Tuesday, August 24, 2021

How to flash a Custom ROM in Redmi 5A

Want to change your Redmi 5A (Riva) to a new phone? If yes then this article is for you. MIUI is good and has a good user interface but filled with a lot of bloatware. Over the course of time the phone starts to lag and becomes difficult for everyday use. Let's quickly get started with the process of flashing/installing PixelExperience ROM. Credit goes to the original developers.

Installation steps:

0. Your warranty will be void and data will be erased by flashing a custom ROM so take a compete backup of your phone.

1. Enable developer options and navigate to 'Mi Unlock status'. To do this navigate to Setting -> 'About phone' and tap on the MIUI version several times to enable the Developer options'.

Then, go to Settings -> Additional settings -> 'Developer options' and enable 'OEM unlocking'. Tap on the 'Mi Unlock status' and tap on 'Add acccount and device'. Turn on mobile data and turn off wifi to add your account and device. Await for the confirmation message. Following is the video for reference.

Enabling 'Developer options' and requesting for Mi unlock

2. Setting up ADB. You will need a computer for this.

Download ADB files from here for Windows
Extract the contents of this ZIP file into a folder
Open the extracted folder then open up a Command Prompt from the same folder. To do this type 'cmd' on the address bar of the that folder and hit enter

Connect your phone to your computer with a USB cable. Change the USB mode to “file transfer (MTP)” mode if the phone is not deteced by the computer
In the opened Command Prompt window, enter the following command to launch the ADB daemon: adb devices
On your phone’s screen, you should see a prompt to allow or deny USB Debugging access. Ggrant USB Debugging access when prompted (and tap the always allow check box if you never want to see that prompt again).
Type the command 'adb devices' again to see if the phone is getting listed. Refer the following image

3. Download miflash unlock tool from here and sign in with your mi account.

4. Download Lazyflasher file here which is to disable the dm-verity and forced encryption.

5. Download the 'Downgrade (O To N)Firmware' file from here.

6. Download the Pixel ROM from here. Download the 10(Plus edition) as shown in the below image.

7. Download the OrangeFox Oreo recovery from here. Extract the zip file and copy the file 'recovery.img' and paste into the adb folder.

Copy the recovery.img file

Pasted the file in the adb folder

8. Turn off your phone and boot into fastboot by holding Power + Volume down keys and once the fastboot screen is visible plug the phone to your computer with a good USB cable.

Open the miflash unlock tool by double clicking on 'batch_unlock.exe' file. The phone will be visible on the tool with status 'Locked'. Click on 'Unlock(F6)' button. The phone will automatically restart. Now you have unlocked your phone for custom ROM flashing.

9. Turn off the phone and boot into fastboot by holding Power + Volume down keys and once the fastboot screen is visible plug the phone to your computer. Open adb folder and open a Command Promt by typing 'cmd' on the address bar of the that folder and hit enter.

Type 'fastboot devices' and see whether the phone is detected. Then type 'fastboot flash recovery recovery.img' and wait until it finishes successfully as shown in the below image.

10. Turn off your phone and boot into recovery by holding Power + Volume up keys. Connect the phone to the computer and move the files such as Lazyflasher, Downgrade (O To N)Firmware, Pixel ROM into the SD card and internal memory(optional but just for safety) as well.

11. Install the Lazyflasher file 'lazyflasher-no-verity-opt-encrypt.zip' and wipe cache.

12. Install the 'Downgrade (O To N)Firmware.zip file' and wipe cache.

13. Reboot to recovery again by navigating to Menu -> Reboot -> Recovery. Now you will be booted to the new recovery 'PitchBlack Recovery Project'.

14. Go to Wipe -> Advanced Wipe and wipe the System, Vendor, Data, Cache, and Dalvik.

If you are getting any failed message like 'Failed to decrypt data. Unable to decrypt with default password. You may need to perform a Format Data', then comeback to home and go to Wipe -> Swipe to Factory Reset.

Once done go to Wipe -> Advanced Wipe and wipe the System, Vendor, Data, Cache, and Dalvik.

15. Go to home and tap on 'Install'. Select the Pixel ROM file from SD card. If you don't have SD card then copy the ROM file to internal memory by connecting the phone to computer. Once done then wipe cache and reboot to system.

16. Done!

Please feel free to comment if you had any queries.

Free Unlimited Cloud Backup for Photos and Videos

3:01 AM Andro No comments

Most of the latest smartphones which we own now captures photos / videos at a very high resolution that can occupy more space. Even the videos shot at Full HD eats a lot of space on phone's memory or sd card. No need to say specific about 4K videos!.

So what is the app that gives unlimited free backup space?. Answer is Google Photos

This app gives an option to upload / sync unlimited photos and videos at high resolution. The app just syncs all the photos and videos from your phone to the google server and the synced photos and videos can be accessed from any device, anywhere, via any browser, anytime by hitting photos.google.com
Deleting the photos from the phone will not delete the copy from the google server.

There are three quotas available as follows,

1. Original quality - Backs up media at Original resolution which counts against the 15 GB google storage space. It allows us to buy more storage if we had crossed the 15 GB limit

2. High quality - Unlimited free backup at High resolution. Photos are compressed to 16 MP, Videos are compressed to high definition

3. Express - Unlimited free backup at Reduced resolution. Photos are compressed to 3 MP, Videos are compressed to standard definition

Some of the useful features of the Google Photos app

1. Acts as a gallery

2. Frees up space

3. Creates smart albums automatically

4. Advanced photo editing

5. Sharing

6. Smart and powerful search

7. Allows to link many phones under same google account and so on...

How to delete Whatsapp backup from Google Drive?

9:54 PM Andro No comments

If you had provided your google account(gmail id) for the backup of WhatsApp messages then you have no option to remove the account from WhatsApp itself but you have to login to your google drive to delete the backup. Let's see how to do that!

Deleting the backup from Google Drive

1. Sign in to your google account from this link https://drive.google.com/

2. Go to Setting from the Settings icon

3. Click 'Manage Apps' from the menu on the left. Scroll till you find 'WhatsApp Messenger' and click on 'Options' --> 'Disconnect from Drive'

Deleting the backup from Android phone

1. Open File Manager

2. Got to Internal Storage and find the folder 'WhatsApp' and delete it

Stopping WhatsApp to make any more backup in future

1. Open WhatsApp and tap on the three dots at the top right and select 'Settings'

2. Tap on 'Chats' --> 'Chat backup'

3. Tap on 'Back up to Google Drive' and select 'Never. This will stop WhatsApp from backing up the data even though you had provided a google account

How to disable auto download of media in Telegram ?

11:05 PM Andro No comments

As soon as we login to the Telegram app, we can notice that the media gets auto downloaded as we browse through the chats/groups/channels.

The auto download of media files can be controlled in the Settings. Here is how to do it.

1. Open Telegram and tap on the hamburger icon at the top left and tap on Settings

2. On the Settings, tap on the 'Data and Security'

3. Scroll down to the section 'Automatic media download'. Here we can see the media that are set to be auto downloaded for Private Chats, Groups, Channels