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SGSII owners: is a custom rom necessary?

gorcorps

gorcorps

aka Brandon
I'm getting a SGSII tomorrow (AT&T non-snapdragon version) and I'm wondering if the stock rom just rooted has been working well enough, or if everybody has been finding some better roms to be more worth it. If I'm looking at a rom I'd rather start with it from the get go and not have to redo everything in a month or so when I learn I should have been running something different the entire time.

My only requirements is that it has to be fully functioning. It's my daily driver and only phone, so everything has to work.
 
Depends on whether or not you like samsung's UI "enhancements"

My first instinct when getting a new android phone is figuring out how to get all of the manufacturer and carrier crap off of it and get it as close to stock android as possible and then add the customizations that I want.

If I was getting a SGS II this week, I'd probably root it and load the latest CM 7 (cyanogenmod 7) nightly build on it to use until a fully working build of CM 9 (based on ice cream sandwich) is released..

I don't like having a bunch of extra stuff on my phone taking up space if I don't need it.. and rooting and loading a custom rom is usually the only way to get rid of that extra stuff.
 
I feel like any Android phone thats got a custom ROM is 10x faster. I can guarantee you those HTC phones with Sense 3.0 are so bloated which is why they're slow. People used to be happy with like 1500+ Quadrant scores on dual core phones until the SGS2 came out, but I'm pretty sure considering single core phones can hit almost 3k, that dual core phones can go way beyond that with the right custom ROM.

IT almost seems that any phone is severely held back without a good ROM.
 
I've had an AT&T SGSII for a week-and-a-half now, and have not rooted/ROM'd it. I'm just going to wait for CM9 / other ICS ROM to come out for the sake of simplicity. I've been very pleased with the stock (Samsung TouchWiz) experience: it's not too flashy or bloated, and some of the customizations are actually quite useful. I did install LauncherPro, which I find to be a real improvement over the stock launcher. I'm fully satisfied with the phone now. Although I understand people say installing a custom ROM will improve battery life and/or speed up the phone, these rationales aren't persuasive to me in light of my experience with the GSII. It flies through UI elements and apps; I can't imagine what a "faster" experience would actually look like. And batter life has been a non-issue for me; the phone makes it through a day of normal-heavy use, and I charge it every night.
 
Personally, I like TouchWhiz - I'd leave the stock ROM on unless you have performance issues. Once ICS comes out, if Samsung is dragging their feet, maybe do a custom ROM then.
 
No. I always ran custom roms on my Captivate but my Galaxy S2 is so fast out of the box I don't see the point. I also have found Touchwiz 4 to be far nicer than stock Gingerbread, to me an AOSP rom like Cyanogenmod would be a downgrade.
 
I don't have an SGSII, but you can always just root it, and freeze every app you don't want with titanium. So you will basically have the stock rom without all the bloatware. And if feels buggy, you can unfreeze apps to find out which one.

My personal feeling is that ROMS are for two types of people.The techie guys who have the itch to always have new and different stuff on their phone. Or the people who have bought phones(like my Epic 4g) that need ROMS to make the phone work like it should cause Samsung can't do it.

If you are one of those two, than you should definitely get a ROM to start. Read up on the CM though, cause a lot of times they don't have 4g or have bugs that aren't worth it.
 
Sounds like it's not necessary then, which makes life easier for me. I've made due with stock rooted on my Atrix and that's known to be a less than stellar experience, so the SGSII will be an improvement regardless. The only thing I guess I'd be looking for is a multi-clock kernal to use w/ stock so it will downclock properly while idle and only use full CPU when necessary. Unless of course it does this stock for some reason.
 
I'm not sure if the situation is the same on the SGII, but on my SG (original version), upgrading to a custom ROM made a night and day difference in terms of speed and responsiveness. The custom rom still had lag in some places, but it was much, much better than stock. I'm not sure if or how much difference a custom ROM makes on SGII, but I don't think the difference would be as drastic since SGII has much better hardware.
 
The SGSII is fast and smooth as is the TW4 is actually decent. I still use GoLauncer but root nor a ROM is needed for it. I am rooted, but I won't go with a custom ROM until ICS ROMs come out.
 
KingGheedora said:
I'm not sure if the situation is the same on the SGII, but on my SG (original version), upgrading to a custom ROM made a night and day difference in terms of speed and responsiveness. The custom rom still had lag in some places, but it was much, much better than stock. I'm not sure if or how much difference a custom ROM makes on SGII, but I don't think the difference would be as drastic since SGII has much better hardware.
Click to expand...

The reason the original SGS ran so much better with custom roms was because samsung used a proprietary file system called RFS that was very slow..

The first major custom roms created EXT2 or EXT4 partitions to run from and that sped up the device considerably. The SGS II uses EXT4 from the start, iirc.. so that performance gain can already be enjoyed via the stock experience.

The stock kernel will downclock the device when it isn't necessary for it to run at full speed.. so you don't need a special kernel for that, either.
 
