Do you customize your phone?

[B12]

I'm really not sure where to ask this 😂

I know the general idea of customizing a phone is changing icon packages, changing fonts, adding widgets (who does this? I know no one), and making your home screens look whatever way that strikes your fancy.

I am not talking about any of that here, at least not directly. No, nay. 😂 I am wondering if anyone here roots their phone and puts a custom ROM on their phone and what they think of it.

[CFPartDeux]

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@gpixel wrote:

@CFPartDeux  another thing is, not everything works on modded ROMs. which isn't a huge deal breaker unless it's a feature that I use daily.

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Yes, while poking around, and reading about various ROMs for various phones, it often seems to be a case of x, y, or z app/feature doesn't work..... I've seen things like the Google Play Store doesn't work right, so you have to jump through hoops to enable it, or the camera app on the ROM either sucks, or doesn't work at all, or the WiFi on certain phone/ROM combinations is flaky, etc., etc. That's why, as I mentioned much earlier, that a lot of reading, before flashing a custom ROM, is a very good idea. 👍

[gpixel]

@CFPartDeux I like photography, that's one of the biggest reasons I have a pixel. but if the camera had no influence in my decision, I would settle for an older phone. another thing is, not everything works on modded ROMs. which isn't a huge deal breaker unless it's a feature that I use daily.

[CFPartDeux]

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@gpixel wrote:

@CFPartDeux you're right there are ROMs only for the international version.

IIRC, there ARE Lineage ROMs for the Canadian S3, but you have to dig around for one that's 1 or 2 versions older. 🤔

it's pretty amazing, they have a ROM for Android 10

[ROM][UNOFFICIAL][10.0.0] LineageOS 17.1 [ALPHA][8.02.2020]

That's just it - A LOT of older phones apparently have enough horsepower to run some of the newer versions of Android, but none of the manufacturers want to support old hardware..... they'd rather sell you a new phone, just so you can run the latest and greatest OS and many apps that require newish versions of the OS.

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[gpixel]

@CFPartDeux you're right there are ROMs only for the international version.

it's pretty amazing, they have a ROM for Android 10

[ROM][UNOFFICIAL][10.0.0] LineageOS 17.1 [ALPHA][8.02.2020]

[CFPartDeux]

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@gpixel wrote:

@CFPartDeux it seems people have been able to run lineage os 14.1 on the S3. which is nougat! I don't know how stable the ROM is, but that would be a nice little upgrade for that phone. 

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Yeah, I looked into Lineage, and while I don't recall version numbers off the top of my head, ISTR that the most recent version of Lineage, that runs on some variants of the S3, doesn't have a ROM available for the Canadian version of the S3, so a previous version would have to be used. 🤔

[gpixel]

@CFPartDeux it seems people have been able to run lineage os 14.1 on the S3. which is nougat! I don't know how stable the ROM is, but that would be a nice little upgrade for that phone. 

[CFPartDeux]

@gpixel 

🤣Give me time.... I'll get to it eventually(got LOTS of other things that take priority). I have previously looked, to see what ROMs might be available for that phone, and while some do exist, the better/newer ones seem to be available for other variants of the phone. 😞

[gpixel]

@CFPartDeux 

[CFPartDeux]

I put a custom ROM on my wife's old(no longer being used at that point) Samsung Galaxy Ace, which, if I recall the version numbers, bumped Android from, I THINK 2.3(or somewhere around there), up to 4.4.4. I did it just as an experiment, to see how it's done, but you have to be pretty careful when doing this kind of thing, because there are so many variants of what seem to be the same model of phone, and the folks that create the ROMs are often targeting only certain variants, such that you could potentially brick the phone by flashing the wrong ROM for your particular variant of that model.

I'd definitely recommend doing a fair bit of reading on the 'net before ever doing such a thing.

Having said that, now that I have a new phone, I'm thinkin' of flashing some other ROM on my old Samsung S3, just to see what the results might be.

[Triguy]

If your phone is still under warranty then I wouldn't recommend doing as it would void your warranty.  You need to be familiar about how to do it or you could damage your OS.

[will13am]

I will keep the discussion brief.  I used to root 100% of my phones to ensure a steady stream of software updates.  In recent times, I have backed off a bit as OEMs are starting to include software support.  Nova launcher is the go to app to customize the phone.

[gpixel]

@B12 this most likely belongs in the lounge

I used to root my phone back when I had the legendary nexus 5! best phone ever made! I think I flashed all the way to nougat.

one of the biggest issues with flashing custom ROMs is you don't know what the developer put in their software. you need to trust that you aren't being keylogged, or private data being downloaded from your phone.. what rooting does is it's essentially giving the user admin permissions. 

as fun as it was in the past, I wouldn't do it today. id rather stick to giving my info to big brother.

what about you? what phone do you currently have and do you install custom roms?