[AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 General] Aou:
I jump back and forth between these two ends of the opinion spectrum in regards to TW and Samsung's (AT&T's) stock ROM. This is probably the first android phone that I could honestly be okay with never flashing a custom rom on. I will still unlock the bootloader when it becomes available. I will still flash a custom recovery (nandroid backups are a really nice thing to have, and I'm disappointed that carriers don't include this) when it becomes available as well. I *might* flash a custom rom based on the stock rom, but I think I'd rather stick to stock as much as possible, at least for some time.

As for the gimmicky features it comes with, I sort of agree, yet it's fun to show off to friends. I normally keep the gestures and eye scrolling turned off, and I keep the NFC turned off when not in use. I did buy the $9.99 remote app, and I'm surprisingly content with it. I need to offer some feedback about being able to actually drag/drop to change the order of the buttons on the other screen, but otherwise it's so much better than the WatchOn stuff that I have recently frozen using TiBu.

And on to speaking of freezing apps. With root, I'm pretty content. I can use TiBu Pro (to anyone reading this, go buy the Pro version - it's completely worth it!!) to freeze all the bloatware that I don't like. Every few days since I got my phone, I re-evaluate the list in TiBu and check into any blaotware I haven't frozen yet. "Do I need this? Have I used this? Nope! Frozen." I've done this for nearly all of the "Samsung ____" apps, including the Samsung store and all the associated apps (Samsung account, etc.). Did the same for every "AT&T ___" app that it came with - they're all garbage to me. Next on my list to evaluate and possibly freeze is all the printing services - do I really need to print from my phone? Maybe if it were my work phone...

I suppose one good reason I would want to flash a customized stock-based rom would be to free up some space. Having a 16gb version is no different than my S2 was... but I definitely had a few more GB's of room to store all the cool photos. And with larger picture files, and a faster camera, the storage is suddenly a bit more important to me.

And finally, the camera, and its associated apps/modes. I see a lot of people freezing some of the apps that allow some of the cool modes this camera can use. I'm not a professional photographer, but I love taking awesome pictures with this phone. It rival's my wife's Nikon 9300 point-and-shoot, with the exception of the Nikon's zoom lens. But as far as features and quality are concerned, it's possibly better.

This thing has been pretty smooth since day negative-one for me. Even better when we got root and the bloatware was frozen. Even snappier and better on battery once that first OTA dropped. I'm pretty impressed, and it certainly is a huge step up from my S2 running CM10.1.

TL;DR: I really like the stock rom and all the cool things it offers. The performance is great. I do like some of the gimmicky things, even if I rarely use them. With the root ability to freeze things I don't use, I could definitely see keeping this thing "stock" for this device's lifetime.

PS: It's also nice to see the "Official" status, as though I haven't violated the phone too badly...