theselfishgene

Hell, just unlock at the start. Then, you don't have to lose your data when you decide to venture into ROMs/kernels. Most of those apps are good, yeah. Personally, my mandatory apps are: Authenticator (two factor authentication), BaconReader (Reddit), Chrome, Drive or Dropbox, Fenix (Twitter app), Hangouts or Messenger, Nova Launcher, Pandora, Play Music, Steam, Twitch, and Youtube.
 
  Yes, Cyanogenmod and ParanoidAndroid are excellent examples of ROMs. You can still unlock the phone and try out some ROMs, even within the 4 month rule.

I recommend checking out an alternate launcher called Nova Launcher. Then you can look up some custom icon packs. One popular one is called Minimal UI. These two things will help slightly to get away from Samsung's skin, which I find is pretty ugly.

First? Sadly, the first thing I do is unlock, install a custom ROM and get root access.
 
If I can't, I usually install Chrome, Voxel Rush, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, Play Music and Google Camera, then I get the Google Now Launcher or NovaLauncher.

Mines pretty good. Optimums price isn't too crazy. If you're a cable cutter it's definitely a decent ISP. Their cable is a joke though. The cable boxes pretty much force you to buy an htpc and cable card PCIe. My fiber option is uverse which I liked the TV when I had it but the internet is way too slow. They charge double per Mb as optimum and the fastest speeds aren't even guaranteed. Uverse needs to learn from fios.