In the midst of the Galaxy S6 release date and the emerge of S6 Edge, a lot of geeks like me could decid to bring fresh blood to their Galaxy S5 smartphone, since the last Android Lollipop update brought out the good and the worse of this device. For me, the “upgrade” to a cyanogenmod environment was necessary, since I couldn’t keep up with the moods of my device. Running on the stock ROM, it was laggy as hell, virtually freezing for tens of seconds, especially when I was using the keyboard in various apps. So, I decided to install CyanogenMod CM12. Is it worth it? Let me give you the pros and the cons.
The pros:
- Galaxy S5 is definitely faster with this custom ROM
- Improved overall experience
- You will get updates at shorter periods of time
- It’s easier to customize everything
- You can install apps that requires root
- You can add multiple users to your smartphone
The cons:
- The camera app (and other apps) will crash from time to time
- The battery seem to drain faster, I had to install Greenify
- You have no access to special features like slow-motion recording, SHealth, fingerprint scanner
- While I was using some apps in the same time, the phone rebooted by itself
- You need to have a rooted S5 in order to install Cyanogenmod, and it will void the warranty.
Of course, the difference is major, but these are the ones that are important for me. So far, I’m pleased with the overall experience of using CyanogenMod 12 on my Samsung Galaxy S5, and I’m actually thinking to keep it. Hopefully, the developers will invest more into making things perfect. If they fix the Camera App, I would be greatly pleased. Since the Android Lollipop 5.0 is relatively new, I am expecting a stable CM12 (or 13) release.
To answer the question in the title, if you feel that you can live with the cons I’ve mentioned here, you should definitely give it a try.
