For the rooters and flashers out there (you know who you are) have you tried MultiROM yet? For those who don’t know rooting refers to the unlocking of the system level of your device. In basic terms, when you first buy a device it is always provided to you in what is best described as a ‘safe mode’. All the real juicy system files which control your device at its most basic level (think Matrix) are hidden from you and locked away by the powers-that-be. Rooting is the process by which you unlock those hidden and dark levels resulting in unlimited access to the core of your device (think Neo). However, it does come with some risks. By having access at such a fundamental level means you have the ability to alter and change the device at its core. Another way to look at this is you have the ability to really mess the device up and even permanently “brick it,” a term commonly used within the rooting and ROM flashing community for a phone broken at the software level. Flashing on the other hand usually occurs after rooting and generally refers to flashing new ROM’s or firmware onto your device. Again, in basic terms when you receive your device it comes preloaded with a variant of Google’s Android. By flashing you can change the operating system (OS) to something else, more alternative or feature packed. Think CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android and OmniROM.
Either way the best definition of flashing and rooting is fun but dangerous. Back in the early days both rooting and flashing was an arduous and difficult task usually requiring a good degree of understanding and knowledge. Not much has generally changed although the process over time has been made easier and more straight forward with the release of numerous apps, installers and un-lockers available to download. There is also an extremely wide array of tutorials and guides available for almost any device you can think of. When a new device is launched it normally takes literally only days (sometimes only hours) for the new device root/flash guide to be made public. Even with all this information it can be difficult and stressful to do for those who are less-confident. Well MultiROM is an extremely useful tool and once installed allows users to flash a multitude of ROM’s and operating systems. In short this is a MultiROM boot launcher. So this allows easy booting of the ROM files. In addition to booting almost any Android ROM the benefits of MultiROM is it can also boot other systems like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Active, Linux and so on. Like many other single installers the MultiROM allows users to boot directly from the app but unlike the others also via the USB when connected to a PC
MultiROM was initially created for Nexus devices however more recently they have begun to be modified for other devices too. Roughly two weeks ago MultiROM was modified for use on the Moto E and now it seems it has also been modified to work on the popular Moto G thanks to the XDA forum Member montamer. Most of the features work fine, but there is a couple of known issues (which is normal) including random secondary ROM boot failures (which will require a reboot) and sometimes suffers from permission denied errors (which requires a ROM re-install). Knowing the guys at XDA, these bugs will be fixed in due course. So if you are a Moto E or G owner (or Nexus of course) then I would seriously suggest checking MultiROM out. Just remember the number one rule…backup!