Lately we have been seeing a lot of custom cooked ROMs popping up in forums. You may feel Wow! and proceed to upgrade your PocketPC and right after you finish the upgrade, another one pops up. So, is it all worth the upgrade?

First of all, you must be aware that, flashing a custom cooked ROM on your PocketPC is illegal in most countries and it will definitely void your warranty. Especially in countries where the phones are purchased on contracts, it is absolutely illegal and even if you don’t mind about that and go ahead to upgrade, later when you change or upgrade your device for a newer model, you won’t be allowed to do so.

If all of the above don’t matter to you, still it is a risk because custom ROMs may not work always and a wrongly cooked ROM can even brick your PocketPC. We have personally seen this happen to many people if not all.
Alright, we understand that you don’t care about any risks. Should you still proceed? Analyze the ROM. Find out what’s new in the ROM and ask yourself: Do you really need the new feature? Is it worth spending time in upgrade? Many ROMs may say the new feature is improved performance. Even though benchmarks may show a slight increase in speeds, on a real usage you may never feel the actual speed improvement.

Some ROMs boast of many applications included. When you could install all of these applications yourself, why not install them on your current ROM instead of reflashing and losing all data. You may also not like all of the applications bundled in the ROM, so it is always better to select your favorite ones and install on the current ROM you use.

There’s a well known say: “Why fix it when it ain’t broken?” Likewise, there is no point in upgrading a ROM that doesn’t give you any significant change. Stock ROMs are always the best because manufacturers like HTC, when they make a ROM, it goes through an extensive testing phase by a limited group of testers and only the best ROMs are finally released to public.

But HTC and many other companies never release ROM upgrades very often, especially when a whole new OS version comes out. Like Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade will never be released for older phones running Windows Mobile 5 or even older. In this case alone it may be good to flash the custom cooked ROMs. Also, by this time, the warranty on your device may also be expired, so you don’t need to worry too much and enjoy the new version of Windows Mobile OS.

Final verdict: When your device is new, there is absolutely no requirement for a ROM upgrade as you have your device covered under warranty and most likely you will also be having the latest softwares in your ROM already. And as your device gets older, you may either get bored with it or a whole new OS upgrade comes out or some new softwares like TouchFlo 3D comes which cannot be installed on your PocketPC without a ROM upgrade and your carrier or manufacturer won’t release an official upgrade with it, at this time, it may be a good choice to upgrade the ROM with an unofficial cooked ROM. But still the risks mentioned above may apply.

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