Custom Rom - Avatar Rom

In my earlier Post I have written about Custom Roms. (Click Here to read it)

I like to try out new Roms and see which one works best for me, being a very heavy user of Mobile (calls and Data both) I am always looking for a compromise between applications and Battery life. The one ROM that is so far giving me the same is Avatar Rom. 

I installed it initially about 2 months ago and loved it, then for some reason went back to the STOCK Based ROM (Stock is what the manufacturer ships it with) loved that as well, but realized that I was not getting enough battery life and was stuck with a lot of gibberish Samsung sends with the phone, I dont want S-Memo, S-Calendar, Chat on, or any other S-XXX product. They start on their own, eat the RAM, drain my battery. No Sir, I don't want any of these things. So i tried a few other ROM's. The reviews were excellent but I somehow did not like them.

The choice was to go back to a AOSP (Android open Source project) based ROM, but since these are based on Cyanogen Mod, they suffer 2 problems, 1 the Loudspeaker volume during calls and frequent Force Close of Camera. Though Avatar is based on the same Module, I have not had either of the two problems with this ROM and that is why I have ported back to AVATAR. 

Another thing that one really wants is that the developers are regularly updating the ROM with latest tweaks, the Folks at AVATAR keep on doing this all the time and was quiet surprised when yesterday I got another notification to update, once i had updated it showed that it had beats audio installed. That's a HTC feature but the folks at AVATAR have integrated the same into the update as well. 

For me this remains the Best Rom and a ROM that I use everyday, get amazing battery life. and love the features. 

I use a Samsung S3 4G/ LTE variant also known as I9305 and the best place to download the ROMS and to read about them is at XDA Developers. 

To download the Custom Rom for S3 I9305 Click here Please understand that you need to rrot your phone for a Custom Rom to work and once Rooted the warranty is Void. Also if not done properly you can brick your device. So follow the Tutorials on XDA Developers page very carefully if you want to do this.

Cheers

The inevitable question do i stick to Stock ROM or move to a Custom Rom.

If you are not scared of technology then the usual question comes whether I want a custom rom or should i stick to Stock rom. Just to explain STOCK rom is what your device is shipped with and Custom rom is a highly customised rom devoid of what a Samsung or HTC wants you to use. 

Now is Custom Rom for you?? 

If you are going to use your phone 

A) To show that you have the latest in terms of Technology
B) Just for your emails, messaging, Facebook or Google+ and Calling up. 

then you should not even think of Custom Rom. Its not needed your phone is pretty well equipped to Handle the above tasks without even draining any resources. However if you like to play around with you phone like I like to do then at some stage you would have to let go of warranty and Root the phone, a basic step towards moving to Custom Roms. Once rooted you have more access to the root functions of the phone and the warranty of the phone is void. (You also run the risk of Bricking the device, making it unusable) let me give an example, a friend of mine saw me on my SIII 9305 LTE and upgraded from his SIII to 9300 to 9305 like me, He asked me how to root it and I told him about it. While using ODIN to root he flashed the file for 9300 instead of 9500 and voila there were no Signals any more on his phone. Took us better part of 1 day to sort this mess out by flashing different Custom Roms till we got it working. 

So be sure that you are really ready to mess with your phone before you root it. Once rooted voila you have opened a world of possibilities for your phone. The first thing I did was to move from the over stocked STOCK Rom with all the features that Samsung wanted me to have but I didnt want, to a custom ROM, I chose a ROM called AVATAR. Pretty slim rom and worked great, had a few bugs though on the camera and the speaker Volume was quiet inferior but the good thing was that I was on Android 4.2.2 which was a very smooth experience and I really enjoyed it for a while. (Available here) and then I moved to the other ROM which is the Super Nexus for 9305 (Available Here) A Lovely experience but I was still facing the low speaker volume issue so I tried another Rom which is very similar to the STOCK rom but stripped of a lot of the extras that Mr. Samsung wants me to have. I think I have found a perfect Rom for myself now. (The only draw back that I had to downgrade from 4.2.2 to 4.1.2 a small price to pay considering that my 3 year old can now easily talk to her grand parents on Speaker Phone. The Rom I am currently on is called The Galaxy Project 2.02 (Available Here) and I am very happy, eventually the rom would get upgrades.

So Yes CUSTOM Roms are definitely for me and I would not be going back to any manufacturer like LG which doesnt have custom roms for it due to the fact that they dont release the Source code, the only Phones I am buying are the ones which have custom roms for them as they give me more flexibility.

Take your pic Guys, If you are not gonna Root and dont want Custom Roms then there are great phones for you but If you would like to tinker a little then check before you buy. 

Cheers