I thought the Orbit was an Artemis - the O2 version of the Hermes was the Trion.

Well, I now have HSDPA!

Just did a test at work (Lewisham way), and got 560kbit/sec from dsl reports and 725 from GPRS Monitor. Did it last night at home and got even higher. GPRS Moitor showed over 1000.

Yay. now I know my phone is OK, it is off to Dutty's Rom for me.

OK - I only got the email this morning, but checked my speed just now and am still capped.
Oh well, I guess it said to give them a day or so.

Well maybe the email I got will get something done then?

Sounds more like the approach we wish HTC had taken with the kaiser drivers - oops we got found out lets say it was an error and fix it.


Thank you for emailing us about your download speed.

I've requested for you line to be open to the maximum download speed we can offer. This will take 36 hours to be completed.

To get an update on this, please call customer services on 0870 600 3009. Their opening times are Monday to Friday 8am - 9pm and Saturday to Sunday 8am - 8pm. This number is free to dial from your O2 handset.

If you should have any further questions, please visit our online Help Centre at:

http://www.o2.co.uk/help

Kind Regards

Having been effectivley misled by both the store manager and customer services both on the phone and via email, I think I may use this to leave O2. Apart from this issue I have so far found thier customer services to be good.
Customer services suggested taking my phone back to the shop and exchange it as it must be faulty, so I could spend a month turning the entire stock of Stellars into used phones I suppose.

Damn, was just about to post a link to the regsiter article.

I have replied to the email I have from O2 customer services denying any such restrictions, asking them to comment on the article......

try this

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/index/1,21....html?b8e6=7f59

My stock rom O2 Stellar updated itelf and told me it had.

Go to the Kaiser section on XDA, go into the ROM development section and look for the thread called hyperdragon by Sakajati, second post down there are the add ons. Try the first one (HTC Home)

I tried again in central london last night, with no change to my results. I really do wonder if there is something further that needs to be enabled - I am sure I read one of your reviews where it menitoned getting the HSDPA enabled by O2. If you have any guidance re this, or what exactly needed to be enabled, it would be most appreciated.

On O2, using the GPRS Monitor supplied with the phone, I am consistently hitting on or around 130 Kbit/s, or less. When doing speed tests, the consistency of this result irrespective of location/time leads to the suspicion that it is not simply network load that is causing this.
Having said that, those kinds of speeds are not the end of the world for phone browsing and emails.....(But still)

The reply I got from O2

Thank you for contacting O2 customer services.

We do not have any policy to restrict consumer contract SIM cards to low speed HSDPA connection. If you have an HSDPA compatible phone and are in an area with good coverage, the maximum speed that is possible is 1.3Mb. However this speed can be reduced by a number of factors, the main one being network traffic. As with many types of internet connection the speed can vary depending on how busy the server is.

HSDPA is a fairly new part of our service and we are still in the early stages of rolling it out. In future the coverage across the UK will increase.

To clarify a point made in an earlier post, the query is not whetehr O2 provide HSDPA, as they do (at least in some areas). The query is that most of us find that the speed APPEARS to be capped at the very low end of 3g speeds despite showing as HSDPA.

I have now had an email reply to my specific question regarding this alleged policy submitted via the O2 website. The email states categorically that there is no such policy.
Will post full text of email reply when I get a chance.