Upgrading the Galaxy S3 to a Custom ROM

What exactly is a Nandroid backup

Last night until 1 o'clock in the morning I spent fiddling with my phone and getting it ready to put on a custom ROM. I got a lot of information from a Google plus community about how to do it. I needed to download extra stuff, for example I needed to do a Nandroid backup as well as download an extra application to add Google apps to the update. This is due to the fact that Google do not let the custom ROM makers distribute their applications within the actual custom ROMs. I have to admit that the process is quite complicated and confusing and not for your average human. Updating your phone to a custom ROM is more for the geeks of the world. I do consider myself to be a geek, but I have to admit that I'm finding this process a little bit challenging this first time around. I suppose that once you have done this process while two times it seems a little bit more friendly and easy. I bought an application called ROM manager which is supposed to be making things easier. I watched a video showing how to do the process but it didn't show all the things that were shown to be necessary as per the information from the Google plus community. There are certain files that have to be downloaded and the files are specific to the model of the phone that you're working with. There are rather variables also which are dependent upon the custom ROM that you want to put on your phone.

Why would anyone want to do this?

When you get a phone from a carrier it has extra software on the phone that is commonly called bloatware. So one of the reasons to use custom ROM is to get rid of that extra and required software. That software can't be otherwise deleted from the phone. After having the Nexus seven for a couple of weeks and using the latest version of Google Android and liking it, it seems like a good plan to get to something a little bit more pure Android.

Instructions from Geoff Whiteley at Google plus

With CWM this should be your procedure....

1. Boot into recovery (shortcut in ROM manager)
2. Backup (you've already done)
3. Wipe data/factory reset
4. Wipe cache partition
5. Wipe dalvik cache (in advanced)
6. Format /system (only /system nothing else, found in mounts&storage)
7. Install zip, navigate to ROM
8. Install gapps
9. Reboot system
10. Enjoy