Updating a Samsung Galaxy View
Several months ago, my wife and I lucked into a used tablet in a thrift shop - a Samsung Galaxy View. This one was apparently issued by Bell Canada, and was still registered to someone's accounts, but I was able to safely remove them. We had to find a power cable - it was donated without one. That proved to be a bit tricky since it didn't use the usual micro-USB but instead a more traditional cable, but find one we did, and we're all hunky-dorey now.
The only problem is that it was stuck running Android 5 - WAY behind. Many apps are not supported by such an old version of Android, so we weren't able to install all apps. Some still worked, like Netflix or Disney+, but I couldn't use our TV app to watch live TV after a while. It kept kicking back saying we needed to update the app or some such things. Disappointing, and on top of that the OS was not visually appealing, and was full of pre-installed apps that served no useful purpose.
It is possible to install custom ROMs on Android phones and tablets, but because of the unique nature of this device, there's not much available.1 Thankfully someone managed to port a version of LineageOS, running Android 8.1, to the Galaxy View. I found this a few weeks ago in a search, and saved the links for when I had more time - I wanted up-to-date apps, darn it!
Unfortunately the links I found were not entirely helpful. I found the link to download the OS:
https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-8-1-0-unofficial-lineageos-15-1-sm-t670-galaxy-view-wifi.3783243/
But figuring out how to install it was a bit of a challenge for me. I've never installed a custom OS on an Android device before so I didn't know where to start. When I searched for how to do it, I had several different guides of varying quality2, not all of them intuitive. This was my quest over the weekend, and all in all, it probably took an hour to an hour and a half.
I doubt many people will have one of these tablets and are looking to upgrade, but I will tell you: installing TWRP is the key to installing LineageOS - or any custom ROM, really. One of the guides I found originally involved using adb to install the new ROM, and it had several steps at the command line. Yeah, sure, I could do it. But it wasn't working because I had first installed TWRP, which replaces the default Recovery Mode of the tablet. So that was a bust.
I realized way late in the process that I should just follow the instructions on Lineage's website. They're fairly simple. Save the OS file onto your device's memory, along with GApps (Google's app suite, if you want to use the play store) if you're installing it, and boot into TWRP. There's a big install button, which you tap on and select the OS you want to install. Very quick. The process to install GApps is the same - though I encountered several errors along the way.3
In the end everything worked and I had a proper installed version of Android 8.1. Some of the apps I wanted (Netflix, Disney+) weren't available in the Play Store. Probably something to do with the device, I'm not sure; but I was able to find the APK for the correct version of Android and they installed just fine. It's only a matter of time before Android 8 becomes unsupported, at which point I'll have to find some other use for the tablet (if that's even possible).
In the meantime we have a great portable movie machine for when we're away at our in-laws. Great, lucky find and it was fun to flex my technical muscle in trying to reason it out. Also very thankful that I didn't brick the darn thing!
This thing is HUGE. It's not your standard tablet. It's bigger than the largest iPad Pro.↩
And quantity of ads↩
Those errors are thankfully very detailed and tell you what you need. First was I downloaded the wrong version - then the file I had was too big for the storage space on the device. Quickly remedied.↩