[Xperia Arc Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RAGman7:
Hi

To upgrade or not to upgrade…

Few days ago I come back to old GB 2.3.4 simply because I have some unfinished business with some games I didn’t finish while on GB – and also sort of compare to what was like to be on GB again comparing to ICS… (anyways it takes me @ 15min to switch to any Android ver. And with CWM backup it a matter of minutes to be back on favorite ROM…)

Man I felt like I was driving on handbrake all this time… you feel like flying fast… no LAG whatsoever it feels great again… speed wise.

From the moment ICS come out I already flashed it via flashtool and rooted, immediately I started to try out different kinds of ROM modes out there… tried like maybe 10 of them (could only use some as I need to stay with locked BootLoader… so no custom kernels.) Anyway after so many months of playing around – the only ROM which suited my needs was JJROM 3.1 – also the look of it is great for me… so I stayed with it… flashed XPERIA S Walkman port + some other little add-ons which made my ROM complete…

Now somebody wrote here that you need to be very careful what you run on ICS ROM in order to be sure it can run smoothly enough… and this is so true…

When buying originally the phone (ARC S) it was supposed to serve me like a little computer machine while I’m away – Internet, mail, GPS, banking, photos, music, movies, YouTube, FB… etc, etc… it supposed to be very flexible and have enough power to do many things with many programs as possible… now with GB I noticed that I’m able to do many more things at once while lag-free then with ICS… I didn’t buy phone just to make calls and SMS – as many users tent to use their smartphones for… for me it have to do some rather heavy duty stuff…

Unfortunately ICS is very memory hungry and I noticed that with time after installing all favorite apps it starts to lag… you don’t notice till you have some reference like trying again GB with the some programs… don’t fall into adverts of different ROM makes that their ROMs are so great and fast – lag free and have so much RAM free – and blah blah… they flash fresh ROM, take few screenshots of fresh install with so much RAM free (zero apps running), then upload some clips on YT so you are amazed at the smoothness… BUT the real life starts after somebody installs their 10+ favorite apps and then can test the ROM in real life… and most of the time you realize that the difference between “before and after” is like night and day… ROM becomes unusable… or lags terribly.

I will be going back to my beloved ICS JJROM3.1 (after I finish the games I can’t on ICS) but I realize that it will never be as fast as GB… I just love the HOLO layout and look of ICS… I miss already some of the ICS options and functions, but the speed of GB is just amazing so I will stay on it to enjoy a bit longer… ha. I guess someone needs to find this “in between” ROM, where he can use as many of his apps as possible and still have reasonable speed left. I have running all GG services, FB Firendcaster, Forum app, weather, RSS reader, maps, Email etc etc and no lag whatsoever – games load fast and run perfectly without any glitches… while playing NOVA, DeadSpace, Shadow Guardian etc I still receive mail and forum/FB/RSS notices in the background and games don’t stop or even shatter for a moment, you don’t feel like there is any problem with having all this background services going on… well with ICS is a bit different, I can still run the some games (exept SG)… with this services, apps etc but it will take longer to load and while receiving notifications games shutter for few sec…

I found GB ROM called JellyBreadV2Arc which is modified version of stock GB which is super for my needs (has removed all FB bloatware + other tweaks) runs really fast…

Anyway – don’t know why I started all this… I guess the question to flash ICS or not is very hard to answer – if you want to try something new and are willing to sacrifice some gaming and a little speed then try it out… there is always way back…

One thing I noticed immediately with GB is battery life, is not as good as on ICS and charging takes longer on GB… which bugs me a bit… I know that with different kernel would improve but I don’t want to unlock BL… so needs to be that way.