Newly rooted Verizon SG3 has some questions

[spodoc]

What are the chances there is a site with ROMS reviews?...

Once I've flashed the ROM do I need to keep Verizon OTA updates off my phone, if so, how do I do that?

Second question first: run a custom rom and you most likely will not get updates. Chagne that to a 'definitely will not" if you run an AOSP rom (e.g. Cyanogen Mod, AOKP...) If on a TW-based rom (clean rom, beans, synergy) you can hunt for the files that control updates (FWupgrade.apk and some others). Delete any of those if they exist.

First question: No, there are no site with a comprehensive review of roms. I'll throw in my $0.02 here.

You want stable? Staability is an objective state. There are aspects of the stock Touchwiz (TW) software that I consider unstable. That said, I think most folks consider stable to mean all major phone functions work and the phone will not freeze and reboot when you are counting on it.

Are you a doctor, business person, or anyone else that lives and dies by their phone? If so, i'd probably suggest an iphone honestly because even stock, unmodified android phones are a few years away from where they need to be in this "stability" issue. If not, read on.

If you are OK with quirks here and there, then I submit to you that AOSP is about 95% or more quirk-free when compared to the stock form of your phone.

Here are some quirks of AOSP roms:
- Music skips more on playback
- occasional screen flickers which are getting better by the week
- some minor things broken (e.g. in call volume on your earpiece not adjustable, volume on video recording too low) What's minor to most might be major to you depending on who you are and how you use your phone
- infrequent (once or so a week) reboots or freezes
- absence of samsung "improvements" (aka touchwiz) such as TW calendar, TW svoice, TW camera...
- Hate to tinker? Have low patience for things messing up if you do? Don't go AOSP rom then. Many of their features have had minimal testing. I'm OK with the occasional bug popping up but some folks can't stand that. It annoys them almost as much as it annoys me to run stock based roms.

Benefits of AOSP
- near insane performance. the smoothness and responsivness is unreal. you can't make this phone lag on AOSP
- AOSP style. If you run AOSP for a while, you will simply come to reject the "improved" stylings HTC, samsung, and Motorola have made. There are things about android that I would change, but manufaturer skins don't improve on it. I recently went back to a TW-based rom and left within an hour. You have to run AOSP for a few weeks to see what I mean about the style.
- Customization and themeing. Type A people like myself want control of the clock placement and color. We want to change font size and color. We want our own background on the notifications pull down menu. AOSP roms like AOKP and CM10 give us some of this control over the theming.
- It's fun, if you are a tech-type person that enjpys tinkering and reaping the benefits. If not, eh, go with a TW rom or stock

Touchwiz (stock) based roms:
These use the stock software as a base but then tweak from there. Some roms (e.g. Beans) offer a great amount of customization for stock-based roms. Many will swap in AOSP apps such as AOSP email and messaging. Any/all stability inherent in stock roms will most likely persist into the TW-based roms. Personally, I reccomend beans lastest rom. It's TW so you have all the samsung, super secret software that AOSP doesn't. That means unmatched stablity and battey life that you get in stock, but with Beans' visual and AOSP tweaks. It's the best of both worlds, so to speak.

Enough rambling. Just trying to help.

Summary: are you easily annoyed with your phone? Run stock. Do you like it but desire some customization? Run beans. Do you want ultra-cool, techie type experience w/ the latest google android software? Run AOSP and fly your nerd flag high.

Jwalz says make sure you flash gapps if you go AOSP

[CR6]

Great reply spodoc! :thumbup:

tap'n

[UltraDroid]

That was an EXCELLENT analysis Spodoc!

[razingkane]

Second question first: run a custom rom and you most likely will not get updates. Chagne that to a 'definitely will not" if you run an AOSP rom (e.g. Cyanogen Mod, AOKP...) If on a TW-based rom (clean rom, beans, synergy) you can hunt for the files that control updates (FWupgrade.apk and some others). Delete any of those if they exist.

First question: No, there are no site with a comprehensive review of roms. I'll throw in my $0.02 here.

You want stable? Staability is an objective state. There are aspects of the stock Touchwiz (TW) software that I consider unstable. That said, I think most folks consider stable to mean all major phone functions work and the phone will not freeze and reboot when you are counting on it.

