Hi,

So, I’ve tried to mod my phone quite a few times and it’s…
never gone very well, always ending in something breaking or me installing something pretty silly. It also doesn’t help that I get bored really, really quickly. So here is the long history of everything my phone…

My First Mod

Early 2023, my friend convinced me to custom ROM my phone (I honestly did not need much convincing). We got to it over the phone later that night and it was such a process. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S20FE, so it isn’t the easiest thing to find a ROM for, with it being a pretty unusual phone. But after she found a cool GitHub repo for it and a pretty nice XDA post (this is not the original but it is the guide I followed most recently). It wasn’t much trouble getting the bootloader unlocked, but the issue this time was with TWRP and getting my phone cleared and ready for a new ROM. Eventually, we managed to get Derpfest on my phone…

My Custom ROM Experience

I actually really enjoyed it. It was way better than anything OneUI5 could have given me. I had way more freedom over everything. I love the visualizer for music it has on the bottom of the screen; it made me feel much more connected to the music that was playing (if that makes sense). Until I got bored of that and looked at a few more such as Pixel Experience and Project Elixir, but eventually I wanted my phone, watch, and earphones to work 100% again (which they never did). I did end up reverting to original Samsung software and closing my bootloader, which I thought was the end of my custom ROM experience, until the other day…

Hell

My friend knew a way to get it reopened and once I was told, I instantly did it. I didn’t even bother to back up my phone, I was that excited. And even better, LineageOS has a build for my phone and I got it installed just fine… except I forgot to install GApps, so I had no Google apps. Thankfully, there’s a cool reimplementation I can use my friend showed me, so I didn’t have to reflash my OS. Amazing, right? It turns out that Samsung would not let me use any of their apps because my phone was once a Samsung phone, so I couldn’t use my watch. So I had to switch to the GSI I used originally, Derpfest. This didn’t go as smoothly as I had to reinstall Samsung software on my phone, then install TWRP again because of Lineage recovery. Eventually, I got it on, and I set it up with no issues. Until I had to set up WhatsApp and the text message just wouldn’t go through. I thought that was weird and tried to set up the Tesco Mobile app. The text message also didn’t come. It turns out that I just couldn’t get text messages, so I had to choose between text messages and my watch…

Now

My phone is running LineageOS for the S20FE, and my watch is sat in the corner of my room. I doubt I’ll ever touch it again, like my A12.

Update 1

Recently I couldnt keep using lineageOS for my S20FE as it was increadibly buggy so I wanted to see if CRdroid has fixed any of the issues I was having and it did! So I am now using Crdroid and Im really happy with all the features I’m getting access to. I do really recommend it though