[Xperia SP General] |>/\nte:
I stumbled upon this thread and it reminded me....that I'm yet to find "the perfect rom" for my xperia sp. I have this phone since April 8th, 2014. It's not the perfect phone, but I still love it as much as I did in day 1, plus it covers all my needs the way I want, so it's my daily driver, and it'll keep being so for a long time. Anyways, I've tried a.i.c.p. 10 (July 18th, 2015 being the best build of those I've used), which was fantastic. The multitasking is exceptional, the ram management is great (I'd say almost on par with the stock 4.1.2 - around 400+ mb of free ram), it was stupidly fast, super stable and also it had great built-in customization (imagine something like a built-in xposed framework or dirty unicorns' "dirty tweaks"). I was using this rom for around 3 months and was very pleased.

After around 3 months, I realised I miss the led bar's functionality level the stock firmwares offer (like, while making a call, if the display is on, the 3 leds will illuminate according to the theme color accent, also when recieving a call and the phone rings the leds illuminate again, etc.), so I reverted back to the stock 4.3, where I had begun with. However, after some time of using it, the stock 4.3 seemed somewhat....sluggish. I'd rooted it, removed all of the bloatware and was running a custom kernel (williams to be exact), so I was looking for a replacement. Having in mind that I didn't want to lose the functionality level of the led bar of the stock firmwares, so I looked for something based on that.

After a long time searching and trying out, I flashed the "original pure stock v3" rom, which is essentialy a quite trimmed-down version of the stock 4.3. I also made a Hatsune Miku theme as I admired (and I still do) the Japan-exclusive "xperia feat. Hatsune Miku" (here's a video about this phone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T751VmtMHPo) and its goodies, flashed a zip I found on xda that contained all the wallpapers (and the wallpaper changer that changes the phone's wallpaper everytime the phone is being unlocked), and also flashed williams kernel so I can have a better level of customization over my phone, and I was good to go. It was a better version of the stock 4.3, but still. Deep down I felt something missing......

Then I found the existenz ultra rom, which I found charming, and wanted to make my own version of the "xperia feat. Hatsune Miku" based on that. Flashed it, made the appropriate mods, and off I went again. This rom is actually stock 4.3-based, but with lots of xperia z2 goodies, so it's like having an xperia z2 with a led bar (which is working perfectly, the job done on that rom is quite good). After adjusting the ram management via the kernel adiutor and taking advice from a thread I found on these forums (if anyone's interested, take a look here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2751559), and of course, making the mods I wanted (mostly what I already described in the previous paragraph), I was in peace for quite some time....the ram management is around 300+/350+ mb free, so it's good I guess.

I'm currently rocking the existenz ultra, but I still feel something missing. I thought about reverting back to the stock 4.1.2 and its superb ram management (since I'm starting to have performance & compatibility issues with ppsspp - no idea if it's the app's fault or it's something else), but I'm not sure about that. I just don't know what to do anymore. The phone itself is awesome, but I've yet to find the appropriate rom to combine its hardware with. I'm looking for something that has the exact same led bar functionality of the stock firmwares, but also must be fast, smooth and that lets lots of ram free to take advantage of. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to suggest. As for now, I guess I won't find peace until I find this "perfect rom".....anyway, these are my experiences with the phone. Hope I can actually help someone.