Taking the plunge

[TheDonJ77]

I have decided to root. I got my nexus for the pure android experience and the ability to root. I am new to this but have done plenty of reading and video watching and I'm ready.
I want a good stable rom with little to no bugs that is close to stock but offers usable features/functionality. I have been looking at the rasbeanjelly ROM. Are any of you familiar? What are the Roms I should check and or stay away from? Any suggestions/links are appreciated.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Rizy7]

Roms are based on opinion so there is no real answer for the best rom. The three main ones I would try are PA, AOKP and CM, most other roms are usually based of these three roms.

 

[TheDonJ77]

OK. Thanks for the response.

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[greydarrah]

AOKP is probably the most supported ROM out there. Try it, then make a nandroid backup of it after you used it for a few days, then try another (maybe CM...the other heavily supported ROM). As long as you have a nandroid backup, you can flash a new ROM and if you don't like it, you can get back to the one you were on in a few minutes time.

Before you flash any ROM, you should make a nandroid of your stock ROM. Then you can easily get back to stock if you ever need/want to.

 

[Tronstar]

I'm really liking AOKP. Has all the options I wanted and was easy to navigate. I found PA hard to fine the settings I wanted to change and didn't like the PIE.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Yeah I wasn't too keen on the pie either from the videos of PA but I was still going to possibly look into it.

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[TheDonJ77]

AOKP is probably the most supported ROM out there. Try it, then make a nandroid backup of it after you used it for a few days, then try another (maybe CM...the other heavily supported ROM). As long as you have a nandroid backup, you can flash a new ROM and if you don't like it, you can get back to the one you were on in a few minutes time.

Before you flash any ROM, you should make a nandroid of your stock ROM. Then you can easily get back to stock if you ever need/want to.

I see you DO learn something every day. What is a nandroid backup and how is this done?



Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[Rizy7]

Nandroid backup is a complete copy of your phone at the time you make the nandroid backup. It is done using your custom recovery so you either need TWRP or CWM flashed on your phone. So after unlocking your bootloader and flashing a custom recovery and rooting, you can then do a nandroid backup by booting into your recovery. The backup will be saved on your phone and if for any reason things start to go wrong you can just restore the backup.

 

[Tronstar]

Yeah I wasn't too keen on the pie either from the videos of PA but I was still going to possibly look into it.

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

That's the great thing about ROMs. Easy to flash and try something out. You can always flash back.

For bakcups, I use CWM. How To Make A Nandroid Backup In CWM Recovery - YouTube

 

[greydarrah]

I see you DO learn something every day. What is a nandroid backup and how is this done?



Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

Rizy7 described the process for you well, I'll just add a couple of things I like to do...

As stated, the nandroid is made in whatever custom recovery you like to use. Personally, I prefer CWM over TWRP, the reason being that TWRP seems to get updated all the time, and I can't tell you how many threads I've read where someone could not do something (flash a ROM or restore a backup), because TWRP was the wrong version. I've never had that problem with CWM. Either way, they both work. The 2 most critical things to nandroids are 1 - make one of your stock OS before you flash your first ROM, and 2 - always make a fresh nandroid before flashing either a ROM update (to the ROM you're currently running) or before flashing any new ROM. This will keep you from starting post about how everything on your phone is screwed up and you don't know what to do. You can always get into recovery and you can always restore a working nandroid from there. Also, you can, and should, rename your nandroid backups to something that makes sense to you (like Stock422, AOKP031213, etc...). Although some recoveries may vary, I've found it best to not put any spaces or special characters in your renamed backup. Some recoveries wont recognize the file if you have a space in the name. If they start to take up too much space on your phone (they get put in directories relevant to the name of the recovery program), just copy them your PC. The best guide/tutorial I'ev ever read on flashing ROMs and making backups is here : http://forums.androidcentral.com/ve...backup-restore-install-roms-galaxy-nexus.html It's for the Galaxy Nexus, but the steps work on any Android phone. I found the first time pretty scary, but it's really simple. Follow all the steps in the correct order and it works out perfectly. Also, buy the paid version of Titanium Backup and it will keep all your data from apps you've downloaded and used (everything from to Angry Birds to Zedge), so you can restore data after you wipe the phone in recovery. Just don't ever restore system app data (like for Gmail, Maps, etc...).

