this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

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Where do you find info about Android customization? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Whenever I search for questions I have about Android system apps, ADB, flashing, etc. I noticed all the search results are really scammy-looking websites with instructions that sound like they were translated from Chinese by an AI.
It doesn't make a difference if I use Google, Duckduckgo or Bing.

Also, there seems to be hardly any official documentation for Android available. Even finding out what the preinstalled system apps even do, what exactly is needed for push messages to work, or what the different permissions do is impossible for me.

I know of xdaforums.com but when I look there I usually end up in a thread with 30+ pages full of users asking questions that get no helpful answer.

How come there is so little good information on Android? Or am I looking in the wrong places?

top 22 comments

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The key in xdaforums.com is using their tags when you go to the specific subforum for your phone:

The tags that are likely to interest you are "How To Guide", "Development" and "Themes / Apps / Mods".

You've got also more general tutorials for stuff like adb: https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-linux/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This is a little helpful, but god that site has bad indexing and if you mention it even in passing prepare to bring down a shitstorm on your head

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

I would probably start with XDA forums first.

Searching there might be difficult so you may need to use something like DDG or Google to find what you are looking for.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

Our saviors XDA, some reddit posts and sometimes youtube videos.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

it's been some years since I last flashed a device, but I did what the younger citizens do and got instructed by a nice indian-accented fellow on youtube

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just went with pixel and flashed graphenos. Plenty of info for that.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not gonna give money to Google or increase the resale value of their products.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

If you want the in-depth customization that only flashing from the boot loader level allows, you'll want to prioritize phones that allow that.

Pixel is usually on the top of most people's heads because even if other phones can have their boot loader unlocked, actual support is a crap shoot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Some people just don't want anything to do with Google and I respect that. In that case I'd go with a Pinephone tho.

Otherwise, a used Pixel with GrapheneOS isn't giving much to Google in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

How can I learn about this? My friend asked for help flashing a new OS onto a couple old Samsungs, I'd like to know what the best options are and what the drawbacks are with the models they have (2 different phones)

[–] K4sum1 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm actually curious about this too, I have no idea where to find the answers to very specific questions anywhere aside from ask and hope.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have 15 tabs open and 9 YouTube videos.

It's hard work.

First things.

Download fucking everything.

Then start

Unlock OEM

Unlock bootloader.

Need to know how to access terminal. Run commands

It's really complicated. Would be nice if they made it easier.

[–] K4sum1 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Depending on the phone, that can be relatively easy.

What I mean is putting modem and oem files from Xperia 10 onto XA2 (Ultra) to attempt to get working T-Mobile VOLTE. Newflasher won't do it, so trying manually doing it, but I seemingly can't write to /oem, and recovery doesn't pick it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't say it's easy. I expect 90% of people have never touched a command prompt. It takes me she's just to find the thing. Need to download all the files then start commands.

Once you've unlocked and got TWRP it's really easy.

If phones would just preinstall TWRP and be unlockable. That would free up all the issues. Then it's just transferring files over. Noice and simple

[–] K4sum1 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I meant relatively as it's more of a nerd thing to use custom ROMs, and you would usually have more experience with this kind of thing.

My issues are things nobody has cared enough to try, or impossible to fix idk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

True. Be better if they made it easier. More would do it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Telegram.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, that's where a ton of custom ROM info has gone to. Pretty annoying since search engines won't find it and all the different groups have different rules, all the info is behind "notes" managed by a bot and quite a few of them seem to be treated almost like social platforms instead of info platforms.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I hate this trend on the Internet. Looking through 30 pages of a forum may be tedious but it's not behind a wall people might not know about. With Telegram and Discord it's great for the community but even worse usually when you need an answer. If you search discord and the question was not replied to or your search term was not mentioned you may have to scroll through for a long time. Not to mention how quickly information can go away if the server is deleted or something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It is better than XDA though, at least it is for lmi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Actually there is a bot that lets you browse through Telegram too haha, and its global search ofc.

I agree chat based ain't better than forums, but it is pretty dead in XDA, at least for lmi, and you can always find the info faster and better in TG (again, for lmi).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's dead because people have moved to Telegram (or sometimes Discord). Sucks but I guess it's faster. At least would be if you were actually allowed to ask questions lol. A lot will have really strict rules about asking questions.