Reinstalling Android on a Chinese Samsung phone

[Deuteronomy93]

Hi All

 

I'm living in Beijing and my Note 9 has really been slowing down. It's been a really trusty workhorse for a while now and I've been putting off getting a new phone.

 

There are some sales on at the moment and I'm trying to decide between a new Note, or a Fold 2 seeing as during these sales, the price difference makes the tablet aspect of it very appealing.

 

The downside to getting one from China is that I do want to start with the standard Android/Samsung experience and customise from there. A lot of the Google services etc just won't be installed and apparently it can be a massive pain getting them to work due to how interconnected they are.

 

I'm a PC guy and phones really aren't my territory, but with these sales I don't have much time to familiarise myself with how these processes work.. though I have been looking through forums.

 

Is it possible to get the phone and install a normal version of Android/Samsung version from scratch and then customise it? From what I've seen, there's a bit of a minefield with being able to just install a fresh OS unlike with PCs. I've seen a lot of talk about Odin, ROMs, Bootloaders, LineageOS etc.

 

Honestly the main things I need is access to PIA VPN, APKs and ideally the Play Store. I don't use a lot of voice commands currently but I am also getting into HASS so having the Google Assistant would probably be a big bonus.

 

Many thanks in advance!

[jaslion]

Might as well put a new android version on your note 9 as that phone still has a lot of performance left just slowed down by samsungs mess of a android version. Look into lineage os they have official 100% working roms on their site with a step by step guide how to do it.

 

As for chinese phones those are often not unlockable so you normally cannot install a custom rom.

[Deuteronomy93]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Might as well put a new android version on your note 9 as that phone still has a lot of performance left just slowed down by samsungs mess of a android version. Look into lineage os they have official 100% working roms on their site with a step by step guide how to do it.

 

As for chinese phones those are often not unlockable so you normally cannot install a custom rom.

Hi

 

Thanks for your feedback, I've been pretty much power using this phone now, to the point that it does become far too hot when I'm wanting to do my typical things. I can try using Lineage as a trial but probably will need to switch phones.

 

Regarding the "unlockable", is there a way to test this? We have a Xiaomi (I think?) here which I could test to see if a method is working.

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, Deuteronomy93 said:

Hi

 

Thanks for your feedback, I've been pretty much power using this phone now, to the point that it does become far too hot when I'm wanting to do my typical things. I can try using Lineage as a trial but probably will need to switch phones.

 

Regarding the "unlockable", is there a way to test this? We have a Xiaomi (I think?) here which I could test to see if a method is working.

Benefit of lineage is that you can restrict the phone to keep itself cooler. You can test it by installing a custom rom on the xiaomi IF and only IF the EXACT model of that phone has a rom for it.

[Deuteronomy93]

Ok, so I would find a site such as https://www.sammobile.com/ and get the ROM, this is like the BIOS of the phone?

 

Follow a Youtube video for flashing it, and once that is done, proceed with downloading an OS. The OS doesn't seem to be brand/model specific right?

[ki8aras]

phones from different regions have different bootloaders, so even if you got it unlocked you would need to find a rom download that complies with your bootloader

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Deuteronomy93 said:

Ok, so I would find a site such as https://www.sammobile.com/ and get the ROM, this is like the BIOS of the phone?

No the ROM is the entire OS, and yes it's model-specific.