Are you a doctor, business person, or anyone else that lives and dies by their phone? If so, i'd probably suggest an iphone honestly because even stock, unmodified android phones are a few years away from where they need to be in this "stability" issue. If not, read on.

If you are OK with quirks here and there, then I submit to you that AOSP is about 95% or more quirk-free when compared to the stock form of your phone.

Here are some quirks of AOSP roms:
- Music skips more on playback
- occasional screen flickers which are getting better by the week
- some minor things broken (e.g. in call volume on your earpiece not adjustable, volume on video recording too low) What's minor to most might be major to you depending on who you are and how you use your phone
- infrequent (once or so a week) reboots or freezes
- absence of samsung "improvements" (aka touchwiz) such as TW calendar, TW svoice, TW camera...
- Hate to tinker? Have low patience for things messing up if you do? Don't go AOSP rom then. Many of their features have had minimal testing. I'm OK with the occasional bug popping up but some folks can't stand that. It annoys them almost as much as it annoys me to run stock based roms.

Benefits of AOSP
- near insane performance. the smoothness and responsivness is unreal. you can't make this phone lag on AOSP
- AOSP style. If you run AOSP for a while, you will simply come to reject the "improved" stylings HTC, samsung, and Motorola have made. There are things about android that I would change, but manufaturer skins don't improve on it. I recently went back to a TW-based rom and left within an hour. You have to run AOSP for a few weeks to see what I mean about the style.
- Customization and themeing. Type A people like myself want control of the clock placement and color. We want to change font size and color. We want our own background on the notifications pull down menu. AOSP roms like AOKP and CM10 give us some of this control over the theming.
- It's fun, if you are a tech-type person that enjpys tinkering and reaping the benefits. If not, eh, go with a TW rom or stock

Touchwiz (stock) based roms:
These use the stock software as a base but then tweak from there. Some roms (e.g. Beans) offer a great amount of customization for stock-based roms. Many will swap in AOSP apps such as AOSP email and messaging. Any/all stability inherent in stock roms will most likely persist into the TW-based roms. Personally, I reccomend beans lastest rom. It's TW so you have all the samsung, super secret software that AOSP doesn't. That means unmatched stablity and battey life that you get in stock, but with Beans' visual and AOSP tweaks. It's the best of both worlds, so to speak.

Enough rambling. Just trying to help.

Summary: are you easily annoyed with your phone? Run stock. Do you like it but desire some customization? Run beans. Do you want ultra-cool, techie type experience w/ the latest google android software? Run AOSP and fly your nerd flag high.

Jwalz says make sure you flash gapps if you go AOSP

Run AOSP and fly your nerd flag high.......Now that's funny as my business partner whose nerd flag is the size of a hankie comes to me for all things tech. I like tinkering and as long as there is support for bugginess I'm ok with that too. I have 4-5 suggested ROM's so I need to investige further....

Thanks for your ASOP and Beans write-up.

[spodoc]

Try AOKP first. There is milestone build coming this sunday. Should be good.

[jwalz]

Try AOKP first. There is milestone build coming this sunday. Should be good.

This Sunday for sure?

[spodoc]

Not sure. Tweets by team king members suggested it was coming very soon.

[spodoc]

From xoomdev: A lil @AOKP_ROM treat coming up. Stay tuned.

[razingkane]

Last weekend I finally flashed my Verizon SG3 ROM. I decided to do a stock ROM flash first so I used High on Android v0.03. Everything went smoothly. Just to see how it works, I did a restore back my original Samsung TouchWiz then I did a restore back to High on Android. After a day I moved onto my next flash. This time I had to wipe and flash. I selected LiquidSmooth v2.0 rc3 and gapps. Again, I did not have any problems. Today I flashed up to LiquidSmooth v2.0 rc7 and so far, no problems.

[spodoc]

Last weekend I finally flashed my Verizon SG3 ROM. I decided to do a stock ROM flash first so I used High on Android v0.03. Everything went smoothly. Just to see how it works, I did a restore back my original Samsung TouchWiz then I did a restore back to High on Android. After a day I moved onto my next flash. This time I had to wipe and flash. I selected LiquidSmooth v2.0 rc3 and gapps. Again, I did not have any problems. Today I flashed up to LiquidSmooth v2.0 rc7 and so far, no problems.

nice. Good job.