Published by: Android Enthusiast Daily
Reading Time: 12 minutes
When Samsung launched the Galaxy S9 Plus in 2018, it was a powerhouse. However, in 2024 and beyond, even the most loyal Samsung fans feel the sting of time. Official software support ended with Android 10 (One UI 2.5). While the hardware remains surprisingly capable—featuring a brilliant Quad HD+ display, a versatile dual-aperture camera, and an iris scanner—the aging software leaves it vulnerable and feature-deprived.
Enter the world of Samsung S9 Plus Exynos custom ROMs.
If you own the international Exynos variant (SM-G965F), you are in luck. Unlike its Snapdragon cousins (which have locked bootloaders), the Exynos chipset is a developer’s paradise. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know: why you should do it, the risks, the best ROMs available right now, and how to install them.
The Samsung Galaxy S9+ Exynos is a classic device that refuses to die. By installing a custom ROM, you not only extend its lifespan but also get a software experience that rivals modern flagships.
Have you installed a custom ROM on your S9+? Which one is your favorite daily driver? Let us know in the comments below!
Tags: #SamsungS9Plus #CustomROM #Android #Exynos #LineageOS #TechTips #SmartphoneModding
Samsung implements a hardware fuse called Knox.
As of late 2024, these are the most stable and actively maintained builds for the starlte (S9 Plus Exynos codename).
Start with LineageOS 20. It is the most stable, has the largest community, and receives weekly updates. Once you are comfortable, branch out to crDroid or Evolution X.
Your old S9 Plus isn't dead—it's just waiting for a second life.
Resources:
Have you installed a custom ROM on your S9 Plus Exynos? Share your experience in the comments below.
Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus Go to product viewer dialog for this item.
(Exynos variant) remains a popular device for custom ROM development, especially since official Samsung support ended with Android 10. Because the Exynos bootloader is unlockable, you can install ports of newer One UI versions or AOSP-based ROMs like LineageOS. Top Custom ROM Recommendations
For the best experience in 2026, consider these actively maintained options:
The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus (Exynos variant, codename star2lte) officially stopped receiving updates at Android 10 (One UI 2.5). However, a dedicated developer community continues to release custom ROMs that bring modern features like One UI 7 and Android 16 to this legacy hardware. 🚀 Popular Custom ROMs for S9+ Exynos
Noble ROM: A high-profile port that brings modern One UI experiences (up to One UI 5 and 6) to the S9 series.
LineageOS: The standard for a clean, "Stock Android" experience; unofficial builds are available for Android 16 (LineageOS 23).
DuhanROM / CornROM: Specialized ports designed to bring One UI 7 (Android 15) features to the Exynos 9810 chipset.
Pixel Experience: Ideal for users who prefer the interface of Google Pixel devices over Samsung's One UI. 🛠️ Prerequisites for Installation
To install any custom ROM, your device must meet these technical requirements: Install Android 16 LineageOS 23 ON Galaxy S9 Plus
Here’s a grammatically proper version of your phrase, depending on how you intend to use it:
As a search term or title:
“Samsung S9 Plus Exynos Custom ROM”
As a full sentence:
“A custom ROM for the Samsung S9 Plus (Exynos version).”
If asking a question:
“What is the best custom ROM for the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus with Exynos?”
Key corrections made:
For the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus (Exynos), custom ROMs are the primary way to access modern Android versions and updated features long after official support ended. As of April 2026, the development community remains active, with recent ports bringing Android 15 and 16 to the aging flagship. Top Custom ROMs for S9 Plus Exynos (2025–2026)
The choice depends on whether you prefer the familiar Samsung One UI experience or a clean "Pixel-like" stock Android feel. Noble ROM (Recommended for One UI fans):
Current Version: Noble ROM 5.x/6.x based on Android 14 & 15 (One UI 6.1 / 7).
Features: Ports official Samsung features from newer flagships, including modern UI elements and updated Samsung apps. Pros: Familiar interface; includes One UI 7 features.
Cons: Higher battery consumption and slightly slower performance compared to AOSP-based ROMs. LineageOS (Recommended for performance/longevity):
Current Version: Unofficial builds now reaching Android 16 (LineageOS 23) as of early 2026.
