Root Why should I use a custom ROM?

[3club]

Hey there everyone! First I want to thank and congratulate you guys on a truly fantastic forum. It's helped me a lot with general things, and I've even rooted my phone!

Now this might be such a stupid question that maybe I should change my name to UberNoob! lol I've seen many threads about HOW to install a custom ROM, but none about WHY I would do so. The steps and complications seem more significant than rooting, which I really only did so I could use Wireless Tether. I'm pretty happy with my phone now as is. So other than looking prettier, would there be any functional reason why I would want to install a custom ROM? Or should I just leave well enough alone?

Thanks

 

[colchiro]

There is no stupid question.

When you get to the point where you start to think, "gee, I bet my phone would be bigger, faster, better-lookin', if I got rid of the bloat that Verizon put on", then it's a good time to think of a custom rom. There's no reason to think you can just freeze a bunch of apps and not run some kind of risk. The devs that develop roms have put a lot of time and testing into what they crank out.

 

[3club]

Thanks for replying. Can you give me a "for example"? My phone has all kinds of stuff I never use, such as NFL Madden and Amazon Kindle, but I assumed that as long as I never start them up, they're not running, just sitting there. Am I wrong, or is there other stuff I'm not considering that IS running without me knowing it?

Thanks

 

[colchiro]

Go to settings... applications... manage applications... running. See stuff there you'd rather not have running?

Also, settings... applications... running services.

 

[3club]

Wow! Thanks for showing me that. I didn't realize so much was going on. Most of it looks important, though I have no idea what a lot of it does, but some stuff I shut right down, like Amazon MP3 for example, and the weather services.

Is that why my phone locks up and reboots itself once in a while?

 

[colchiro]

An unstable app could cause rebooting.

I found two more apps to uninstall.

 

[kimkgk]

I just wanted to chime in. I loaded a ROM on my Gpad and the difference is amazing. More speed, many new options and the absence of lame user interfaces. Give it a try

 

[3club]

Now here's a question, and I don't know if it's related to ROMs or not.

When I get a PC, a Hewlet Packard for example, even after I do a factory recovery it's still full of HP crap like wild tangent games, norton trial, etc. So I grab my XP CD, format the drive, and install just Windows and only Windows.

Can I do something like that with my Droid X, install just the Android operating system? And then add in the apps I want? I assume that's not the same thing as a ROM, as there is one Android operating system, but many choices of ROMs?

 

[colchiro]

What is a droid x rom?

They take the same os that came with your phone, dropped out all the bloat, tweaked it a bit and maybe added a theme to change the default colors. Some roms remove Motorola's Blur, recompile the original android (Google) apps. These are called AOSP (Android Open Source Project) roms. Many add a toolbox for tweaking.

So, to answer your question, bloated Windows that came with computer - bloat = what's on the cd, right? Isn't that what I just described?

 

[3club]

Well, no, not quite the same on pc, "bloated Windows that came with computer - bloat = what's on the cd, right? "

Even after you take back out the stuff you don't want, it's never as clean as when the stuff had never been there in the first place. So I'm gathering that on phones, you can't just format and clean install the OS. Instead you have to just whittle away at what the carrier gave you?

Even so, I think yes I will try a custom rom one of these days. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[colchiro]

Like I said, roms remove the bloat, to varying degree, based on the rom. For instance, if you want social networking or media center, you have to add that back in. It's usually removed by default.

You might want to check out Apex 1.4, just released. It's a good first rom. Still has familiar blur apps, like camera, gallery, email. AOSP roms give you generic versions of those apps.

 

[jguns112]

Aside from removing bloat ware and making your phone a little bit quicker, the biggest appeal (at least for me) is that they make your phone look a lot nicer. I'm still quite new to the whole rom thing and have only tried out Apex, but it gives a lot of nice transitions plus theme is a lot better than the stock blur one.