Hi All,
I have a two Relays that have served me well, and I enjoyed having them, but the time has come to pass them on to someone else. Before I do that, I'd like to update them to the most recent versions of stable-release software that is available for them.
For Cyanogen, I have:
cm-11-20150831 (this is stable)
cm-11-20160523 (this is a nightly build)
For recovery I have:
philz touch 6.48.4
I'd like to replace Philz with a newer TWRP, but the Relay is no longer listed on the TWRP website. I'm also wondering if there was ever a stable CM release newer than the one I have.
Does anyone have sources for the above?
Thanks.
Is there any one still developing for this device? If so, is it possible to get Android Go on it.. might just breathe new life into it and bring it upto date..
mrigancb said:
Is there any one still developing for this device? If so, is it possible to get Android Go on it.. might just breathe new life into it and bring it upto date..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although I'm not a developer I have been working on my SGH T699 from T Mobile. You may already know of the JellyBean and before. Recently I've noticed new builds for the samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G like the Validus 5.0.2 or the Fat Toad. I haven't tried those yet I was trying for a higher version. With 8.0 Oreo it requires partitioning and I need to brush up on that. So I went lower to the 7.0 or the 7.1 Nougat. I started noticing a lot of broken or old links so I had to resort to fishing the internet for most of the packages apparently lost in XDA. I pretty much have all of them and was just starting to try a few out when I ran into problems like I want to keep using the keyboard and Wifi calling or a related Wifi issue. It also crashed, went into bootloop or even soft bricked within a few days. The Roms and packages I've found are highly unstable and I see many had flashing issues. So far I've been tricking my device into taking the flash and even then it doesn't hold long. I'd like 6.0 MarshMallow if I can, maybe 7.1 if they ever get stabler that'd be great. But so far the ROMs for the Galaxy S (relay) are fairly horrible to say the least. I get the impression these so-called developers aren't testing their ROM creations more than 5 minutes and then handing them off to noobs who may be very likely to brick their device trying to get it in and running, only to have it crash repetedly! Or worse, hard-bricked.
I like this device. I think I'll keep working on it.
Casper Young.
As we all know there is a point during setup where you put in your google account and it asks to restore from a phone or start fresh. When I got to that part, there were no backups to restore from. I confirmed that my Essential Phone and my Pixel XL backup were still present on my drive. Then after the setup was complete, I noticed that there wasn't Android 8.1 on the Premium, despite having the April security update. Being impatient, I looked it up and I saw that 8.1 was available and out for OTA. Since I don't have a carrier-locked device, theoretically I could receive all updates as they roll out from Sony. I thought since my backups were from an 8.1 device, they were incompatible to downgrade to 8.0. Still being impatient, I looked over XDA and found that Unlocking the bootloader and loading a custom ROM would be fine, but that's where I ran into issues.
Half of the threads that supported G8412 (Dual Sim) were either edited to "working" or out-of-date or closed by a moderator (I downloaded the Turbo mod before it was deleted, and I only discovered it was deleted when I logged on to thank him).
TL;DR:
-Unlocked my bootloader, which turned out to be a terrible mistake on my part
-Cant seem to find a stable ROM (the flash-and-forget kind) that supports my model
-Apparently now the camera is broken and unusable on most ROMs?
-Can't migrate any of my data due to a (theoretical) Android 8.1/8.0 clash
Anything I am missing on the forum would be appreciated. I've looked at Storm's thread (closed), Turbo's thread (closed), Snappatch (DRM Fix required). It seems like a lot of ROMs that are still active require the DRM fix by Storm except for the Carbon ROM. So, any suggestions as to what to do going forward? Is there something I am missing?
(Edit: upon reading, this looked more like a blog post so I cut it down)
I'm personally using the official CarbonROM 8.1 on my G8142. Been running it for a few weeks and it's pretty stable.
Thunder_47 said:
As we all know there is a point during setup where you put in your google account and it asks to restore from a phone or start fresh. When I got to that part, there were no backups to restore from. I confirmed that my Essential Phone and my Pixel XL backup were still present on my drive. Then after the setup was complete, I noticed that there wasn't Android 8.1 on the Premium, despite having the April security update. Being impatient, I looked it up and I saw that 8.1 was available and out for OTA. Since I don't have a carrier-locked device, theoretically I could receive all updates as they roll out from Sony. I thought since my backups were from an 8.1 device, they were incompatible to downgrade to 8.0. Still being impatient, I looked over XDA and found that Unlocking the bootloader and loading a custom ROM would be fine, but that's where I ran into issues.
