Are you a user of HTC Desire HD? There’s great news for you as Android 4.0 Ice  Cream Sandwich is now available to you through the Blackout ICS XL custom ROM, which will bring Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich and HTC Sense 3.6 to your HTC Desire HD.

According to XDA Developers member QD2DC, who developed the ROM, the Blackout ICS XL custom ROM is based on Sensation XL 2.12, so no resizing is needed.

The custom ROM is still in alpha development, so expect bugs, bugs, and bugs.  Though, we’re happy to note that the following (according to the developer) are working: 2G/3G/HSDPA data, proximity sensor, phone calls, audio (but without Beats Audio), SMS/MMS, accelerometer, GPS, microphone, video playback, capacitive buttons and backlights, and touchscreen.

The following are still being worked on, and are not yet working: USB mounting, GPU acceleration, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera, and some others.

If you’re eager to experience ICS on your HTC Desire HD through the Blackout ICS XL custom ROM, check out the rest of this guide.

Requirements

These are what you’ll need:

• HTC Desire HD — rooted, S-OFF, unlocked bootloader, and with ClockworkMod Recovery installed
• Backup of all your important data (e.g., SMS, contacts, call logs, etc.)
• Full battery power
• Blackout ICS XL custom ROM — Download from here, here, or here (Blackout_ICE_XL_v1.0.zip, 384 MB, md5sum: 9fb2a017302bd0000f499ec76f54944f)

Instructions

1. Connect your phone to your PC via USB cable.
2. Copy the downloaded ROM package to the root of your phone’s external SD card using a USB cable.
3. Disconnect your phone from the PC.
4. Turn off your phone completely.
5. Reboot the phone into recovery mode by holding down the Volume Down key as you press the Power key.
6. Once in recovery mode, create a Nandroid backup through Backup and Restore > Backup.
7. Wipe your phone data:
   1. Choose Mounts and Storage > Format System and confirm the action on the next screen.
   2. Choose Format Data and confirm the action on the next screen.
   3. Choose Format Cache and confirm the action on the next screen.
   4. Go back to the main recovery menu.
   5. Select Advanced > Wipe Dalvik Cache and confirm the action on the next screen.
8. Return to main recovery menu.
9. Select Install zip from SD card > choose zip from SD card and select the ROM file that you copied to the phone.  Confirm that you want to start flashing the ROM.
10. Return to main recovery menu.
11. Select “Reboot system now” to reboot your phone.  Your phone will take about 10 to 15 minutes to boot for the first time.  Do not interrupt it.  Subsequent reboots should be faster after that.

Congratulations!  You’ve succeeded in upgrading your HTC Desire HD to Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich and HTC Sense 3.6 via the Blackout ICS XL custom ROM.