Of all the ways you can customize an Android phone, installing a custom ROM is by far the biggest. It can bring an old device up to date, allow you to focus on privacy and security, or just give your phone a whole new look.
While some may like a certain UI or skin, others may not. Some users prefer a feature-rich interface with the ability to install themes and modify system elements while some may want a clean, simple experience with no frills. This is where installing a custom Android ROM comes into the picture.
INSTALLING CUSTOM-ROMS: How To
There are multiple benefits to installing a custom Android ROM. If the UI you're currently using has a lot of ads or bloatware, you can install a custom ROM to get rid of them. If your phone's OEM has stopped updating your device and you're stuck on an older Android version, you can use a custom ROM based on a newer version of Android. If you like a different OEM's UI and want to try it on your phone, you can install a custom ROM.
Once you've copied the ROM and GApps files to your phone's internal memory, it's time to boot into TWRP to flash the files. If you're not familiar with booting into recovery mode on your phone, we have a guide telling you how to boot into recovery on your phone so you can follow that to boot into TWRP. Once you're in TWRP, there are a few things you need to do before installing the ROM which we'll go over in the next step.
But there is one big problem with this solution. Installing custom ROMs is a difficult and risky process even for people with some degree of technical knowledge. It involves unlocking the bootloader (rooting the phone), temporarily booting a custom recovery using fastboot, and then installing the new operating system from the system recovery. Make one wrong move at any of these steps and you could brick your phone. Even if everything goes right, this is generally a pretty technical process that involves a lot of steps and is not going to extend the lives of a meaningful number of phones given the time and effort involved.
Several of my colleagues at Motherboard have all had similar experiences trying to install custom ROMs on Android devices over the years. Motherboard editor Jason Koebler spent two full evenings installing SailfishOS, only to find that certain features on the phone no longer worked. He never used the phone again. Senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai enlisted the help of an older cousin, a computer science graduate and IT professional. Together, they almost bricked the phone, and after hours of researching online guides and forums, managed to restore the phone to its original state. But they gave up on installing the custom ROM.
Can the developer of custom ROM steal my data & banking passwords?? Is it safe to install custom ROM with [Unofficial] written before them onXDA website?? How to verify whether the Custom ROM is safe or not to use before installing it?????
Make sure to double check that you have downloaded the ROM that is meant for your specific variant of the handset. Otherwise, at the time of installing the ROM, you will get an error or worse, end up bricking the handset.
Therefore, now the preinstalled and default Stock ROM UI comes with plenty of customization features with limited restrictions. If users are happy with their default Android stock ROM, is there really a need or benefit from installing a custom ROM? The answer is yes. Custom ROMs still do serve a purpose. Have a look at the pros and cons of custom ROMs mentioned below.
Installing a Custom Recovery like TWRP has nothing to do with slots or partition whatsoever. hence the process of installing TWRP is exactly the same for both kinds of devices. Follow the below steps. It contains two sections. In the first one, you need to temporary boot the TWRP Recovery and in the next step, it will have to be permanently installed. Execute both the steps very carefully.
In case of iOS devices, a ROM is more often called IPSW (after the default firmware installation file extension) and a custom IPSW is usually something you make yourself from the stock IPSW using certain tools and thus, you get to decide what to include in it and what not. The resulting IPSW is usually very similar to the stock one in most ways, except for being unlocked and jailbroken, with Cydia installed. If your device is unlocked and you can jailbreak it using other methods, there is no need to go through the process of building and installing a custom IPSW to your iOS device.
In case of Android devices, the first part of our series on how to customize the looks of your Android device features an excellent introduction to customizing your phone by installing a custom ROM to it and includes links to rooting guides, several resources on finding custom ROMs and two ROMs of our choice: CyanogenMod and MIUI. That should be enough to get you started.
Making any operating system work with the underlying hardware is quite a task. It requires developing or installing specific device drivers and then programming the operating system to communicate with those drivers. Because Android is superimposed on a Linux kernel, developers must be familiar with both Linux and Android to create a custom ROM.