Features: A clean, bloat-free experience that prioritizes stability and speed. samsung s9 plus exynos custom rom
Pros: Significant performance boost; lightest weight; offers the latest security updates.
Cons: You will lose Samsung-specific features like VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling. Duhan ROM:
Current Status: A newer contender providing updated builds based on Android 15.
Focus: Aimed at users who want a balance of new features and better battery optimization than Noble ROM. Key Benefits & Trade-offs Feature Stock ROM (Official) Custom ROM (AOSP/Lineage) Custom ROM (One UI Port) Android Version Android 10 (Dead) Android 13–16 Android 13–15 Performance Sluggish over time Very Fast/Smooth Battery Life Heavy Drain Samsung Pay/VoLTE Broken Broken Camera Quality Good (requires GCam) Near Stock Installation Requirements Before flashing, you must prepare your device:
Unlock Bootloader: Only possible on the Exynos variant (SM-G965F/DS).
Custom Recovery: You need TWRP Recovery or a ROM-specific recovery to flash the files.
Backup: All data will be wiped during the mandatory Format Data step.
Files Needed: The ROM zip file, GApps (if not included), and potentially a "repartitioner" script for larger One UI ports. Critical Warnings
Leo’s Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus was a ghost in the machine. On paper, it was a 2018 flagship: a gorgeous curved AMOLED display, a versatile dual-aperture camera, and enough power for daily tasks. But in reality, it was a hot, stuttering mess.
The culprit was the Exynos 9810 processor.
While friends in the US praised their Snapdragon S9s for smooth performance and battery life, Leo’s European Exynos model would heat up scrolling through Twitter. Gaming was a lag fest. And the final insult? Samsung had pulled the plug on OS updates two years ago. He was stuck on Android 10 with a November 2020 security patch.
“It’s a paperweight with a beautiful screen,” he muttered, watching the battery drain 10% in fifteen minutes of camera use. He was about to list it on eBay for spare parts when a Reddit notification popped up: [ROM][OneUI 5.1] Noble ROM 3.0 for Exynos S9/S9+ - Faster than ever!
Leo’s heart skipped a beat. He remembered the old days: CyanogenMod on his Galaxy S2, XDA forums, and the thrill of turning a carrier-bloated brick into a lean, mean machine. But that was a decade ago. Could this tired Exynos S9 Plus really run Android 13 with One UI 5.1?
The XDA thread was a chaotic cathedral of hope and technical jargon. The OP (Original Poster), a dev named corsicanu, claimed they had backported the entire camera stack, fixed the Exynos thermal throttling, and even enabled VoLTE. The comments were glowing: “Benchmarks up 20%!” “No more overheating!” “It’s like a new phone!”
The risk was real. Flashing a custom ROM on an Exynos S9 Plus was a minefield:
But the stock ROM’s lag was a slow death anyway. Leo decided to go for glory.
The Procedure:
Friday night, 11 PM. He downloaded the prerequisites: TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project) for the starlte (S9) and star2lte (S9+), the Noble ROM zip, a patched version of Magisk for root, and the latest Exynos 9810 vendor image. He backed up his photos, kissed his e-warranty goodbye, and powered down.
Volume Down + Bixby + Power. The screen flashed. He was in Download Mode. He fired up Odin on his laptop, the ancient flasher tool with its four mysterious slots: BL, AP, CP, CSC. One wrong checkmark and it was over.
He clicked “Start.”
The blue bar crawled. His palms were sweaty. At 75%, the phone rebooted into a black screen. His heart stopped. For five seconds, nothing. Then, the glowing Samsung logo flickered. He exhaled.
He booted into TWRP, swiped to allow modifications, and formatted everything – Data, System, Cache, Dalvik. The stock ROM was dead. He then sideloaded the Noble ROM ZIP. The script ran, spitting out lines like “Patching Exynos thermal engine” and “Adjusting GPU governor.”
Finally, the message: “Script succeeded. Result was [0.200]”
He hit “Reboot System.”
The first boot on a custom ROM is always the longest. The “Samsung Galaxy S9+” logo glowed for a full three minutes. Then, the screen shimmered, and the new Android 13 setup wizard appeared. The colors were sharper. The animations were fluid. There was no stutter, no micro-lag.
