The twins Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have a lot in common, and to our surprise, this extends to their compatibility with each other’s custom ROMs too. But there’s a catch, some internals are a bit different and hence you need to do some post ROM-flash work, also flashing a device specific kernel to be exact, to be able to boot the ROM of other device of the two on your device. XDA user osmosizzz has already tried this and confirmed it to be working for the Galaxy S6 too. It’s not the first time either that we’ve seen any other variant’s ROM getting compatible with your own variant.
Anyway, in short, you just need to flash your device’s kernel after flashing the ROM of other device. Let’s understand this with the help of an example.
- Suppose, you have a Galaxy S6 Edge, model no. G925F) and you want to flash the custom ROM meant for regular Galaxy S6, G920F (the other device).
- Then you’ll need to download two files for flashing in recovery:
- Custom ROM of the other device, G920F, in this case
- Kernel of your own device, G925F
- Then, you’ll boot into recovery mode.
- Flash the custom rom first.
- And then flash the kernel of your own device.
- Reboot the system and you should be good.
That’s it.
Though, know that you can only flash a custom ROM of one variant on another, even when you are flashing the kernel of your own device thereafter. That’s to say, custom ROM of:
- G920T on G925T and vice versa (T-Mobile S6)
- G920P on G925P and vice versa (Sprint S6)
- G920A on G925A and vice versa (AT&T S6)
- G920F on G95F and vice versa (international variant). Similarly, other international variant, G920i and G925i would work on each other. But could work well with G92*F models also.
Hence, you cannot flash a custom ROM of another variant on your own device. Example: you cannot install ROM of Verizon Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge on regular Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge. Same for T-mobile’s Galaxy S6. Though, the GSM device like AT&T and T-mobile S6 variants could work well with regular Galaxy S6’s ROMs, just take care to flash the kernel meant for your own device.
Further, this is not guaranteed to work and it’s recommended you create a backup from recovery, which you can easily restore to get back to pre-install state of your device in case something terrible happens. Also, you can always install the official firmware back of your device, using the Odin PC software, doing which is safe and best way to restore the device, as it also removes custom recovery, root, etc. stuff from your device, bringing the device back to normal state.
Let us know if you need any help with these. Good luck! And do share your experience with us!
