[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note 3] jeep447:
Ok first of all the reason why I'm responding is purely to try and help, and I know some people can be sensitive to criticism so I just wanted to clarify that my intentions are not to flame you. With that being said I know that I don't "know" so I'm only basing this from your post, but you seem to be extremely negative about the entire process in general. I also understand that it may be overwhelming for people who aren't technically "in to" rooting or even customizing their phones, which is why I often consider rooting to be a double edged sword for a lot of people.

This is why basically imo it's a complete waste for someone to "pay" someone else to root or customize their phone for them (I'm definitely not implying that's what you did or anything just to clarify), because it's not in the least bit a one time thing where once it's done it'll just be smooth sailing from there on out. It takes a huge amount of upkeep and dedication to get and enjoy the most out of what rooting and customizing has to offer, and for some people the trade off just isn't worth the overall amount of work which involved with it. It always just depends on the person, how they use and how much they use their phones, the amount of work they are willing to put into it, and what exactly they expect to get out of it, to determine if it's even worth the process to begin with.

As far as what you were talking about with wiping the phone, having to set everything up again, and losing some of your game data, it kinda sounds like that was along the lines of a traumatic experience for you especially when compared to others who might actually go through that same process 10 or more times a day and really enjoy it.

Also as far as your battery life goes there's so many different variables that can determine whether you'll have killer battery life or struggle to make it through the day kinda battery life, but the beauty of root and the ability to customize is that you never have to just settle for one or the other. One thing I'd strongly suggest is to look into different Kernels depending on which rom you're on, because it's amazing how much difference the right kernel for your device alone can make with battery. Every single device is different in it's own tolerances and even if you pull 2 of the same phones that are back to back off of the assembly line, one might work better with a specific kernel/rom combination than another, one could have better stock battery life than the other, and so on. So I always try to take others experiences with certain Kernels or Roms kind of lightly, because that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to have the same results with my specific device.

Another to keep in mind is that whenever you flash a new rom, kernel, or even flash a new ota, it'll always take at least 3 or 4 days before the kernel will fully settle in and start to show the "true" battery life and performance that you can expect. So if you flash a new rom or kernel and then decide after just one day that the battery life sucks or that the performance isn't what you were expecting and then flash something else, you literally have no idea how that rom or kernel would've truly performed because it didn't even have enough time to settle in. For example I flashed a kernel one time and for the first 3 days the battery life was 10 times worse than what I was getting, and then half way through the 3rd day I started to notice it getting better and better until it wound up literally being the best battery life I had ever had at that point. So if I would've said screw it and automatically decided it was going to be terrible based on what it did at first, I would've screwed myself out of the best battery life I'd ever had up until then. It just takes a lot of patients and I'm not saying this is what you did at all, but I think a lot of people simply don't wait long enough to actually see the "true results" before deciding something is good or bad.

Anyway I waited awhile before doing the update as well because my phone was running almost exactly how I liked it, and when I finally did do the update I wasn't getting the same results at first which can always be discouraging. I'm glad now that I did do the update though because it took some tinkering with but now it's running even better than it was before. Good luck with your phone though and I guess my point is that you don't have to settle for anything if you don't want to, that's the beauty of being able to do all of this on the first place!

Sent from a modified ColecoVision