Stock Rom vs Custom Rom - Exxagerated?

[amw1972]

For the time I had my Mogul, I stayed stock all the way. I was afraid of doing anything more than installing and uninstalling apps. I think I would have stuck with it longer (yeah right!) if I had flashed a custom ROM.

I have flashed a couple of extremely different ones so far and I have been pleased with both. A clean ROM (Y4J 5.0 now WELCOME BACK) gives you so much freedom, I almost didn't know what to do with it all. A L-O-A-D-E-D ROM (KK 1.8...still rocking it and loving it) has so many apps...I don't know what to do with.

Bottom line is preference and usability. One thing for sure is the with custom ROM's you can have actual dialog with the person responsible for the ROM for NO KIDDING TECHNICAL SUPPORT. Dealing with Sprint and their stock ROM, you might get some kid sitting in front of a database regurgitating back to you what HTC/Microsoft recommends as the "fix." Good luck if your "problem" is not a common one...because you'll probably find yourself back here OR XDA for help.

[fiyah]

Originally Posted by amw1972

For the time I had my Mogul, I stayed stock all the way. I was afraid of doing anything more than installing and uninstalling apps. I think I would have stuck with it longer (yeah right!) if I had flashed a custom ROM.

I have flashed a couple of extremely different ones so far and I have been pleased with both. A clean ROM (Y4J 5.0 now WELCOME BACK) gives you so much freedom, I almost didn't know what to do with it all. A L-O-A-D-E-D ROM (KK 1.8...still rocking it and loving it) has so many apps...I don't know what to do with.

Bottom line is preference and usability. One thing for sure is the with custom ROM's you can have actual dialog with the person responsible for the ROM for NO KIDDING TECHNICAL SUPPORT. Dealing with Sprint and their stock ROM, you might get some kid sitting in front of a database regurgitating back to you what HTC/Microsoft recommends as the "fix." Good luck if your "problem" is not a common one...because you'll probably find yourself back here OR XDA for help.

I have to agree with you on the support issue. Just browsing the Custom ROM threads you get a sense of the commitment and purpose these guys have to their builds. They seem genuinely intent on just making sure everyone is satisfied and their quality is high. Pretty impressed there... That is one thing that would factor into me eventually getting the costom ROM.

I am very tempted to upgrade the radio though... what are the overall benefits of that?

[BigDinCA]

If you search the threads on the upgrades forum you'll find a thousand answers, but in a nutshell it improves battery life and can increase your signal strength and data speeds. It did all of the above for me, especially the battery life. As an added bonus, the battery heat issue has dramatically improved for me. I'm on the Sprint 1.11.00F radio and it's superior to the stock radio.

[amw1972]

Originally Posted by fiyah

I have to agree with you on the support issue. Just browsing the Custom ROM threads you get a sense of the commitment and purpose these guys have to their builds. They seem genuinely intent on just making sure everyone is satisfied and their quality is high. Pretty impressed there... That is one thing that would factor into me eventually getting the costom ROM.

I am very tempted to upgrade the radio though... what are the overall benefits of that?

Funny you should mention the radio...I JUST flashed Sprint 1.11 last night...and already I have more bars all along my normal commute. I have more bars at the office, AND (hope its not a placebo effect) I have what seems to be a faster data connection. Flashing the radio does NOT hard reset your phone, but you will have to unlock your phone. SOOOOO....if you already have to unlock your phone...you might as well try out the sweet ROMs out there...cuz everyones doing it...and if everyones doing it...it can't be bad for you...HAHAHA besides...you can always go back to the stock Sprint ROM...and relock your phone like it all never happened.

[BigDinCA]

It's not a placebo effect. I'm on my 4th TP and this is the first one I flashed the new radio to. The differences are very evident. My wife has my old (3rd) TP and her radio hasn't been updated. My battery, data and signal strenth issues are all improved, while her TP still has them.

Kinda' makes me sound like an a-hole for not flashing hers, huh?

[littlefreak]

I only read half the this thread but I figured I give my 2cents since I have a good idea of whats going on with cooking and been lurking and writing a bit myself. Im on the same boat as you I use the stock roms myself as well and have my own method of customization. So here goes:

All custom roms and stock roms really have no differnce. No one here is skilled or smart anough (no offence) to write a hardware operating system from scratch for a hardware platform they do not know everything about (these phones). What they do is take the stock roms and backwards engineer them. In the long run this is no differnt then me taking a windows install and turning off services I dont need. Yes this does make them faster out of a box.

