gdgt

could it be motoblur related? Perhaps turning off the widgets might improve that? (I have no idea, just shooting around some ideas).

I actually don't think it was for me. After the update even with motoblur on, the vampire battery drain just about vanished.

I installed all of the updates I could, but my Cliq was still running slow and dying quickly. I finally decided to just go for it and get 2.1 installed. These are my findings, for anybody who is thinking of doing the same.

First off, there is a wonderful speed increase, and my battery lasts *much* longer. I don't have to worry about it dying after a few short hours anymore. For the speed increase, I use SNesoid as the benchmark: Before, using Android 1.5 / Motoblur, everything was so choppy it wasn't really playable, except for some turn based games, where they can still be played if they are slow. Sound was turned off because it was too choppy to listen to anyway. With 2.1, the games are running at full speed, although the sound is still a little slow, so I still turn it off. Plus with 2.1, you get the features of 2.1 that were missing with the Cliq, like Voice Navigation.

However, it's not perfect. As it is an unofficial release, and still an alpha version (I installed alpha 5), not everything works. There are a few kinks around the phone, such as, if you try to turn on GPS using the home screen widget, your phone will crash and restart. The switch on the side of the phone that mutes/unmutes the phone doesn't do anything at all. I have heard that bluetooth doesn't work, although I haven't tried it. The worst however, for me at least, is that the camera is completely unusable. Trying to use the camera in any app crashes the app at best, doesn't nothing at worst. No pictures, no video. Most of the live wallpapers the release comes with crash as well when you try to run them, but so far live wallpapers I have downloaded are working.

So there you have it, the pros and cons. For me I hate not having a working camera, but overall I'm really glad I did the upgrade. When the official upgrade comes out I will probably be avoiding it, as I think it was motoblur causing a lot of the speed and battery problems. I'm keeping an eye on the unofficial releases too, waiting for alpha 6, or a version that will fix these last few problems.

Beta 1 of this rom was released; I installed it and posted a follow up here: gdgt.com­/discuss­/follow­-up­-anybody­-interested­-21­-r...