[ziggyland]

Hello,

I have a question regarding using kernels on this phone. I was planning to run the "Franco's Kernel" on the nexus 4 to see if it improved battery life; but not sure if it requires rooting the phone first?
I see that I can download Franco's kernel updater from the google apps store, so do I just run it from there and it should be fine?

Thanks in advance.
P.S. If anyone has experience doing this or know a forum post that explains some steps, please link here. Really appreciated as I am new to smartphones.

[Rizy7]

Yes you need root to flash a custom kernel. If you read the app description it also says you need root. Visit the rooting, rom and hacks section on a step by step guide on how to root your device. A lot of reading is recommended. You can either choose to do it manually or through a toolkit. This is a guideline on the actions you will perform to manually root and flash the kernel:

1. Download drivers and sdk
2. Download a recovery image
3. Boot into fasboot and unlock the bootloader
4. Temporarily or permanently flash the custom recovery
5. Flash supersu zip through recovery to gain root access
6. Use franco's app to download and flash custom kernel or flash kernel through recovery

[ziggyland]

Yes you need root to flash a custom kernel. If you read the app description it also says you need root. Visit the rooting, rom and hacks section on a step by step guide on how to root your device. A lot of reading is recommended. You can either choose to do it manually or through a toolkit. This is a guideline on the actions you will perform to manually root and flash the kernel:

1. Download drivers and sdk
2. Download a recovery image
3. Boot into fasboot and unlock the bootloader
4. Temporarily or permanently flash the custom recovery
5. Flash supersu zip through recovery to gain root access
6. Use franco's app to download and flash custom kernel or flash kernel through recovery

Thanks, I'll read more about it .