Axon 7, the current rooting and custom ROM situation. Part 2.

Hello and welcome to part 2 of my "highly-anticipated" guide. How to install custom ROMs and mods. This was meant to be part of the original post but I wanted to farm karma ran out of time because it already taken me 4 hours to do that. With edits and screenshots, I’d say it’s taken up at least 5 hours of my life sigh

Alright as always…

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##NOTHING YOU DO WILL BE MY RESPONSIBILITY, ALL ACTIONS ARE OF YOUR OWN. THIS IS JUST A GUIDE AND IF YOU FOLLOW IT AND END UP WITH A VERY EXPENSIVE BRICK OR THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON IT’S NOT MY FAULT.

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What is a custom ROM?

A ROM is not technically correct, ROM stands for “Read Only Memory”, this is technically wrong as with root you can write over it and “Custom Read Only Memory”s is just plain wrong grammatically. Despite that, that’s what we call them, ROMs as it’s shorter to say than custom software. If you changed anything permanently such as the boot animation it is technically a “custom” ROM.

What different types are there?

The first type is what I just described, a stock system with mods to make the experience more enjoyable. This is limited as mods don’t work with all stock systems as it’s up the maker of the phone to load the software on to the phone. If the said maker renamed the “dialer” to “phoneapp” then mods that target the dialer will not work as it cannot find it.

The second type is much more custom. Cyanogen is the most popular one at the time of writing. Cyanogen releases a set of code and tools on to a site like GitHub, by using those tools anyone could stitch together a ROM. Most of the time this will be an individual that owns the device with time to spare, other times it could be an entire company such as OnePlus. Advantages of this would be that with one set of rules that is define for Cyanogen, mods developers would only need to write the code once for Cyanogen, the mods should work for all devices running Cyanogen. For example, a phone running AOKP which is partially based on Cyanogen should work with all Cyanogen mods.

If I don’t want to install mods, why don’t I just use the Stock System if it’s not that much different?

You could, in fact that is exactly what I’m doing. More of this later. But with Cyanogen the developer normally pushes the code back to GitHub so you can build it yourself once the developer gives up on the phone someone else could take over right where s/he stopped. Because of the arguably less complicated process to make a new ROM, Cyanogen is normally quite quick to update to the newest Android versions and security patch.

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Enough blabbing, let’s get to the guides…

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##GUIDES START HERE

###Mods to install once you have TWRP.

SuperSU

One of the most important things you need is first a root managment app, the one that I use is SuperSU. You should have already flashed this, if not it’s inside folder 3 “TWRP Extras” in my old guide. This would allow you grant root access to apps within android. If you don’t want to use mine because you think I planted a virus inside or something you can go download SuperSu 2.65 flash file off your choice of websites. Once you have flashed this you can update it to the newest versions in the Google Play Store.

Xposed

This is not a mod itself but more of a framework, this allows you to install other mods that allows you to change icons system wide, set hardware key combos and much, much more. Once you have flash the Xposed file you should have the Xposed app automatically installed along with it. If not get it here

Once you have it installed you can open up Xposed installer, go to downloads, look through the apps you want to install. Enable it in "Modules" and reboot. I won’t go too much into this as different apps require different things.

Viper4Android

This is an audio engine mod allow you to EQ every sound out of your phone. It’s a lot more functional than the Dolby Atomos app. If you don’t know what you are doing, then I won’t personally install it. More options means more places to mess up but also means more ways to tweak it to how you like it. In order to use this you need to download the latest version from the official website and then install the drivers. For the drivers to install you need 2 things. Syslinux to be in permissive mod (it is by default. If not, check this out) and a writable system, which was covered in last guide.

http://vipersaudio.com/blog/?page_id=48

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Full ROM flashing

The only one that is functional and even exists that I know of is CM13 found here. To flash this is pretty simple. This is a general guide for flashing a zip, could be used for any zip/ROM.

