Yeah I read a post saying to do what you just described with success.
However, this phone is really poor. I have tried GB, ICS, JB and all of them I get similar performance just different features.
The phone can't handle two apps at once regardless of the rom.
I was traveling to a different city to get something on Craigs. It constantly would shutdown my Maps and Navigation when I wanted to read a Kik message.
If I have Kik open and want to read a txt msg, it takes like 10 seconds after clicking the txt msg icon to show the txt.
Is there an app or method that everyone uses on this phone that I don't know about to get this phone to run speedy? Or, is it just so outdated it can't run modern versions of apps?
I just want navigation, txt, kik, and a light browser like dolphin.
Can a Fascinate handle all that and be snappy and quick??
In the mean time, I am switching over to my S3, though I don't like how it's so big I can't reach all the screen with one hand.
i think you should understand that this phone has a single-core CPU. running at 1GHz. this phone is almost 4 years old. it's amazing this thing can even run things like Kitkat at all, let alone with the relative finesse the most recent unjust build provides.
it took me a while to realize that apps these days are not optimized for single-core CPUs, it took upgrading to a gs4 to realize that. the fascinate is an admittedly, well, slow phone. or its not meant for multitasking, definitely.
the s3 runs circles around this phone. almost anything does. i've never really found anything that allows for the multitasking and insane speed that i get out of my s4, the closest i've ever gotten was cm7, but that even in its stable release had tons of SOD problems (sleep of death, phone locks and never comes back on).
part of the issue is that the fascinate has 512MB of RAM. back in 2010, it was adequate. not even good, just.. alright. these days the norm is 2GB. a phone with 1GB of RAM is considered outdated. despite google's efforts to optimize kitkat for 512MB devices, this phone's GPU shares RAM with the system, and depending on the configuration, usually 100+ MB is reserved for the GPU, leaving typically about 360-384MB of RAM. You can get more (the kitkat ROM i've mentioned allows 416MB of RAM to the system) but things will start breaking, particularly HD video recording and torch, among other things
I have not used the kik so I can't really say about it's performance,,, I have seen on the 4.4 kitkat rom from Unjust when I have used google maps navigation it was a huge battery sucker, no matter if I only put it on device [gps] only. I could barely even use it and on a charge it was still draining it faster than it could take it.
i did not have this on jellybean roms
I have not had the the problems you describe '10 seconds to open an app'.
Hangouts used to be slow opening initially but their latest update has made it much faster
I don't think it's multitasking is bad for what it is as a phone given it's specs,,, but everyone use a phone differently,,,
so I mostly agree with the overall jest of what skept is saying,,, it is ultimately limited by the 512MB ram available to use.
for GB and JB roms you can also look at the V6 Supercharger thread, it does help with multi-tasking, it can be a bit hard to understand how to implement it but once you figure that out it goes decent, boot up and time till initial use are much longer than normal, but you just have to plan your reboots for when plenty of time allows
i think jellybean roms are very good performers and given the face that you can use a different kernel that allows for overclocking up 1400 Mhz if desired,,, it's a give and take though,,,, over 1200Mhz and battery life goes south very quickly. [luckily the battery doesn't take long to charge, usually 1 hour,,, and even 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there will really help it last through the day]
Most of the earlier jellybean [4.1.x] versions seemed to give better battery life from what I remember than the newer [4.2.x] ones
and there are a lot of different ones to choose from to suite your style or needs from basic cm to full customization.
most of them were stable enough to be daily drivers,,, the big thing is you will just have to read up on a particular one or just break down and try some to see if they fit what you want.
With all that said though the fascinate will
never perform like an S3, S4, Nexus, Nexus 4, Moto G, Moto X
I would consider checking out the Motorola Moto G, it's
physical dimensions are nearly she same as the fassy but a hugely better phone, screen size, etc and depending on your phone carrier needs it can be had for as little as $65 bucks...