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Root What ROM to flash? A guide on ROM Philosophies

Rxpert83

Rxpert83

Dr. Feelgood
What rom should I flash?​

This question comes up all the time. With all of the different options to choose from it can be really difficult to make a decision on what ROM is right for you. After all, not everyone has the time to try them all. ;)

The first decision you need to make is whether to run a sense or AOSP based ROM.
Sense ROMS are based on the stock HTC ROM. If you are new to flashing ROMS these will look very similar to what you are used to. They will also have all of the normal HTC widgets and other things you may already use

AOSP ROMS are usually built from source. They are android the way google intended it to be. Generally, AOSP roms are faster, and have better battery life than their sense counterparts. People new to AOSP can find that it lacks the polish that sense ROMS offer. AOSP ROMS are also based on android 4.1 Jellybean. This incorporates among other things project butter and google now.


Sense ROMS (based on ICS android 4.0)- (Thanks to EarlyMon)
1)Mike has always been about tweaking for his vision of a max Sense performance rom, yet still providing flexibility via auxiliary packages/mods. If you like getting your flash on, you'll love being a Meanie. This ROM gets updated OFTEN.
[ROM] Aug-31 MeanROM ICS v3.5 | 2.13.651.1 | Mods | Batt saver - xda-developers

2)The Viper4G team is set on basic stock, but with the easiest path to customize look and feel, and perform basic maintenance (cache cleaning, zip aligning, permissions), and cleaning out hidden cruft like temp files on reboot. If you want a conservative Sense approach, with few updates to mess with, but better than stock performance with the fun of themes and no steep learning curve and no digging through forum threads to see if something works, Viper4G is for you.
[ROM] 7/30 Team Venom presents: Viper4G 1.0.0 - The most innovative Sense Rom ever! - xda-developers


3)If you want a less conservative Sense approach with the bloatware fully removed, but not the edge for the Meanies, then CleanRom is probably a choice to consider, despite it being less popular in our subforum. That, like flipz Fresh Rom, deserves attention.

4) Tranquility by Bad Seeds Customs
These guys are stationed over at themikmik.com and do a lot of themeing to their ROMS. If you want to stay sense-based but want something a little different this might be a good ROM to check out.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1783124

5)And then there are the high performance, other hybrid / partially de-Sensed roms like freeza's to consider.

AOSP ROMS (based on JB android 4.1)-

1)CM10- CyanogenMOD is by far the most popular custom ROM out there. There are millions of people who use it across many devices. It is the closest to stock AOSP out of the others but still has some modifications/customization options for the user.

Almost all of the other AOSP ROMS are based on CM10, so it gets the bug fixes first. I'd suggest flashing this if you want to try AOSP.
[8-31-12][ROM] CM10 for the evoLTE! - xda-developers

2)Paranoid Android- PA uses an interesting feature of ICS to blur the lines between phone and tablet. ICS was the first point in time where the android phone and tablet code merged. PA allows you to run in a hybrid mode where you can setup things to display however you want them.
The devs say it best themselves (<<<NOT THE EVO LTE ROM) :
To be honest, this is not tablet mode at all, it has nothing to do with silly build.prop hacks. This is the first and only Android rom to feature true Hybrid mode. This rom lets you scale and project every app, every widget, even systemcomponents individually. Remember, android is modular, everything is an app: Lockscreen, navigationbar, dialogs, popups, keyboards, widgets, and your regular apps of course. Apps have the capability to switch into various designs or layouts according to the device they run on. This can result in a complete new experience as many apps will transform to the better.
Click to expand...
[ROM] Paranoid Android JB 4.1.1 Unofficial 8.31.12 Updated! - xda-developers





3)Android Open Kang Project- AOKP is another ROM that gaining a large following. It has even more customization options than CM10.
[ROM][08.31.2012][AOKP/4.1.1] UNOFFICIAL Build 1 - xda-developers

4)MIUI- MIUI is a chinese based ROM that is mostly closed source. I was quite fond of it back on the OG EVO. Its got some cool things that set it apart from the other AOSP ROMS like the ability to change an apps permissions.
http://forums.miui.us/showthread.ph...26-2012-MIUI-us-v4-1-for-Evo-4G-LTE-aka-Jewel
 
Great idea. As far as Sense ROMs go, I think nothing beats Viper, especially if you throw Enoch's kernel onto it.

That being said, I need to check out the latest nightly for CM10, because it's so very close to being my daily driver.

What additional functions does AOKP that CM10 doesn't, and do those affect performance at all?
 
suprmallet said:
Great idea. As far as Sense ROMs go, I think nothing beats Viper, especially if you throw Enoch's kernel onto it.

That being said, I need to check out the latest nightly for CM10, because it's so very close to being my daily driver.

What additional functions does AOKP that CM10 doesn't, and do those affect performance at all?
Click to expand...

Things like weather in the notification menu, centering the clock, ect

Not performance tweaks, just more bells and whistles
 
Excellent write-up Rxpert. I just unlocked and did S-OFF last night so I'm about to get my flash on myself. :D

How about adding a poll and letting users vote for their favorite ROM? It would be nice to see if there is consensus after a while so that people in the future can see the most popular ROMs.
 
gamblor01 said:
Excellent write-up Rxpert. I just unlocked and did S-OFF last night so I'm about to get my flash on myself. :D

How about adding a poll and letting users vote for their favorite ROM? It would be nice to see if there is consensus after a while so that people in the future can see the most popular ROMs.
Click to expand...

I like the idea, but caution that we'll need to keep that updated as well, as roms fall in and out of fashion, or are retired. Users will also have to be able to vote more than once, not sure that our polling feature can allow that, so we'll have to check.

Also, pretty sure that if someone changes their mind, it takes one of us to adjust the poll.
 
We had a poll in the OG EVO (the original EVO 4g) forums. While its a cool idea, like Early mentioned its very hard to keep it current with peoples favorite ROMS as new ones come out and preferences change

If you want to start a thread with a poll to get a snapshot of peoples current favorite ROMS that would be interesting to see, but for the purposes of keeping things current I'd prefer to keep this as clean as possible. I already have some maintenence to do to this thread now that I look back on it and its only been a few months :o
 
Yeah I am familiar with the poll for the OG and I thought it was a great idea which is why I suggested it for this phone as well. I see your point about upkeep though, inability to change one's mind, etc.

Both of the sense ROMs you mention here sound good do I'm not really sure which one is better. I'll probably start by trying CM10 anyway, though I actually like sense.
 
The list I have up there is pretty much the most popular choices from this subforum. Thats definitely not a list of all of the ROM available, but its a good place to start for anyone who doesn't know what to flash.
 
Rxpert83 said:
The list I have up there is pretty much the most popular choices from this subforum. Thats definitely not a list of all of the ROM available, but its a good place to start for anyone who doesn't know what to flash.
Click to expand...

I just flashed Viper4g last night and have been tweaking it. I am thus far very impressed with how much I can customize things on the fly! I especially like the quick settings options, the button remapping options, and all of the status bar mods. The installer was pretty neat too, and being able to select certain apps to be removed directly from the installer was a really nice touch. Sure I could go delete them from /system but if I don't have to then even better!
 
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