Half of the threads that supported G8412 (Dual Sim) were either edited to "working" or out-of-date or closed by a moderator (I downloaded the Turbo mod before it was deleted, and I only discovered it was deleted when I logged on to thank him).
TL;DR:
-Unlocked my bootloader, which turned out to be a terrible mistake on my part
-Cant seem to find a stable ROM (the flash-and-forget kind) that supports my model
-Apparently now the camera is broken and unusable on most ROMs?
-Can't migrate any of my data due to a (theoretical) Android 8.1/8.0 clash
Anything I am missing on the forum would be appreciated. I've looked at Storm's thread (closed), Turbo's thread (closed), Snappatch (DRM Fix required). It seems like a lot of ROMs that are still active require the DRM fix by Storm except for the Carbon ROM. So, any suggestions as to what to do going forward? Is there something I am missing?
(Edit: upon reading, this looked more like a blog post so I cut it down)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think turbo said he might bring it back he is just away right now(work)
also for camera you can go here https://forum.xda-developers.com/xz-premium/how-to/xz-premium-145-twrp-root-fix-t3783036 and download the drm fix.
blweldon2 said:
I'm personally using the official CarbonROM 8.1 on my G8142. Been running it for a few weeks and it's pretty stable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the CarbonROM require any upkeep? I see it says "Weeklys" in it's title, so for the uneducated, does that mean it is updated Weekly with new features/fixes?
raven213 said:
i think turbo said he might bring it back he is just away right now(work)
also for camera you can go here https://forum.xda-developers.com/xz-premium/how-to/xz-premium-145-twrp-root-fix-t3783036 and download the drm fix.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did get the firmware that is .145, and I do have a DRM fix currently, however I do not remember where I got it from. I wish Turbo the best of luck in bringing back his work and collab with that other guy.
Update
After a bit of research, I did find that getting the 8.1 Carbon Rom with the AOSP upgrade below would be best. As seems like the current trend where some users report successes and others report failures and there really isn't an "in-between" of a particular combination, this one seems to have the most credibility as of May 8. Carbon Rom's thread hasn't been active for about a month, however and the author behind the Snappatch upgrades seems to have left XDA..
Any other users that have Android 8.1 have anything else to say/suggest?
Carbon Rom:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xz-premium/development/8-1-x-carbonrom-cr-6-1-t3771540
AOSP Upgrade (Snappatch)
https://forum.xda-developers.com/crossdevice-dev/sony/pom-snappatch-xperia-aosp-t3777322
blweldon2 said:
I'm personally using the official CarbonROM 8.1 on my G8142. Been running it for a few weeks and it's pretty stable.
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How did you do to flash it when I do it it's stock at Sony logo
SilverGamer_YT said:
How did you do to flash it when I do it it's stock at Sony logo
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Click to collapse
Make sure you flash the AOSP userdata image. Can obtain it by compiling from source or grabbing it from one of the AOSP roms compiled from source. Just flash it in fastboot and then flash the rom in TWRP. Only need to flash userdata once.
By all means, read @Neffy27 's FAQ if you are starting out. even as a refresher for stuff you may have forgotten.
-But do think a bit about what you are doing:
-Do not modify your phone unless you are willing to toss it into the trash, as that could well be the result, no matter how well planned.
-Always have a spare on hand. I used my old Moto G3 when my MZP died suddenly. Worked just fine. You know, things really haven't changed all that much since Gingerbread...
-If you are going to be getting the latest OTA stuff by doing a full flash you might want to reflect on just how much, or little, you would gain. We all like to think that if we have the latest security patch we are somehow more safe, though I don't believe I have ever heard of a phone being affected by something just because it is not on the latest patch. I was running my old Moto z play on an aug '18 (if I remember correctly) patch with no problems up until a few weeks ago when it was done in by an expanding battery envelope which cracked the display. Consider, also, that many of the custom roms that are available are not updated at all - it takes a ton of work to try to get/keep a custom ROM current, AND working! Yet you never hear of viruses or the like.
- Be aware that if you modify ANYTHING on your phone, even as little as a new boot logo to cover up the unlocked bootloader message, you will prevent your phone from taking any further OTA updates. Some mods, like adding TWRP, may still allow it to try to download and install an OTA, but when it reboots to finish that install, it will fail since it needs to re-boot through stock recovery to complete. And it will continue offering you that update.
- There is a difference between the partition structure in our phones on 8.x, and those on 9. 9 is not full Treble, only a "partial" Treble, and really only the addition of a second set of partitions which OTA updates can use to update the system - instead of modifying the single partition set, it modifies the other (a or b) set and boots to that on update completion. If it fails it can always boot the other set. Theoretically! Makes it safer than the old way of doing OTA updates, but this may cause problems if you try to flash a 2 partition set phone with a single partition set ROM. I don't believe anyone has run any experiments on this, so YOU, when you flash things without thinking about the situation, may get an unusable phone. I do not know the answer here. If you read these forums which detail other's problems, you may trod a bit more hesitantly!
