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Theo[_3_]

wrote:
Thanks to all (esp. Theo and DaveL) for the info.
What I'm still lacking is an understanding of the benefits that would
offset the pain. If the newer Note phones had removable batteries I'd
probably treat myself but, apart from feeling a little slow, the N4 does
everything I need. How would it be "better" with a different ROM (I'd
misunderstood the process, thinking that Rooting was a necessary
precursor to changing the ROM code) and would everything still work?

It's a bit subjective, but to me the nice thing is it 'feels like' a new
phone. For one thing you get the most recent version of Android, with
various new features (although there's nothing super compelling to me,
things like night mode are handy, and some of the third party tweaks are
nice), for another you get more control over what things are installed.
Another thing is you get the most recent security updates, rather than stock
firmware which is often years old.

For me, it's being Google-free, via MicroG (reimplementation of Google Play
Services, so that many apps work), Yalp or Aurora Store (Play Store
replacement without a Google account), NetGuard (firewall to prevent apps
chatting to the internet without my permission, eg for spying or to fetch
ads) and XPrivacyLua [Pro] (feeds fake data to apps that want access to data
I don't want them to have). That's all rather complicated (and a bit fiddly
to set up), but an example of the kind of things you can do with a rooted
phone.

Like you, I'm less than keen on the newer Notes (and for a long time you
couldn't actually buy a newer Note anyway - Note 5 didn't come to Europe,
Note 6 didn't exist, Note 7 caught fire...), and even now they ain't cheap.
I have two Note 4s - I use one as a daily driver and reflash the other with
a new ROM, then when I'm happy swap things over.

Some things don't work as well - the Samsung camera app uses a special
backdoor to the camera that isn't on plain Android, so you have to use a
different app which isn't quite as good (I use OpenCamera). The stylus
works but things like S-Note, S-Command etc don't - but non-Samsung stylus
notetaking and drawing apps work fine.

What's nice is you can decouple the hardware from the software - you might
have a perfectly working phone, but want the feature from new software. On
something like Windows it's easy, just install the new version, but often
with phones the vendor gives up after a year or two so you never get a newer
version. With a custom ROM you can keep old phones going for a lot longer.

Theo