Upgrade From Android 5.1 To Android 9.0 On ZTE N9518

[Kimbel Keener]

My Phone Does Not Support Root, I'm Not Going To Buy A New Phone Because I Just Want To Get Android 9.0 So I Can Use Phone Link And Better Emojis And Other Crazy Stuff Like That, But I Can't Do That Because My Phone Has No Root And I Can't Do It via Update!

 

[olbriar]

Your phone has served you well. There will come a time when the battery life will force you to upgrade phones... if not some other game changing problem. It will cost more to have a new battery installed than a phone upgrade. Your phone is far from the leading edge and has long since lost support and upgrades. A new phone is in your future so keep that in mind moving forward.
Backups and cloud services should be in place just for that day when you have to upgrade.

 

[ocnbrze]

My Phone Does Not Support Root, I'm Not Going To Buy A New Phone Because I Just Want To Get Android 9.0 So I Can Use Phone Link And Better Emojis And Other Crazy Stuff Like That, But I Can't Do That Because My Phone Has No Root And I Can't Do It via Update!

is this just a rant or are you asking if it is possible? i asked this cuz your last sentence just answered everything.

your phone came out in 2015. its a very old device now. there is no way to get it to upgrade to android 9. there is no development community for your device so you can't root it.
most apps will not work on android 5.1.

just get a new phone with android 9 or higher.

edit: or keep your phone now and not worry about emoji's

 

[Dannydet]

Best answer, above....

 

[Windroid]

your phone came out in 2015. its a very old device now.

Sad that that's considered "very old". A ten-year-old desktop or laptop computer could work fine for modern computer usage, once you installed a modern operating system onto it. But tablet computers (including smartphones): Seems the companies want us to buy a new tablet every two years so they can make more money.

 

[Hadron]

Android has to be built for the particular model of phone (true of all mobile OS's), there cannot be a generic version you can download and install. That leaves 3 possible ways of updating:

1. The manufacturer builds an update and makes it available.
2. An enthusiast with the necessary skills builds one and makes it available (which will involve rooting, or at least unlocking the bootloader, before it can be installed).
3. You learn how to do this yourself, which takes a fair bit of time and effort.

The first has not happened, and if the last update was 5.1 it's very clear it's not going to. From what you say the second hasn't happened either. That leaves number 3 - except it sounds like you first need to find an exploit that will allow you to unlock the phone so you can install custom software before it's even worth trying to learn how to build a ROM. And you'll need drivers for the various components which are compatible with Android 9, which may not exist for everything (and if they don't, and you can't hack a workaround, that's game over).

Those are the options. So if number 3 doesn't work for you then you have just 2 further options to choose between: buy a new phone, or live without things that won't work with 5.1. Sorry, but no device is supported forever, and budget ones get the least support both from the manufacturer and from the community. It's actually done very well to have lasted you this long.

 

[Windroid]

Android has to be built for the particular model of phone

That used to be the case in the desktop computer world. Then the computer manufacturers made their computers enough like the IBM-PC that software designed for the IBM-PC would work on any computer (except a Mac).

 

[Hadron]

That used to be the case in the desktop computer world. Then the computer manufacturers made their computers enough like the IBM-PC that software designed for the IBM-PC would work on any computer (except a Mac).

There is also the question of all of those device drivers, which PCs handle quite differently from phones. That's probably a major reason why you don't get a "generic" Android build.

 

[svim]

My Phone Does Not Support Root, I'm Not Going To Buy A New Phone Because I Just Want To Get Android 9.0 So I Can Use Phone Link And Better Emojis And Other Crazy Stuff Like That, But I Can't Do That Because My Phone Has No Root And I Can't Do It via Update!

What you want to do and what's actually possible just isn't possible.
You can't upgrade this model to a newer stock version of Android simply because you want it to happen. Google may release new versions of Android each year, but that only means manufacturers get to pick and choose which of their phone models will actually get any of those newer versions. In your instance with your model, ZTE stopped supporting it a long time ago, so you either need to accept that as a fact, or buy a new or at least newer phone.

