The Custom ROMs Era

The era of installing custom ROMs started for me back in 2014-15, I guess. As of now, I have flashed custom ROMs across 7 devices, with my very first smartphone being the Samsung Galaxy Y, which wasn't actually mine at first, tbh. It's just that my parents bought a new device, and because of that, the Galaxy Y was sitting in a corner unused. I used it sometimes, and given that I always had a habit of tinkering around with computers and gadgets, of course I had to do something with it as well. So, I installed a custom ROM on it, and eventually did the same for 6 other devices as time went on.

It all started when my Galaxy Y got soft-bricked while I was playing around with build.prop. So, I had to fix it because that was the only device I had. After searching on the internet, I flashed the stock ROM using Odin and got it working again. That small learning eventually led me to install custom ROMs. I got interested in this field and started learning more and more about it. Whether it was installing custom kernels, installing and playing around with Xposed modules like Greenify and GravityBox, trying out Root Explorer, ROM Toolbox, or Lucky Patcher, installing BusyBox, or arguing online about which was better—CWM Recovery or TWRP Recovery—I did it all. At one point, I even created a post on XDA that solved the SetupWizard crashing issue on first boot. I remember that after tinkering around with custom ROMs, I learned how to reverse-engineer their ZIP files and modify them according to my needs. I even did it for my Galaxy Y (I didn't need a Brotli extractor back then).

Later, this became a rabbit hole so deep that, in early 2021, I ended up building a custom ROM for myself, even though my main interest had shifted more towards building Android kernels. Even to this day, I want to install a custom ROM on my current device, but given how much I rely on banking apps, I can't. So, I'm forced to stick with the stock ROM until I buy a secondary device for myself.