[T-Mobile Galaxy Note 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] drtechnology:
lol I know I am asking a lot but hoping y'all can help :)

I had the OPO (One Plus One) and the Op2 is not to my liking because my OPO filled up and ran out of storage. I have over 500 apps (don't ask lol) and use a lot of them.

That being said my OPO finally died. After almost 2 years I accidentally lost it in a buggy and the gears got the case and phone quite well unusable. I used to LOVE Samsung because of the external SD and easy ROM flashing with included root (superuser) in the rom. The S6 is nice but here we go again no external SD. The Note 5 is nice, but again no External SD.,

Sooooo.... Onto the Note 4. Quad core because t-mobile does not have the octa-core version for sale. Which is cool in many benchmarks I see ran for it the Snapdragon outperforms the Exyos. Also 4gb memory vs 3gb is not that much to write home about I won't miss too much. PLUS the Note 5 has no IR emitter for remote use so yea. I liked that feature. NOTE 4 IT IS.

The more I read up on it though the more I find issues and I want to be sure I can resolve them NOW vs later. Did many searches here so please do not tell me to search. Been there done that. I am overwhelmed and actually pretty happy that there is so much good development for the phone. But I find myself hours and hours of reading and still on the sideline wondering what I want.

Thus I figured I would ask you all, who have been there done that and find out what the differences are in what I want and what would fit me best. NOTE THIS IS A NOT WHATS BETTER THAN OTHER THREAD - JUST WANT SOME FACTS AND IDEAS WHAT WOULD SUIT ME BEST IN CHOOSING A CUSTOM ROM WITH ROOT ACCESS BUILT IN HOPEFULLY AND A KERNEL TO GO WITH THAT ROM.

I will be adding a zerolemon extended battery. I know after reading I need a Rom and/or kernel that supports this to show the right battery percentage. This has to be factored in.

Here's some other stuff I would like (not need, just a wish list) that may help you find me a nice rom and kernel combo. REMEMBER I AM JUST ASKING WHAT YOU THINK WOULD WORK FOR WHAT I NEED/WANT AND WHY. Thanks in advance for the help.

I would LIKE a nice black background texting and phone and contact look. In my Galaxy S4 I had a few years back one rom I installed was black with neon phone pad keys and a neon look to the contacts and even the texting was black with yellow and blue and red and green text bubbles - was so cool. I HATE white backgrounds or light color backgrounds, but alas if there is nothing avail it is what it is. I do use swiftkey and it has some cool dark keyboards but I mean the actual texting app and phone screen backgrounds.

As stated need a rom/kernel that has extended battery support

Do NOT need all the fancy CPU tweaks. Its cool to overclock and such but not needed. Either way - with or without overclocking is cool. I have rom toolbox pro so I can do most anything in there anyways.

Would LOVE extended volume controls and extended power menu so I have screenshot and boot into recovery and such on the power menu - but hey isn't that what xposed framework is for and I just install an app there that does it. lol Been there done that I LOVE xposed - but if a rom has this built in why not get it and save me a step

Speaking of xposed do any roms have xposed pre-installed? I know, asking for a lot here but if some do please top of the list. Otherwise will install xposed myself :) That's why I am doing a custom recovery. DO YOU suggest CWM or TWRP or?

NEED TO KNOW HOW ROM WORKS. Some I see are based on 5.1 lollipop some on older 4.4. I am all for upgrading to 5.1 (woohoo) my OPO was on 5.1 and loved it. I am thinking its easy to keep phone NO updates brand new out of box keep the 4.4 stock and put my own recovery and I can use a custom rom to jump to 5.1 so that way there is NO Samsung or t-mobile updates to lock anything. I remember in my Galaxy s4 my 1st one I made the MISTAKE of upgrading the stock o/s then my custom recovery showed the yellow 1 in the corner after I added my custom rom. After that did the rom 1st NO system updates - I figure its best to do the same here with Note 4 right? or??? PLUS I read the note 4 gets kinda buggy on 5.1 so hoping some awesome developers have fixed this and maybe some newer roms or older roms now updated have fixed this and the note 4 does 5.1 as smooth as 4.4 lol

Any other info? I am not locked on the Zerolemon - any ideas there too would help - but amazon has it for $55 now thats cheap for zerolemon and it has a case like otterbox with the belt clip so yayyyy :) Ultimately I would LOVE a waterproof case with extended battery but been searching a while for that no luck lol.

Thanks again people. I just got tired of searching all the roms and the reading hundreds of posts - some thousands of posts for extended battery support, then there's 100 ideas on best kernel to match and I find myself 20 pages from the last thread trying to see the most recent posts from past month or 2 seeing what is best now vs what was best when the rom 1st came out and comparing which is really best and its just too UGH! I am a technical guy and will be here for weeks checking everything out. I am finally just asking for your advice and what you think is best for what I want and narrow down my search a lil to keep me from being here so long doing it on my own.

MAINLY I AM JUST ASKING AFTER TRYING SEVERAL ROM AND KERNEL COMBINATIONS WHICH DO YOU FEEL ARE BEST SUITED FOR MY NEEDS AND WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND AND WHY - I DON'T WANT THIS IS BETTER THAN THIS JUST RECOMMENDATIONS ON GOOD ROMS WITH A KERNEL FOR THAT ROM OR MAYBE STAY STOCK KERNEL IDK.... U TELL ME WHAT YOU ALL FOUND THAT WORKS GOOD. THAT FIT THE ABOVE CRITERIA AND I WILL LOOK AT ALL AND CHOOSE WHAT I WANT.