Why use a custom ROM?
 

I've been using Mighty Rom for a little while now and wondered what makes other decide to use a custom rom over the stock rom (Sprint in my case). Can someone share their reasons for one way or the other?

Thanks!
Ben

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

i use custom roms just to try new things like winmo 6.5 for example

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

Lots of reason

Number 1 reason is custom roms are always better then the Stock ROM

Faster

Smoother

More Attractive

ect.

I say you should defiantly flash a custom ROM (Copper)

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

That's a good reason ans one of the reasons I wanted to try a new rom. It's fin to tinker with our gadgets anyway. I really wondered what technical reasons as I am sure other 'newbies' may be.

Ben

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

So you can help keep people like me out of the bar!!!

Usually better performance, custom apps, and gives you more of a choice. Think if you woke everyday and wore the same outfit...

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

Copper is a pretty poor ROM to recommend to someone who doesn't even understand why you would want to flash. Copper is so stripped down, he would have to go out and find .cabs for features he is probably unaware of in the first place, making the search pretty difficult. It would be better to suggest a crowd favorite, such as Juicy's ROM, or MightyMike's ROM...

Hell, even something older, like DREAM's ROM

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I was on the Sprint stock ROM since October 2008 when I got the phone. I kept reading about all these customs ROM's and why they are so good. I just recently flashed to Might ROM about 5 days ago and I'm glad I made the change.

I was initially hesitant b/c I didn't want to screw up my phone b/c I have several apps i use for business. After reading a ton about it, I made the move to Mighty ROM.

The main thing I've noticed is the SPEED is much better and my BATTERY LIFE has increased. There are also some different apps he includes with the ROM and also removes the Sprint stuff. Those were probably my two biggest grips with the stock ROM, sluggish and poor battery life. I had to soft reset my phone a couple times a day on the stock ROM b/c it would always freeze up on me.

The other big reason I made the switch is so Arcsoft would work on my phone. I could never get picturemail working with the stock ROM and with Mighty ROM it works great!

I don't think I'll try other ROM at this point b/c I'm happy with Mighty ROM, but when he releases and updated version, I'll definatley flash to the updated version of Mighty ROM.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I'm on Verizon with one of the memory gimped Verizon Touch Pros, and I just flashed to SSK this past weekend. The reason I flashed was because of sluggish performance and the fact that the stock rom was a memory hog on the already memory handicapped VZW TP.

Prior to flashing I'd given up on using Touch Flo 3D because it was just too much for it. Now I have plenty of memory and the phone still looks great. The only thing I still disable is the HTC dialer to free up those 10 megs or so of ram, but with this rom the windows stock dialer is skinned black so it looks pretty cool regardless.

I personally think, now that I've flashed, that VZW users need to flash a stock rom to unlock the full potential of this phone. I highly recommend SSK, they're tweaked for VZW and run great in my experience so far.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I had been interested in the custom ROMs for a while but feared bricking my phone. I then had a lot of problems with my phone not hanging up a call. I would finish the call and click the red phone button and then people would say that they would listen to me for a while after that. As I was pressing a "hard" key perhaps the ROMs would have no impact on the problem anyway. Still, I decided to make the attempt. It was funny, I read and read and read so carefully figured the task of burning a new ROM would be very difficult but in the end it took minutes and was a piece of cake.

I have the Verizon Touch Pro and what I tried so far was JD's but it was clearly written around Sprint. It seemed fine but as I kept seeing Sprint pop up I was a bit uncomfortable and moved to eRice. It was ok but I had a lot of problems with it booting up. It would boot up only about 20% of the time and lock the other times. I could live with that but I also got left with a very small amount of free memory that caused everything to be too slow. The TF3D interface seemed relatively quick but other actions were slow. It all may have been my fault as I added some apps in the kitchen that I likely didn't need. I'm still not clear if that would kill memory. None the less, I decided to try Copper and love it. Yes, very stripped down but so far I have everything I need. I could get VZ Navigator back so in the end I decided to try some other GPS programs. Not sure yet what I think about them. I am left with 40% of my memory free at boot up which is the most I have ever seen. That was with the default page pool settings which I can't recall what they were. That is the only thing I haven't tried which might speed things up further. To be honest, I don't know what a page pool is. :) I will say that with Copper there is no MMS, only SMS. I guess I need to download a different program for MMS? Haven't figured that out either.

Whichever way you go, good luck.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I have been trying all morning to send this short little audio clip to my friend as a mms message like I used to on my old Clamshell Samsung A920. I'm using my Touch Pro on Sprint with the 4.16 Mighty Rom. I read HERE that mms is no longer supported by sprint for Windows Mobile devices. There used to be a 3rd party app that you could use but in 2008 sprint started blocking it.

Is this still the case today?