One other thing I recommend is getting a custom launcher, like Nova (or others). Now, when you back up the phone with Titanium, it will back up that custom launcher and after you restore data to that launcher, all your home screens come back up just like they were, so you don't have to manually set your phone up after every ROM flashing. I like Nova because it's smooth and very much like the stock launcher, but others work well too.

So here's the process in a nutshell (the order of everything here is very important):
Launch Titanium, back up all apps with data
Download new ROM and its referenced Gapps files
Flash into recovery and make a nandroid of your current ROM (even if your only doing a ROM upgrade)
While in recovery (do all of this in the order shown), wipe data, wipe cache, wipe Dalvic (none of that wipes your sd card stuff), flash ROM, flash Gapps, reboot phone (from recovery menu)
After booting up, sign into gmail account
Go to the market and re-download Titanium
Launch Titanium and restore all apps without data
Still in Titanium, restore app data only to non system apps (these are the app that you have decided to download...not apps that the phone comes with)
Reboot (for good measure) and you're good to go.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Thanks alot the above info was extremely helpful.

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[lethalgorman]

thats perfect, thats how I flash my roms. One thing to add is, If your having problems, alot of times doing a fatory reset after the flash will fix those problems. Also you need to know how to get into recovery if you happen to get stuck on your boot loop. It only happened to me once out of the 50 or so roms I have flashed. Simply power down, Hold power button until it shuts off and then hold all 3 buttons at once to power it back up, then use the volume buttons to navigate. Once you do it and have you nandroid done its really easy, and addictive, enjoy responsively.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Rizy7 described the process for you well, I'll just add a couple of things I like to do...

As stated, the nandroid is made in whatever custom recovery you like to use. Personally, I prefer CWM over TWRP, the reason being that TWRP seems to get updated all the time, and I can't tell you how many threads I've read where someone could not do something (flash a ROM or restore a backup), because TWRP was the wrong version. I've never had that problem with CWM. Either way, they both work. The 2 most critical things to nandroids are 1 - make one of your stock OS before you flash your first ROM, and 2 - always make a fresh nandroid before flashing either a ROM update (to the ROM you're currently running) or before flashing any new ROM. This will keep you from starting post about how everything on your phone is screwed up and you don't know what to do. You can always get into recovery and you can always restore a working nandroid from there. Also, you can, and should, rename your nandroid backups to something that makes sense to you (like Stock422, AOKP031213, etc...). Although some recoveries may vary, I've found it best to not put any spaces or special characters in your renamed backup. Some recoveries wont recognize the file if you have a space in the name. If they start to take up too much space on your phone (they get put in directories relevant to the name of the recovery program), just copy them your PC. The best guide/tutorial I'ev ever read on flashing ROMs and making backups is here : http://forums.androidcentral.com/ve...backup-restore-install-roms-galaxy-nexus.html It's for the Galaxy Nexus, but the steps work on any Android phone. I found the first time pretty scary, but it's really simple. Follow all the steps in the correct order and it works out perfectly. Also, buy the paid version of Titanium Backup and it will keep all your data from apps you've downloaded and used (everything from to Angry Birds to Zedge), so you can restore data after you wipe the phone in recovery. Just don't ever restore system app data (like for Gmail, Maps, etc...).

One other thing I recommend is getting a custom launcher, like Nova (or others). Now, when you back up the phone with Titanium, it will back up that custom launcher and after you restore data to that launcher, all your home screens come back up just like they were, so you don't have to manually set your phone up after every ROM flashing. I like Nova because it's smooth and very much like the stock launcher, but others work well too.

