Another Personal Blog

Which Device?

• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 SM-G7102
• 1.5 GB RAM, 8 GB ROM
• Android 4.4.2 Touchwiz ROM by Samsung

Purpose?

• Update to at least Android 5.0 Lolipop
• Renovate old phone with new ROM and great flexibility to customize

Tools?

• Windows Computer
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and data cable
• Odin
• CWM
• Various ROM files

Tested

• CyanogenMod 12 by mukulsoni
  • Lolipop 5.0 (Android L on Grand 2 Looks nice and work satisfactorily)
  • But I experienced excessive sogginess while switching applications. Nike Air Max UK For example when you touch the chat bubble from facebook while texting on viber. It’s annoying especially when you got ring on your phone but the screen remains black for long time.
  • Camera works ok but the panorama was not working, which is the most have feature for me.
  • Beside this everything working fine.
• CynogenMod 13
  • Android 6.0 Marshmallow
  • Wifi, Camera and other apps seems to be working
  • Sim card not detected. 🙁 Due to this I got to search alternatives pretty soon
• GenNext (Note 4 Port)
  • Wifi toggle not working.
  • Sim card detected
  • UI seemed nice but due to no wifi it lived short on my device
• Resurrection ROM
  • Wifi working
  • sim card detected
  • apps like play store and messenger crashed frequently
• Stock Rom and Rooted

After all those nifty gifty testing, I decided that the Stock Rom is ok to go with. As every hardware and software is working nice with it along with the performance gain.  yes not much renovation on UI but immediately I rooted it to get rid of the boltware from it. How To-s

• Stock Rom
  • Download Stock Rom for your Grand 2 , and unzip it
  • Download Odin, an windows tool you will use to flash the rom
  • Go into download mode on you device by pressing volume down and home key while powering on it.  Press volume up to continue to download mode.
  • Connect phone to computer and run the Flashing tool Odin
  • If com0 port is not shown connected, check wheter the datacable is working and your system have necessary usb driver to detect the device. For later case you could install kies which will install the driver for you
  • Click on PA(PDA button) on Odin and selecte the tar file from the extracted stock rom
  • Make sure to have tick on Auto rebook and Flash time only
  • Click on Start at the bottom of Odin window
  • Wait for 10 min or so till you get Green Button saying Pass
  • Yahoo you got Stock Rom flashed on your phone
• Root Stock Rom
  • Download CF Auto Root image and extract it.
  • Follow the same process as above but while selecting file on PDA select this CF Auto Root tar file extracted
  • After 1 min or so you will see the green Pass button and you are done.
  • On next reboot go to the recovery by pressing the volume up key. CF Auto root will replace the necessary binary on this stage.(This will trick out make the KNOX ineffective)

TWRP/CWM installation

• I had first installed TWRP using odin, tested it for a while and then flashed CWM through TWRP
• Download TWRP recovery image and extract it
• For installing TWRP follow the steps used on flashing stock rom except select TWRP image file on PDA and untick the Auto-reboot option
• After you see the Green Signal, eject the battery to power it off.
• Go directly into recovery (don’t let it open normally) by pressing volume up key while powering up. This is essential for the first time as the android system will try to revert to default recovery. Shame on Samsung
• You should see the TWRP recovery which is nice touch based recovery
• For CWM installation Download CWM and copy it to external sdcard.
• Boot into TWRP recovery and select install button and pick the the CWM file from sdcard
• You will get CWM on your phone.
• alternatively you can follow the instruction given here but the files are missing there.

Cynogenmod 12,13 GenNext or Resurrection ROM

• Install CWM recovery
• Download required roms Cynogemod12, Cynagenmod 13, Resurrection Remix
• Download Gapps for installing Google paly and other google apps
• Copy rom into external sdcard
• Boot into CWM Recovery(pressing volume up while pressing power button)
• do wipe/data
• do clean cache
• select install zip
• choose desired rom file.
• After completion, select install zip again to install gapps
• reboot the device.
• Some of them will work Okay and some won’t.