[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] itasoulas:
Wipe -> Flash -> Test... Wipe -> Flash -> Test ... The Neverending Story!!!

I took some time to return back to pure stock Android to see what I was missing from the great custom roms. From the minute your first boot completes, two things happen: You feel comforted as you know that everything works as expected. You feel the stability and safety as your phone probably won't play any weird tricks to you. But as you go through your settings, pulling down your notification panel or pressing the power menu (and probably a million other things!) you see that all the extra things you were used to are not there. Confusion is the next thing to occur as you may indeed like the polished look and safe playing - ahhh, the original firmware on your device -, but you would definately like your phone to do more things.

Most of us, like to make the most of our devices. So we try custom roms, kernels, radios, themes...the list is endless...to find the golden rule in order for our phone to look and perform the best possible. Developers come up with new and innovative ideas most of the time and testers try their mods in order to provide feedback for things to get better. This is a nice thing and I guess this is called evolution or progress, name it what you like. It's an addictive process for both ends, especially for devs as the joy of making something work the way they pictured it to be, is the most rewarding thing in the world and for the end user the joy of helping devs out and by having the latest and the greatest is a reason to make their day.

But let's get focused on the end user. Wiping and flashing...wiping and flashing...it's a vicious circle man! Everybody's searching for the holy grail, the ultimate rom for their device. But guess what...YOU'LL NEVER GONNA GET IT! Why? Concerning custom roms and as the updates are very frequent, even if you have flashed a version with the minimum bugs possible, the next one will probably have an annoying or critical bug. So either you wait for an update or you start searching for a rom similar to the one you use in order to avoid a certain issue. So as you guess, this is a neverending road trip! And the truth is that after a year or two flashing a million of things on your phone, your device gets old and you probably thinking of upgrading to a newer model. Which of course you need to try it's true potentials, so you will start testing things again... What you realise is you as the end user, you never trully enjoy your phone as it has become a "lab rat", constantly under testing.

So what's the "cure" for you? You can spend some time flashing all different kinds of roms and kernels. When it comes to roms, look for the features that you think suits your needs the most and will be used on a daily basis more or less. I know that a million other features might seem cool to you but if you are not gonna use them they are useless to you. The truth is that we are living in a world were more is better but you need to focus on what is really useful to you. Do not forget that the more the features on a rom, probably the more the possibility of issues to occur or the more the battery consumption. So look for something that is not extremely overloaded with all mods available outhere. Look more for stabiltiy and a little less for performance.

To end this...by doing the above, you already provided feedback on devs the time you were trying things, so you helped them improve their work, and by settling down to a specific rom, you will start enjoying your phone and you'll have a device that suits your daily needs. In the end, even if you still haven't got that, you will need to settle down on something. Otherwise you are doomed to play a role in the "Neverending Story" movie!!!