So here's the process in a nutshell (the order of everything here is very important):
Launch Titanium, back up all apps with data
Download new ROM and its referenced Gapps files
Flash into recovery and make a nandroid of your current ROM (even if your only doing a ROM upgrade)
While in recovery (do all of this in the order shown), wipe data, wipe cache, wipe Dalvic (none of that wipes your sd card stuff), flash ROM, flash Gapps, reboot phone (from recovery menu)
After booting up, sign into gmail account
Go to the market and re-download Titanium
Launch Titanium and restore all apps without data
Still in Titanium, restore app data only to non system apps (these are the app that you have decided to download...not apps that the phone comes with)
Reboot (for good measure) and you're good to go.

So basically I should unlock bootloader, root, make a nandroid back-up of my stock rom and then do all of the above steps. Everytime I change roms perform a nandroid backup of the previous rom in case there are any problems, correct? Also I have a question, if the rom I have, has an update, where do I update from (Is it CMW)? Can I just update or is there anything in particular I need to do? Thanks again for all your help.

 

[Rizy7]

You dont really have to perform a nandroid everytime you switch a rom because they do take up quite a bit of space. However, it is good practice to do so and as was said before you can transfer the nandroid from your phone to your pc to free up space. I would recommend goo manager, most links to roms are via a website called goo.im and goo manager is a front end for that website. You will be able to download roms and gapps from the app. The app will also notify you of any rom updates. Goo manager gives you the option to flash roms within the app but I would recommend you do it manually by booting into recovery, factory reset, wipe cache and dalvik cache and then installing the rom and gapps. When you get an update, just download the update, the gapps should remain the same so you should already have them downloaded on your phone. On updates you dont have to really factory reset so you can just wipe cache and dalvik cache and install the rom and gapps.

 

[TheDonJ77]

You dont really have to perform a nandroid everytime you switch a rom because they do take up quite a bit of space. However, it is good practice to do so and as was said before you can transfer the nandroid from your phone to your pc to free up space. I would recommend goo manager, most links to roms are via a website called goo.im and goo manager is a front end for that website. You will be able to download roms and gapps from the app. The app will also notify you of any rom updates. Goo manager gives you the option to flash roms within the app but I would recommend you do it manually by booting into recovery, factory reset, wipe cache and dalvik cache and then installing the rom and gapps. When you get an update, just download the update, the gapps should remain the same so you should already have them downloaded on your phone. On updates you dont have to really factory reset so you can just wipe cache and dalvik cache and install the rom and gapps.

Got it. Thanks. I'm excited to get going

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[greydarrah]

Got it. Thanks. I'm excited to get going

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

Don't forget to copy anything that's on your sd card (like pictures or music) to your pc before you unlock. That unlocking (you only do it once) is the one and only time that everything on your phone will be wiped clean, including everything on the sd card. The wipe that you do in recovery when flashing a ROM does not touch the sd card.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Don't forget to copy anything that's on your sd card (like pictures or music) to your pc before you unlock. That unlocking (you only do it once) is the one and only time that everything on your phone will be wiped clean, including everything on the sd card. The wipe that you do in recovery when flashing a ROM does not touch the sd card.

Got it. I don't have any music on my phone and only a few pictures so no biggie

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[anon5664829]

Got it. I don't have any music on my phone and only a few pictures so no biggie

Sent from my Awesome Nexus 4 using Tapatalk.

AOKP isnt as smooth as Cyanogen Mod, just throwing it out there and Cyanogenmod has profiles while AOKP

 

[TheDonJ77]

Just wanted to thank everyone for all the help. Rooted a little while ago and it went off without a hitch. So far everything seems to be working fine. I'm using the Rasbean Jelly rom with the trinity kernel. So far I like it.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Trying out my second ROM. Really enjoyed Rasbean Jelly, had it for several weeks. Trying out an AOSP Rom, Project E.L.E now. Very clean and fast but with more customization. Not overwhelming, just more.