Don’ts while installing Android custom ROM on Moto G5s Plus!
A story of installing Pixel Experience with the things that should be avoided and some useful links that may help.
This post contains my story, actually of the small decisions (which you should avoid) I made when I planned to install custom ROM on my phone which made my SIM cards not being recognised and what helped me get out of this state.
DISCLAIMER
I am not to be held responsible for any of the damage that occurs to your device during this process. You are yourself responsible for any damage done (if) to your device during this process.
It all started when I was having some network related issues while connecting to my phone’s hotspot on my laptop. I thought this must be something to do with the old android version I have on my phone (strange it was true). So I decided to install a custom ROM with latest android version and made some horrible decisions along the way which I think no one should make.I try to break this into multiple sub parts so that you can jump right to the one you are here for :) .
Choosing the custom ROM
My (common) requirements for choosing any custom ROM were that it must have a good reputation out there and I can get as close to the latest version out there as possible. So I chose pixel experience for it. I must say after installing it, I got the satisfaction I needed. Everything was so smooth and perfect, I just cannot express all of it here. A banking app not working but that was due to the reason that I had custom ROM installed that was not intended for my phone.
There, this was the first don’t I must have thought through before starting this. So have a clear mind about things like this because when you search for these things on web (which I did), the solutions are there but the warnings, they may frighten you as they did to me.
Finding the correct steps to install the ROM
Yeah, pay as much time as possible on this. Because you don’t wanna just follow any youtube video or article that is out there. My experience is that you follow the one you understand the most because the steps are pretty much the same, I followed this to guide me.
Here, I made my second don’t which was not following all the steps and listening to the article. It said I don’t know like a thousand to make a full backup using TWRP (which I did not). Now I know that the thought may come that I don’t use this much or I have copied the images and videos so I don’t need this. Yeah you may be right but at least backup system files (my favourite one is EFS partition which has something to do with the IMEI numbers and more on the phone). I didn’t make backup of these which resulted in my SIM cards not being recognised by my device which made me restless for about a week, reason being there was a lockdown and no shops or service centres were open that can restore my phone.
Moving back to Stock ROM, SIM cards not working/ the imei = 0 horror
So I decided to move back to stock ROM and downloaded firmware from here and followed this (while definitely missing or skipping some of the steps). And I have somehow managed to stop my SIM cards to be detected by my phone. The phone has lost the steps to read the IMEI from memory. But at times like this, there was this statement in some article I read gave me strength which states ‘these information is stored in places which cannot be erased by steps we have done so far’.
Another don’t here is that follow all the steps from one single article and if you have some OS related constraint which I had or I think I had because I didn’t run the bat file due to ubuntu on my machine. So either find the required resources to follow all the steps or find some other guide.
How I was saved from no IMEI
This was no solution, I just happened to end with IMEI by beginner’s luck may be. I have installed ten or more times random Custom ROMs and flashed my phone with almost the same number with the different firmwares I can find on the net. Now I don’t think it’s needed to share the list of the firmwares or Custom ROMs I installed so I’ll share what worked for me. You remember I have downloaded firmware files from the link mentioned above. I flashed it with steps from the article. The phone booted up but no IMEI yet. Then I thought let’s install the updates and may be while installing these the phone might repair itself. So after installing a year long of Security patches and firmware upgrades the phone booted up and I noticed instead of the old SIM symbols I am now seeing Emergency Calls only. I quickly inserted my SIM to the phone and there they were the beautiful network bars smiling at me. And if they could I could have told them nothing but this that I missed them, I missed them a lot. I checked my IMEI by pressing *#06# and the IMEI were also there.
The present situation
While I am writing this, I have the flashed firmware installed and the SIMs are working fine but the network issue still persist. It may be something my mind is doing to make me go over the same path (with the learned precautions this time) again. But should I go that way or I shouldn’t, well I’ll definitely share that story if it happens hoping it will help you or at least make you laugh of the silly things I make. Sharing a consolidated list of few self notes that can help.
Things I should have done:
- Should have a clear mind of the consequences of installing a custom ROM while being in a lockdown state.
- Should have a clear understanding of how things like these work, I know it’s hard one and thought of it as an unnecessary thing to do, but it could have saved me from the restless days I have spent trying random solutions. At least have someone who can help you with stuff like these and are easily reachable.
- There is a application out there known as Rescue and Smart Assistant (LMSA) which you can find by a google search or here. I should have downloaded the OEM files for my device which I can do easily by this before unlocking my bootloader I guess because it is not allowing me now.
- Should have made a backup of my phone’s important partitions using TWRP or any other recovery software.
- Instead of flashing recovery file I should have directly boot to it using command `fastboot boot recovery.img`, which I did after learning this the hard way.
