Hi,
I was going to start a new thread, but spotted this one. Here's my 2p worth on the debate between the two apps...
I've used Handcent from virtually day one instead of the stock sms app and after a couple of weeks with it on my Hero, have given up as of today.
The problems I had, which seem to have been related directly to Handcent are:
Notification delays - The phone would vibrate, but no notification sound unless or until I unlocked the screen, which could be minutes later. It was driving me mad and I couldn't solve it by closing/reopening the app, clearing caches, rebooting. Nothing worked until I uninstalled Handcent. With Chomp installed, every sms I've had today (around 15 so far) has had notification sounds and vibration together as they should be. Nothing else has changed on my phone other than uninstalling Handcent and installing Chomp immediately after.
SMS failures & delays - This is the dealbreaker for me and from other comments online, it looks like I'm not alone in experiencing it. SMS messages often (as in around 10% of the time for me) fail to send or sit there delayed for a long time. I can have a full network signal strength and messages will fail to send. In one case, the sms looked to have gone (no fail message or icon next to it) and I got a call two days later from the recipient asking why I'd sent the message so long after our conversation. Two days is way too long. Again, with Chomp today, every message has gone, first time, even with a low network signal.
Lag - I didn't notice this until I removed Handcent and installed Chomp, but my phone is definitely quicker without Handcent. Why that is, I have no idea. But, the laggy gui is less pronounced.
MMS fails - As with sms messages, the multimedia messages I send, which are usually pictures, often fail to send immediately and it can take me hours to kickstart them. It doesn't matter how strong or weak my network signal is either. This seems to be completely random.
Missing messages - Now, this one is really interesting to me. When I uninstalled Handcent and got Chomp running, I noticed an sms thread I didn't recognise. I opened it up and lo and behold, there were three identical mms messages I'd tried and failed to send via Handcent in a thread all on their own!! I can't begin to explain this one.
I like the idea of Handcent because of the power it gives you over sms, which is something I do more with my phone than making calls. However, with these issues, I won't be installing it again any time soon. It's way too buggy for me. So far, there's nothing to indicate Chomp having the same problems and it has more than enough config options for me to be happy with it as my main texting app.
Cheers for this thread, it's nice to know I'm not alone with my problems.
All the best,
Jim