by Dead Metal » Sat Apr 04, 2015 12:47 pm
- Motto: "Don't do drugs, beer's cheaper anyway!"
OK, this is something I think I should share for all those interested in android smartphones and maybe rooting them.
Now, I've been using Android for quite some time now, and in that time I've seen android grow, change and evolve. When I first started out it was a pale and rather ugly imitation of iOS, but since then it's grown to the point that it barely shares any similarity to iOS.
During this time I did become interested in rooting my phone and then installing a custom rom (a custom version of the OS) on it, because my first smartphone was an entry level Samsung (don't get these, Samsung is bad when it comes to entry level phones) and Samsung decided to stop supporting it, not even 6 months after I signed the contract. So I chose a custom rom and followed all of the instructions to get it to work.
I enjoyed doing that, it made me feel brilliant and smart that I managed to do that without falling victim to any of the set backs or dangers that were mentioned.
I tried out two different makes of roms; CyanogenMod and LiquidSmooth. Of the two LiquidSmooth was the better one, it was based on CyanogenMod, but with more care put into it and more features, and I loved it so much, it not only gave my phone new life, but it made it so much cooler.
Now why am I telling you all this? Simple, I want to warn you of. Because after a while I had problems with the phone because the developer started to not care anymore and stopped putting effort into it, just to then abandon it while leaving the software a mess.
You will often see or hear people write and say how amazing custom roms are and that you should get rid of whatever stock version of Android you have ASAP, because they're awful compared to "pure vanilla" android and custom roms will breath new life into devices that the manufacturer no-longer supports.
What these people neglect to tell you though is the following.
Sure, custom roms can and often do breath new life into a phone the manufacturer no-longer supports, but that'S not guaranteed, plus the creators of these roms will eventually lose interest and your device won't be supported again. They often talk about OEMs having too much clutter and crap in the software which makes android perform worse than it should. Most of the time they will say it's the bloatware (the unnecessary stuff your carrier installs on your phone and you don't want and need but can't delete, like McAffee) that ruins your experience. They however forget to mention, that the clutter and all the extra code and stuff the manufacturers ad to their phone are the features you actually payed for to use. You know what pure vanilla android is and how many features it has? As an example, the android you have on your brand new Samsung Galaxy S6, is Windows 8.1, vanilla android is MSDos. It looks about as pretty as well.
All the features and the extras that you decide between when you drop your cash on a fancy smartphone, that's the "clutter" they're talking about that's letting android under-perform. And they are basically right, pure android is much faster and smoother than, say what you have on your Samsung for Sony phone, that's because pure android doesn't have anything to it. It's like claiming that an empty house is superior to the house you're currently living in, simply because unlike your home it's empty and therefore had more usable space.
Sure, you can install half backed versions of some of the features you lost out on by installing the custom rom, but once you did that, android is once again cluttered and performs about as "bad" as the stock version.
Some more drawbacks, if you like using your phone's camera, and like the picture quality, say goodbye to that, no matter what, no camera the custom rom has will match what you can do on your original stock rom. That's because manufacturers have hardware specific code in their apps to get the most out of it, which can't be replicated.
I often complain that Sony, the makers of my current phone, take far too long to bring out software updates, and have terrible customer support. Now, I decided to return to my beloved LiquidSmooth and see what they have in store for me. And after a few days, I returned to stock.
LS was too unstable, often lagged, removed most of the features I bought the phone for, and the replacements it offered were, well inadequate is an understatement.
One of the biggest fails is the much touted "VIPER" audio engine and equalizer, it sounded worse than on stock, and ruined the music and well any sound really, with scratching, stuttering and regular skips, it was almost like having a tiny terrible DJ who was dying in my phone. MY much used IR blaster was also non functional.
A few other things that you will suffer with custom roms, most of the people who write these are more interested in the "smart" parts of the smartphone and not the actual phone parts. So they'll call it a success if they manage to have themes and the wifi working, and won't care that the areal reception is terrible. Yeah, the phone part is the least important part.
But if you absolutely want to take more control over you phone and have something that's different from the stock experience, use the X-Posed framework. It gives you the extra features you only get with a custom rom, while keeping all of the stock features you payed for and quite possibly actually want intact. But do inform yourself about that first and if it actually works on your particular make. You do need root for this, which comes with it's own risks.
Want a bit more speed and control over the look of your phone? Get NovaLauncher from the playstore, you don't need root for most of its features and you can set it to be your default launcher. It's a bit faster than stock launchers, highly customizabel and it keeps the features of your phone mostly intact. It will however not be able to use widgets and features that are specific to your stock launcher (like the gallery widget for Xperia, or the cool Xperia app drawer quick settings).
I also strongly advise against doing anything with rooting if you have a very, very new and very very expensive phone, otherwise you may end up with a very very new and very very expensive paperweight.
Jeep! wrote:Why do I imagine Dead Metal sounding exactly like Arnie?
Intah-wib-buls?
Blurrz wrote:10/10
Leave it to Dead Metal to have the word 'Pronz' in his signature.
