Saskatoon TechWorks Forum

Since many here own the Galaxy phone, I was curious, does anyone use custom ROMs like CyanogenMod? I'm pretty sick of some of the issues my phone is having so I was thinking of taking the plunge. Anyone who has so far I'd love to hear your thoughts/reviews of whatever custom ROM you used!

I've used a few. I'm using DarkysRom 10.1 right now, which has been quite nice. I've noticed the battery isn't lasting as long now, but most of the power consumption seems to be cell standby and wifi and I am using a new modem firmware, so those are probably related. Before that I used a custom rom built using http://www.romkitchen.org/samsung/, which was down for awhile, but appears to be online again. I highly recommend doing some serious reading on the XDA developers forums http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=656. There's lots of information about how to safely flash your phone, changing the modem firmware (so that you get the 850MHz band here in Saskatchewan), and many other considerations.

If you're new to flashing ROMs, I'd suggest starting with upgrading to a newer stock ROM first, since it's the easiest and most likely to work. Once you are comfortable with that, check out some of the custom ROMs -- there are many to choose from and they generally include great features like lagfixes, modified themes, and fixes for minor annoyances with the stock firmware.

"DarkysRom" I tried that awhile back and nearly bricked my phone Not really but it sure didn't want to boot. That was a good 6 months ago and I learned afterwards that the version I had flashed hadn't been built for the I9000M so the modem firmware was preventing it from booting. It turns out it is actually pretty hard to brick the phone as long as you can do the 3 button into boot manager and Heimdall (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=755265).

What do people use for backup tools? I am curious to start playing with roms again. Backing up contacts and messages is pretty easy, But there must be a decent way to backup application data.

Titanium Backup seems to be the de facto app for backing up app data. There's also nandroid, but it backs up the entire ROM, so it's not useful for restoring your apps after installing a new ROM.

I don't actually use any backup tools. My contacts and calendar are synced with Google and my other files (pictures and music) are on the internal SD card, which doesn't get formatted when installing a new ROM. I made a nandroid backup of my phone when I first got it, but aside from that, I've never had a need for a backup.

Sweet, great info guys.

What are the main advantages of the 850 MHz band?

Also, does the DarkysRom have lagfix built into it? I'm mostly looking for a ROM that has a bunch of neat tweaks/improvements so that I don't need to apply all those patches/apps/fixes in myself on a stock ROM.

I believe DarkysRom has all the same fixes as the Supercurio's Voodoo kernel, including ext4, proper EQ for the sound chip, color calibration for the screen, and a bunch of others. It's working great for me right now.

The advantage of the 850MHz band is that it can be picked up where the 1900MHz band can't be. It's mostly important for getting service in remote areas, although I think it also lowers battery consumption when you have a weak signal, since it can step down to 850MHz and get a better signal. I'm not entirely sure on all that, though.

If you plan on travelling to the US, it's worth taking note that the old modem firmwares for SaskTel didn't enable GSM communication, only UMTS (since this is all that SaskTel uses), which made roaming in the US and Europe difficult. They updated that in firmware KC1, but I've found that JL2 (their original one) uses much less battery. I'm currently testing a bunch of modem firmwares to see which ones work best.

Also, I'm not sure if SaskTel is actually using 850MHz at all. I can't get 850 service at my house, though I was trying it the other day and it seemed to work elsewhere.