1)Download the flash file found on the XDA thread

2)Put this on to your sdcard, external if you can

3)Reboot into recovery mode, you can do this via 2 ways.

a) power off the phone and then boot it back up again with the volume up held down, a reboot will not work

b) plug in the phone, in cmd or powershell (win+r then type in cmd or powershell), run the command

* adb reboot recovery

4) go to Mount and make sure "Micro SDCard" is ticked if you put the flash file on your external SD card, if not then don’t worry about it

5. go back and tap on Install. Tap on “select storage” on the bottom. Find your flash file and swipe to flash it.

5.1 optional) if you have installed Cyanogenmod and want to keep using google apps like the play store you will need to install Gapps found here. You require Android 6.0 for CM13 or 7.0 for CM14. Both needs to be ARM64. I recommend at least mini+ so you can use Google on tap. Flash other files you need to flash now, unless it says not to.

6. It should take around 10 minutes to flash it, after that go back and tap on Wipe

7. Swipe to do a factory reset, this will wipe data, cache and dalvik cache.

8. Reboot the system by holding down the power button, using the menu or your favorite method. If you still have your phone plugged in I normally just use adb to do it since I’m lazy like that.

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ZOMG!!11!!! I HAZ BRIKED LEL PHONE!!!! SNED MONIES OVER PAYPALS!!!!

I did say that was not my fault but hey ho. If you have messed up your phone so bad that you have to reinstall the OS do a few check first:

1)Did you install something on Xposed recently? If you did you can use the Xposed Uninstaller in my first guide included in folder 3

2)Still bootlooping? Boot back into TWRP hold Vol Up and Power until it reboot, wipe the cache and dalvik first. If that doesn’t work wipe the data. Hope you made a backup.

2.1) STILL BOOTLOOPING??? oh boy you have messed up good, skip to the restore to stock or flash a fresh ROM on top of it

3)It’s just a black screen!!1! Hold down the power button for at least 20 seconds to force a reboot. If it boots follow step 1 and 2

4)Yeah, it’s just a black screen, charge it overnight first. If it gets picked up by your PC you can try restoring the backups you made in my first guide. Rename the backup file to simple just recovery.img and boot.img and flash it as you would.

5)Still no! welp, enjoy your new paper weight at least it has cool speakers, right?

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Restoring to Stock

If you want to restore it to stock there are currently 2 ways, via TWRP and via the official ZTE way. Both will remove TWRP, I’m not sure which one would leave traces or if they would at all. As always, at your own risk.

Method 1) With XDA made stock system files. Afaik, they are extracted from OTA files and are fully working. Obtain the files you need and flash them using the method above. Remember to wipe. Please use the one designed for your device but I’m running a A2017 and using the A2017U B29 update and it works fine, that’s not to say it won’t break in a future update.

File can be obtained here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/axon-7/development/rom-guide-updates-to-stock-files-via-t3469484

Method 2) This is made by ZTE so I don’t know it will leave telltale marker that says you have unlocked the bootloader already or something but it would be the safest bet to do if you want to get to the nearest factory experience.

Download can be found at: https://www.zteusa.com/axon-7

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Which ROM should I use?

Only you can answer that but I personally use this. You might be wondering why I don’t use CM13? CM13 as nice as it is doesn’t quite have the sound quality stock has, this is coming from a guy that thinks that the stock music app sounds better than PowerAmp so take that how you will. But most users that don’t find audio to be a big thing will much prefer more software features and tweaks CM offers. So far, I have been able to get most mods that I want on Xposed. The stock ROM is not that great but ZTE gets far too much hate for it. It’s okay, not great but far better than Samsung, Sony, HTC, and I bet any other company if I have used them in the past. ZTE’s ROM is not great, but it’s so far, the best that I’ve used.

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With that I think this is the end of my guide writing days, I have typed over 20k+ chars over this week, not including PMs and replies. If you have any questions please leave it in the comments below along with spelling and grammatical errors.

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HOPE THIS HELPED SOMEONE GOSH DARN MY BLOODY HANDS