I picked up an A854 at ACS on Sunday. Been an iPhone user since the original, and now running an IP4 on GCI. But have been curious about the Android phones and since ACS offered one for "free" I couldn't pass it up. (And to boot, for the Life plan, it was only $15 more than what I was paying per month for my Krzr...!)
But anyway, I used z4root 1.3.0 for a painless root process. Read a bunch more on installing ROMs, etc., but also saw several threads on issues with MMS after the upgrade, but thought I would give one a try. I chose the Bugless Beast 0.6.2.1 and it works great! (Except for MMS...)
Appreciate this thread, since it solved the problem! I followed the instructions above, but it still didn't work. Went back and double-checked the settings. Found a mistake, but still didn't work.
However, I created the ACS APN one last time, but this time, I deleted the Verizon apn that had been installed. That did the trick! I rebooted just to make sure, and shot text, image, video, and audio messages back and forth with the iPhone.
Thanks, Crummy, for the helpful information!