We asked, you told us: Custom ROMs still have their place on Android phones

Installing custom ROMs on Android phones serves several purposes. ROMs could offer more features above and beyond the software your phone packs by default. Using a current ROM could be essential if you’re using an aging device with minimal or no software support. Or, you could just be longing for something different.

However, judging by our reader opinion garnered by our recent poll, the majority of our readers never cared or no longer care about any of these things. See the results below.

Do you use custom ROMs on your Android device?

Results

This was a fiercely popular poll, gaining over 7,000 responses across our site and plenty more across Twitter and YouTube. All three platforms produced some wildly different results, too.

Let’s start with our website. Just under 35% of readers currently use ROMs on their devices. 39.1% admit that they “used to” but no longer. Finally, slightly more than a quarter of voters say they’ve never used custom ROMs at all. Remarkably, this means that nearly three in four Android Authority readers have dallied with ROMs at some point.

On Twitter, we saw just shy of 5,000 votes. A much larger portion of voters (38%) on this platform have never tried ROMs, while 16.6% are currently running devices with them. This leaves just over 45% of voters who have abandoned ROMs, having tried them in the past.

Finally, we come to YouTube. The majority (46%) of our audience admits to never trying custom ROMs at all. 40% have tried them in the past, while 14% currently run a custom ROM. This stems from over 16,000 votes.

In conclusion, it seems the vast majority of our readers used to dabble with custom ROMs, but no longer due to improvements in software, trouble with Google’s new security features, or the general hassle. Just over one in five readers still use a custom ROM.

Your comments

• Varusal: Not anymore because most apps, especially finance apps, will not work (thanks to SafetyNet).
• Boni M: I used to install custom ROMs a lot in my older devices for almost 10 years but nowadays I see no need for the same. Most OEM ROMs are customizable & android has matured in a lot of ways.
• SanBlarnoi: I use them mainly because I want monthly security patches and a clean UI without bloatware with the hardware of my choice.
• roaduardo: Used to be a flashaholic back in the day. But bootloaders these days can be locked up pretty tight and then there’s the financial apps that won’t work (for good reason). Security has become more important for me as I got older? I don’t want to dig into my phone’s software guts like that anymore. It was a fun hobby, though.
• Seela: I only use them once OEM dropped support for my device.
• Kean: I use custom ROMs for devices which the OEM dropped their support for, it could increase the useful life of phone for many years, especially if the device is officially supported by LineageOS.
• Achyut Arjun: Custom ROMs are like a necessity for me, because I hate how OEMs take forever to update the phones, and also some custom ROMs offer a much cleaner and ad-free, stock android experience.
• YT Cast: I don’t root them because they seem too complicated, but I’m so in love with the OnePlus 8T I think I will try to root it to keep OS updates.
• Arun Udayakumar: Used custom ROMs on every android phone that I’ve owned.

That’s it for this custom ROM poll. Thanks for voting and commenting. Have any additional thoughts about the results or custom ROMs? Be sure to drop them down below.