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[Howto] Set up your new phone. Nov 20, 2015

Mr. BG , Nov 20, 2015 :

The last thing you want is to get into trouble when setting up your brand new phone. It's not funny when it ends up acting weird, things are just not working properly, or worse, it gets into a loop or leaves you with a very unresponsive "bricked" phone.

Now, ofcourse it is possible something is wrong with the phone, that would leave you with no other choice than contacting Customer support. But in general that is not the case, it often is a chain of software interacting and not working properly.

Smartphones are Basically small computers. I have build, setup and fixed hundreds if not thousands of PC's, laptops, tablets and phones and I can honestly say 95% of the problems are software related. You can avoid many problems by setting up your phone carefully, step by step.

This setup system is based on the thought of minimising the variables, so if something goes wrong it is easier to backtrack what caused you problems. Start from scratch and change things step by step, if something goes wrong it is easy to analyse what causes the problem and you can simply take it one step back and go from there.

A careful setup can make or break your phone experience

There are many ways, here is mine. It may seem extensive, but I never had a single problem I could not resolve easily setting up any phone with this method that is easy and gets me a rock solid phone every time.

Setting up your new phone ​

1. Don't update, not even the OTA system updates
2. Don't put in your SIM yet, leave it for now...
3. Start with the setup procedure, but: Skip as many account setup things as you can (I prefer to do that later by hand, it turns out that way I get less problems)
4. After the initial setup go to the settings area, start with activating wifi and after that setting up your Google account ONLY for now!
5. Do NOT install any new apps, but have all apps that are standard on the phone update in your Google Play account.
6. After You did that it may be necessary to shut down the phone and charge it fully.
7. After it charged fully play with the current apps. Try them all, setup everything Google has. Test for stability.
8. If all goes well with the new phone shut it down and put in your SIM card. update your phone settings accordingly.
9. See if all works stable, check call quality, texting etc.
10. After all that install your favourite apps ONE AT THE TIME and test drive them before installing the next.
11. If one of the apps screws up your phone you'll know exactly which app it is. Use Google for troubleshooting
12. Avoid (or disable) apps like Facebook (and FB Messenger), Instagram etc. those are in general battery and memory hogs. Also avoid apps that offer little to nothing over the browser version, like for example Twitter (thank you @sfomin for the addition)

Installing updates.​

Before updating I recommend you wipe system cache on older Android versions.

1. make sure you have all relevant data backed up
2. Remove redundant apps that can disturb things
3. I strongly recommend disabling Launcher apps
4. In other words: get as close to stock settings as you can.
5. Power down your phone
6. Press Vol. Down and power button until phone starts.
7. In the menu choose "Wipe system cache"
8. Don't be silly by accidentally wiping data
9. Reboot, make sure your battery is (near) full
10. Go to Settings -> About the phone -> System update
11. Run the update, leave the phone alone, even if it seems dead for a whil.

Rooting and flashing​

(Courtesy of The French connection ;))

"May I suggest to the flashaholics around to:"

• not root your phone the very first day
• do not unlock bootloader and install TWRP the very first day.

"I found it very convenient *not* to do that, because of the numerous OTAs coming in the next weeks. As you can read here and there, root and custom recoveries are somehow annoying on this subject"

Lineage OS 17.1 (XDA)

Battery advice​

Modern batteries don't like full discharging, it can actually damage or even kill it. Same goes for charging, although your Oneplus X has a protection mechanism for that. In general, just keep the electrons flowing, and keep the charge between 15-85%.

Here are some great battery saving tips as well

Cheers...

Edit 2020/08/22:
Added link to latest Lineage OS.
Edit 2021/04/12:
Some minor changes and additions.