-The idea here is to have fun, and sometimes to experiment with new things. To a newbie, losing the use of a $200 phone can be a tough life lesson. Let's help them out by helping them to be cautious!
Agreed. I've been running stock with January 2018 patch, TWRP installed and Magisk for root and successful safety net bypass.
I'm looking to see if running Lineage will help streamline any update processes. It looks like they have their own recovery too.
Maintaining root has become a pain in my ass the past few years.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
SR3TLAW said:
Agreed. I've been running stock with January 2018 patch, TWRP installed and Magisk for root and successful safety net bypass.
I'm looking to see if running Lineage will help streamline any update processes. It looks like they have their own recovery too.
Maintaining root has become a pain in my ass the past few years.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would be careful about lineage as folks don't seem to be able to get back to stock from it.
I agree about maintaining root. I will likely just stay on stock with this one.
Not sure if this really should be going to the noob friendly thread, but since it is a couple of questions covering various Android related issues, I figured that I will make it a separate thread after all.
1. Sometime updating an Android version would also end up updating the bootloader, at time rendering it impossible to downgrade again. Can this also happen in custom ROM (e.g. Lineage). I am asking this because I am thinking of custom ROM with newer Android version on my Galaxy S7, but may want to revert to a relatively old Android 7.0 after I am done testing.
2. Do file systems (the way application, application data are stored in the system and other information) etc. tend to stay the same as stock for a given Android version? For example between stock Android 7.1 and Lineage 14.1.
3. Same question as question 2., but between major Android versions (e.g. stock 7.1 and stock 8.0).
4. On rooted devices, can you usually update major version update without losing any data, and is it usually trouble free?
Feel free to skip reading this part, but for some background information, the reason I am asking all those questions is because one of the app I tried to restore via Titanium Backup and Swift Backup both failed. The application itself launches properly, but as soon as I restore the data, it would instantly crash and close. My guess is that this is probably caused by attempt to go from Android 6.0 to 11.0. Maybe it is the backup software or maybe something changed in the way files are stored, but whatever the reason, it just won't work.
So I am thinking that my best option is to try it to restore it on an Android 7.0 phone that I have (also on the way to be retired, and if it works, update to Android 8.0. Since Android 8.0 was the last officially released major version for that phone, and I was thinking that if it does work, perhaps I could alternatively go for an early Lineage ROM, then make gradual updates up to Android 11.0 and see if it helps the app remain unbroken. And then if it does work, perhaps I could then make a backup then restore it on the other new Android 11.0 phone that I have.
All in all, it is a silly amount of work to do just for one app.. but it is important to me, so I will exhaust every option that I can think of to find a solution.
Thanks!
First of all. I have a Poco X3 Pro with 8GB RAM and 256GB Storage. MIUI is v12.5.2.0 (RJUEUXM). Model says M2102J20SG. I Have bought my phone 8 months ago and yesterday I decided to unlock it, mistakenly thinking that would let me disable the Xiaomi apps I do not like.
TL; DR:
1) Can I root my phone with stock rom?
2) Can I disable Xiaomi apps on stock rom if I root it?
3) Any suggestions for me with priority on stability over performance?
I have not been involved in rooting a phone in many years. The last android phone I had and rooted was a ZTE Blade and I mean the first Blade, which was like over a decade ago. After that I did a mistake to go on iPhone and then on an LG G6, that never made me feel like I needed to root it honestly.
The main reason I want to root my phone is to debloat it safely, removing/freezing/disabling quite a lot of Xiaomi's extra software, that I just do not want on my phone. MIUI seems quite enjoyable to me, although I have to admit, due to how I am worried that updating it will make my phone more sluggy and will affect battery life, I have yet to ever update it, still being on version 12.5.2.0.
I honestly would not mind to use a custom rom, but my preference is always stability over performance, except if that would offer me extra battery life and the current MIUI's battery life is beyond excellent in my experience, but maybe because LG G6's battery life was never that good since the day I bought it. I am definitely open to suggestions, about the course of action you people think I should take.
You can use adb commands to disable apps, but speaking from experience, you can only disable so much before things start to break, and some of the most annoying things (to me) cannot be disabled without breaking something. Also, when you update the system, all disabled things will most likely re-enable and you have to do the whole process all over again.