 

[Kimbel Keener]

is this just a rant or are you asking if it is possible? i asked this cuz your last sentence just answered everything.

your phone came out in 2015. its a very old device now. there is no way to get it to upgrade to android 9. there is no development community for your device so you can't root it.
most apps will not work on android 5.1.

just get a new phone with android 9 or higher.

edit: or keep your phone now and not worry about emoji's

It Wasn't A Rant! p.s What Could I Upgrade To Then? I Need Android 7.0 Or Newer And I Don't Want To Buy A Brand New Phone Because It's Worth Spending More On A PC Than A Mobile Device And However, It's Okay If I Could Get Android 6.0 Max Or Just Stick With Android 5.1 And It's Battery Can Last For 1 Day!

 

[svim]

It Wasn't A Rant! p.s What Could I Upgrade To Then? I Need Android 7.0 Or Newer And I Don't Want To Buy A Brand New Phone Because It's Worth Spending More On A PC Than A Mobile Device And However, It's Okay If I Could Get Android 6.0 Max Or Just Stick With Android 5.1 And It's Battery Can Last For 1 Day!

For your own mental health, it might be best to just go and buy a PC then. At this point, you're just going to continue getting more and more agitated and frustrated.
Hopefully you'll eventually realize you won't be able to upgrade your ZTE up to the level you want it to be.

 

[Windroid]

It Wasn't A Rant! p.s What Could I Upgrade To Then? I Need Android 7.0 Or Newer And I Don't Want To Buy A Brand New Phone Because It's Worth Spending More On A PC Than A Mobile Device And However, It's Okay If I Could Get Android 6.0 Max Or Just Stick With Android 5.1 And It's Battery Can Last For 1 Day!

Unless there's an Android 7+ custom ROM for your smartphone, or you have the programing skills and the time to make one yourself: You can't update your smartphone to Android 7+.

 

[ocnbrze]

It Wasn't A Rant! p.s What Could I Upgrade To Then? I Need Android 7.0 Or Newer And I Don't Want To Buy A Brand New Phone Because It's Worth Spending More On A PC Than A Mobile Device And However, It's Okay If I Could Get Android 6.0 Max Or Just Stick With Android 5.1 And It's Battery Can Last For 1 Day!

you can upgrade the phone to android 5.1......that's it. not much you can do. if there was a development community you might have been able to flash a custom rom that has features of android 7, but it will never be a full android 7.0 os. your phone is not made to handle higher android os. but that point is moot as there is not a dev community for your phone anyways. there are plenty of budget phones out there that has the current android os running. i would look to those phones or as you say get a new computer.

 

[ocnbrze]

Unless there's an Android 7+ custom ROM for your smartphone, or you have the programing skills and the time to make one yourself: You can't update your smartphone to Android 7+.

the way custom roms work is that a developer will take the current stock rom and add or delete stuff to their liking. they cannot make a custom rom from a higher android os that was not made for the phone. they can take features of latest android version and add it to their rom.....but the base rom will always be whatever the most current stock rom is..

the only difference would be lineage os. lineage uses the base android os and modifies it to work on certain phones. the lineage group does allow others to tweak their os as long as they designate that the rom is unofficial and give credit to the lineage group.

edit: this is why there is not an android 7 custom rom......cuz there is no dev community and because there is no stock rom that is andoird 7

 

[Hadron]

There are other AOSP ROMs apart from Lineage, but that's just a quibble, because if there is no ROM development for your phone it doesn't matter what development there is for other phones as that won't help you .

It Wasn't A Rant! p.s What Could I Upgrade To Then? I Need Android 7.0 Or Newer And I Don't Want To Buy A Brand New Phone Because It's Worth Spending More On A PC Than A Mobile Device And However, It's Okay If I Could Get Android 6.0 Max Or Just Stick With Android 5.1 And It's Battery Can Last For 1 Day!

As others have said, the Android version number doesn't matter: if you have no updates available from the manufacturer and there is no development and no root for your phone then there is no upgrade option whatsoever.

But you certainly can buy a phone for less than a PC: it's perfectly possible to find budget phones from reputable manufacturers new from ~€/£/$130 or so, without any network subsidy, and there's no way you can buy a new PC for that price (or if you can I don't think I'd want to take the risk of plugging it in!).

However since this is an old CDMA handset it's possible that you can only use handsets which your provider approves (some of your providers in the States are weirdly controlling). So I can't offer any specific advice because I don't know what handsets are available to you. But if you can't buy a phone that isn't significantly cheaper than a PC you are with the wrong provider.