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The Itch to Mod....So. Hard. to. Resist. (Verizon Galaxy S3)

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hokiealumnus

hokiealumnus

Water Cooled Moderator
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Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Who has a Samsung Galaxy S III, and what ROM do you like the best? I've lasted a good five months on the stock ROM and they've Verizon is even up to 4.1.2 OTA, but the urge for more customization is beocming overwheming.

I might not even do it considering I'm still on contract and don't want a $400 (ish) brick. There just looks like there's so much fun to be had. What am I missing?
 
This post called my attention. I had the same itch, ATT Samsung S3. Modding it is so easy, I don't know if you are familiar about the process but now, there's a ODIN for the phone, so you can mod it even without a computer.

BUT... and there's always a BUT. I rooted it and found out that the GOOD application won't work. The workaround is a mess.

If you don't need to use GOOD for company email, then you are good to go. Try Cyanogen or AOPK.
 
Bricking a phone is pretty darn hard these days. Most of the rooting/recovery options are pretty much fool-proof unless you go out of you way and don't follow instructions.

ROMs are a pretty personal thing Hokie, I'd suggest you flash the custom recovery and try out a few roms to see what you personally like. Improvements can be anything from different visuals to improved battery life or built-in overclocks.

Personally I'm really a fan of AOSP (pretty much vanilla stock roms like on a nexus phone) or AOKP- (Like AOSP but with extra add-ons and done by the open kang project)
 
Heh, anhikilator, I'm not even sure what GOOD is, and I don't use my phone for corporate email (that stays at the office!). I used Cyanogen on my OG Motorola Droid and liked it. Haven't looked at the most recent version though. Here are a couple that piqued my interest:

Clean ROM
Hyperdrive
SynergyROM

Good to know bricking is harder, thanks Kow. Definitely a pretty personal thing. I guess I'm just searching for others' experiences in case they want to share. I want basic stuff to just. work. Like Hyperdrive (I think that's the one) has a problem with texting. Texting of all things; that's like the most basic function you need on a phone, and it has some sort of workaround required (according to the Androiduniversity youtube review).

Maybe I should give Cyanogenmod a try. Based on my last experience, it really does Just. Work. CleanROM looks enticing for its simplicity too.
 
Ahh. Figured as much. Not something I do away from the office thankfully.
 
I got a verizon Galaxy S3 about 3 months ago. Had Cyanogen on it within 3 hours of buying the phone (I had errands to run, or it wouldn't have been that long). I really like CM, have run it on my last 3 phones, and have it on my tablet.
 
Can't resist. I'm rooted & have a custom bootloader. Downloading Jelly Beans right now; best of both worlds - AOSP look, TouchWiz stability. :)

EDIT I - Backing up stock...
EDIT II - Flashing...
 
Last edited:
Ok, well that was a disaster. The tutorial I followed to root and unlock the bootloader did NOT go as planned, but I didn't know it. Apparently I had rooted it, but not unlocked the bootloader. Thus, for about 1/2 hour (while I downloaded a stock ROM to flash with ODIN), I had a soft-bricked phone telling me I needed to take it to Verizon. D'oh!

Thankfully, there are procedures to fix that (flashing a stock ROM with ODIN, heh). I chose to go back to ICS instead of JB, that way I could use the easy peasy auto-unlocker. MUCH easier than the procedure to unlock JB.

Aaaaanyway, now I'm on Jelly "Beans" Build 14 as linked and it's rolling along very smoothly. There is no instability to speak of, everything works as it should and it looks like AOSP. There are cool new features to play with (ROM stuff, NOVA launcher, AOSP lock screen...all kinds of fun stuff; the feature list for this ROM is huge).

My phone is now what I want it to be, and it's quite fast to boot without Samsung/Verizon's bloat, even down-clocked a couple hundred MHz to save battery!

Mission: Accomplished.
 
Hah, you and me both! Thankfully, with my experience on the OG Droid, I learned not to panic and as long as something shows up on the screen, most of the time it can be fixed...and most of the time, thanks to the good folks at XDA Developers forums. :thup:
 
Looking good Jeremy!

I've been running CM9.1 (ics ) on my s2 skyrocket and have liked it a lot. I may be upgrading to the s4 next month if I don't have any surprises.
 
Thanks guys.

So far this month I've flashed custom firmware to my router and phone. Who knows what's next??

My next task is to build a PC for a case review.
 
I've used mainly Cynogen on my phones. My tablet, though since its specialized (TF700 w/ dock) I use CleanROM since it keeps intact the main aspects/features of the primary rom, it just customizes/tweaks it which works out very nice.

As for rooting the phone/tablets for custom rom, I typically do it the first day I get the device. Like said if you follow the instructions its pretty hard to mess it up, and even then if you mess it up there is a way to get it back most of the time. The key is to get the custom recovery on the device, from there its much easier and you can make backups of the full system.
 
AOSP ftw I still have a galaxy nexus launched in november 2011 and I run rasbean (stripped, dark hollow themed AOSP) with AK kernel and it's awesome. LOVE STOCK ANDROID and have no need to upgrade whatsoever.
 
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