How To Flash a Custom ROM on your Device

There are like number of ROMs available on XDA for almost every device. Before flashing any ROM do read its reviews first, there might be bugs too. Also there have been cases when user’s phone doesn’t performs well in that case they need to flash the stock ROM again. So this guide would be a great help to them.

What is a Custom ROM?

Well in simple language a custom ROM is an aftermarket firmware which is a standalone OS and includes everything as in the stock firmware however it’s customized in someway.

Why do you need a Custom ROM – A Custom ROM provides better features, more frequent updates and bug fixes and also in cases of some device you can even upgrade to a new version of Android which you may not if you are running on the Stock ROM made by the manufacturer.

Where can I find a Custom ROM – You can find custom ROMs available for your device by just simply Googling up or you can check on XDA Developers forum if any ROM is available for your device or not.

Some Precautions:- Here are some precautions that you must take before installing a Custom ROM.

1.  Backup your data:- The first thing you need to do is to backup your apps, contacts and other important data before installing a custom ROM. You can backup it using custom recovery.

2.  Ensure a decent battery level:- Ensure that you must be on a 75% + battery before installing a ROM, because if during the process your phone turn off due to lack of battery it may brick.

3.  Enable USB Debugging:- Sometimes if due to an unfortunate reason you end up bricking your device, you can recover it if you have enabled USB debugging as most of recovery methods require it. To turn it on follow: Settings–>About phone–>tap the build number 4-5 times and that will enable Developer Settings in case it is not present by default and then enable it inside it.  Settings–>Developer options–>Enable USB Debugging.

 How to install a Custom ROM on Your Device? 

1.  Install a Custom Recovery: Next thing you require after Rooting your device is a custom recovery image. All android devices have  a recovery partition, in simple word a recovery is used by manufacturers to recover a broken device (system crashes, device bricked etc). So you need to install a custom recovery because the default recovery is not capable of flashing a ROM. There are many recoveries like CWM, TWRP etc. SO search up recovery for your device and install it. To install Custom Recovery follow this instructions here.

3)Installing a Custom ROM:- Now that you have installed a custom recovery, you can flash a Custom ROM on your device. Thanks to the developers that we have a variety of Custom ROMs to choose from. So select a ROM you want to flash.

1. Download and copy the ROM file as it is to your phone that is if it is a .zip file, copy the whole file and don’t extract it.
2. Boot into recovery, usually there are different key-combinations for different devices so follow the one for your device and boot up. (Volume up+Volume down+Power key).
3. When you have booted into recovery, you can use the volume buttons to navigate and power button to select.
4. Select Backup and restore and backup your device by confirming it using the power button.
5. Wait for it to finish and then select Wipe data/Factory reset and then select Wipe cache and wait for them to complete.
6. Select install zip from SD card and choose the from zip you copied and install.
7. Wait for it to install up and then reboot to system and you will be running the new ROM.
8. Some custom ROM may want you to also install Gapps and here is the link to download and carefully to choose it.

If you still have any problems comment below.

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