Andrmgic said:
The reason the original SGS ran so much better with custom roms was because samsung used a proprietary file system called RFS that was very slow..

The first major custom roms created EXT2 or EXT4 partitions to run from and that sped up the device considerably. The SGS II uses EXT4 from the start, iirc.. so that performance gain can already be enjoyed via the stock experience.

The stock kernel will downclock the device when it isn't necessary for it to run at full speed.. so you don't need a special kernel for that, either.
Click to expand...

Cool -- thanks for the explanation. Do you know what file system the Galaxy Nexus uses?
 
KingGheedora said:
Cool -- thanks for the explanation. Do you know what file system the Galaxy Nexus uses?
Click to expand...

I think it is EXT4.. there are some custom kernels already that improve i/o performance, though.. I'm not entirely sure what they did to achieve that.. as I'm not a developer of any kind..

I love my galaxy nexus.. I've had it for about 2 weeks as of this past friday..

It's a great device.
 
Andrmgic said:
I think it is EXT4.. there are some custom kernels already that improve i/o performance, though.. I'm not entirely sure what they did to achieve that.. as I'm not a developer of any kind..

I love my galaxy nexus.. I've had it for about 2 weeks as of this past friday..

It's a great device.
Click to expand...

I should get mine tomorrow or the day after. Girlfriend upgrades from a non-smartphone to my SG (original). Looking forward to it!
 
They'll go after you if you hit 5gb on an unlimited plan, whether in fact you tether or not.

You're going to have to change your setup/workflow for ICS anyway, but before then is up to you.
 
I am going to go against the group on this. As a AT&T SGS2 owner from day 1, I think if you get a fresh start you might as well use a ROM. The default OS has too many small annoying issues (like a home button lag that AT&T introduced) that a decent ROM fixes.

Avoid CM7 ROMs- you lose too many features on those. The best are Samsung-based ROMs. I recommend UnNamed:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1299474

Read all the changes that ROM makes to the default and you will see why the default needed some work. Plus you get the best kernel so far (undervolt all you want).
 
I thought the stock ROM was plenty serviceable when I first got it. But then I installed the UnNamed ROM (a modification of the stock ROM, incidentally, not a total overhaul like CM7 or Miui) and I'm never going back. Feels snappier, is cleaned of bloatware, and gets much, much better battery life. I can easily get 4 days with light usage; a couple calls, text messages, light web browsing, etc. Anyway, your question was, is stock "good enough" and I think that the answer is yes. But UnNamed is definitely better, and has no downside. Of course, now I am realizing you have Skyrocket, so forget the specific ROM recommendation. If you can find something that is debloated stock though in the I727 forums, that might be worth starting out with immediately.

I haven't tried CM7 for the I777 yet because it sounds like it still has some issues, including battery drain that has creeped up in recent releases. Also, I think focus is shifting more towards CM9, so CM7 development is low priority.

Edit: didn't see above post, but totally agree.
 
I'm using a custom rom on mine. It seems to work better for me. Using the unNamed rom and waiting for a ICS release.

Depending on the software version yours has it could have CarrierIQ embedded into it. At least that's what I heard anyways over at xda. There was a leaked att rom that had it installed. Not sure if it was pushed yet or loaded onto the newer SGS2's yet. The Skyrocket has it on all versions.
 
:hmm: Maybe I'll look into the unNamed rom then. Thanks for the recs


Kenmitch said:
I'm using a custom rom on mine. It seems to work better for me. Using the unNamed rom and waiting for a ICS release.

Depending on the software version yours has it could have CarrierIQ embedded into it. At least that's what I heard anyways over at xda. There was a leaked att rom that had it installed. Not sure if it was pushed yet or loaded onto the newer SGS2's yet. The Skyrocket has it on all versions.
Click to expand...

What is CarrierIQ and what does that change? Are you saying that it's a newer feature that has yet to make it into the roms, and I'd lose that for now? I can't imagine it's something that would affect flashing to unNamed regardless, since a flash should replace the entire OS. If the hardware's the same then it shouldn't have an issue, right?
 
gorcorps said:
What is CarrierIQ and what does that change? Are you saying that it's a newer feature that has yet to make it into the roms, and I'd lose that for now? I can't imagine it's something that would affect flashing to unNamed regardless, since a flash should replace the entire OS. If the hardware's the same then it shouldn't have an issue, right?
Click to expand...

You don't want CarrierIQ its more of a rootkit that can track keystrokes etc. Its something that makes a lot of people paranoid because of possible exploytation.

XDA forums are the place to look for Roms and general cellphone tablet facts etc. Just make sure you go into the correct subforum when looking.
 
personally, TW is fine and it's actually a decent launcher.

you still need root/custom roms due to what they offer. e.g 7 toggles in your power bar (or 12 if you want), script enhancements, setcpu, lcddensity etc etc etc.

whatever any manuf puts on their phones, xda devs will improve upon - and that's without AOSP (CM, oxygen etc).
 
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