Monday 30 December 2013

Android KitKat (4.4.X) on your Galaxy S3 with Resurrection Remix ROM

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It’s been a long time since I tinkered with Android. That was the only good thing I found in these devices – they were simply modifiable to any extent. You could do almost anything with these devices. For me, getting an Android and using it as it is and playing with all the millions of apps in Play Store is kinda boring. For me, the thing is to dissect each and every tiny software portion of these devices to learn more and more and to make it better and better. I hate the common stuff. Luckily, I managed to get back into that lost world thanks to my bro’s Samsung Galaxy S3. He too finally admitted that TouchWiz sucked (it always did) and that he wanted something new. Luckily for him, his device was ultra-popular among the tinkerers. Instead of getting him a TouchWiz alter-ego, I managed to dig out some ultra-cool 4.4 ROMs.

Android 4.4 aka KitKat recently went loose to the world and since then, everyone was trying to figure out to get this onto their device. And yes, those freelance devs didn’t ditch the most popular phone of a time. Galaxy S3 had a lot of new KitKat ROMs out of which, some were stable and some weren’t. There were unofficial Cyanogenmod ROMs and the usual stuff. My bro actually wanted the latest 4.3 stock firmware but I was totally against that especially since it was quite large for my low bandwidth. Instead, I managed to get my hands on a stable, Android 4.4 custom ROM that was totally cool – the Resurrection Remix ROM. Last time I checked, it was on 4.3 but after 4.4 arrived, I guess the dev went crazy and ported all the goodies to it. Surprisingly, he managed to get it stable while others were still digging for unknown bugs. Without any second thought, I flashed the SGS3 with Resurrection Remix ROM.


It’s almost like a “Nexus” experience thanks to the launcher Google built into the OS. I had at first, two launchers out of which one was loaded by the dev which is maint to be the default launcher, a Nova launcher (maybe there’s a tie-up). After I installed Google Apps, I got a third launcher named ‘Home’. This was the Google Launcher for KitKat. The Home launcher was pretty smooth and with this, it almost felt like a Nexus 5. But the awesome thing was the OS itself – Android 4.4 aka KitKat was pretty much stable on the RR ROM and it was smooth as butter even after installing a lot of apps. Plus, it seems Android is starting to follow iOS in terms of perfection as the major thing I noticed was the entry of some perfections in the whole UI. Everything was clearer and looked darn good. The fonts, the icons, the status bar – everything was fine tuned. Things got fluid, faster and more responsive. Google Now literally gained my attention. I played with it a lot and the voice commands are more responsive. Hands-free control of the phone is definitely working to some extent. Just say “OK Google” and say anything without having to touch the phone. The inbuilt Camera app also took a new theme. Every setting can be accessed by touching just once whereby an arc of commands appear. You then glide your finger to go into each option and once you’re done, release the finger. However, it took a little time for me to understand that.

Basically, you won’t be getting any TouchWiz styled stuff here as this is a custom ROM based on the latest Android version, 4.4.2 (at the time of my flash) and is based on pure Android (with some advanced stuff of course). There are a lot of advanced options available in settings but for a common user, the experience would resemble a Nexus. However, one thing this ROM can guarantee is the smoothness, reliability, responsiveness and the darn looks of Android KitKat and a stable OS that won’t let your daily tasks down. You can definitely survive a year with this ROM and it’s one of the best ROMs in the hub so far. If you want TouchWiz, you’d have to wait either for the official release which won’t be coming any soon by the way and if you are in deep thirst for TouchWiz, you can get some 4.3 ROMs. However, I’d recommend this to you if you are waiting to get a bite of KitKat on your SGS3 and if you’re tired of the stock ROM.

You can get Resurrection Remix (4.4.X) at XDA forums. Instructions for flashing this custom ROM are given at the thread and you can follow them.
When I went over to download and flash the files, the Google Apps (GAPPS) package link belonged to older Jelly Bean version. Flashing this package will make the ROM crash. While downloading GAPPS from the given link at XDA, make sure it’s KitKat (KK) and not Jelly Bean (JB). GAPPS for Android 4.4.2 can be downloaded from here if you want.

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