Install Pixel Experience on a52q

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Basic requirements

  1. Read through the instructions at least once before actually following them, so as to avoid any problems due to any missed steps!
  2. Make sure your computer has adb and fastboot. Setup instructions can be found here.
  3. Enable USB debugging on your device.
  4. Make sure that your model is actually listed in the “Supported models” section here (exact match required!)
  5. Boot your device with the stock OS at least once and check every functionality. Make sure that you can send and receive SMS and place and receive calls (also via WiFi and LTE, if available), otherwise it won’t work on PixelExperience either! Additionally, some devices require that VoLTE/VoWiFi be utilized once on stock to provision IMS.
  6. PixelExperience is provided as-is with no warranty. While we attempt to verify everything works you are installing this at your own risk!

Pre-Install Instructions

  1. Connect the device to a Wi-Fi network.
  2. Enable Developer Options by pressing the “Build Number” option at least 7 times, in the “Settings” app within the “About” menu
    • From within the Developer options menu, enable OEM unlock.
  3. Download vbmeta.tar from here.
  4. Power off the device, and boot it into download mode:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Volume Down and connect USB cable to PC.
    • Now, click the button that the onscreen instructions correlate to “Device unlock mode” and/or “Unlock Bootloader”.
    • Device will restart, repeat steps 1 and 2 to enable the Developer Options menu again.
    • Verify that “OEM Unlock” is still enabled and continue to step 5
  5. Download and install the necessary drivers.
    • Download the newest Samsung drivers from here.
    • Install SAMSUNG_USB_Driver_for_Mobile_Phones.exe.
  6. Download this version of Odin.
  7. Extract “Odin_3.14.4.zip”.
  8. Run Odin3 v3.14.4 found in the newly extracted “Odin_3.14.4” folder.
  9. Check the box labeled next to the button labeled “AP”, and then click the “AP” button.
    • In the menu that pops up, select the downloaded vbmeta.tar file.
  10. Power off the device, and again boot it into download mode:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Volume Down and connect USB cable to PC.
  11. Check in the top left of the Odin window that you see a valid device, it will show up as something like COM0.
  12. Click “Start”. A transfer bar will appear on the device showing the VBMeta image being flashed.
  13. Your device will reboot, you may now unplug the USB cable from your device.
  14. The device will demand you format userdata, please follow the onscreen instructions to do so.
  15. Run through Android Setup skipping everything you can, then connect the device to a Wi-Fi network.
  16. Re-enable Development settings by clicking the “Build Number” option 10 times, in the “Settings” app within the “About” menu, and verify that “OEM Unlock” is still enabled in the “Developer options” menu.

Important Information

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called “Download mode”, which is very similar to “Fastboot mode” on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Odin is a Samsung-made tool for interfacing with Download mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through Download Mode – rooting the stock firmware is neither necessary nor required.

Installing a custom recovery using Odin

  1. Enable Developer Options by pressing the “Build Number” option 10 times, in the “Settings” app within the “About” menu
    • From within the Developer options menu, enable OEM unlock.
  2. Download the PixelExperience Recovery. Simply download the latest recovery file.

  3. Power off the device, and boot it into download mode:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Volume Down and connect USB cable to PC.
    • Now, click the button that the onscreen instructions correlate to “Continue”, and insert the USB cable into the device.
  4. Download and install the necessary drivers.
    • Download the newest Samsung drivers from here. You might need to create a Samsung account and login to download them.
    • Install SAMSUNG_USB_Driver_for_Mobile_Phones.exe.
  5. Download this version of Odin.
  6. Extract “Odin_3.14.4.zip”.
  7. Run Odin3_v3.14.4 found in the newly extracted “Odin_3.14.4” folder.
  8. Check in the top left of the Odin window that you see a valid device, it will show up as something like COM0.
  9. In the left side of the Odin window, you will see an “Options” tab, click it, and then un-check the “Auto Reboot” option.
  10. Check the box labeled next to the button labeled “AP”, and then click the “AP” button.
    • In the menu that pops up, select the newly downloaded custom recovery .tar or .tar.md5.
  11. Click “Start”. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery image being flashed.
  12. Manually reboot into recovery, press the Volume Down + Power buttons for 7~10 seconds (or unplugging the device, pulling device battery out and putting it back in, then replugging back the phone to a pc) until the screen turns black & release the buttons immediately when it does, then boot to recovery:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Power while the device is connected to a PC via USB cable.

Installing PixelExperience from recovery

  1. Download the PixelExperience installation package that you would like to install or build the package yourself.
  2. If you are not in recovery, reboot into recovery:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Power while the device is connected to a PC via USB cable.
  3. Now tap Factory Reset, then Format data / factory reset and continue with the formatting process. This will remove encryption and delete all files stored in the internal storage, as well as format your cache partition (if you have one).
  4. Return to the main menu.
  5. Sideload the PixelExperience .zip package:
    • On the device, select “Apply Update”, then “Apply from ADB” to begin sideload.
    • On the host machine, sideload the package using: adb sideload filename.zip.
  6. Once you have installed everything successfully, click the back arrow in the top left of the screen, then “Reboot system now”.

Get assistance

After you’ve double checked that you followed the steps precisely, didn’t skip any and still have questions or got stuck, feel free to ask on our Telegram group.