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

Because I like to live life on the edge.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I was wondering if it was worth the effort also.


I disabled TouchFlo 3D and installed SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

and now my phone is pretty quick.

How much quicker can it get?

I'm beginning to think that TouchFlo3d was the major issue.

It seems like I have a ton of memory now also since I made the switch to SPB Mobile Shell.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I thought I was happy and had my phone where I wanted until I started flashing. Two of the best IMO are the Mighty and Juicy ROMs. I'm on MightyROM 4.16 & TF3D is enabled & my phone is as fast as it's ever been

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

It would help to see a demo of how much faster it really is.

It took me forever to set up my phone how I like it so if I'm going to flash, I want to see why it would be worth it.

Like I was saying, with SPB Mobile 2.0, it's pretty quick.

And navigation is way better than TouchFlo3d IMO.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

To be honest, the stock Sprint rom is pretty good. It's solid and pretty much bug-free.

I tried a few roms, just for the hell of it. Mainly because I had already unlocked my phone to install a different radio.

There was always some type of annoying little problem with every rom I tried. A bug, something that didn't work right, some extra programs that were useless to me...

I was ready to go back to stock, but I tried one of Juicy's rom and I was impressed. It's faster than stock, leaner, it didn't have annoying bugs.

And now, with TF3D2, no way I'm going back to stock.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

Why not back it up (I recommend Sprite Backup http://www.spritesoftware.com/produc...p/full-edition ) unlock your phone and then flash one of the many Roms available yourself. You can always reflash & relock your phone & restore everything with a backup.

I would also recommend backing the device up twice

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I felt the same way when i first started looking to flash my phone,, however i have the pleasure of working with Ivan at my place of business,, after talking to him and getting info on flashing i took the dive,, so after flashing 8 different roms onto my phone i was able to compile a list of things i liked and didnt like,,so i took a dive again and started to cook my own roms,, after several attemps (mainly because of forgetting to put something "vital" in) i now have a very stable, bug-free and personalizied rom built for my likes needs and wants,, then i have another rom that is a theme rom for the tv show "Doctor Who",, plus its a lite and mainly sprint free rom (ie. taking out all sprint customizations). dont get me wrong the sprint rom is just fine (insert a good comment of sprint due to the fact i work for them) for the every day user,, but for someone that wants more out of their device then a new may be your answer,,

In short what im try to convey is that its a way of making your phone "YOUR PHONE".

Flashing to another rom is like getting to try out a different operating systems on you computer,,

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

That's what I want to know. I like TF3D but I'd love it if the phone just worked faster. I've done all the registry tweaks I can find and have a 3/9/09 build phone. Can it really get that much faster and keep TF3D? Or maybe TF3D2

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

That's early 2008.....This is almost mid 2009. My MMS works great as me and the wife send pics through pic mail all the time.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

Yes, it can.

I have a Sprint TouchPro (so it has tons of free memory) activated on Verizon. When I switched to Mighty 4.16 the speed difference was night & day from any stock ROM (including the leaked VZ ROM which is better than the stock Sprint ROM)

Even with TF3D enabled (I use the cfc compressed HD version as it is faster than the standard version) there is absolutely no lag whatever. Everything I click on opens/responds etc. almost instantly. The only place I get any noticeable lag at all is opening the music tab as it is seto to read mp3's from my card (always slower than main memory) & I have over 500 songs there it has to catalog.

~John

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

I was very apprehensive at first as well about flashing my phone. This is my first time with a real good phone, prior I always had the "freebies" a company would give out for signing up. When I switched to Verizon this past summer I bought an LG Voyager and thought I was the man. I had the option of buying a smartphone or a PPC or even a Blackberry and thought they were just for stuffy business execs and that I didn't need them.

After having my Voyager for 6 or 7 months and being disappointed at how locked down it was I started researching and found the Touch Pro, and decided that's what I wanted.

After buying it I was very happy but did notice not long afterwards that I had to disable TF3D to make it usable. I couldn't run lots of programs at once, I'd have to keep shutting stuff down to open others.

I finally decided to take the plunge and flash about 2 weeks ago, and after trying Juicy and Mighty (keep in mind I have a memory handicapped Verizon TP) I tried SSK and haven't gone back.

Being able to add in whatever OEMs to the kitchen you want is great for keeping it lean and mean, and now when I enable TF3D I have more memory free than I had on stock *without* TF3D enabled, and it's more usable when it is running too.

Flashing, imo, unlocks the potential of this phone, and I will say it again, almost necessary on the Verizon version to really get the most out of your device.

Re: Why use a custom ROM?
 

My TF3D doesn't feel too sluggish. It's not iPhone-snappy but I don't think that is even really possible with WM. But opening programs or even e-mail seems like it could be faster.