When flashing a custom ROM, you need to be absolutely certain that you're downloading the right files for your particular device and model number. For this reason, I'd recommend installing an app called Droid Hardware Info to learn some basic information about your device's hardware.
When the process is finished, you have two options. If you're only installing a custom ROM and do not plan on flashing a Gapps package or custom kernel, you can simply tap the "Reboot System" button and skip ahead to Step 9. Otherwise, if you're flashing any additional ZIPs today, simply tap the back button to head out to TWRP's "Install Zip" menu and read on below.
Finally, if you're installing a custom kernel today, simply select the ZIP file from TWRP's "Install Zip" menu. From here, swipe the slider at the bottom of the screen to install your custom kernel, then tap the "Reboot System" button when that's finished.
After flashing the custom ROM and any additional packages, your phone or tablet will take a lot longer than usual to boot up. This only applies to the first boot after installing a ROM, so don't worry about this being an ongoing issue, but know that it could take up to 15 minutes this first time.
Another question I have is, if I apply this latest pre-rooted software, will I be able to back it off and reinstall the older firmware versions again? Does installing this pre-rooted image totally wipe out the FireTV environment, deleting ClockWorkMod and all the tools and apps I currently had loaded?
hi i downloaded the custom rom firmware and named it rom.zip and pushed it to my box rebooted into recovery selected file and it says installing update. then it says installation aborted. any idea as to what i am doing wrong?
After installing pre rooted 51.1.4.0_514006420 updated, deleted rom.zip file, i than installed busybox free and than installed kernel boot menu. Booted in kernel by default and Launch recovery mode, everything as you stated.
Please note that there is some risk involved with installing Enso, as it does some permanent modifications to the boot code of the PS Vita. Do understand that if a problem happens, it could brick the PS Vita, and there is no known way to revive the console. Nonetheless, it has been used by thousands of Vita enthusiast by now, with no significant problem reported.
As with custom ROMs, the version of TWRP that you install will depend upon the phone you are installing it onto. In my case, I chose the latest version of TWRP for Sony Xperia S. If you are following along here, please make sure that you select the correct version of TWRP for your device.
Once you open F-Droid, you will see that the apps are organized into categories, such as Connectivity, Development, Games and so on. There is a reasonably good selection of apps out of the box, but you can expand this by installing additional repos, many of which are listed here. You can read how to add a repo to F-Droid here.
If you want to change your android a little bit and customize it, installing a ROM can be an option. Not only that, it will add some cool features to your device as well. Just think of amazing UI with premium functioning of the device; yes that is possible with ROM. Now, each ROM is different. And therefore, you need to choose according to your choice.
When it comes to rooting, flashing and installing custom ROMs, no two devices are the exact same. That said, there are some general tips and hints that should apply straight across the board. If you are ready to give installing a custom ROM a try, just remember that there are risks involved, so proceed with caution.
The main LineageOS website is laid out quite nicely, and there's an accompanying Wiki page to guide you through the installation process. After downloading all of the necessary files, installing the ADB Platform-Tools, and ensuring my bootloader was still unlocked, it was time to begin.
Following the instructions to the "T" let me boot into LineageOS on my OnePlus 9 Pro. Everything looked and worked as advertised, as I could log in with my Google account and peruse the interface a bit. It looks a lot like stock Android, minus the default Google apps like Chrome or Gmail. There's even a custom Camera app instead, but I was planning on installing the GCam version anyways.
Perhaps this has to do with a bit of me trying to rack my memory from years ago, but I felt the need to flash the patched Magisk boot.img. Since my ROM was already loaded, I figured that I just needed to get into fastboot mode and flash the image. Not once did the idea of just installing the Magisk Manager app cross my mind, again, because that's not how I remember doing things "back in the day."
The first and only prerequisite to download GCam is that your smartphone should support the Camera2 API feature. Once this prerequisite is satisfied, you can move on to the next steps of installing GCam. So, let us check whether your phone is compatible or not. 2ff7e9595c
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