[T-Mobile Sidekick 4G] snessiram:
Hi all,

I thought I'd share the steps I did to improve my experience (speed, battery life,...) with the stock ROM of the SK4G, and hopefully get some additional tips from you guys. There's nothing really *new* here, but hopefully it is helpful to some newer people (who don't want to mess with ROMs).

The steps in short:

1) Install the latest firmware.

2) Turn off or configure all automated syncing which you don't use.

3) Remove and/or freeze all apps you don't use.

4) Remove everything from your home screen which you don't need.

5) Disable apps that run on startup, but shouldn't.

6) Replace stock apps.

1) Install the latest firmware.

The latest firmware, currently KJ2, is a real improvement. I was previously using the KG2 firmware which seemed to have some memory leak. In simple terms, every minute the device was on, the system itself was taking up more memory, leaving less and less memory for the apps to run. This resulted in a device getting less responsive with time, the home screen being refreshed regularly, the device completely locking up, ... It was so bad that I made a habit to restart the sidekick at least once a day.

With the new firmware, this seems fixed. I don't think I have even seen the home screen refresh since I updated. Everything just seems more responsive! It also had a positive result on my battery life.

You can either wait for the update to happen automatically, or you can do it manually using Kies. It's a matter of installing Kies, connecting your Sidekick and pressing update. You can find a guide here.

2) Turn off or configure all automated syncing which you don't use.

It's a smartphone, you expect it to sync some stuff. Just check for each use case if you need the syncing and how frequently the syncing should happen. A lot of apps let you configure this kind of stuff. Some even allow you to only sync over wifi.

So just take a look at all installed apps and see which ones use some form of syncing. Some might do it without you being aware of it.

3) Remove and/or freeze all apps you don't use.

This is self explanatory for apps you've installed yourself. With the sidekick you also get a lot of apps that might be completely useless to you, but you can't remove since they are pre-installed. With root however, you can! (See the bottom of this post on how to root.)

Before I go any further, let me explain the difference between removing and freezing apps. Removing an app does exactly what it says, the app will be gone "forever". Freezing however is non-destructive: the app will be disabled and gone from your app list, but you can easily unfreeze it to restore it.

An app that's often mentioned that allows this is Titanium Backup. It is however not free. So instead, I used the free AntTek App Manager, which has worked wonderfully. You get a list of all apps, select one, choose "freeze" and it's gone! In case you want to undo your action, you select the app in the "frozen" list and choose "unfreeze". It's as simple as that.

Note that some apps should not be frozen. For example, I tried to freeze Wifi Calling. As soon as it was frozen, I got "force close" popups. Off course, since freezing is non-destructive, I could simply unfreeze the app to solve the problem.

Here is a list of everything I froze:

- com.amazon.mp3

- AllShare

- com.tmobile.apppack

- Backup (I'm not on T-Mobile)

- DriveSmart

- DriveSmart System

- Group Texting

- Media Hub

- My Account (Only the com.tmobile.selfhelp one)

- T-Mobile Device Carbon

- T-Mobile TV

- Video Chat

- SNS (Social networking)

- SNSAccount

- SnsComposer

- Visual Voicemail (I'm not on T-Mobile)

- Gallery (I use QuickPic instead)

- Swype (I use the samsung keyboard in portrait mode)

- Tips & Tricks

- Email (I use gmail instead)

- Accounts & Sync

- Files (I use ES File Explorer instead)

- Web (I use Dolphin HD instead)

- TeleNav GPS Navigator

- Talk

- Mini Diary

- com.google.android.apps.books

- Task Manager

- Messaging (I use Handcent instead)

4) Remove everything from your home screen which you don't need.

Again, quite easy. What I noticed in the beginning was that I used the home screens to list all apps I actually used, so I didn't have to open the app drawer and search for the wanted app between all apps I didn't use but couldn't remove. However, now that I removed/froze all useless apps (see step 3), the app drawer is quite a clean list of apps, so apps that I use sparingly don't need to be on my home screen anymore.

By the way, it is possible to order the apps in your app drawer. Just open the drawer, choose "menu / View type" and choose "Customizable grid". Afterwards, you can choose "menu / Reorder".

5) Disable apps that run on startup, but shouldn't.

I'm using an app called autorun manager for this. I disabled some apps that I use sparingly but that shouldn't be started when turning on the phone.

6) Replace stock apps.

It might be interesting to look at alternatives for the stock apps, depending on your needs. This is especially handy if you are able to remove/freeze the stock app you're replacing (see step 3).

Some stock apps you can replace:

1) Messaging --> Handcent.

The main features which made me choose Handcent were an incredibly handy popup window if you receive a message and great customization (both the interface as well as the configuration, for example not automatically switching to mms if your message is longer than 3 sms messages was handy for me).

Another nice replacement is Go SMS Pro, but when I tested it, it couldn't work with the led indicators of the sidekick.

2) Default launcher / home screens --> LauncherPro

I only tested this briefly before reverting to the default one, but it seemed very responsive. (I personally didn't like the spacing of the icons on the home screen)

3) Web --> Dolphin HD

I personally love the interface of Dolphin with tabs on top, gestures, efficient use of the screen space, ...

Other replacements are Opera, Skyfire, Firefox, ...

4) Gallery --> QuickPic

I find QuickPic to be a lot faster, and you can easily include/exclude folders.

Root

Rooting the sidekick is actually an easy process. It's a matter of connecting your device to your pc, installing the samsung drivers, running SuperOneClick and clicking "root". That's it. And if you want to undo this change, just go through the same process but click "unroot" instead.

You can find a guide here.