Help Travelling around the world with an HTC One M8, wipe or don't wipe?

[Android Question]

Hi all, a preemptive thanks for reading- I am about to leave on a year long trip throughout Asia and Europe. I am cancelling all phone service I have with Verizon as I am out of contract and their service suspension is a joke (3 months max, and you still have to pay $10 a month). I'm planning on porting my number over to Google Voice, but once service is gone I'm not sure of my next move yet.

Background: Device is an HTC One M8, purchased almost right when it came out 2.5 years ago. Great device out of the box, but since has become rather sluggish (expected). I'm not proclaiming to be an Android power user, but I'm not a tech moron either- I've tried to keep it decently clean over the years.

I have three options as I see it:

1) Leave it as is- clean up some of the junk apps and other things, but otherwise don't do anything else to it. Deal with the poor performance and (IMO) increasingly bad UI, but have assurance that things generally will continue to work as they currently do.

2) Wipe and factory reset, and disable all updates. Brings me back to the day I purchased it, but concerned that apps will want the latest version of Android.

3) Wipe and root and go the full homebrew route with something like CyanogenMod, etc... No guarantee the apps I want will work at all.

My priorities for this trip are:

• Google Translate (offline)
• Google Maps (offline)
• Battery life
• Performance

I guess my biggest question is- will Translate and Maps run on older versions of Android and/or on rooted phones, or do I need to suck it up and keep current despite the cruft that's accumulated over the years?

Thanks again all, and please set me straight if any of my assumptions or ideas are flat out wrong- this is my first smartphone

 

[Hadron]

From 2 I think you may be under the misapprehension that a "factory reset" will revert the OS to the version that came with the phone. It won't. All a reset does is wipe user-installed apps and data, but it doesn't affect the system at all. Put another way, the phone doesn't waste storage keeping a backup copy of the original OS, and each update completely overwrites the previous system. So after a reset you will still have the same OS version.

That said, phones do accumulate cruft in their caches, and if you've had multiple updates it may be that if you back up your data, do a reset, then reinstall what you need it will actually run faster than it currently does. No guarantee, but it may improve. TBH that would be my first suggestion; after that you can consider the custom ROM route if you are still dissatisfied (you may even be able to find one based on an older version of the HTC ROM if that's what you want).

 

[badcatz]

You might try wiping the cache partition before you do the reset. It *might* help with the sluggish performance and it will not delete any of your data.

http://droider.eu/2016/01/23/how-to-wipe-cache-partition-on-one-m8-running-marshmallow/

 

[mikedt]

A Verizon version HTC One M8? Think you better check network compatibility, before you go off around the world with it...
willmyphonework.net
This is a useful site.

I think it should work with other network SIMs, provided it's properly unlocked. You'd better check with Verizon for that of course. The Google stuff should work OK, as long as you're not planning on coming here to China. Where you'll need a VPN for it.