The Sony Xperia Z4 smartphone comes with a 5.3 inch display and runs Android 5.0 Lollipop software update out of the box, Even though there were a few updates beyond Lollipop such as the early stages of Android Marshmallow rolling out over the air for this device, it isn’t close to being updated officially to version of Android OS that are new today.
That’s not a huge deal if you don’t mind customizing a smartphone though because what you can do is install a custom recovery image and then flash some custom ROMs from the custom recovery that you installed to help update to newer version of Android that way. A custom ROM is often installed for the sake of delivering a more niche user experience to the person who wants it, but most of the time people are installing custom ROMs because they can’t resist the temptation of checking out what the newer versions of Android look like on a device. A custom ROM allows them to do this without spending lots of money on a more recent device that runs it as an official update.
As you know, these official updates can take ages to find their way onto device—even today only a handful of devices around the world are running on the official version of the Android 7.0 Nougat software update. On the other hand, there are heaps of custom ROMs out there that allow a multitude of devices to be running the Android 7.0 Nougat update if people are willing to do the work that is required to get a custom ROM running.
Most of the time it doesn’t really matter what custom recovery image you choose to install because there’s only one that is being installed by most people anyway: the TWRP Recovery from the people over at Team Win. The TWRP has taken over as the world’s most popular custom recovery image. It used to be ClockworkMod Recovery that got all of the attention, and then people started installing Philz Touch Recovery which was a touch-based version of the ClockworkMod Recovery, But even with ClockworkMod still having a loyal following, the developer decided to shut it down because he knew that TWRP Recovery was better.
The Sony Xperia Z4 smartphone is a strange device. It is the fourth generation of the flagships series coming from Sony—but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of the custom developments that are available. There aren’t many custom ROMs being made or installed. Moreover, you will find it hard finding any specs about this device from the usual sites that offer them—the Phone Arena website doesn’t even have the Sony Xperia Z4 listed on the site at all.
Kryptonian – The ROM of Awesomeness
The Kryptonian custom ROM is based on the Android 6.0.X Marshmallow software updates, and its goal isn’t to bring you the latest version of Android to your device but rather have a device that is completely battery optimized. If you are someone who uses the phone every day for quite a while and always finds him or herself wishing they had a few more hours of battery life before they had to charge it up again, then this is a ROM that you should check out. You might not ever get a few extra hours because, in battery terms, that’s a lot to make up, but you won’t get a ROM running on your device that can optimize the battery and make it last longer than the Kryptonian custom ROM.
In addition to being battery optimized, the Kryptonian custom ROM comes with a heap of system UI tweaks, loads of display mods, new dynamic engine features, a range of navigation bar mods, more animations than you can poke a stick at, lock screen mods, new framework and color mods, plus heaps more.
Download: Kryptonian ROM
Xperia X v1.0
Did you like what the Sony Xperia X smartphone’s ROM had to offer and wish you can have many of those features on the Sony Xperia Z4 smartphone instead? If so, then the Xperia X custom ROM is a good choice. It doesn’t pack all of the features from the Xperia X ROM over to the Xperia Z4 ROM, but it does bring over many of the highlight features that you probably want to try.
The Xperia X ROM is based on the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow software update, so if you haven’t tried Android 6.0.1 yet, that might be another reason for you to want to try this one out.
Download: Xperia X ROM
SuperSlim ROM
The name SuperSlim might sound familiar because it is close to the Slim ROMs name, but this is not related to the SLimROM custom ROMs at all. The SuperSlim custom ROM for the Sony Xperia Z4 smartphone is named that way because the developers have trimmed it down to just the bare essentials for speed and performance. It’s about as close to AOSP as you could get without witnessing any issues like a lack of camera functionality.
Download: SuperSlim ROM
Unofficial CM13
The CyanogenMod custom ROMs are still the most popular to run even though the CyanogenMod team doesn’t make ROMs anymore. That gives you an idea of how much they were ahead of the game. Part of the reason why they are still being used by more people around the world is because of the sheer amount of unofficial builds that were ported from other device and have proven still popular to use on this day. Depending on the device sometimes these unofficial CyanogenMod custom ROMs for devices are the most popular ROM for people to download.
Since this is the unofficial version of CM 13, you can expect to find a few bugs that developers haven’t managed to smooth out quite the same that real CyanogenMod developers would have, but it’s still a good ROM for you to install if you wanted to check out CM 13 features.
Download: unofficial CyanogenMod 13 ROM