Custom ROM and their Power~Explained!

I have explained about android rooting in my previous article and had mentioned about Custom ROM’s but most of you maybe don’t know
that much about it and what
possibilities,benefits but also risk
come with it.This article is meant
to guide you through all of this,I
want to bring you closer to custom
ROM’s in general so you can
decide for yourself if its worth the
effort and the risk.

What is it good for?

If you never used one before I will
try to keep it short and simple and
only point out the most obvious
reasons,which would be..
- Better performance
- Better battery life
- Easy but powerful theming
possibilities
- Tons and tons of tweaks and
customization options

Are there any risks?

Yes and no. Of course there are
always unexpected things that can
happen during rooting your device
and flashing a custom ROM, but if
you carefully follow the given
instructions there is not really
anything dangerous that could
happen. It is always smart first to
flash a custom recovery,which you
will need to flash the custom ROM
anyways,and do a nandroid
backup.
A nandroid backup will take a
snapshot of your entire system as
it was you last left it and you can
always restore back to it in case
something bad happens. Then
there are always some small bugs
and stability issues of the specific
ROM’s to consider as well. Mostly
random freezes and some minor
glitches but nothing major. Some
certain device features are possibly
not available as well.
CyanogenMod is always the safe
and easy way to go, but most
others are very stable and bug
free. They offer a lot more
customization, to which i will come
later. If you take the high rated
popular ones on XDA you should
be pretty safe, don’t worry.

There are so many of them,which should I get?

OK, if you have decided to take the
risk and want to dive right in, you
probably want to know which
custom ROM to choose. The
choices can be almost
overwhelming on certain devices,
especially on the popular Nexus
devices.
I can only talk about AOSP based
ROM’s here so almost everyone
can relate to it. Considering
manufacturer skinned versions
based on Sense ,Touchwiz and all
the other ones would be to
confusing and cumbersome. And
chances are always the best that
you will find one of the upcoming
mentioned ones for your devices.
The 3 major ones and their crossed
siblings
By now 3 major branches have
crystallized out of all the smaller
ones. Those 3 would be
CyanogenMod, which is the most
common known, AOKP (Android
Open Kang Project) and Paranoid
Android which is the latest one of
those 3. There is also another sort
of type to which I will come to a
bit later. I will try to show each
specific pros and cons as short but
as understandable as possible.

CyanogenMod

This ROM is very close to stock
and only adds those tweaks the
developers think stock android is
really missing out and and which
really improve the general
experience without getting too far
off the stock way. The benefits are
obvious, new users won’t get
confused too much but still will be
able to get certain benefits without
any major bugs or stability issues
since it always tries to leave as
much stock source code as it
is. The downside though is that
staying so close to stock, a lot of
heavy custom ROM power users,
like I would consider myself, just
won’t get satisfied enough
because of the limited tweaks.

Paranoid Android

The Paranoid Android team may
have released one of the most
revolutionary inventions since the
beginning of custom ROM’s itself,
at least in my opinion…the hybrid
engine. If you followed Armando´s
videos you probably know what I
am talking about. But for those
who don’t , its a very powerful way
to do complex and drastic changes
to the UI and dpi in general, but
also on a per app base itself which
is the even more genius thing
about it.
You get 3 main User Interfaces to
choose from, phone, phablet and
tablet mode. This way you can get
the tablet mode back which Google
decided to get rid of in favor to
more consistency throughout the
whole android ecosystem. But
using the hybrid engine you can
also assign which apps to use
which UI, a thing being impossible
before. Now you can enjoy the nice
tablet app design on your phone
as well, which makes much sense
on all those big high res displays
nowadays.
Other than that you can also
choose specific dpi´s for specific
apps without having to settle for
one for the whole system. Apart
from the main hybrid engine
features, the PA team created
some other cool things which are
also a part of the engine as well
like color per app, expanded per
app and the infamous PIE which is
well known almost everywhere by
now.
But besides all the hybrid engine
the biggest effort of the team is to
try to stay super close to stock and
only change the things they think
Google is failing in improving the
experience. That´s also the reason
why they officially only support
real nexus device, but there is a
port available for almost any other
device out there already as long as
it isn’t too old.

AOKP

AOKP in my opinion, is the right
choice for everyone who wants to
use as many tweaks as
possible. None of the other 2
previous mentioned ones is even
close in that department. AOKP is
all about tweaks,tweaks and even
more tweaks. But it is much more
than just that, it is also among the
fastest ones out there in general.
At least that is my opinion after
having tested lots and lots of
ROM’s

If you are using a device that is
officially supported by those
branches,chances are you will not
run into any kind of trouble worth
mentioning. I always read CM is
the most safe and stable one to go
for, but honestly I never got any
real bugs or issues on the other
ones as well. All of those are
pretty mature and polished enough
thanks to the very good source
available out there. Also,
developers tend to share fixes
throughout the other
branches. That is most probably
the reason why no branch has any
significant advantage over the
other one anymore.

CM+AOKP+PA

Earlier I mentioned there is another
kind of custom ROM out there. I
was mainly referring to the so
called “cherry picking” ROM’s
which tend to most often take one
of the big 3 as the base and then
cherry pick all the best tweaks of
each other one intending to create
the ultimate custom ROM.
Personally those are my absolute
favorites but they almost all come
with a negative connotation. You
always have to keep in mind that
the 3 big ones are developing
most of their stuff totally
independent from each other and
that results in different kinds of
coding the specific tweaks. Also
some have a similar feature that
behaves the same but looks
different. So the developer of such
a ROM always has to check for
interfering tweaks and decide
which one to keep and which one
to ditch.
The best example for a sloppy
cherry picking is maybe the quick
toggles I saw on one ROM a while
ago right before Google releases
their own quick setting tiles with
Jelly Bean 4.2. CM had their
toggles and AOKP had their own
ones as well but they looked
slightly different, the sloppy
development ended up displaying
both sets of toggles at the same
time. And for a new user of
that ROM it wasn’t that obvious
which settings belongs to which
set of toggles. Even the simple
disabling of one or both wasn’t
possible at that time.