If you like MIUI, uninstall apps that can be uninstalled normally and use it as it is, or (and I highly recommend it) install custom ROM. If you want stability, ArrowOS or Crdroid is what you should take a look at. ArrowOS comes with gapps, while Crdroid offers tons of customization and comes as Vanilla (you can flash gapps seperately, if you want).
You sure can root your phone with stock Miui. However, you need to unlock the bootloader, first. It implies loosing all your current data. After that is done, I see no point in running stock miui, I'd go for xiaomi.eu's stable or any of the AOSP roms currently available.
I'm currently running latest crDRoid, which I'm quite enjoying. It's based of LineageOS with added tweaks and is shipped without gapps - you must installed after flashing the ROM.
Make sure you understand the process:
1. Unlock bootloader - you must wait for the 7 days to do so.
2. Flash a recovery. I suggest looking for a beta of a recovery that supports Android 12 decryption, try Nebrassy's TWRP
3. Flash your preferred ROM
4. Root it with Magisk+useful modules: safetynetfix, gms doze, etc.
Enjoy.
- Regards,
Popletenec said:
You can use adb commands to disable apps, but speaking from experience, you can only disable so much before things start to break, and some of the most annoying things (to me) cannot be disabled without breaking something. Also, when you update the system, all disabled things will most likely re-enable and you have to do the whole process all over again.
If you like MIUI, uninstall apps that can be uninstalled normally and use it as it is, or (and I highly recommend it) install custom ROM. If you want stability, ArrowOS or Crdroid is what you should take a look at. ArrowOS comes with gapps, while Crdroid offers tons of customization and comes as Vanilla (you can flash gapps seperately, if you want).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, adb commands is something I definitely do not want to do. I want the system to allow me to actually disable something, without any sort of "brute forcing", mostly cause like you mentioned, I am worried of breaking things. I do not per se dislike google apps, but honestly if I can have as less as possible, it would be better for me. I will look into both the custom roms you mentioned, thank you =)
aurocha said:
You sure can root your phone with stock Miui. However, you need to unlock the bootloader, first. It implies loosing all your current data. After that is done, I see no point in running stock miui, I'd go for xiaomi.eu's stable or any of the AOSP roms currently available.
I'm currently running latest crDRoid, which I'm quite enjoying. It's based of LineageOS with added tweaks and is shipped without gapps - you must installed after flashing the ROM.
Make sure you understand the process:
1. Unlock bootloader - you must wait for the 7 days to do so.
2. Flash a recovery. I suggest looking for a beta of a recovery that supports Android 12 decryption, try Nebrassy's TWRP
3. Flash your preferred ROM
4. Root it with Magisk+useful modules: safetynetfix, gms doze, etc.
Enjoy.
- Regards,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I unlocked the bootloader just yesterday, so I am done with the first part. I will definitely be checking crDroid, since it seems I can't get rid of MIUI what annoys me the most, which is it's bloatware. I guess since you guys mention to try a custom rom, I should give it a try at least, since i went ahead and unlocked the bootloader anyway. Thank you for the suggestion!
Popletenec said:
Also, when you update the system, all disabled things will most likely re-enable and you have to do the whole process all over again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you uninstall them via ADB on the active user profile they will stay uninstalled even after an update. I did so with 12.5.5 and upgraded to 13.0.1 a while back and they stayed uninstalled.
weltall2 said:
No, adb commands is something I definitely do not want to do. I want the system to allow me to actually disable something, without any sort of "brute forcing", mostly cause like you mentioned, I am worried of breaking things. I do not per se dislike google apps, but honestly if I can have as less as possible, it would be better for me. I will look into both the custom roms you mentioned, thank you =)
I unlocked the bootloader just yesterday, so I am done with the first part. I will definitely be checking crDroid, since it seems I can't get rid of MIUI what annoys me the most, which is it's bloatware. I guess since you guys mention to try a custom rom, I should give it a try at least, since i went ahead and unlocked the bootloader anyway. Thank you for the suggestion!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could also try XiaomiEU rom, which is basically what you want: debloated MIUI. But to have true control over the apps and features you want, rom like Crdroid is the way to go.
Oh I have seen Xiaomi EU mentioned a lot, but I kept thinking it was just the European stock roms. I just looked it up thanks to you and it indeed looks exactly like what I was asking for. I wanted to stay on MIUI cause I really worry that if it is not vanilla, it might cause problems and most importantly battery life ones.
I probably will be trying to go for crDroid, but for now I am worried I might make a mistake. I would hate it if I ended up bricking my phone, since I love Poco X3 Pro.
weltall2 said:
Oh I have seen Xiaomi EU mentioned a lot, but I kept thinking it was just the European stock roms. I just looked it up thanks to you and it indeed looks exactly like what I was asking for. I wanted to stay on MIUI cause I really worry that if it is not vanilla, it might cause problems and most importantly battery life ones.
