In general, terms, Flashing a smartphone, actually means replacing the existing Software (ROM) with custom or Stock Rom
When would you want to flash your phone? To answer that, you can think of situations when you want to get rid of a Boot Loop Hazard, it is a situation when you are stuck on the boot screen, with the icon and cannot get out of that loop. You would also want to flash your smartphone or tablet if you want to roll back to the older versions of Android versions or upgrade to a newer version for some or other reasons. You can do so, by installing a new ROM (custom ROM), replacing it with the original ROM provided by the smartphone or Tablet brands originally. Also, you may think of flashing your gadgets when you want to reset your gadgets with the factory settings, but this is a lesser popular choice, as flashing brings many disadvantages along with it, which we will be addressing shortly in this article.
‘Rooting’ is another term you would generally come across and you would tend to confuse with ‘Flashing’. Well as a matter of fact they are quite different processes, ‘Rooting’ gives you super access to the core elements of your device hardware and kernel so that you can customize your performance distribution as per your need, whereas ‘Flashing’ just lets you install custom ROMs through which you can upgrade or downgrade the Android OS as per your choice, or get out of the boot loop hazard, or unlock your screen when you forgot the password (lesser popular option), etc. Flashing does not let you access the Kernel or customize your power distribution or performance distributions.
What is SP Flash Tool?
Flashing is possibly also the best way you can optimize your system. SP Flash Tool is a very powerful and popular Flashing Tool available in the marketplace using which a user can flash any of their Android gadgets working on MediaTek chipset (MTK) very easily. SP Flash Tool works on Windows and Linux OS and is available for free download on the internet.
There are many reasons why a user would want to flash their gadgets but except the once discussed above in the article, disposing of all the bloatware, performance support, and updating a device that has reached saturation level of getting any further software updates, are a few more reasons and motivations behind flashing any gadgets.
SP Flash Tool is generally used to install/flash stock ROM in the android devices, unbrick the frozen devices (to get out of Boot Loop Hazard), firmware update, and flash recovery in the android devices.
System requirements for SP Flash Tool include:
● PC/Laptop for SP Flash Tool.
● USB cable to connect the device with the PC/Laptop.
● MTK- USB-VCOM Drivers
● Scatter file
● Files to be flashed (to be installed according to your requirement)
● Data Backup
Features of SP Flash Tool
- One-stop solution to address all your problems
SP Flash Tool can address all the requirements in the way system changes. You can use it to flash stock firmware, recovery flash, flashing the kernel, or for flashing more similar files.
- Supports system recoveries and modifications
SP Flash Tool ensures that it can be used efficiently to manage firmware upgrades, downgrades, and even more.
- Unbrick MTK based smartphones
If your MTK based android smartphone is bricked i.e. you’re stuck on the boot screen loop, the SP Flash Tool can help you to unbrick your smartphones and other gadgets.
- Language options
The default language is set to ‘English’, however, you can change it to any language available in the selector menu as per your preference.
- Advanced memory verification and testing.
This tool can help you to verify and test the device’s memory allocations
- Erasing/ Formatting/ Resetting your MTK based devices
It can be used to erase all the data or to format the smart, or resetting the smartphones to the factory settings.
Important Take-Aways
Most of the smartphone brands and tablets today work on MediaTek chipsets (MTK). SP Flash Tool hence is a one-stop savior for any user that has any gadgets working on the same chipset irrespective of its brand.
Along with many benefits that SP Flash Tool, or Flashing in general has, flashing also has many detriments, so don’t try to flash a phone that is still getting software updates from the brand itself. Flash your phone only if your smartphone gets on a boot loop or any other software problem, and not for fun. Try to avoid flashing in any other non-serious situations.
A few of the detriments about the flashing process includes smartphone malfunctioning due to the incompatibility between installed stock ROM and the system architecture; it can permanently brick the smartphone if a person by mistake flashes a wrong recovery, in the worst case; Data security demanding apps (eg. banking apps and other payment gateway applications) would no longer work on the phone; it also affects the camera quality harshly, etc.
With the freshly designed minimalistic and simple GUI and the latest updates, flashing a smartphone or a tablet is a lot simpler than ever before with the SP Flash Tools (especially for the users trying to flash any device for the first time), still, it is highly recommended to try to be over-cautious while flashing your smartphones, especially when you are selecting the stock firmware version, double-check and be sure of the fact that it is compatible with the system architecture of your smartphone and the Android OS being installed on it, otherwise it can cause some serious malfunctioning and even break the phone forever.
In this article we hence tried to explain what is flashing, rooting in very simple terms which we think even a normal non-techie guy can understand easily. We discussed what is SP Flash Tools, what are the main features and services it offers as a tool, and also some of the extra features that give it an edge over other flashing tools available in the marketplace. We also discussed the detriments of the Flashing procedure and the situations in which a user would want to flash their smartphones and tablets.