The Aftermath:
The next morning, Leo ran a stress test. He played Genshin Impact at medium settings – the Exynos used to overheat in 5 minutes. He played for 30. The phone got warm, not hot. The battery graph was a gentle downward slope, not a cliff.
The camera? The developer had ported the flagship camera drivers. The variable aperture f/1.5 and f/2.4 worked perfectly, even in Pro mode. For the first time, the Exynos S9 Plus felt like the phone Samsung should have shipped.
There were quirks. Secure Folder was gone. Samsung Pass showed an error about “tampered device.” But Leo didn’t care. He flashed a custom kernel, underclocked the big cores, and managed to squeeze 5 hours of screen-on-time – two more than he’d ever seen.
He returned to XDA, not as a lurker, but as a contributor. He posted his battery stats, helped a noob fix a bootloop by telling him to “fastboot erase misc,” and sent the developer $20 for coffee.
The Samsung S9 Plus Exynos was no longer a forgotten flagship. It was a thought-provoking machine, freed from Samsung’s planned obsolescence, running on the love of strangers on the internet.
In a world of thousand-dollar foldables and AI phones, Leo realized the most powerful feature wasn’t a spec sheet. It was an unlocked bootloader.
The package arrived in a bubble mailer that smelled of ozone and stale warehouse air. Inside lay the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, a relic of 2018 with its curved "Infinity Display" gleaming like polished obsidian.
For most, this was a backup phone. For you, it was a battleground.
Under the hood sat the Exynos 9810 chipset. In the States, people touted the Snapdragon for its raw power, but in the world of custom development, the Exynos was the "chosen one"—blessed with an unlockable bootloader that didn't require a hacker's miracle to crack.
The transformation began at midnight. The glow of your monitor washed out the room as you downloaded the tools of the trade: Odin, TWRP, and the holy grail—a build of LineageOS. Published by: Android Enthusiast Daily Reading Time: 12
The first hurdle was the "Download Mode" screen, a teal warning that felt like a digital "Keep Out" sign. With a click, you bypassed it. The progress bar crawled forward, a thin blue line rewriting the phone’s soul. You weren't just installing software; you were stripping away the "Samsung Experience," the bloatware, and the tracking, returning the hardware to its purest form. Then, the Bootloop.
The Samsung logo pulsed. Once. Twice. Then the screen went black. A cold sweat broke. This was the "brick" moment—the silence where a $200 piece of glass becomes a paperweight. You dove back into the forums, scrolling through threads from 2021, finding a lone developer’s comment about a specific vendor image mismatch. One fix, one re-flash, and then: the spark.
The LineageOS arc-and-circle animation spun across the screen. The S9 Plus breathed again. It felt faster, lighter, and stripped of its corporate shackles. You held a device that the manufacturer had declared "end of life," yet it was now running the latest version of Android with a smoothness it never had on launch day.
The hardware was old, but the spirit was new. You didn't just own the phone anymore—you commanded it.
Samsung S9+ Exynos Custom ROM Review: A Breath of Fresh Air
As a long-time user of Samsung's flagship devices, I was excited to dive into the world of custom ROMs on my S9+ Exynos variant. After installing a custom ROM, I was blown away by the newfound flexibility, performance, and features that I never thought possible on my device. In this review, I'll share my experience with the custom ROM on my Samsung S9+ Exynos.
Installation Process
The installation process was relatively smooth, but I had to do some research to find a reliable source for the ROM and the necessary tools. I opted for the popular LineageOS ROM, which is known for its stability and feature-rich experience. I followed a well-documented guide on XDA Developers, and after a few reboots, I was up and running with my custom ROM.
Performance
The first thing I noticed was the significant improvement in performance. The custom ROM brought a much-needed boost to my device, with animations feeling smoother and more responsive. The Exynos chip, which was previously criticized for its performance, now felt on par with its Snapdragon counterpart. I was able to play demanding games like PUBG and Fortnite at high graphics settings without any noticeable lag.
Battery Life
Battery life has been a pleasant surprise. With the custom ROM, I've seen a noticeable improvement in battery endurance. I attribute this to the removal of bloatware and the optimization of system services. On a single charge, I can easily get through a day and a half of moderate to heavy use.
