[Closed] how does a 54 yr old man learn all about modifying mobile phones ie rooting etc

There's this thing called "Google" that you should try. It's all the rage!

What do you actually want to do? These days I only use rooting and custom roms to extend the life of older phones. It's not as useful as it used to be ime.

<h1 class="post-title">how does a 54 yr old man learn all about modifying mobile phones ie rooting etc</h1>

The same way a 12 year old boy does ( google ) but much, much slower.

😉

XDA is a good place to start. They have forums for most phone models, with howto guides etc. https://forum.xda-developers.com/

Yeh XDA is probably the best place, but it can be quite technical and assumes some understanding of android.

Have a read of the section concerning your particular phone and see how you get on.

Rooting can be compared to admin access on windows, it essentially gives you full privelidge to tinker with parts of the operating system that are protected normally, this is required if you want to flash a custom rom, which basically means replacing the operating system on the phone with a different custom version of android.

51 year old here is also interested for the very reasons nickjb says.

1. to shove some apps to the SD card so I don't constantly have to delete an app to install a new one

and

2. to upgrade from Android 4.1 to something a bit more up to date in order to use more recent apps.

Phone is otherwise sound and has great battery life (Galaxy Xcover 2)

singletrackworld often brings up better results than google. XDA sounds useful ...there's so much stuff online that it's difficult to know where  start . I guess i'm curious rather than needy for the info as I like to understand things and android seems a black art to me!

Over a decade away from 54, but wanted to minimize the amount of google getting shoved down my throat everytime I pick up my phone. The google apps are typically flashed seperately to custom rom which is where the Open GApps project comes in. Think I experimented a bit with a custom selection of GApps until I had the basic functionality I wanted working. Currently using Lineage OS, happy with it.

Flashing a custom rom voids the warranty (atleast it does on my phone, and each time it's powered up it displays that it has been flashed at the top of the screen - even if you somehow restore it I believe).

I'm well short of 54 but I'd really like to improve the battery life on my z5 compact as it seems to have given up lately

Trouble is as I don't know what I'm doing I'm not sure taking random downloads to my laptop and phone is particularly safe for me to do as I could well and probably would download something dodgy and ruin both

Sometimes rather than install an entirely new ROM, the best method might be to root your phone then use an app called Titanium Backup to uninstall rogue apps. They could be using data and running processes in the background that hog memory and drains the battery.

Installing TWRP, which comes with some custom ROMS, though can be installed on it's own, allows you to create an image of the phone to reinstall if you make any errors in uninstalling essential services. Similar to imaging software that PCs use.

But, as said XDA's the place to go

https://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-z5/general

Last time I considered this, I did some reading and some banking apps do not work if superuser permissions are compromised. Required for flashing a ROM I believe.

Also, custom ROMs no longer include Google Play Store which makes installing everything else a pain in the arse...

This knowledge may well be out of date as it was a couple of years ago...

When I first got into android I used to root them as soon as I got them. Don't bother anymore though.

One thing to remember is that I believe some banking apps won't run on rooted mobiles which might be an issue to you.