Previewing Android L on Nexus 7 2012 through MultiROM!

Disclaimer: Before you start anything, you must know that I take no liability for anything that would happen to your device as a result of you following this guide and/or any of the instructions from the links that will follow.

The new Android L (5.0) has been recently announced by Google, and if you own a Nexus 7 2012 tablet, than this is your chance to try the newest version of Android on your device. Please note that this is nothing official, it is just an port from the Android L emulator with the proper Android 4.4 binaries included. Therefore, you should expect frequent force closes, poor performance overall and lots of other problems.


Here are the general steps you need to follow:

1) First of all, the tablet must have an unlocked bootloader, with a custom recovery installed on it. This is a great guide that'll help you achieve that: link.

2) Then, you must install MultiROM, it will allow you to boot multiple ROMs on your tablet so that if you feel Android L is too unstable, you can easily boot the other ROM: link.

3) Finally, download the Android L files and gapps, and flash everything in MultiROM by following these instructions: link.


If you see a .zip file named repacked-something (repacked4.zip at the time of writing this article), then it needs to be flashed in MultiROM, unless the last link states otherwise. Do not follow what other websites or articles say (they are not even giving direct links to the original authors, which is unfair), some of them advise to flash repacked4.zip directly through recovery, that will not work and you risk bricking your device that way.

So that was all I had to say. I am currently running Android L myself, it is unexpectedly stable, I've seen relatively few force closes, but performs poor in terms of speed. There is probably barely any acceleration whatsoever (YouTube videos won't start at all). The animations are probably accelerated at less than even 30 frames per second and with more than several programs in the multitasking menu, you are going to see huge performance issues.

For the apps that are not available (Chrome, Facebook etc): go on Google, and search, for example, "Chrome apk". It will give you the apk for that app, which can be easily installed. Yes, it can be altered/have malicious code injected but.. this is the only way you can get these apps.

Good luck!

PGM Nexus is an application which makes you forget of the power button.

PGM Nexus is a great kernel module (or an app, if you prefer it in simple terms), designed for rooted Galaxy Nexus phones which allows you to turn your screen on or off using just swipe gestures. For example, on my Nexus I just swipe from left to right across the screen, and it powers on. If I do the same thing but on the other direction at the bottom of the screen (where the navigation buttons are located), screen just turns of. It takes a bit of time to get used to it, but after you start enjoying it, it'll be the exclusive mode you turn the screen on and off.

If your power button fails and you are afraid of that, this is exactly what you need. I still can't figure out how it actually works (the screen is off, it doesn't use any power but it still recognizes the swipes), but it's a great idea which is well implemented. It's really great, but because of the kernel thing, it will automatically turn off (if set to start on boot) when a kernel is flashed, but selecting that option again seems to stick through reboots afterwards.

Only drawback: it's $3. There's a free version available, but people complain that it completely stops working after a week. So you decide on which way to go.