Have you ever owned an old android smartphone you dearly loved and felt like it could offer some oomph if given chance? There’s a clever way you could bring it back to life with a little hard work, but which is worth it in the long run. Smartphones have evolved in the last five years to accommodate new technologies as well as modern designs, but not all of these new features are essential in the day to day activities. In fact, some pundits out there argue that there’s very little which has changed to date, some go to an extend as prefer older designs especially those found on devices such as older HTC metal enclosures like the HTC 10.
Requirements of Recycling your android phone with latest custom ROM and new battery
There are some minimum requirements your old device should at least meet to be worth recycling. As much as you’d want to recycle your beloved android device, without available custom ROM’s to install and accessories such as batteries, the hustle might not be worth it. In such a case, you’d be better off buying a cheap device instead.
- A quick look at the xda forums, you’d easily tell if there’s a custom ROM based on the latest android version supporting your device. In my opinion, this is a must for a device to be worth consideration.
- Secondly, the latest version of android would require at least a minimum of 2GB ram to run without hiccups, I however prefer 4GB as my bare minimum to have a second look at the device
- Smartphone batteries are based on the lithium ion technology which degrade over time. It’s highly unlikely that a handset aged three or more years would effectively function without replacing the battery.
- Something worth consideration also is the complexity of the repair process. Whether you want to change the display panel, charging port or in this case battery, it’s always a good Idea to have a look at the process of performing that repair. Having used the HTC 10 for example, I learnt just how its almost impossible to have the battery replaced without damaging the display panel. And most of these devices with an inbuilt battery would require special tools to carry out the repair, if this can be accomplished by a professional, you’d rather consider that.
- Your device must have unlocked bootloader. Some manufacturers such as HTC have a simple process you could unlock the bootloader.
How to finally bring back your old android device to life
Having taken the above requirements into consideration, the process of reviving your old device might require some bit of know-how, so I suggest you buckle-up. At this point, I assume you’ve checked out at xda forums and established availability of a candidate ROM with the latest version of android to install on your device.
If you still have some battery capacity juice left in your device, then you might not need to have it replaced, after shelf third party batteries might not have the same capacity as the original one or something could go awry wrong in the process.
- First, replace the battery if need be
- Then proceed to install the latest custom ROM. You’ll need to make all the necessary requirements needed to install the custom ROM such as unlocking the bootloader, installing recovery software and of course updating to the necessary firmware version. Failure to follow some of these steps could render your device useless.
Reviving an old device comes with its own merits, especially if the latest notch generation doesn’t excite you. In fact, its almost impossible to get a phone with such a study-built quality like back in the days when most manufacturers embraced full metal builds.