Android Diaries, Part 5: Custom ROMS

In my last look at SGS2, I overviewed getting root access and getting core utilities installed and in place. Now most people can call it a day and move on with their lives knowing they have proper admin privileges on their phone. For me, the phone was almost perfect… only a few things really outstanding that were bugging me – but they bugged me enough, so the default configuration had to go.
Annoyances

• The lockscreen, while pretty and novel the first few times, was annoying after the novelty wore off. I missed the lockscreen options I had with my Milestone. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with a lockscreen, no point in wasting away the entire screen on a BAM! image and the time.
• The autocorrect options that ship with the phone annoyed me to no end. In my world, at no point should autocorrect replace words I type without me opting for it to (hey, my spelling isn’t that bad!) Sure, offer the suggestions, but don’t go on replacing my words. I’ll have to look more thoroughly at the options on the virgin ROM when I get a chance, but I don’t think there was a way to make it do this.
• Cleanup up the notification bar, notably the battery meter, having a different home screen manager. Neither of these really requires a full ROM replacement, but, having the additional options in the custom ROM was nice. Also, getting a newer OS build was nice too.

The options

• No brainer, CyanogenMod. I came from using this on my Milestone, loving it and as such, I’m naturally pre-disposed to it. In general, I find it has a mature look and feel which is a nice touch. The “watch out” factor here is that it’s currently (at time of writing) not even in Alpha stage – still nightly builds.
• Litening ROM. I was drawn to this ROM by the appeal of speed – after the extreme sluggishness of the Milestone as it got long in the tooth, anything emphasizing performance, lightness and speed is appreciated.
• VillainROM. While Litening ROM was clean and quick, there was just a bit too much blue in the overall look and feel. Just a bit too much. There’s a lot in here that still feels “stock” (which isn’t a bad thing, they got rid of all the aggravating bits)

The LiteningROM was the first ROM I tried, I liked that it was a bit faster and got rid of the way-too-flashy graphics and look and feel of the stock OS… but immediately got bothered by the way-too-much-blue.
Moving over to VillainROM, this seemed to retain more of the stock components however, due to the way they reprocessed the browser, it was painfully slow (not that there’s much that can be done to avoid that). That and it didn’t feel distinctly different turned me off.

Most importantly, nether custom ROM presented me with the optimal auto-correct + auto-suggest options I wanted. I went, reluctantly to the CyanogenMod nightly build. There’s a huge drawback of not having proper support for Bluetooth audio and not supporting 2G/3G toggling (the main phone application loops force-closes) but it’s different, it’s clean and most importantly, offers me the desired autocorrect options. I use the nightly builds as my day-to-day ROM and am very happy with it


The process

Obviously, anything you do, you do at your own risk. While this is a pretty straightforward process, there are a zillion ways to screw things up and no set of instructions and experiences can cover everything. I strongly urge you do a backup (either from the recovery environment directly) or through ROM manager (you don’t need the premium version to do this, I recommend everyone with root access to do it regardless as a ‘just in case’). It’s just a matter of clicking the Backup Current ROM option in the menu and letting it run. It’s very easy. I wrote up an post on getting everything backed-up..

1. Purchase and install ROM Manager Premium. It’s a solid, first rate application and, for CyanogenMod nightlies, you need the premium version. I’ll assume you’ve already read through Part 4 in this series and have the alternate recovery environment setup.
2. Fire it up, click the Download ROM menu option. You’ll get a screen that looks a bit like this
   
3. Under the Premium section, select CyanogenMod nightlies, select the build you one, click download. You’ll get a popup for the the Google Applications (CyanogenMod was asked to remove the core Google Applications from their custom ROM), click ok and you’re good to go. It should look something like this: 
   
4. When the download is finished, you’ll be presented with a screen like the following. 
   
5. If you haven’t done a backup yet (you should!), you have the option to perform a backup right here all in one go.
• If you are coming from a totally different ROM (whether it be the stock SGS2 ROM or a different custom ROM), make sure you check the second option, to wipe the data and cache – yeah this means you lose all your settings (which you did backup using Titanium right?).
• If you’re coming from a different version of CyanogenMod then you can leave the second checkbox unchecked. Always wipe the Dalvik though.When you click OK, there is an automagic process and when it finishes rebooting, you’re all done! 

Getting updates for the CyanogenMod is just as simple as selecting the Check for ROM Updates option from the main menu (not all ROMs support this, CyanogenMod does) and running through a similar process as Steps 3 and 4, it’s ridiculously easy to stay on top of releases!

What if you're not using CyanogenMod?

Have a look through the Download ROM menu option in ROM Manager (you may not need the premium version even, depending on where certain ROMs are added to). If you're lucky and the ROM you want is available in that list, you can follow a similar process to the above to get your custom ROM installed and updated.

If you're not so lucky and the ROM you want to try isn't in the list (such as Litening ROM or VillainROM), go ahead and download the ROM from your source. Depending on where you get your ROM, you may need to extract it (typically you'll be working with a .zip or .md5 package). From the main menu of ROM Manager, select Install ROM from SD Card (after copying this file to the SD card), find the md5/zip file and you'll be presented with a screen similar to Step 4 above.

If that doesn't work, or if you prefer a "purer" approach, you can reboot into the recovery environment (there's an option for this in ROM Manager or you can use the  adb reboot recovery command) or one of many other ways such as QuickBoot). Once you're in the recovery environment, navigate through the menu to perform the update (you may need/want to rename the file to update.zip to make use of the predefined action). Again, the customary 'do a backup' guideline applies. When it finishes flashing the ROM, restart the phone and you'll have your new ROM installed.