So, after all of this,what do I finally
get out of it?
You know about the risks, the
specific branches, now you most
likely wonder what all of this great
tweaks are, you will get as
reward. So let´s get up to it and
see what we have. I can’t list
which specific tweak is available
on which sort of ROM because it is
too hard to sort each one out, but
most ROM threads give you
detailed information about what
you will get.

Theme Engine

This is the most obvious one, but
it is also very easy to use and
does change quite a lot. CM and
AOKP have this, so you just have
to search for a theme in the play
store and install, go to the designs
menu in the android settings and
apply it. The changes on the
general UI look can be very subtle
of really drastic depending on
which theme you choose. The most
common changes included are
themed status bar icons, pull down
notifications and general color
changes but sometimes even go
that far to even theme system
apps like the play store and
such. It is really a lot of fun to try
those out and see which one you
like the best. Since i like a very
minimal black/white look i use a
slightly modified version of
Jellyblack made my the very
talented Tun_SD.
Better Performance and Battery
Life
Most of those ROM’s are heavily
optimized for their specific devices,
even way better tuned than the
manufacturers ROM’s itself. The
developers spent so much time in
optimizing the code and testing it
for so long which almost every
time results in a way better
experience compared to how it is
out of the box. It is almost
unbelievable how they changed the
once so laggy HTC One X into the
snappy smooth device it is
now. Battery life still isn’t
exceptional but it got so much
better compared to how it was
when i bought it almost one year
ago.
Better Quick Settings/Tiles
I know the latest jelly bean has
quick settings but you just have to
keep in mind custom ROM’s have
those since ages. Even more than
2 years ago I had those already on
my HTC Desire but Google just
introduced them recently. Also the
stock ones are very limited, you
only get a few preconfigured ones
which you can´t even
rearrange. With a
custom ROM, adding new ones and
reordering is a piece of cake.You
can even change their appearance
to your liking if the ROM supports
it.

Better Lockscreen

The stock one sadly is pretty
limited, you get the camera, Google
now and the unlock shortcut that
´s it. Using a custom one you can
end up in having up to 8
lockscreen targets, which you can
assign yourself and even choose
custom icons for it. Newer ROM’s
even allow long press actions for
every single target which can be
pretty cool.
The lockscreen widgets are nice to
have but you can’t really use a lot
of them till now. Custom ROM’s
allow you to enable a feature
which gives you the possibility to
add any widget you have on your
device. You don’t have to wait till
it is finally officially supported.

Navbar…

In my opinion this is one of the
most impressive features created
by the AOKP Team itself. You
certainly know the stock navbar,
with its 3 buttons and the menu
button if you need it. The AOKP
navbar is based on that but goes
so much further with it. You get up
to 7 completely customizable
buttons! You can choose a short
press as well as a long press
action for it and also set a custom
icon for each button.
Actions theoretically almost have
no limits. It can be one of the
standard buttons but also an app
shortcut. Any other shortcut is
possible too, even 1×1 widget are
possible. One of my favorites is the
last app button which allows you
to jump directly between the 2 last
used apps,this makes multitasking
so much faster and more intuitive.

…and Navring

The navring is similar to the
navbar but it doesn’t use the bar,it
uses the ring which was introduced
with Google Now to launch your
actions. 5 targets with short/long
press actions as well as custom
icon support are available on this
one.
So using the bar and ring with its
full potential you can setup up to
24 customizable actions which can
all be accessed pretty much
instantly from anywhere you
are. Perfect for a power user like
me because I can access almost
everything I do, with almost never
having to go to my home screen or
app drawer.
These were the best and most
used features IMO, but there is so
much more left which I just can’t
put in here. Maybe that is up to
another article if there is any
demand for it. Just leave your
opinion in the comments.

Summary

I you stayed through all this, I
hope I convinced some of you to
try a custom ROM for yourself and
give it a fair chance to see that
there is way more to android than
just stock. Some of you may say it
is not worth the risk and I
understand that. If you really
depend on a reliable stable system
and don’t need all those tweaks
and goodies that´s fine and
certainly the smart choice. But this
article is more directed on people
who want to experiment with
android, get more out of android
itself, just have fun playing with all
those extra features and tweaks
and maybe even being more
productive.

Custom Rom Recommendations

- For the newbie who wants to
stay safe but still have better
performance and battery life
combined with light customization
capabilities – CyanogenMod
- For users most likely tablet users
who desire the tablet UI, Paranoid
Android is a good choice.
- For the heavy tweaker and users
who want best performance AOKP
should be the right choice
- For users who can’t decide or
want all of those and are willing to
live with possible minor issues I’d
recommend to go for those mixed
ROM’s, just search for some in
your devices thread.
I personally use Rootbox on my
OneX at the moment but
IceColdJelly is my clear
recommendation for a super
polished and advanced ROM on
the One X, in theory it is a heavy
tweaked and way better AOKP. I
use no specific one at the moment
for my Nexus7 though because it´s
more of an experimental device for
me and ROM’s change frequently
for testing purposes. I’d most
probably go for AOKP in
combination with the xposed
framework in case I needed
something reliable till I get
Domination ROM for it.

So thats it for now guys.. I hope you liked my articles

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