Samsung Captivate and Cyanogenmod

With this post I just want to bring awareness to the great work of the CM team, but this post won't be a tutorial on how to upgrade. I can't be responsible to any damage to your phone, and it's possible these actions void your warranty if you are still in warranty period, so please fully read the materials before trying anything. Here are some useful tips and places to start:

• Make sure to back up your apps first. I use an app called Titanium Backup Pro, which costs money, and requires root access on the phone, but it's worth it. When changing from one OS to another (stock to CM7, or CM7 to CM9), you can only take with you "user apps and data" and not "system apps" or "system data". System data can be restored to an OS of the same major revision. System data includes things like wifi/cell settings.
  • If you don't backup, then you can still reinstall all apps from Google Play (market), but you will lose saved settings like high scores and progress in games, notes in apps, etc. Your paid apps will not be lost -- Play will remember your app purchases. I don't have any other Play content (movies or music) but I assume that can all be redownloaded if lost.
• When you upgrade the SD card contents (including the "internal" SD card) are not touched, so if you have stored files or data there, it will be OK.
• If you care about SMS and call logs, there are two free apps I have used with success:
  • SMS Backup and Restore
  • Call Logs Backup and Restore
• Official instructions to go from original OS to CM7 on Cyanongenmod wiki
  • The key basically is getting ClockworkMod recovery on your phone. Once you've done that, installing any custom ROMs (including CM) is far easier, and it's much much harder to "brick" your phone. Worst case scenario is booting back into recovery mode and wiping the whole device clean, losing data since your last backup.
• Instructions I used to go from CM7 to CM9 nightlies on Cyanongenmod forum
• I think if you are on stock ROM, you can go straight from that to CM9 without going through the "stable" CM9 if you follow the "official instructions" linked above, but instead of using the download links on that page, use the ones on the CM7 to CM9 forum post.
• Once on CM9, it is easy to upgrade, do a backup to be safe but I have not lost settings upgrading. I just install the updated zip file (I am using update-cm-9-20120524-NIGHTLY-captivatemtd-signed.zip right now).
• I've only used the "via Clockword Mod Recovery" method -- I've never used ROM manager to install ROMs, but supposedly as an app it setup installs for you (mostly upgrades once you have CM).
• You will lose all of the "proprietary" apps that come with the Samsung OS, for example AllShare, Swype, and QuickOffice (which views word docs, spreadsheets, pdfs, etc). Most of the functionality can be found in other apps downloadable on the market. For myself personally, this was not a loss, except for Swype. You can download the Swype beta for free and it's actually much newer than the one that came with Captivate, however, I am using SwiftKey X keyboard these days (it costs money though). For PDFs you can download Adobe, and for AllShare and MS Office docs support I never used those anyway so I did not try to find replacements. You also will lose all of the AT&T installed apps, if you actually used any of them. Normally people are glad to get rid of them.
• Some Google apps preinstalled won't be there either, but the ones not installed by the "gapps" zip (the zip you install after update-cm) can be found on the Play market, for example Maps and GMail.

If you have any questions leave a comment and I can answer what I know.