Buy a new phone or flash ROM?

[G.murph]

Hi guys. I have a question. Over the past few months my Captivate has been acting funny (running stock 2.2, not rooted). While the basic functions of texting and calling work fine, a lot of other applications don't seem to work properly. 9/10 times I can't watch YouTube videos (it just says an error has occured) and won't play until I reboot the phone. In terms of listening to music and watching videos (that I've recorded on the device), they don't play 50% of the time. It just tells me the file types are not compatible with the phone, which I know can't be right because the music files used to play and I recorded the videos on the device. And usually if I can't watch video, I can't record video, either (pops up saying recording failed). All these issues can be temporarily fixed by rebooting the phone, but that gets annoying every time I want to do one of these things. Plus I try to shut off my phone once a week just so it's not running for weeks at a time, so I shouldn't need to reboot more than that.

So here's my question: could these issues be fixed by rooting and flashing some ROM on there or should I just get a new phone? I can't seem to justify getting a brand new phone since the things that don't work are programs I don't use all that often (calling, texting, email, fb/twitter usually work fine), but I will if I have to. I'm no longer under warranty so I can't exchange for a new device. Actually the only reason I have this Captivate is because I had to exchange the Samsung Impression 5 times before they got sick of me.

Thanks for any help/suggestions.

 

[erwaso]

Rooting won't make it worse.

But a new/different/updated phone is always much better

 

[loraque]

If you just want things to work and not deal with rooting, I would try a factory reset from your MENU and start over. Make sure you copy your stuff to a PC so you can copy it back, but from what you describe, you probably installed a app or three in there that messed things up. It happens. If it worked before, it should work again after a reset.

Please note that you will need to put yourself (phone) back together again... this is not painless, but not too bad. Basically it will be like a new phone, without the new phone.