New to flashing? Not sure where to start?

[CellGuy]

I had a day off work so I tried as many ROM's with as many different setups (themes, taskbars, task managers, etc.) as I could. I tried variations of manila/touchflo/sense 2.1, 2.5 and so on. 2.5 is great visually but in the end doesn't currently offer the stability I demand. I found a lot of incompatible setups as well as glitchy/bugged ROM's along the way. I won't note the cooks that I found to be glitchy or bugged as I respect the work these chef's are doing and they all have something unique that makes the testing worth it. If you're new to ROM flashing and don't know where to start, this is a solid build that I'm sure most anyone can enjoy.

The Goal:

So, I decided to find a ROM/theme/software/utility setup that meets the following requirements: Must be responsive with low memory usage, must look visually appealing and finally not be so overloaded with extras that it becomes unstable.

Choosing a ROM:

My final setup required finding a good base to build off of. Thanks to Mighty Mike and his MightyROM Build 12.6, I found just that. This ROM is built off of the US Cellular WM6.5 w/ Sense 2.1 stock CDMA ROM. What advantage does that have? Well, go check out his site here to find out. This ROM is lightly customized and very stream lined for efficiency. So stream lined, in fact, that with all of the extras I run (including my IM client that I keep running) the memory usage is about the same as a stock oem ROM does out of the box. I am usually somewhere around 50% - 53% memory usage at idle with my IM client running in the background. The best part is, this MightyROM is even more responsive to user input than stock, thanks to Mighty Mike's experience in tweaking and building ROM's. Go check out his site here.

Finding a theme:

My next objective was to pretty this thing up. As much as I enjoy the Dusk themes found here. I found a lot of issues using them with this specific build So I returned to MightyROM.com and decided to settle with the MightyROM Midnight Blue theme, created by Lil Rico specifically for MightyROM and recommended by Mighty Mike himself! At first I was hesitant to go with a blue theme as I have always preferred black themes on my phones but this thing looks fantastic! I look forward to cloudy days now as the white clouds passing over the blue home screen is a nice little piece of eye candy. You can download the theme from the link above but I strongly recommending visiting this thread by Lil Rico to grab a few extras.

Extra eye candy:

This theme looks great but what about those boring white icons on the taskbar or the green found in many of the icons in your start menu? You will also find a few other small enhancements in this section.

I found and tested many taskbars, some good some not but finally decided on one that was simple and complimented the blue theme well. I decided to use PurianS Tsowens Modded Taskbar. (I can't remember where I got it from at the moment but I'll update with a link later to provide proper credit. Not to worry, I'll include a download of all the cabs I used in this thread.) I also combined a 1% battery meter meter with this taskbar to finish it off. (This simply changes the battery meter for increments of 10 to increments of 1) Not completely necessary but I find useful.

A few other small enhancements are:

Brigg's Mighty Globe: Adds a flying Mighty Mike to your internet globe in the slide bar.

abcls Colored Dialer and Call History Symbols: Much needed improvement to your call history. Adds colors to the missed/dialed/received call icons!

Mighty Rom Transparent Email Envelope: Removes the envelope around your email message preview so you can see more without opening it!

A few useful utilities:

Slide2Shutdown: A useful tool to provide additional options with the power button (which by the way is remaped on this ROM to only work with the endkey). Shutdown, sleep and restart.

psShutCP Power Key: An alternative to Slide2Shutdown with the same functionality but different look. (Note, do not install both, choose one or the other)

Contact Changer v1.3: Have first and last names programmed in your contact list? Tired of seeing them organized by last name, first? Install this and run it from your start menu once!

dotcomptZoom Adds v1.2: Turn your zoom bar into a scroll bar!

htcAddictscleanRAM v1.8: No more lengthy soft resets to restore memory! Simply run this utility and get those resources back!

Software, games and so on"

More coming soon but for now I just have a few for you.

Palringo! For all of your IM needs! and it's free! Well, mostly. This week they added some features only usable with a premium acct which is not available for a couple weeks and will cost an unknown amount but still a great IM app.

Groovefish: The companion to the amazing site Grooveshark Not fully working yet but you can read more about it here.

And now for some screenshots:




BEFORE PROCEEDING READ THIS.

Go to mightyrom.com to get the rom.

.Cab collection download can be found here





If you are the author of something here that has not been properly credited and would like to be, please let me know. I take no credit for the development of anything here, only the research and time to put it all together. Thanks to all of you hard working devs and cooks out there. Without all of you, I'd probably own an Iphone.

12/6

[imtjnotu]

if ur new and dont kno where u start u can always look at the stickies....this will get lost in the sea of threads

[CellGuy]

That's fine, if it helps one person I'm happy. It actually come from a thread on XDA where some flashing noobs were asking for help deciding what to try. I thought I'd copy my post over here in case anyone finds it useful.

[imtjnotu]

and thats cool because it is informative....its just there are so many threads every day that if it doesn't get a sticky its lost within hours

[CellGuy]

Now you're making me sad. I don't like getting lost.

[imtjnotu]

sorry man....ill try to send all new people to this thread to help them out....or u can try and post it in the upgrades side of the TP2 forum and ask for a sticky...

[CellGuy]

I wasn't sure if it was something that really should be posted there. If the mods feel it belongs there, I'm sure they will let me know or move it themselves. I don't really ask for stickies, I leave that up to others to decide it's worthiness. And, I was j/k about being sad.