HTC Wizard users: (why) is it worth upgrading to new ROM versions?; overclock the CPU to achieve considerably better file transf

If you happen to have a HTC Wizard and haven't ever upgraded its ROM, you may really want to consider a ROM upgrade.

To decide whether you need to upgrade, go to Settings/System/Device Information and check out what the ROM version (it's the first row, "ROM version") and what the Radio version (the third row, "Radio version") are.

click for screenshot

These two values are totally independent of each other. An increase in the ROM version may mean better/faster PDA functionality; and, an increase in the Radio version may mean better radio functionality and/or faster data transfers. In this article, I refer to both the ROM and the Radio version when referring to a given upgrade. For example, 1.1.9.3/01.01.10 means the given PDA has ROM version 1.1.9.3 and Radio version 01.01.10.

If you see the pair 1.1.9.3/01.01.10 in here (or, the ROM version starts with 1.1), consider the upgrade. Most HTC Wizard devices are shipped with the original, 1.1.9.3/01.01.10 ROM/Radio version. Therefore, if you haven't upgraded your Wizard yet, it's highly likely that you have this old and very slow ROM.

You'll see increased performance in almost everything if you upgrade. For example, when I upgraded my HTC Wizard to 1.5.4.2/01.12.10, I measured drastic performance improvements in the following areas:

1. USB transfer speeds (for example, I've measured drastically, about 40% increased FTP download speeds over USB after upgrading it to a new ROM version)
2. EDGE access speed (I've measured about 40-60% increase in download speeds over EDGE)
3. Boot-in time after soft resets (51 seconds instead of 70 seconds)

When I next upgraded my Wizard to 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 released early January, I've measured further, drastical EDGE transfer speed increases – the maximal EDGE down/upstream (that is, down- and upload) speeds I measured with 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 were around 20-40% better than with the previous, 1.5.4.2/01.12.10 version. This means new versions almost always deliver enhanced speed.

Development doesn't stop and ROM version 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 soon becomes history. The soon-to-be-released 2.8.x ROM version (now with a lot of goodies, for example, A2DP and Push Email support) is already knocking at the door. To see whether it's worth trying out the currently available, leaked (and to please my readers that wanted to know whether it's worth upgrading to a beta, unofficial upgrade), 2.8.7.1/01.13.10 version, I've also given it a try.

The leaked version is definitely slower than 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 (and, after all, it's not official, with all the legality problems this involves). Therefore, if you want to squeeze out everything possible of your Wizard as an EDGE modem / EDGE-connected PDA and you want the shortest possible reboot times/the best responsiveness, I strongly advise against installing it. (The Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) for Hi-Fi Bluetooth headphones, of course, is another question. It already works flawlessly. The Push Email support doesn't seem to work in this version, though.)

OmapClock - real-life, practical results

At the same time, I've also tested the first Texas Instruments (the CPU in the HTC Wizard) overclocker utility, OmapClock, to see whether running the CPU at 240 MHz delivers significant gains in pure transfer speeds.

Based on the benchmark results, as can clearly be seen, USB-based transfers (where it's not the bandwidth that is the bottleneck) became 30-50% faster while overclocking the CPU to 240 MHz.

Transfer speeds over EDGE (where the network bandwidth is mostly the limiting factor) show far less improvements: as far as downloading is concerned, about 10% with ROM version 1.5.4.2 and even less, about 4%, with the leaked ROM version 2.8.7.1. With the current version, 1.6.7.1/01.13.10, there is absolutely no point in overclocking your PDA to speed up your EDGE downloads – the transfer speed will be the same, while the power consumption of your PDA greatly increases.

Upload speeds can't be reliably benchmarked over EDGE. As can be seen in the cases where I provided more than one test results, these varied wildly. That is, it can't be said for sure whether you'll encounter faster uploads over EDGE if you overclock your PDA.

(Please note that I'll elaborate on other usage areas of OmapClock in my forthcoming article about Pocket PC Voice over IP clients (most importantly Skype, which needs heavy overclocking on the HTC Wizard to become usable) and their usability on the HTC Wizard. OmapClock is a wonderful application deserving further tests.)

Verdict

If you need every kilobit/s speed you can squeeze out of your Wizard, it's, in general, worth upgrading to newer ROM versions. Do not, however, think new leaked/beta ROM versions will deliver increased performance – as is the case with the current leak, this is not true. That is, you can safely stay with 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 if you want absolutely the snappiest operating system and EDGE performance.

The same stands for overclocking the CPU: in practice, it performed very well, as far as its effect on pure transfer speed is concerned with fast connection. The speed difference was visible even over (comparatively) low-speed EDGE connections with slower ROM's (but not with the current 1.6.7.1/01.13.10 one). Connections with much higher transfer speeds (USB, Wi-Fi) will definitely benefit a lot (30-40% speed increase, as can clearly be seen in the results of this test) from overclocking.

Note that overclocking your CPU to 240 MHz won't damage it; it's "only" the increased power consumption that you'll notice. Also note that it's really worth making use of the selective, one application-only overclocking capabilities of OmapClock. For example, if you plan to speed up FTP transfers via vxFtp, you will need to create a link file with the following contents:

222#"\OmapClock.exe" -clock 240 -launch "\vxFtp\vxFtp.exe" -restore

(Here, I assumed OmapClock.exe is in the root directory of the file system and that vxFtp is in its default home directory. You can also download the link file here; just copy it to \Windows\Start menu\Programs on your PDA to make it easily accessible.)

Quantitive results (version comparison chart)

ROM version1.5.4.2/01.12.101.6.7.1/01.13.102.8.7.1/01.13.10
USB download6.1-6.8s6.5s6.5-7s
USB download at 240 MHz4.4sn/t4.5s
USB upload18.1s~21s20.0s
USB upload at 240 MHz14.5sn/t14.5s
EDGE download88s (~165 kbps)60s, 62s (~240 kbps)77s (~189 kbps)
EDGE download at 240 MHz80s (~182 kbps)61s74s (~197 kbps)
EDGE upload~159s? (~90 kbps)136s, 160sWildly different, useless benchmark results (117-176s)
EDGE upload at 240 MHz~138s? (~105 kbps)124s, 155s, 163sWildly different, useless benchmark results
Booting in52s54s60s

Note that all file transfers have been benchmarked with a 1.46 Mbyte compressed ZIP file. I deliberately used a large file, even over EDGE connections, so that differences in the initial 5-10 seconds of EDGE handshaking (while the system is searching for free network resources to maximize its throughput speed) don't influence the results much. I've also made the tests at almost the same time (quickly reflashing my HTC Wizard between the tests) so that the results remain comparable and not that dependent on the changing network load caused by other users. I used the latest version of vxFtp, currently the fastest FTP client, transferring into/from main memory to avoid the storage card bottleneck.

EDIT (21:26 CET, the same day): Mail Push does work in the new beta version, as opposed to what I've stated. Thanks for the corrections/comments guys :)