[Q] Basic Doubts - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello
Here are some basic queries that I have before I start my adventure in Android ROM flashing:
What's the difference between Baseband and Kernal?
I have a Nexus 4 & Google provides only stock ROM (and not kernel) on their official website. If I flash a 3rd party kernel how will I able to restore stock kernel? and
What are binaries?
Thanks!

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ngr.hd said:
Hello
Here are some basic queries that I have before I start my adventure in Android ROM flashing:
What's the difference between Baseband and Kernal?
I have a Nexus 4 & Google provides only stock ROM (and not kernel) on their official website. If I flash a 3rd party kernel how will I able to restore stock kernel? and
What are binaries?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer your questions:
1. Baseband is a subset of the phones system that controls radio communications and related aspects of cellular tower communications. The Kernel is the low level layer of code that interfaces directly with the phones hardware such as sensors, processor, etc
2. Included in the stock ROM or Google Factory Image for the Nexus 4 is a kernel, the kernel is contained withing the boot.img file in the ramdisk usually in the form of a zimage file. If you flash a 3rd party kernel and you want to restore the stock kernel you will have to flash the Google Nexus 4 Factory Image to restore the stock kernel. The other method is before you flash a 3rd party kernel is to make a NANDROID backup of your phones stock ROM using either Clockworkmod Recovery or Team Win Recovery Project. Then after you flash the 3rd party kernel if you want to restore the stock kernel you can just restore your NANDROID backup of the stock ROM which will contain the stock kernel.
3. Binaries are the proprietary files that allow the phones hardware and sensors such as the touchscreen or GPS for example to function. You will only need to download these if you are building Android from source and/or making your own custom ROM. If you need to download the proprietary binaries for the Nexus 4 you can download them from here.
Let me know if you still have any questions .

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shimp208 said:
To answer your questions:
1. Baseband is a subset of the phones system that controls radio communications and related aspects of cellular tower communications. The Kernel is the low level layer of code that interfaces directly with the phones hardware such as sensors, processor, etc
2. Included in the stock ROM or Google Factory Image for the Nexus 4 is a kernel, the kernel is contained withing the boot.img file in the ramdisk usually in the form of a zimage file. If you flash a 3rd party kernel and you want to restore the stock kernel you will have to flash the Google Nexus 4 Factory Image to restore the stock kernel. The other method is before you flash a 3rd party kernel is to make a NANDROID backup of your phones stock ROM using either Clockworkmod Recovery or Team Win Recovery Project. Then after you flash the 3rd party kernel if you want to restore the stock kernel you can just restore your NANDROID backup of the stock ROM which will contain the stock kernel.
3. Binaries are the proprietary files that allow the phones hardware and sensors such as the touchscreen or GPS for example to function. You will only need to download these if you are building Android from source and/or making your own custom ROM. If you need to download the proprietary binaries for the Nexus 4 you can download them from here.
Let me know if you still have any questions .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a million for the follow up.
A few more specific questions:
1. By saying Baseband (used in Android terminology) and Radio (used in WinMo terminology) mean the same thing, right? So, can we say, flashing 3rd party basebands can improve cellular connectivity?
2. [In relation to your 2nd answer]
A. So, we can also extract zimage and flash it solely without the need of flashing the whole stock ROM, just like we flash a 3rd party kernel?
B. Is NANDROID really that reliable, as in, it's just like making an .iso of a DVD, and any malwares already present in your DVD would also get backed up?
3. I have seen many kernel threads in which OP mentions CWM and non-CWM variants. Saying so, does he means to say that the kernel comes with CWM built in, right? If this is true, no dev has not integrated TWRP right into their kernel. So, devs prefer CWM over TWRP? And
4. CWM has an app in the Play Store and I'm sure it's not that recovery mod. So what's that? How is it different from the flashable mod and the Touch version?
Lastly, a humble request, there can be more queries as I dive more deep into Android Dev., please do answer them.
Thanks

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ngr.hd said:
Thanks a million for the follow up.
A few more specific questions:
1. By saying Baseband (used in Android terminology) and Radio (used in WinMo terminology) mean the same thing, right? So, can we say, flashing 3rd party basebands can improve cellular connectivity?
2. [In relation to your 2nd answer]
A. So, we can also extract zimage and flash it solely without the need of flashing the whole stock ROM, just like we flash a 3rd party kernel?
B. Is NANDROID really that reliable, as in, it's just like making an .iso of a DVD, and any malwares already present in your DVD would also get backed up?
3. I have seen many kernel threads in which OP mentions CWM and non-CWM variants. Saying so, does he means to say that the kernel comes with CWM built in, right? If this is true, no dev has not integrated TWRP right into their kernel. So, devs prefer CWM over TWRP? And
4. CWM has an app in the Play Store and I'm sure it's not that recovery mod. So what's that? How is it different from the flashable mod and the Touch version?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer a few more of your questions :
1. Yes you can flash different basebands (Used pretty much interchangeably with radio) often referred to as modems to improve cellular connectivity.
2. A. You can in theory extract the zimage and bundle it with a ramdisk and boot the system from that or flash that using the command syntax in fastboot:
Code:
boot <kernel> [ <ramdisk> ]
flash:raw boot <kernel> [ <ramdisk> ]
I have never done it this way, the safer easier way is to flash the stock boot.img file that contains the stock kernel. For example:
Code:
fastboot flash boot boot.img
2. B. NANDROID is very reliable, it is the go to standard for completely backing up an Android using a custom recovery. In a sense it is like making an ISO disk on windows, as you mentioned since it backs up the whole system anything good or bad will be included in the backup. NANDROID also has advanced options to only restore part of your backup I.E only restore the boot.img or system.img file. So say you wanted to restore the stock kernel you could go into recovery mode and restore only the stock boot.img (Containing the stock kernel) file without having to restore your entire backup.
3. Kernels do not come with CWMR built in (Except on some older Sony devices and other exceptions to this rule) the recovery partition that contains CWMR or TWRP is separate from the boot.img partition where the kernel is stored. Developers don't necessarily prefer CWMR over TWRP for the most part they are completely compatible with each other it's more of a personnel preference on the user's part.
4. I believe you are talking about ROM Manager (Correct me if you are talking about a different app), ROM Manger is outdated and should not be used to flash CWMR on most modern devices as it can brick the device rather then installing the custom recovery image. I would recommend not using ROM Manager to try and flash anything to your device.