Anyone use a wallet on a rooted phone with custom ROM?

[9thsky]

What rom are you using and how secure is it to use a mobile wallet on? Which wallet are you using? If it's not Electrum (which I'm strongly considering), then why did you choose it over Electrum?

Appreciate your input guys!

[NeuroticFish]

I did use for a short while a rooted phone, but I don't trust any of them. I actually don't trust non-rooted phones either, so I use Mycelium with Ledger Nano S (there's a small under-1$ adapter you can buy at AliExpress from normal USB to micro-USB or USB-C).
It depends, of course, of how much is the worth of the coins on the wallet, but I think that's a setup that worth considering.

[bL4nkcode]

I once used a rooted phone way back 2017 on my asus zenfone on miui rom, I used mycelium wallet btw, so far nothing bad happens. But I stopped rotting my phone after I bough a new phone with updated android version which is a harder of rooting phones.

Well, I used mycelium over electrum at that time due to many features that only mycelium has such signing and verifying signed message, working with my ledger. But don't get me wrong I use electrum as well after some time.

[BitMaxz]

It is not a good idea to use a rooted phone with a custom ROM as we do not know if it has a backdoor or not.
I have a bad experienced before while using rooted phones if you keep using it while browsing you are prone to any malware and viruses. Most of the viruses that I got before are trojan called monkey test/monkey virus.
This type of virus can't be easily remove by just flashing it or wipe the data and cache you will need some special tool to remove them.

So if you want to make the phone as wallet and safe to any attacks better stay away on rooting the phone and make sure to use a phone which is always up to date.
Samsung phones is way more better on security based on my experienced compared to any brands of phone except on Apple devices.

About Electrum I don't have bad experienced using them with phone except for rooted phones. Alternatively you can use Mycelium as another awesome wallet and developers are now more active than before.

[Karartma1]

When I was under Cyanogenmod on my last rooted Android device I used Mycelium for almost two years without any sort of problems. I was always very cautious about what apps could I install or not, still I would not suggest to use a rooted phone to store btc anymore.
Like BitMaxz said you never know what kind of vulnerabilities may be open on your OS and since rooting gives administrative privileges to anything capable of exercising those rights it is better to avoid having bitcoin wallets on rooted phones.

[joniboini]

It's probably better to use a second phone dedicated to cryptocurrency activity instead. While I do use a wallet on a rooted phone with custom ROM I can't recommend it to others since I don't really know how good their security practice is.

Another experiment you can try is to dualboot your phone (albeit it's not supported on the newer Android version) and make the second ROM root-free. You can use something like https://github.com/chenxiaolong/DualBootPatcher, but as always DWYOR and DYOR.

[Karartma1]

Another experiment you can try is to dualboot your phone (albeit it's not supported on the newer Android version) and make the second ROM root-free. You can use something like https://github.com/chenxiaolong/DualBootPatcher, but as always DWYOR and DYOR.

First time I see it, thanks for posting it. I might want to try that on an older Android device. Being used to have Windows and Linux in dual boot already, I believe I know what this is all about. Will try it 

[joniboini]

No problem. I used to play around with it on Android 9 (or older, can't remember the details), and yeah it's basically the same thing as Windows/Linux dual-boot structure. Make sure you use a recovery like TWRP so you can restore your system if anything is wrong.

[Karartma1]

No problem. I used to play around with it on Android 9 (or older, can't remember the details), and yeah it's basically the same thing as Windows/Linux dual-boot structure. Make sure you use a recovery like TWRP so you can restore your system if anything is wrong.

I am using TWRP for a long time now so I know where to move and how. Anyway, it's an old Galaxy S6, the battery is almost gone and I don't mind if something goes wrong along the way but that is the perfect testing ground for this purpose. I will give it a try over the next weekend and see how it goes.

[BitMaxz]

No problem. I used to play around with it on Android 9 (or older, can't remember the details), and yeah it's basically the same thing as Windows/Linux dual-boot structure. Make sure you use a recovery like TWRP so you can restore your system if anything is wrong.

I am using TWRP for a long time now so I know where to move and how. Anyway, it's an old Galaxy S6, the battery is almost gone and I don't mind if something goes wrong along the way but that is the perfect testing ground for this purpose. I will give it a try over the next weekend and see how it goes.

Take note you will need to root the primary ROM before you were able to install it to the system partition but I don't know if after you installed the dualboot maybe you can unroot the primary while the 2nd ROM is rooted but I think the 2nd ROM will not run if the primary is not rooted. And if your device is not supported you will need to add your device manually which I think time consuming.

Anyway, if you still want to do this then there is a full guide from the XDA forum here https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software-hacking/guide-dualbootpatcher-build-source-t3663076

[Karartma1]

No problem. I used to play around with it on Android 9 (or older, can't remember the details), and yeah it's basically the same thing as Windows/Linux dual-boot structure. Make sure you use a recovery like TWRP so you can restore your system if anything is wrong.

I am using TWRP for a long time now so I know where to move and how. Anyway, it's an old Galaxy S6, the battery is almost gone and I don't mind if something goes wrong along the way but that is the perfect testing ground for this purpose. I will give it a try over the next weekend and see how it goes.

Take note you will need to root the primary ROM before you were able to install it to the system partition but I don't know if after you installed the dualboot maybe you can unroot the primary while the 2nd ROM is rooted but I think the 2nd ROM will not run if the primary is not rooted. And if your device is not supported you will need to add your device manually which I think time consuming.

Anyway, if you still want to do this then there is a full guide from the XDA forum here https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software-hacking/guide-dualbootpatcher-build-source-t3663076

Noted, thanks. I did not know that. Thank you for the link, I will read it thoroughly. After a quick look, it seems that going for dualboot on a computer is much easier than installing the same thing on a phone. As I said I have an old phone that can be used for this so it should not be a problem if it gets bricked.

[joniboini]

After a quick look, it seems that going for dualboot on a computer is much easier than installing the same thing on a phone.

From my experience, it is not that hard actually. I guess it depends on how often you mod your phone and play around with TWRP and stuff like that. Since the phone is also available for the experiment I think it will be easier for you to do it. I did it on my Redmi Note 3 a while back, so I can't say much for Samsung phones but as long as you managed to install TWRP it should not be that hard.