[Verizon] Am I missing anything by dumping TouchWiz?

[mikestorm]

Got my S4 yesterday, via Amazon. I went with Amazon because I suspected they would be less fastidious with green dotting their phone inventory to ME7. As I hoped, phone came with older ROM image, and I had the phone rooted, a custom recovery installed, and a Google Experience ROM loaded before the phone even had a chance to finish downloading the ME7 update.

So now my new phone is a larger and prettier looking (but less stable version of) my old phone (Nexus). Screen for screen. App for app. Sort of dampened my enjoyment.

I can't go back without losing root, but curious if I'm missing anything with TouchWiz? The funny thing is I told myself I'd spend a day or so using TouchWiz before I made any decisions, but on the first boot, when the VZW logo flashed and I had visions of all the crapware preloaded on my phone (which I had forgotten about with the Nexus) I immediately said 'Nope' and went about rooting.

 

[Paul627g]

This is based solely on your tastes. If you like an AOSP type experience which is " similar " to the Nexus line then you now have that. At what cost? By running the GERom you lose TW and along with that you loose many of the perks that the S4 was built on with the custom Samsung software and firmware. Notably the camera software for one.

 

[tvouge]

There's a few good things about touch wiz. The hands free gestures are hit and miss. The camera blows stock away. While the bloat ware is significant, it doesn't affect performance or battery life as much as storage. To tell you the truth though, I've settled on touchwiz with nova launcher customized as stock as possible.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Bizzle69]

I'm running Hyperdrive Rom on mine... I love touchwiz now haha... you can always run nova like tvouge said, and still use smart stay/pause/scroll. Tons of tweaks on this rom, and it's based from ME7 now...

And it has 3 camera apps, Focal from CM 10.2, 4.3 ASOP camera and the stock touchwiz camera

 

[HPferoxCraft]

Why not start researching touchwiz based roms, they all pretty much remove the bloat, keep all the good stuff. There are a couple folks actively working on themes plus you can always use a different launcher like the above poster noted to customize your Homescreen.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mikestorm]

Notably the camera software for one.

As I thought; the camera was my biggest concern. I played with a GS4 in the store and the camera software was pretty fricken cool.

Why not start researching touchwiz based roms, they all pretty much remove the bloat, keep all the good stuff

This I never thought of. I guess in my mind the only thing I had to go back to was VZW OTA ME7. Coming from the Nexus, it was GE or nothing. It never occurred to me there would be TW ROMs I could choose from as well, which would enable me to keep the bootloader unlocked. I think I will do this.

I had Cyannogenmod 10.1 on the Nexus which was rock solid. I think I'll load a TW ROM until a 10.2 release candidate comes out.