[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] curiousgeo:
I've been lurking on these forums a bit - trying to nerve myself up to install Jellybean. I'm a complete noob. (some Linux experience, curious about Android) Here's what I've picked up. (All measured relative to stock Froyo.) (And I like to fiddle, but I also love my Captivate-so I'm a bit nervous about this...)

Good stuff:

1. Jellybean is great, everything works. Helly Bean/Devil is probably a bit more stable than Cyanogenmod 10 right now. Phone, WIFI, Camera, Movie, Apps all work at the moment. ICS and Gingerbread were all appreciably laggy.

Iffy Stuff:

1. The GPS on anything but stock Froyo may behave a bit better, or not, as the Captivate GPS has hardware issues in addition to possible problems with stock Froyo.

Bad stuff

1. Encryption Unsuccessful: Jellybean is likely to share the 'Encryption Unsuccessful' bug with ICS on the Captivate. For some reason, ICS seems to handle SD access a bit differently than Froyo and this occasionally permanently borks the internal SD. It may occasionally bork an external SD, but that seems fixable so far. Someday, someone may figure out a fix, but don't count on it. For now, any Captive running ICS or later should expect to eventually lose the internal SD permanently.

2. IMEI: Something in the latest installs may result in replacement of my IMEI with a generic one. This will result in AT&T temporarily blocking my phone. This may be related to some custom roms and possibly some apps borking up the efs folder after something in the more recent Cyanogenmods sets the efs folder as R/W.

3. Bootloaders: If I bork up bootloader flashing, I can end up hard-bricked.

4. Sleep of death: Custom ROMs may aggravate a 'sleep of death' issue on older Captivates. Fortunately, I checked and my Captivate doesn't have this issue.

I'm wondering if the following sketch is workable and if I've left anything major out:

1. Backup phone thoroughly. Test backups.

2. Remove SIM card (or stay at home, AT&T simply doesn't pick up here anyways-:rolleyes:)

3. Print out and follow one of the sensible guides for upgrading to Helly Bean/Devil Kernel. Use Heimdell - and - after the first time I flash new bootloaders - stop flashing new bootloaders. If I do hardbrick, I can most likely do a bit of soldering to do the unbrickable mod for recovery.

4. Disable access to internal storage and run from partitioned 64 GB external SD card chosen for fast R/W in small blocks (4k).

5. Check IMEI and fix access permissions to efs folder.

So, assuming that the above isn't completely idiotic...

1. How comparable (in terms of speed and stability) should I expect this setup to be? I'm particularly worried about running from a SD card. Most earlier recommendations have been to run from 16 GB SD cards, but I'd kind of like the extra storage. People who bork their internal SD cards seem to end up switching phones even after getting the external setup working and I'm wondering if external access is just unreasonably slow. Also, would 64 GB sizes result in ridiculous boot times or some sort of size limit?

2. Also, is Jellybean inherently laggy on a Captivate - or should it be comparable in responsiveness to Froyo?

3. If I do someday successfully bork my external SD card with an Encryption Unsuccessful message -what sort of information would be useful for me to provide?

4. I should expect a modest increase in setup time when flashing new roms (editing mounting information), but not that many other problems?