[Captivate General] troyy0206:
Like you, I recently started trying to figure this out after getting an AT&T Captivate and I agree about the need for a better listing for features (or lack of) for each ROM. A good matrix to compare would be nice, but I fear there are so many people working on these things and it all moves so fast, it would be a full-time job just to keep it up. Reading through all this stuff is quite overwhelming. However, I honestly think it's not bad once you figure out the basics and understand the ropes. By the time you get the things to load on your phone, with Clockworkmod Recovery, Odin and some other tools, life is pretty simple--the devs have done all the hard work, you're just flashing the stuff and figuring out what you like best.

Here is what I can tell you that may help and like I said, I'm pretty new at this, so someone *please* correct me if I'm wrong. I would not want to mislead anyone:

1. Cognition is an "Americanized" version of the Rogers 2.2 Captivate release. If you want 2.2.1 you have to use another custom ROM. Everything with Cognition appears to be well done, stable and smooth. I spent a couple hours trying to get wireless tether to work only to figure out MobileAP is built in and works ;)

2. Look up the videos on YouTube by MobileTechVideos. They are very good and well produced, plus he looks at all the different ROMs. There is a 3-part video on loading Cognition on a captivate. I used it to load 3.04 on mine in almost real time right with the video. The only thing I would caution you on is if you use Titanium Backup to restore apps, be careful about "select all" like he says you can do in the video. I'm not sure if I had backed up system data and accidentally restored it or what--didn't go back that far to check, but after I did my restore I thought everything was fine and I could not make outgoing calls the next day. I reloaded from scratch following the videos again and this time use TB to restore one app+data at a time and was very picky about what I did and it worked wonderfully.

3. Once I got everything working I started to get curious about kernels. Once you have your ROM loaded, you can flash a new kernel (has to be same version as the ROM) and you can get enhancements with speed and other things by doing so. However, I loaded Firebird and did not notice in the thread that Bluetooth doesn't work yet, so I'm trying to figure out if I can go back or if I have to start over. Not a big deal to start over since I know what I'm doing now, just want to push the limits a little cause that's how I roll ;) For some reason after Firebird I also seen duplicate photos on my SD card, even though there were only singles. It's like thumbnails were duplicated or something. I moved the pics off to my PC and it left blank thumbnails behind. I deleted them from the gallery and put the pics back and everything cleared up. I've seen stranger things--no biggie.

4. Battery life was fairly bad at this point, dropping 10-15% or more per hour. My phone came with the JH7 modem (last digits of your Baseband version in Settings -- About Phone). Cognition 3.04 comes with JL1 and many others were reporting great battery life with JL2 so I flashed it and everything seems to be much better so far. I haven't reset the battery stats and such, but I will at some point. Looks like a lengthy process that may or may not help.

5. I see a lot of "do I have to flash to stock first" questions posted and from what I understand, it's best practice to follow the instructions and don't ask why--just do it. Learn how to backup and restore apps+data (not system data) using TB and it's no big deal.

6. I read a lot about different builds of the Captivate--lots of posts about 1006, 1007, 1008's so I was concerned about the issues discussed. I'm guessing these were the early releases. I got mine at the end of January and it's a 1012. Look under your battery right under the serial number.

I suppose once I have this part of it working well and figured out, I will probably start looking into themes and digging deeper. It's pretty addictive so once you start, you just keep wanting more and more and making it better and better. Thanks to all the devs out there. I plan on making a few donations soon, especially to Designgears since his stuff is mostly what I've worked with so far.

My advice is to take a day or two and read *A LOT*. The old carpenters saying is "Measure twice and cut once" and that is pretty much how I look at this stuff. After you figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together, you lose the fear.

Hope this helps and if I would appreciate it if someone more advanced can confirm my statements or correct me.