[quazimodem]

I'm not a fan of HTC Sense or the Touchflo UI at all. I feel like it forces you to use your phone a certain way. Originally, I was not a fan of SPB Mobile Shell because prior to the TP/TP2, it was a memory hog and lagged my phone a lot. When I got my Touch Pro 2, obviously the phone hardware is better in a lot of respects, so I decided to try the new SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 and see what has changed.

I was pleasantly surprised how much it has improved and how well it works on any custom or stock 6.1/6.5 ROM. (not the 6.5.x roms that have the start menu at the bottom, Mobile Shell doesn't support that version of the WinMo OS).

It's smooth, intuitive, better built-in support for facebook/twitter, and you have better flexibility on customizations. I just noticed that a new version was released today v3.5.2. It does have a slight learning curve but once you RTFM or play around with it to figure it out, there's a good chance you'll appreciate what it has to offer.

If anyone does decide to try it out, my suggestion is to load a custom ROM that is clean without any bloat or any additional UI software that you won't be needing. Then load Mobile shell. JD's ROM is nice but if you can find a custom rom that doesn't have Sense or Touch Flo, the better....

Originally Posted by n8n

Thanks cbreze,

I have not yet tried MS. I'm returning to the WinMo world with a TP2 after a few years on BB. WinMo now seems sluggish relatively.

I don't need all the eye-candy of the sense UI, particularly if I can trade that for performance and customization. I've been aware of MS since my days of yore with a Treo 700p, although I never tried it.

I feel that with today's hardware, there is plenty of system resources to make it fly and MS is likely the best option to get me the performance I want.

So my question is not really to MS or not to MS, I will in fact try it and most likely make it my default.

The question is really, do I use a custom ROM underneath to enhance MS stability/performance.

All the gee-wiz performance hog crapware and UI drives me crazy. I want speed and flexibility, and will sacrifice all the animations for them.

I have a few killer apps that I'd like to include in a core ROM, and I'm wondering if its worth the trouble of getting into ROM flashing, or whether I should just install on my stock ROM add MS and my killer apps.

Hence the question I posted, soliciting responses from MS users who have used with and without custom ROMs.

Thanks