Features
One of the best aspects of the custom ROM is the ability to customize almost every aspect of the device. I've added features like:
Camera Performance
The camera performance on the custom ROM is on par with the stock firmware. I've noticed no significant differences in image quality, and features like Live Focus and Super Steady video stabilization work flawlessly.
Bugs and Stability
While I've experienced some minor bugs, such as occasional freezes and app crashes, they've been relatively rare. The community support for LineageOS is vast, and I've been able to quickly find solutions to any issues I've encountered.
Verdict
The custom ROM on my Samsung S9+ Exynos has breathed new life into my device. I've gained a level of customization and control that I never thought possible on a Samsung device. While there are some minor bugs, the overall experience has been extremely positive.
Recommendation
If you're a Samsung S9+ Exynos user looking to breathe new life into your device, I highly recommend exploring custom ROMs like LineageOS. Be prepared to invest some time in research and installation, but the payoff is well worth it.
Rating: 4.5/5
Pros:
Cons:
ROM Details:
If you're interested in trying out a custom ROM on your Samsung S9+ Exynos, I encourage you to do some research and join the community on XDA Developers. Happy flashing!
When Ravi found the Galaxy S9+ in the alley behind his apartment building, it lay face-down on wet pavement like a creature that’d finally given up on running. Rain stitched the black glass in tiny rivers. He flinched at the thought of police reports and lost-data angst, but the curiosity that kept him in the evenings tinkering with old phones won out. He scooped it up, wiped it on his jacket, and felt the familiar kick of a detective’s thrill: an anonymous device is a story waiting to be read.
Back in his cramped kitchen, with a mug of tea growing cold beside the soldering iron and a pile of scratched SIM trays, Ravi powered the phone. It booted to a lock screen wallpaper of a paper crane against a pale blue sky and a single missed notification: “Update completed.” No name. No carrier. It hummed with an Exynos heart — not the Snapdragon phone he remembered from the local markets — and that made it rarer, a slight divergence from routine that excited him.
He tried the obvious: emergency call, common pattern guesses, the old “1234” that sometimes worked for careless passcodes. Nothing. Then he tapped a buried setting in his mind: the bootloader. If he could coax it into recovery, he might at least get a shell into its file system. He was careful; he had read enough warnings about bricked phones to know how quickly curiosity could become regret.
The phone obliged. A black screen with white text blinked awake: Odin Mode. He smiled. Otherwise, he would have had to employ the heavy tools — custom cables, spliced pins, the kind of undertakings that devoured weekends. He breathed in a plan: sideload a custom recovery, flash a new ROM, and trace what had been left behind. It wasn’t stealing; the device seemed abandoned. Besides, he told himself, the phone deserved a second life.
Ravi kept logs. Names mattered to him in the way birds might favor certain perches. He labeled the build “ExoRemnant v1.0,” a custom ROM patched specifically for Exynos models like this S9+. The work involved drafting a new system image: slimming the bloatware, restoring privacy configurations, and merging a handful of community kernels that played nice with Mali drivers. He worked into the night, lines of code and terminal outputs his lullaby. The device’s internals were finicky — old eMMC wear, a misbehaving proximity sensor — but his fingers remembered the rhythm. Flash. Wait. Wipe cache. Reboot.
When it rolled into a clean, custom home screen, an unlocked world spilled out. There were no contacts, no account logins. Only a folder named “Letters” and one text file inside it: FOUND.TXT. The contents were oddly formal for something left behind: “To whomever restores this device — there is a signal inside. If you can hear it, help it.” The file linked to a local app labeled “Beacon,” which demanded a passcode. He could have stopped there and called the phone a ghost. He didn’t.
Ravi’s mind threaded toward the improbable. Phones, after all, were tiny weather systems of human intent: maps, messages, debts, confessions. The Beacon app housed a private database of ephemeral entries with timestamps and geotags. Most were fragments — a photo of a lighthouse, a grocery list, a voice memo that dissolved after three plays. But under them, hidden in a folder named /opt/beacon, was an encrypted packet that noted coordinates: a small island two days’ travel from the city.