I probably will be trying to go for crDroid, but for now I am worried I might make a mistake. I would hate it if I ended up bricking my phone, since I love Poco X3 Pro.
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Click to collapse
Don't worry, you won't brick your phone if you just follow instructions, even then, you would have to do some crazy **** to hard brick your phone, most likely you will just end up with bootloop, which is always fixable by just reflashing the rom.
Read carefully and everything will be fine. I am on ArrowOS since I got the phone, updating regularly, rooting, using magisk modules, zero problems so far. Most of the time, battery life is better since useless bloat won't drain it so much.
Purely for battery life reasons I would personally never suggest switching to a custom rom from MIUI, because with a few ADB commands you can get rid of most of the "useless" bloat. However, if you are concerned about your privacy and don't want to feed Xiaomi with your data, then Lineage would be a good choice as an alternative OS, since at least the official versions are heavily regulated.
The battery life of a debloated MIUI is fantastic, at least in my case.
Ok, this will probably be a bit of a dumb and final question before I jump into the whole custom rome in the next days when I have time. I have seen a lot of times people mentioning TWRP or in general recovery that should be android 12 compatible, rather than the normal v11 provided in the twrp site. crDroid even seems to offer it's own recovery for it's latest android 12.1 version. I am still on Android 11 (MIUI 12.5.2.0). Does that mean I need to first update my phone to the latest MIUI to upgrade my software to android 12, or the recovery is backwards compatible?
I would definitely update to latest stock rom, then flash recovery and install ROM.
Hi!! I'm on the same situation here, coming from a Poco 1 (which is being really hard to let go) to a Poco x3 Pro so this thread is being really useful to me cause I'm basically on the same dilemma, stock vs custom?
I always used custom but when I bought my Poco 1 there was an automated script that unbloated the phone so I did that and stayed with the stock with no issues at all in this 3 years of use.
Now, for the poco x3, the only way of doing the same is by going app by app and removing it through ADB which, as you mentioned, is not that good if you are not sure what to remove so that made me think of going to a custom rom. I mean, I just installed it and all that xiaomi junk is removed.
What I didn't know is that the EU version was debloated so that could be a good option for me but, here's my questionk besides de bloated apps, which is the diference between EU and Global roms? Are they target for the same version of the phone or I could have like NFC disable or radio issues? Cause I though there were different version of the stock roms cause the hardware was diferent between devices.
Popletenec said:
I would definitely update to latest stock rom, then flash recovery and install ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, first I am going to let the updater do it's job finally and then the rest. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
zorak20 said:
What I didn't know is that the EU version was debloated so that could be a good option for me but, here's my questionk besides de bloated apps, which is the diference between EU and Global roms? Are they target for the same version of the phone or I could have like NFC disable or radio issues? Cause I though there were different version of the stock roms cause the hardware was diferent between devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to point out, Xiaomi EU is in a way a custom rom. The Xiaomi.EU community taken the Chinese rom, that has less bloat and more features, translating it and sharing it to people. Just because it it called debloated, that does not mean it does not come with the same Xiaomi Apps. It is still MIUI and that means some Xiaomi apps will still be impossible to disable and also apps like the Xiaomi Security that will softbrick your phone if disabled, still is needed and will cause the same thing in the Xiaomi.EU rom.
It is the main reason I am thinking of trying crDroid, or else like you said, I would not mind just a debloated stock rom, since afar from all the needed Xiaomi apps, MIUI seems quite enjoyable to me. If you check their forums though, you will see even the Xiaomi.EU has it's own problems.
weltall2 said:
Ok, first I am going to let the updater do it's job finally and then the rest. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Just to point out, Xiaomi EU is in a way a custom rom. The Xiaomi.EU community taken the Chinese rom, that has less bloat and more features, translating it and sharing it to people. Just because it it called debloated, that does not mean it does not come with the same Xiaomi Apps. It is still MIUI and that means some Xiaomi apps will still be impossible to disable and also apps like the Xiaomi Security that will softbrick your phone if disabled, still is needed and will cause the same thing in the Xiaomi.EU rom.
It is the main reason I am thinking of trying crDroid, or else like you said, I would not mind just a debloated stock rom, since afar from all the needed Xiaomi apps, MIUI seems quite enjoyable to me. If you check their forums though, you will see even the Xiaomi.EU has it's own problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ohhhh I see! I think I'll try crDroid too and Arrow, as long as it's debloated, the IR works as long with the radio and the nfc, I'm happy.