Okay, so today I wanna talk about my little adventure with Android ports. You know, it all started when I got this old Android phone, a Samsung Galaxy Discover, I think. It had an unlockable bootloader, which got me thinking, “Why not try putting a newer Android version on this thing?” I mean, why let a decent phone go to waste, right?
So I began digging around. My goal was to get some sort of Jellybean ROM onto this old-timer. First thing I did was just read up a bunch on how this whole porting thing works. I found out that it’s kinda like giving your phone a brain transplant – you’re basically taking the software from a newer phone and making it work on an older one. Sounds simple enough, but man, it’s a whole different world.
I started with the easy stuff, just to get my feet wet. I found some guides online, mostly aimed at other phones, but the general idea was the same. They talked about things like “LineageOS” and “crDroid”, which were basically like different flavors of Android. I figured, “Okay, if I’m going to do this, I might as well aim for something like LineageOS 18.1, which is Android 11, right?” Gotta keep it modern, after all.
The first real thing I tried was messing around with my computer’s ports, especially after I learned that Cuttlefish uses port 8443. I used this command lsof -i in the terminal, which is like a detective tool to see what your computer is up to connection-wise. Then I used lsof -i grep yourappname to look specifically for my app. I was just trying to understand how these ports work and how my phone communicates with my computer, I even try to set my Android device to listen on a particular port number, but I failed.
Then I hit a wall. I wanted to get my phone talking to my PC via Bluetooth, like a serial port. I downloaded an app that I thought would do the trick, but it kept giving me these weird errors. I spent hours trying different settings, reading forums, and even trying to change the server port in my app’s settings (which, by the way, is usually 8080 by default). Nothing. It was like my phone and PC were speaking different languages.
I’m not gonna lie, I almost gave up a few times. It’s frustrating when you put in so much effort and don’t see any progress. But I kept at it, trying different ROMs, different settings, just about anything I could think of.
Eventually, I decided to take a step back and try a different approach. I tried to put the PC games on the phone, I know it seems like there’s no connection, but I just wanted to try something new. Finally, I did it! I successfully made it, although I didn’t get the Android port done, at least I made something done.
So, yeah, that’s my story about trying to port Android. It’s a bumpy road, full of twists and turns, but it’s also kinda fun in a weird, masochistic way. You learn a lot, you get frustrated, and sometimes, just sometimes, you actually make something work. And that feeling? That’s what makes it all worth it.