Phones and custom ROMs

its been long since the days of flashing my samsung galaxy 1 almost every days with roms.....

now I have a 1+ 6, which I love very much and would not like it getting hurt :slight_smile:

what are the best solutions out there ? lineage ? graphene or what its called? just keep it 1+ android ?

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I think DuckDuckGo is great, and good on them for continuing to fight the good fight even though every time you turn around someone is trying to drag their name through the mud.

I do not use their search engine much anymore, because I just feel like the results are not as relevant as what I get from Whoogle. Any search engine based on Bing is bound to be kind of crappy.

I do use their Email Protection service, and it’s awesome. Pretty much all companies imbed trackers in their emails these days–even companies you wouldn’t suspect–so I really appreciate that service.

I have also been using their App Tracking Protection for a while now, although it has been silent for the past few months because now I just uninstall apps that are trying to track me instead of just letting the tracking attempts get blocked.

I also use their Android browser for certain things. I think Vivaldi is better, but it is good and I appreciate the privacy features.

I don’t know if it is the best or not, but I’ve been using Lineage for the past few months and I like it. It’s very familiar since it shares a common base with Android, but my phone is blazing fast now without Google services constantly chatting in the background.

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Oh I miss the days of cyanogen roms and being able to root and unlock anything. Vanilla AOSP on anything was so nice. Lineage is great if you want something that works with all google services yet you still have control over the phone. CalyxOS and GrapheneOS are the best for privacy just might break google services.

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GrapheneOS are nitpicky about device support , they hate Pixel ROM but like Pixel hardware
I mean wtf

Using the Pinephone Braveheart edition, lots of OS's are quite sluggish. My favorite thus far is UBPorts, which is actually pretty fast.

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Easy to root a pixel. I was thinking about that. Everyone hates google now, but still likes the hardware. I miss the days of no phones with super locked boot loaders. You could unlock anything so easy.

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I used to build ROMs on Samsung phones haha. Always hated tripping Knox but their software at the time was so bloated and laggy so I made some crappy aosp rom but had to use some weird hacks for audio etc. I don't recommend Samsung phones especially if you root tbh. Currently using an OP7 pro but wanna get a pixel in the future

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I like samsung just a good phone rooted or not. I recall cyanogen before they became one plus. I was so hoping they would have not shit the bed. I am still thinking either a pixel 6 or one plus... I just loved my nexus. The nexus made by LG. Never made roms though. I used to make my own windows debloated and all the software auto installed.

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Be careful you boys don't influence someone to root--and brick--some handy, dandy device.

It's possible. I know that as a fact. :sob:

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I find it hard to imagine someone hardbricking a device if I'm being honest. I know it's possible but the amount of stupid crap I've done with even installing different bootloaders and firmware and only having a softbrick easily fixable with something like ADB and fastboot is surprising to me. Anyway it's generally safe nowadays as long as you're not an idiot and follow guides

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I hard bricked a motorola one time and was able to ADB and get it back. It was always a chance to do and was a risk. I was always like, hold my beer. I had to have rooted phones until now.

If you can recover it then I think that's called a softbrick right? A hardbrick from my understanding means it's unrecoverable essentially with software and needs replacing or throwing away etc. And I always gotta unlock my phone because I don't like OOS. Currently running KOSP on my phone and have magisk so I can have Ainur Narsil as better audio. Pretty happy with it as nowadays we have OTA and A/B allows easy rebooting to apply updates and installing magisk to inactive slot. Used to be a lot more complicated and more of a hassle than nowadays so that's all good haha. Definitely not like the olden days of Cyanogen or whatever. I don't even use Twrp anymore because no need. Plus it doesn't support Android 12 properly anyway with encryption. Anyway I'm rambling :sweat_smile:

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Oh man TWRP was so good. You are telling me it's easier now? You never want a hardbrick. I believe you had to have hardware only the manufacture would have to fix that.

Well all you really need to do to flash a ROM especially nowadays on a phone like mine is to fastboot sideload the rom and it will extract and install the different image files and a custom recovery that isn't twrp just for the purposes of management and switching filesystem. So I just wipe my phone and sideload the rom via fastboot and boot to recovery and format to f2fs and then boot into the rom and that's basically it. From there you download magisk and patch the boot image to then sideload via fastboot and updates happen via the OTA updater within system settings and you just let it do it's thing and when you're done you reboot if no magisk or open magisk and install to inactive slot. It's seriously as simple as wipe, sideload ROM, boot, patch boot image with magisk and flash that and boot and you're on a custom ROM with root. Used to be annoying in the past imo compared to now although some people for whatever reason hate A/B partitions. I like it due to easy application of updates as rebooting will switch you to the slot where the update was applied (using slot a but update on slot b and at reboot switch you from slot a to slot b with the update meaning no waiting for it to apply) and also means if something screw's up on the OTA then simply boot to recovery and switch slot's and then you basically have an old working build on slot a for example and a broken install on slot b for example if anything happened to go wrong. That's why I like modern ROMs and rooting.

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I thought it was super easy before also. I loved twrp. I really do miss that super stock AOSP look and feel.

Yeah it definitely was pretty easy before. Case of installing twrp and downloading then flashing the rom zip file. But nowadays it's more about fastboot which I like because of the problems twrp has with new android releases and lack of support for encryption often. Old method required a PC for twrp and then recovery for updates but now we can simply update after installing via system settings like an OEM ROM without the need of a custom recovery which makes things easier and just more convenient as ROM developers often had to work around twrp in order for it to actually work. I'm speaking from experience btw and as much as I love Twrp, it's better that it's gone in favour of fastboot for installing the ROM imo as Twrp is not needed for installing or updating the ROM. And it isn't needed for root and for kernels we have apps that can install kernels when you have root. Only thing I like about twrp that I miss is the file manager for that occasional use but I can live without it for all the benefits I feel we have gained on Android 12 without Twrp support

I do recall you could DL an app and root at one point. I have not rooted or unlocked a phone since 2015.

I loved titanium backup to restore all apps and the settings.

In terms of simply rooting via an app there were sketchy unofficial method's via exploits I used to do. But that way you are supposed to do it now is to copy the boot image from the custom ROM to your phone and download the magisk app. And you select to patch a file and you select it and it will then output a magisk patched boot image which you simply fastboot flash. And then you have root on the rom you're on. Pretty simple process. Or you can even just get a prepatched boot image during the installation process or a magisk zip file to flash via adb sideload. I think there's more options for many things nowadays which is nice.

Yeah titanium backup was the best back then. It's definitely not the standard though anymore as it was surpassed by an app called Swift Backup. It's much faster and works better with less error's and issues. Been using it since my Nexus 6P I would say

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