How to choose a custom Android ROM
Have you read my article on rooting your phone, found the right tools to do it and now you want to install a custom ROM? Chances are the most important question now is which ROM you should use. And it’s nearly impossible to give a clear answer because there are so many factors that need to be considered.
First of all, what are the improvements you’re looking for in a new ROM? Are you trying to get a newer version of Android for a phone no longer supported by the vendor? Do you want to get rid of HTC Sense, Motorola’s Motoblur or whatever other custom interface the vendor of your phone has installed and get the “real” Android experience by running a barebones Android? Or do you want additional features that give you more freedom in using your phone, but without sacrificing the user experience offered by your vendor? There are ROMs for all these cases out there, but it helps if you ask yourself these questions first.
Basically, there are three classes of custom ROMs available:
- generic ROMs that work for a variety of brands and models
- modified vendor ROMs that add features or even backport improvements made to newer devices by the same vendo
- stripped down vendor ROMs that remove vendor specific functionality like launchers, widgets and tools
The most popular example of a generic ROM is the Cyanogen(mod) ROM that is ported to a large number of devices from different vendors and tries to provide the latest available version of Android to all of them with a lot of improvements, but without any vendor specific customizations.
Modified or stripped down vendor ROMs are a lot more specific, since they usually only work for a particular model. For that reason, there is an enormous number of them available and you need to find one that will work on your phone and has the features you’re looking for. theunlockr.com has a nice overview of available ROMs, sorted by model, so it’s a good starting point. Things you may want:
- overclockable kernel (careful with that, though… do it wrong and you can fry your phone)
- additional kernel modules like those needed for OpenVPN
- backported enhancements like the new Gingerbread keyboard on a Froyo phone
- latest security fixes and performance enhancements
- Apps2SD for all applications (you will need to partition your SD card for this – ROMmanager can do that for you)
Things I wouldn’t recommend:
- Data2SD – unless you have a very fast SD card, I don’t think this is such a good idea. It can also introduce a certain level of instability to the system
- Adblockers – call me old fashioned, but I think that if someone writes a nice app and decides to make some money from it by serving advertising in it, blocking the ads and still using the app is no better than using pirated software.
In any case, before you install the ROM, make sure to make a complete backup (again, ROMmanager can do this for you – or you can use recovery mode). If you need to partition the SD card, make sure you move the backup off the SD card before you partition. After installing the new ROM (make sure to follow all the instructions!), you often need to wait a while until everything works smoothly. That’s because the first time your phone runs an app, including all of those included in the ROM, it needs to compile it to something that’s quicker for Android to run, which will then be cached. Original vendor updates contain a pre-compiled cache, but custom ROMs usually don’t. After an hour you shouldn’t notice any slowdown anymore, though.
