This blog post tells you how to install LineageOS 17 on a Samsung Galaxy S5 (G900F/T) phone.
Warning: Please be aware that by following the instructions in this blog post you could damage your phone and make it unusable! You use my instructions at your own risk! You’ve been warned.
Please note: LineageOS 17 is based upon Android 10. I’ve written instructions for the F & T models as that happens to be the two S5 models that I’ve upgraded following the steps below.
Introduction
I’m writing these instructions in November 2020 and I still think the G900 version of the S5 phone is a very capable phone. Both my fiancée and I are using the S5 daily and over the course of a month we find we’ve used our phones in a variety of ways.
For example when we lost access to our landline broadband, we enabled WiFi on two PCs, turned a G900T into an access point and shared mobile internet to the two PCs. We also regularly play games on our S5 phones, record videos and take photos.
I really like the phone and using LineageOS, for me, takes the phone to the next level.
I hope you find my instructions helpful.
2nd warning: Before proceeding please make sure you’ve backed up any data you wish to keep and that the phone’s battery is fully charged. I don’t provide instructions about backing up a ‘EFS partition’, so if that is concern, please look elsewhere for assistance.
Please note: These instructions are for Windows 10 users and I used Windows 10 Pro 64-bit when putting together this guide. There are different ways to preform the LineageOS installation and I’m blogging about the method I used.
What you need:
- Windows 10 PC
- microSD card
- microSD card reader
- USB lead to connect the phone to a PC
Step 1 – Preparing the Windows 10 PC and microSD card
- Download, install the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables for your PC, then reboot. *
- Download the latest klte recovery and build files from here. **
- Download Gapps ARM 10.0 Nano (or latest ARM Nano version) from here.
- Place the latest nightly build of klte and the Gapps Nano files on a formatted microSD card and insert the microSD into the phone.
- Download and extract Heimdall and then place the klte recovery image in the same directory.
* I downloaded and ran vc_redist.x64.exe
** If needed, you can download lineage-17.1-20201025-recovery-klte.img here and lineage-17.1-20201025-nightly-klte-signed.zip here. Those downloads will quickly become outdated.
Step 2 – Using Heimdall
- With the phone turned off, I pressed ‘volume down’, ‘home’ and the ‘power’ buttons at the same time to boot into download mode.
- When you see the message about downloading a custom OS, press the volume up button.
- Now connect the USB lead to both the PC and computer.
- From the Heimdall folder, run the zadig-2.4.exe (or latest version) application.
- From the menu, select ‘Options’, then ‘List All Devices’.
- Find the MSM8960 listing and click ‘Replace Driver’. Once the driver has been installed, you can close the application.
- Now open a command prompt and browse to the heimdall directory. *
- Now in the command prompt type heimdall flash –RECOVERY image.img –no-reboot (replacing image.img with the actually name of the recovery image you downloaded) and then press enter. Those are double – (minus) characters before RECOVERY and no-reboot. *
- Once you seen a blue line move across the phone’s screen, wait at least ten seconds, then remove the battery from the phone and unplug the USB cable.
- Now put the phone back together, but don’t turn it on yet.
* DOS commands such as cd.. and cd heimdall or similar should help you navigate to the directory.
** Make sure RECOVERY is uppercase.
Step 3 – Using recovery to finish the installation
- Now boot the phone into recovery by holding the volume up, home and power buttons together and release the buttons when you see recovery in small text.
- In recovery select ‘Factory reset’, then ‘Format data/factory reset’ and ‘Format data’.
- Using the arrow at the top-left to return to the main menu and select ‘Apply update’.
- Now select ‘Choose from disk/sdcard1’, and select the lineage-17.…. Zip file you placed on the microSD card during step 1.
- Now repeat step 4, but this time for the Gapps ARM Nano zip file.
- From the main menu, you now select ‘Reboot system now’. *
- Once rebooted you go through various configurations screens.
* It will take longer than usual to boot LineageOS 17 for the first time.
Almost immediately after installation I edit the drop-down menu options, by clicking on the pencil icon, selecting edit and then choosing my preferred options.
Mini FAQ
Q. How can I solve the error “ERROR: Partition “recovery” does not exist in the specified PIT.”
A. It’s likely you’re typing ‘recovery’ in lowercase rather than uppercase.
Final thoughts
I’ve used a stock ROM, LineageOS 16 and 17 with the Samsung Galaxy S5 G900F/T models and other than replacing the text messaging app, I prefer LineageOS over the stock for both security and features.
I’m glad I’ve upgraded to the custom ROM and I hope you find my instructions helpful.