Example 1: You buy a dell laptop it comes loaded with dell software and gadgets you must like will never use. If you use a fresh windows OEM windows disk you get windows and thats it no extra software. These custom roms are alot like a oem disk.

This said as I know was stated in the first few posts by doing your own custom tweaks (registry edits and application modifications) you technicly have a custom rom. The only differnce is if you hard reset your going back to sprints default rom and you have to do all those changes yourself again.

*Some features that make custom roms alittle better*
Leaked radios.... Im sure you have heard people talk about using better radios. These are like anougher rom but its rom for the tranmission unit that i think the most perferred one for the TP saves you a bit of battery life. Alot of custom roms make these easy to get the better radio installed easy since if i remember correctly you have to unlock to flash a radio anyways.

**** MY Solution ****
I have a build cab file that has all my registery tweaks and program modifcations and all my program cabs on my storage card. So I can hard reset to stock rom whenever and whereever I want and still set it back up the way I like without going back to a computer or anything. This is kinda like cooking my own rom but less work.

That said from the work Ive followed No2Chem stuff has come closest to being the most stripped down for performance Ive seen. Which gives you a good base to do your own customization.

I use to run a custom rom on my mogul but with my TP it got more then anough memory and more then anough power where I dont care.

Ok let the flame begin from all the rom chefts.

[pastafarian]

Originally Posted by littlefreak

I use to run a custom rom on my mogul but with my TP it got more then anough memory and more then anough power where I dont care.

On the 6700, we flashed to save storage space. The 6800 was all about saving ram. With the TP, it seems to be about snappiness of the system and battery life. I don't have a whole lot of experience, but there's a very noticeable difference in feel between the tweaked stock I ran and the Might 4.13 ROM I'm running now. Now if only someone could build a rom that caused the TP to sprout a couple of hardware buttons.

[littlefreak]

Originally Posted by pastafarian

On the 6700, we flashed to save storage space. The 6800 was all about saving ram. With the TP, it seems to be about snappiness of the system and battery life. I don't have a whole lot of experience, but there's a very noticeable difference in feel between the tweaked stock I ran and the Might 4.13 ROM I'm running now. Now if only someone could build a rom that caused the TP to sprout a couple of hardware buttons.

Lol my tweaks solved snappiness problems.... But your write thats exactly why we flashed back then. Plus battery to mes not a issue I realy use this the way the phone was intended to be used which is like a business phone I dont watch very many videos or surf the web all day on it. Im a student without a laptop so its good for a quick web look up and for keeping on top of emails besides that its just like a normal phone to me. With average use i still ahve 30% by the end of a day.

Only time battery bugs me is when listen to music for long periods of time (on flights) but in my car I have a dock for when im listening to music so i can stay charged.

Maybe Im just use to slow WinMo phones with the TP im more then satisfied with stock... Plus back to my dell analogy I feel like with alot of these roms Im getting program and softwares even TF3D tabs I dont want just because the chefts think its anougher selling point to have a calander in TF3D.

[Lat]

As much as you might be able to tweak a stock rom, you can't change the SYS if you never flash it. Some builds of Windows are just inherently faster. In certain cases, it makes a HUGE difference. If you actually benchmark / compare file read/write speeds, as well as taking in account the 'snappiness' of the ROM.

I second the recommendation to go try Juicy 5; you will never turn back Plus, it saves you time if you don't have to apply the tweaks yourself.

[karate134]

Here's my thoughts for whatever it's worth:

I just got into these expensive phones just recently (past four months or so). I didn't even know what custom roms were. I tried it on my pro and I found it to be better.

Generally companies have to have product that can be set for the various consumer levels and also for the corporate level. I believe microsoft has this issue (not gonna get into that).

What happens is then sometimes the product might get bogged down with certain functions that might have absolutely no use to us. I believe that this custom rom thing that has taken ahold of many of the people on the forums is a way to cut out all that crap that we don't need, add performance where we need it (and possibly lose it where we don't), and potentionally add some app or whatever that we need.

Hopefully I explained my thoughts well (didn't want to go on forever).