Gave in and got another phone. S2 with a United Rom was great but the hardware was showing its age. I got the Nexus 5 and hardware wise its great with KitKat and set it to use ART instead. (Early ART versus Dalvik benchmarks on a Nexus 5)
Rom is still stock but while it's a great overall phone, I miss some features when I had the custom rom:
– reboot menu
– Clicking on location within Calendar automatically brought my maps up
– being able to disable mobile data from the quick menu with a long press on the mobile icon.
I think you're really going to like your Nexus 5. Mine is still stock and unrooted, although I'm tempted to root it to make a few tweaks.
From a physical standpoint, I only have two complaints: 1) It feels too thin in my hand. The non-slip back is great, but I would have liked a thicker phone (with bigger battery). 2) I miss having the removable battery. I used to keep a second battery with me.
+John Miller thanks! I do like the phone. Though that first hour with it I was missing the root access and other software mods I had with the custom ROM. I can deal with the thinness since I already placed a Luvvitt bumper in it.
Battery wise I completely agree a larger capacity would have been nice. That was one of the reasons I was in no real rush to buy it. But even with my s2 I have been using an Anker Astro E5 15000mAh external battery for my devices on the go already.