Your device might be cool, it might spot the latest and greatest hardware anyone could ever hoped for in a single tiny device, but everyone know that if a great hardware if paired with a bad software, it would pretty much sums up to a bad experience.
There’s plenty (emphasis on plenty itself) of ways you could turn the table around and turn this crappy ROM of your phone into a more tolerable and reliable system that you could at least navigate and manage to move around a little bit (and not stuck in a freezing screen for about an hour). The easier way would be just to modify the system itself, with tweaks and modifications becoming more and more of a widespread thing, this might be your preferred choice, since it’s easy and well, it pose less risk than literally dumping a whole modified ROM to your device.
However, if that is also not your thing and you prefer something a little bit more, your choice would end up in flashing ROM, preferably an optimized (or as they said, “boosted”) ROM that is either trimmed out of its bloatware or just generally built for satisfying speed and user operation in mind.
So, how are you going to get this ROM installed ? Of course, phone is not as modifiable as a PC does, you can’t access the higher-level BIOS / UEFI firmware settings and spin up some disk to install a new operating system, but thanks to Android, you wouldn’t need a spare CD to install a new ROM. What you might need is some courage and some bits of patience.
This guide is written in generalization in mind, I’m trying to avoid as many device specific steps as possible to avoid unnecessary Googling in your side. Without further ado, let’s start the guide.
1. Check your device software development
A device that has been released for some time might have a better chance of having a somewhat active software development, or if the device is a flagship (top of the line device) such as a Galaxy S series phone (SIII, S4, S5, S6, and so on) would have an increased chance of having an active development since they tend to peak out more attention for developers to come and develop for the device.
However, there’s some exception to this, for example, a Nexus device (especially a newer, more recent Nexus device) would have a guaranteed development since they are meant to be the device for developers, made for development in mind. Some device also started following this by opening up the code needed to have ROM developed for the device, some notable examples would be the Moto lineup (not all of them, however).
A good source to check for availability of existing development for your device would be on the device specific forums on site such as XDA-Developers forum, or fan pages on Facebook, there’s many source for this and most of them are scattered around the net for you to find them.
2. (If needed) unlock the bootloader !
Bootloader is, as the name implies, a mechanism that tells the device what should be loaded upon boot. Some device have an unlocked bootloader mostly because the OEM doesn’t care about it, but if you’re using flagship device, the chance of it being unlocked by default slim to none (unless you buy a developer-tailored edition of the flagship themselves), and the way to unlock it varies between devices. Most device like the Xperia Z lineup requires an official unlock code from the manufacturer themselves, and other devices like Nexus would only need a simple two line command to make everything worked out.
You might need the device specific guide to unlock the bootloader, so you should be Googling out how to do this one real quick before you progress forward.
3. Root the system
Yes, this should be mandatory before you begin, but I’m just mentioning it as the third step here. Unlike unlocking bootloader, root could be a little less device specific and more universal, since what root modifies is the Android system itself, which is pretty much what you’re using if you have an Android phone.
Some device would take more steps to root, and some would require a lot less, and the others have root bundled by default on their phone. Depending on your situation and current device, you will spend some time rooting your phone and admiring at how great your device would be after it is rooted.
4. Custom recovery aboard !
Your phone have an emergency-use tool called ‘System recovery’, which is mostly hidden since it requires some tricky way before you could enter the recovery itself. Now, the stock built-in recovery is practically useless, it wasn’t meant for device modification purposes. Since the development of Android modification has gone way above, we now have these modified version of recovery, custom recovery as we call it. These custom recovery is again, made specifically for your device (you can’t flash other phone recovery unless some trustworthy developer says otherwise). Since they’re device specific, some step to install them may be longer for your device, or even shorter for some.
A famously known custom recovery is TWRP (a short for TeamWin Recovery Project), the other well-known custom recovery is CWM (ClockworkMod Recovery), these two mostly be your dominant choice, but if there’s neither of these the developers for your current device might provide another type of custom recovery.
5. Backup for regret-free flashing
Before you start anything, backup. This should be something you learn before doing everything, backup your precious data. Recoveries like TWRP and CWM provides a hassle-free backup system, complete with encryption and compression in case you need them. What you would need to backup is system, kernel, and data since these are crucial in case the ROM you’re going to flash are unstable and risky.
6. Wipe everything
By everything, I mean your system and data (no, not sdcard and internal storage, I mean data such as apps), most custom recovery has a “Wipe” function that would enables you to clean up system and data, this is necessary because the ROM you’re installing might be incompatible with the data you’re having right now (anything in the internal / external storage is fine), and might cause a chaotic bootloop.
7. Flash them all !
Now, you shall flash the ROM you have been waiting to use, use the “Install ZIP” or “Install” function to continue and flash the zip file you saved on your internal or external storage. If your device requires some additional zip to be flashed, you should do so right now, since we’re finishing everything up.
Finally, Reboot
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