Curiosity is a ladder. He climbed. Weeks later, with a backpack, a borrowed boat, and his patched Exynos S9+ snug in a waterproof case, Ravi sailed toward that island. The locals called it Sagan’s Reach, a place the ferry only whispered about after midnight. It was an island of salt-washed ruins and a single functioning radio tower. There, the sky glowed differently: a steady smear of auroral light even though it was not the season for northern displays.
At the base of the tower, he met Ira — a small woman with salt-streaked braid and a gaze that cataloged him immediately. She didn’t ask how he knew to come. She had been expecting someone who could hear an unusual signal: a low, persistent carrier embedded within public LTE broadcasts. They had been trying to localize it for months but needed someone who understood Exynos baseband quirks. Ravi’s saved kernels and his ability to parse unusual logs made him the kind of person they’d placed the note for. The Samsung Galaxy S9+ Exynos is a classic
The tower hummed. Its metal bones had been repurposed, patched with homebrew amplifiers and repurposed satellite dishes. The signal was real: an audio-subcarrier tucked into the normal data stream, repeating a short sequence, like a staccato bird call threaded into a song. Whoever sent it knew how to hide information inside the layers of radio traffic, and whoever had left the phone had left a breadcrumb the islanders could find.
They listened together, headphones sharing thin white noise. The sequence resolved into numbers — not coordinates but a cipher. Ira explained quietly: a small collective on the mainland used old phones and ex-Exynos chipsets as portable decoders; they encoded messages inside broadcasts to be picked up by anyone with the right key. The key, it seemed, had been left on this particular S9+. Whoever had been sending the signal was trying to create a new kind of community messaging: anonymous, resilient, hidden in everyday networks.
Ravi flashed modifications to the phone’s baseband drivers — a risky thing on Exynos without proper binaries — and hooked the device up to the tower’s receiver. The phone responded like a nervous animal. Latency dropped. The hidden carrier revealed more patterns and, finally, a voice.
“—R. If you hear this, we hid it where the sea meets the light. Not our names. Not yet. The world’s too loud. We need a place the old hardware can whisper. Take only what you need. Keep the signal alive.”
It was a single garbled message, but the emotion in it — fear braided with hope — pressed on Ravi. He wanted to know who “we” were. He wanted to know why they would choose to hide in the seams of telecoms. Ira’s eyes went distant. “People who don’t fit,” she said. “Activists, ex-engineers, those who want to speak without being listed.”
They found more. The Beacon app contained a chain of micro-transactions, tiny cryptographic proofs leading to caches of physical data hidden on the island: a thumb drive under a rock wall, paper manifestos sealed in a jar, a small library of printed emails and sketches. The materials were not seditious so much as aching: plans to build resilient local networks, to smear public logs with noise, to preserve communities’ ability to coordinate without central oversight.
But not everyone wanted the signal to survive. A company had been tracking anomalies in its probes, and its investigators were closing in. The next storm would likely be the last chance to move the caches. The choice fell into a simple equation: keep the signal and risk exposure, or disperse the knowledge and let the idea diffuse like salt in water.
Ravi suggested a middle path. They would replicate and fragment the caches, distributing bits across older phones — obsolete Exynos models like his S9+ — and hide them inside benign app updates and obfuscated storage compartments. The message would survive as culture rather than a single repository. They would seed a network of devices configured to rebroadcast the carrier at low power during routine off-peak hours, making it indistinguishable from noise unless you knew the pattern.
It was painstaking. Nights stretched into days as they soldered microSDs into weatherproofed cases and turned dead phones into living archives. The island became a workshop of ghosts: people who had chosen the hard labor of maintaining whispers instead of shouting into loud global platforms. The work felt sacred. They spoke little of fame. The goal was simple: keep the possibility of untracked, anonymous conversation — a thread for future strangers to pick up.
On the final night, before they dispersed the last caches, Ravi sat under the tower. Ira handed him a small paper crane — the same motif as the phone’s original wallpaper — folded from waterproof paper. “For luck,” she said. He realized then the paper crane had been a signature, a quiet stamp used by the group as a mark of trust. Whoever left the S9+ had meant for someone like him to find it: someone who could listen and act.
