Install Pixel Experience on a52q

Pre-Install Instructions

1. Connect the device to a Wi-Fi network.
2. Enable Developer Options by pressing the “Build Number” option in the “Settings” app within the “About” menu
   • From within the Developer options menu, enable OEM unlock.
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, hold down the “Volume Up” button until you see the “Unlock bootloader” screen.
   • Then press the “Volume Up” button once to unlock the bootloader.
4. Your device will reboot twice and erase your data, you may now unplug the USB cable from your device.
5. Run through Android Setup skipping everything you can, then connect the device to a Wi-Fi network.
6. Re-enable Development settings by clicking the “Build Number” option 7 times, in the “Settings” app within the “About” menu, and verify that “OEM Unlock” is enabled and greyed out 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. Rename the downloaded image to “recovery.img”, open a Command Prompt in the folder where the file was downloaded, and TAR the file by running tar -cvf recovery.tar recovery.img.
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   Tip: Make sure to not accidentally name the file recovery.img.img when file name extensions are hidden.
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   Tip: You can open a command prompt in any folder by right-clicking on empty space while holding Shift and selecting “Open Command Prompt here” or “Open PowerShell window here” from the context menu.
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   Important: Other recoveries may not work for installation or updates. We strongly recommend to use the one linked above!
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 “Continue”, and insert the USB cable into the device.
5. 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.
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 in the top left of the Odin window that you see a valid device, it will show up as something like COM0.
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   Tip: The COM port, or the number succeeding COM, may be any valid number.
10. In the left side of the Odin window, you will see an “Options” tab, click it, and then un-check the “Auto Reboot” option.
11. 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.
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    Tip: The filename may vary depending on your device, and the version of your custom recovery.
12. Click “Start”. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery image being flashed.
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    Note: The device will continue to display Downloading... Do not turn off target!! even after the process is complete. When the status message in the top left of the devices’s display reports that the process is complete, you may proceed.
13. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
14. Manually reboot into recovery, this may require pulling the device’s battery out and putting it back in, or if you have a non-removable battery, press the Volume Down + Power buttons for 8~10 seconds 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.
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    Note: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after installing the custom recovery. If you don’t the custom recovery will be overwritten on boot.

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.
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     Tip: Normally, adb will report Total xfer: 1.00x, but in some cases, even if the process succeeds the output will stop at 47% and report adb: failed to read command: Success. In some cases it will report adb: failed to read command: No error or adb: failed to read command: Undefined error: 0 which is also fine.
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.