[Captivate Android Development] littlewierdo:
1. Features

CM has more options and tweaks than any other rom (especially for the Captivate) that I have seen (and I have looked at every Froyo based rom out there - never spent much time with GB based roms unless they ran on i897 Eclair / Froyo based boot loaders).

2. Speed

I never have been one to test / benchmark roms. My opinion is, numbers don't matter. I believe in using benchmarking to test hardware for either burn-in tests or reliability tests. But CM seems to be plenty fast for my personal needs (mainly podcast watching / listening and audiobook listening and the occasional game / music writing app when I need to kill a few minutes).

3. Reliability

I haven't had CM crash since around build #40 and I have been running CM since build 16 (back when each piece of the rom had to be installed separately). This however could be due to the fact that my phone pretty much gets a fresh reboot everyday because I install the latest rom nightly update when I get the notification.

4. Battery life

This is the sticking point, battery life is not so great if you compare CM to Froyo based roms. However, if you compare CM to only GB based roms, CM is about on par with GB based roms. My recommendation is to spend some money on a good battery (Amazon has Seidio batteries for around $60). This may seem like a lot of money BUT the Seidio battery extends the battery life of my phone to around 2 days with heavy usage. It has some drawbacks however, it doubles the thickness of the phone, replaces the metallic back piece with a rubber/plastic feeling back piece (although it is plenty strong and durable), and increases the weight of the phone about 30-40%.

http://www.amazon.com/Seidio-Innoce...8EYC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1313320388&sr=8-9

If an extended battery isn't an option, some app management and system resource management will be required to make your phone last more than 10 hours with moderate usage.

Battery saving tips

1. Uninstall apps you don't use. Believe it or not, some apps run in the background and use system resources. If you aren't using an app, there is no reason to have it running and potentially using resources (like your 3g connection) if you don't need even use said app.

2. Control your radios (GPS, Wifi, cellular connection, Bluetooth). Either keep these off and manually enable them when you need them or consider using an app like Juice Defender or Tasker (Tasker is far more powerful but also requires some basic pre-algebra / programming knowledge).

3. Control when apps start up. Purchase an app called Autostarts from the market and literally disable EVERY condition that ALL your user apps start under with exception to apps that you KNOW need to run in the background in order for the app to function correctly (avoid doing this for system apps however, disabling something you don't know could cause your phone to be unusable and require a re-flash to stock>flashing CM). For example, Google Maps NEVER needs to run in the background for my personal needs so I disabled all the conditions it starts under (however, if you use latitude, disabling maps may cause latitude to not report your position to other users as I believe latitude uses Maps in conjunction with itself - if you don't use latitude, this should not be a problem). However, apps like beautiful widgets, Beyondpod (a podcatcher/RSS reader), and Tasker/Juice Defender NEED to run in the background in order for them to function correctly. Also, do NOT disable apps that have a widget you are using.

4. Do NOT use task killers except for occasions when apps are misbehaving (an app has hung/massively slowed down your phone). Where this comes into play is, many people try to set up an app to be auto-killed. This can seriously hurt your battery life. Instead, use Autostarts (see above) to keep apps from starting. FYI, auto-killing an app kills battery life because processor power is used to start an app when it feels the need to start, the auto-killer scans every few minutes using even more processor power, sees apps setup to be auto-killed, kills them, then the app restarts again. This endless cycle uses cpu power to launch the app, the task killer uses cpu cycles to scan and kill the app, and if the app needs to do any sort of network /gps access when it first launches, that can hurt battery life as well. Only use task killers to manually kill a mis-behaving app.

5. Calibrate your battery. There are plenty of instructions for this elsewhere but the readers digest version is as follows.

TIP - Set your display to turn off after 3-5 minutes (Settings>Display). The reason for this will become clear in step d.

a. Charge your phone completely with phone ON.

b. Reboot into recovery and delete battery stats.

c. Completely power off the phone with it still plugged in and allow the battery to completely charge. Use the volume keys (either up or down) to briefly turn the display on. The battery symbol will show '100%' inside the green portion of the battery when it is completely charged.

d. DISCONNECT THE PHONE from the charger, boot the phone up and wait about 3-5 minutes from the time you initially hold the power button to turn the phone on. This will allow the phone to stabilize. If you used the tip I mentioned above, the screen will turn off after 3-5 minutes - this way you don't need to watch a clock.

e. Power off the phone. Once the phone is completely powered off, plug in the phone to charge. When it is completely charged (see step c for verifying a complete charge), UNPLUG the phone and power the phone back up.

Congrats, your battery is calibrated. This process takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Oh, as a side note, CM is probably the best rom in general for phones if they at least have an RC build available (if they don't have an RC build, its usually 'really' buggy). If an RC build is available, use the latest nightly instead of the RC. If an RC is NOT available yet, features and stability are probably going to be a problem so use at your own risk.

CM is NOT so great on tablets (I have 3 different Android tablets that I have played with CM on). Unfortunately, CM is NOT optimized for tablets (and contains useless 'extras' that are specific to the phone like the Provider and Phone apks) and therefore, really, using CM on a tablet really feels like I am using a giant Captivate / Evo.

Just my opinion...