How to Flash a Custom Recovery on the Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe)

Every Android device has, what is called, a recovery image on it. This is basically a part of the Android operating system that you or the manufacturer can access if your device becomes unresponsive and then use it to restore your device.

A custom recovery image, however, is a recovery image that a developer has altered that can not only help the device if it becomes responsive, but also has the added benefits of allowing us to make major changes to the operating system and have even further customizations on your device.

In this procedure, we’ll show you how to flash a custom recovery on your Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe).

After flashing a custom recovery on Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe), you’ll be able to:

• Perform full backups of your device (literally save EVERYTHING from it).
• Increase your device’s performance (after flashing something called a kernel
• Increase your device’s battery life.
• Flash custom ROMs (these make it possible to flash a newer version of Android, totally new user interfaces, add tons of new features, and much more).

Interested? Here’s how to flash a custom recovery on your Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe):

I. Before You Begin

1. You must be rooted before you can do this procedure. Please head to our How to Root the Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe) procedure and root your device first, then come back to this one and continue.

2. This procedure only works for the SM-G900F model. Do NOT try it on any other model.

2. This should only work on Windows based PCs.

II. Downloading Required Files

1. Download Fastboot and save it to your Desktop.

Fastboot

2. Download CWM Recovery and save it to your Desktop.

CWM Recovery (Download link’s given in the first post)

III. Flashing a Custom Recovery on the Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe)

1. Extract files from Fastboot by right-clicking on it and selecting Extract here.

2. Enable USB debugging on your device by heading to Menu > Settings > Developer options > USB debugging.

3. Plug in your device to your PC via USB cable.

4. Launch a Command Prompt Window on your Desktop. To do that, simply hold down Shift and right-click on any blank area on your screen and select Open command window here.

5. Type in following command into the Command Prompt Window replacing cwm.img with the actual name of the recovery image you have downloaded:

adb push cwm.img /data/local/tmp/cwm.img

6. Then enter the following command. Again, make sure to replace cwm.img with the actual name of the recovery image you have.

adb shell su -c dd if=/data/local/tmp/cwm.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/recovery

7. It should flash the recovery on your device.

8. Once it’s done, reboot your device.

9. You’re all done!

All set! Now, you can head to our How to Flash a Custom ROM procedure for the Samsung Galaxy S5 (Europe) to open up a whole new world of customizations for your Android device!

By the way, don’t be scared, you can always put your device back to stock by heading to our Rooting How To’s section, finding your device, and doing the How to Unroot listed for it there.