When they left, the island receded like a secret closing its eyelids. Back in the city, the S9+ hummed on his desk, its screen asleep but its antenna alive. The custom ROM he had written now had a different purpose: to be a seed. He installed small, safe routines that would awaken on specific date patterns and emit the carrier for a minute or two before going back to sleep. Each phone he had modified mirrored portions of the cache and the software necessary to reconstruct it — a digital diaspora.
Months passed. The carriers detected anomalies and the investigators searched, but the data fractured into so many benign fragments that it blurred. People found the signal in the margins: a fisherman catching a faint pattern on an old handset, a student downloading a curious update that unlocked an artful text about decentralization, an engineer who had once worked for the big carriers and felt, unexpectedly, moved to help keep the network alive.
Ravi never met the original senders. He imagined them as a cluster of short notes and quick hands, laughter cut with caution. He kept one of the paper cranes in a jar on his shelf, a reminder that sometimes technology’s best work is not to centralize more power but to let whispers travel.
Years later, when his hair started to silver and his hands remembered soldering less, Ravi would tell a single person about that night on Sagan’s Reach. The person asked if what they’d done was illegal, romantic, or naive. He shrugged. The line between law and necessity had always been thin. He said only that the world needs more ways to speak that don’t ask for names up front — that a single phone, patched and repurposed, had become a beacon for small rebellions of care.
If you pressed him, he’d say the phone never belonged to anyone anymore. It belonged to a method: a dispersed archive of small kindnesses and private ideas, kept alive inside obsolete silicon. The last signal, he realized, was not about one message but about the act of listening — and teaching others how to listen too.
Introduction
The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus is a flagship smartphone that was released in 2018, powered by either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or the Samsung Exynos 9810 chipset, depending on the region. While the stock firmware provides a seamless user experience, some users may desire more control over their device or want to try out new features not available on the stock ROM. This is where custom ROMs come into play. In this paper, we'll explore the world of custom ROMs for the Samsung S9 Plus Exynos variant.
Background
The Samsung Exynos 9810 chipset is a 10nm process-based octa-core processor that provides a powerful and efficient performance. However, the stock firmware on the S9 Plus Exynos variant may not be to everyone's liking, and users may want to try out alternative firmware. Custom ROMs offer a way to replace the stock firmware with a customized version of Android, often providing new features, improved performance, and enhanced security.
Requirements and Preparation
Before diving into the world of custom ROMs, it's essential to prepare your device and understand the risks involved. Here are the requirements and steps to get started:
Popular Custom ROMs for Samsung S9 Plus Exynos
Several custom ROMs are available for the Samsung S9 Plus Exynos variant. Here are some popular ones:
Installation Process
The installation process for a custom ROM on the Samsung S9 Plus Exynos variant typically involves the following steps:
Benefits and Risks
Custom ROMs offer several benefits, including:
However, there are also risks involved:
Conclusion
In conclusion, custom ROMs offer a way for Samsung S9 Plus Exynos users to try out new features, improve performance, and enhance security. While there are risks involved, the benefits of custom ROMs make them an attractive option for power users. By understanding the requirements, preparation, and installation process, users can safely and successfully flash a custom ROM on their Samsung S9 Plus Exynos variant.
References
The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus (Exynos) has reached its official end-of-life, but a thriving developer community continues to breathe new life into it through custom ROMs
. As of 2026, you can upgrade your device to modern Android versions—even Android 15 —far beyond Samsung’s official Android 10 limit. Top Custom ROM Picks for 2026
For the best experience, choose a ROM based on whether you want a modern Samsung feel or a clean, Google-like interface.
Title: Breathing New Life into the Beast: The Ultimate Guide to Custom ROMs for the Galaxy S9+ (Exynos)
Introduction The Samsung Galaxy S9+ (SM-G965F) remains one of the most beloved devices in Samsung's history. With its stunning Super AMOLED display, headphone jack, and incredible hardware, it’s a device many of us just can't let go of. However, if you own the Exynos variant (common in Europe and Asia), you may have noticed the official software support has long ended, and performance in games might not be what it used to be.
It’s time to unlock the true potential of your device. Here is everything you need to know about installing a Custom ROM on your Exynos Galaxy S9+.
⚠️ Disclaimer: Rooting and installing custom software carries risks. You may void your warranty, trigger Samsung Knox (disabling Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, and banking apps permanently), or potentially brick your device. Proceed with caution and always backup your data.