I was so pumped when I first heard that the Samsung Galaxy S4 was going to have a 5 inch screen. As you guys know, I go through a lot of cell phones looking for the one that fits all my needs and preferences. My daily driver at the time was a Galaxy Note 2 and it was just a little too big. So I went out and got the S4 the day it launched. I loved the feel of the phone in my hand and the screen was the perfect size for me. Then I started playing with it and loading my apps on it. I became disappointed very quickly; the phone lagged and stuttered and sometimes even just force closed apps out of the blue. Needless to say I was frustrated. I wondered if I was I putting too much work load on the phone? I did load over a 100 apps on it. So I uninstalled some of my apps that were not must haves and uninstalled as much bloatware as I could. I turned off all the Samsung gimmick features like it scrolling for me while reading or answering the phone with the wave of a hand. It did little good, the Galaxy S4 seemed very overwhelmed and I just grew more and more frustrated. So I went out and bought a LG G2. The G2 is an amazing phone and I do recommend it to some people. I really liked the phone even with the heavy UI it has. So now that I had the G2 as my daily driver it wasn't underpowered, it wasn't slow at all, the screen was a whopping 5.2 inch screen, and the colors were gorgeous.
I use my phone a lot. I have four separate email accounts running on it using four different mail apps. I use it to manage two business I have and I want to be able to be disconnected from the computer and get what I need done using my phone. So I have the G2 and it was great until I got into the heavy work. I, at times, have to respond to emails with lengthy answers or descriptions. The issue that I had with the G2 (This is my issue not the phones) was that when I started typing fast for a long email I would hit the home soft key and the email application would close. I tried changing the keyboard and the keyboard soft key shortcut location. Nothing worked and it was very frustrating trying to answer a time sensitive email when I kept closing the email apps. So I decided to root my Galaxy S4. For those of you that do not know what rooting an Android phone is, it is simply a process to gain administrative access to the phone. So I rooted the S4 and uninstalled everything on it, I mean anything that I would not use, including all the Verizon and some of the Samsung add ons. The phone performed much better I tested it in this manner for a week. Then cruising through XDA Developers I found a ROM (A custom configured operating system) that I wanted to load on my phone. It was built on the original Galaxy S4 operating system without the bloatware and with a lot of tweaks and optimizations for performance.
Hello Hyperdrive..
So I did some research and found they had a workaround called Safestrap. I am not going to go into the whole flashing process in this post I will in future posts. So I installed the Hyperdrive ROM on my Galaxy S4. I was immediately in awe what great work Sbreen94 had done. The phone was lighting fast, everything responded right away there was no lag or issues using any of my apps. It truly felt like a different phone. Hyperdrive not only made the S4 it should have been but it also had a large number of utilities to customize the phone to how you would like. Needless to say after testing Hyperdrive for a few days with all my apps loaded I started using the S4 as my daily driver. Since installing Hyperdrive there have been several upgrades to Hyperdrive and every upgrade was smooth and I continue to be impressed. If only Samsung would look at what developers are doing with their products maybe we would have gotten this beast of a phone from Samsung and our carriers. I know rooting and flashing a new operating system isn't for everyone but if you are up for it Hyperdrive has transformed the Galaxy S4 into a superstar.
I have included the links below if you are interested in checking out Hyperdrive and the flashing process.
Hyperdrive by carrier:
AT&T
Sprint (Didn't find a S4 hyperdrive ROM for Sprint still looking)
T-Mobile
Verizon
Bootloader Definition and information on locked bootloader:
Bootloader
If you have questions about customizing or modifying your phone please let me know I would be glad to answer any questions.
