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I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Verizon. I've recently rooted it and installed Cyanogenmod 10.1.

Of ocurse, when you buy the phone brand new, it comes with all the built-in apps from the manufacturer. With the Samsung Galaxy S3, I prefer their original dialer/contacts/messaging apps vs. the ones that comes with Cyanogenmod.

Is there anyway to get back the original dialer/contacts/messaging apps and replace the ones on Cyanogenmod? Is there anyway to change custom ROMs to your liking? Is there a apk of the original dialer/contacts/messaging S3 apps?

I'm new to the world of custom ROMs and rooting Android, so please, if you could, be specific and detailed as, most likely, I won't know where your coming from.

Thanks!

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  • What is the reason you switched to Cyanogenmod? There are many other roms which are customizations of Samsungs rom (compared to a complete new one). On XDA developers you can find may, for example I'm using Omega which is just Samsung only bloated apps are stripped.
    – RvdK
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 15:26
  • @RvdK I wanted JB 4.2 which Cyanogenmod has.
    – Rob Avery IV
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 15:37
  • Ah ok :) Well the dailer is definately a APK. Maybe someone has uploaded it, or flash back original ROM, extract the APK and flash the new ROM.
    – RvdK
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 15:45
  • Or extract it from the Nandroid backup you surely have made prior flashing CM. This can e.g. be done using Titanium Backup.
    – Izzy
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 16:01
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    Be careful! The original apks signed key must match up with the ROM's signed key, as Phone, Contacts are classified as system apps, and thus signed with the original Samsung ROM's keys, there will be a mismatch with the CM ROM in place and could lead to force closes and or possibly bootloops!
    – t0mm13b
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 16:13

1 Answer 1

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The problem with most manufacturer specific apps is that they are tied very closely with their specific framework, and will not work on "vanilla" Android OS.

In your example, Samsung's Contacts app relies heavily on features of their TouchWiz UI that ships standard with Galasy SIII, and will not function properly (or perhaps even at all) on custom ROMs that are not based on Samsung firmware. CyanogenMod is based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and none of the TouchWiz apps will work there. The same holds true for most other manufacturers' apps that ship with their proprietary UI overlays, such as Motorola's BLUR (or whatever they renamed it to,) or HTC's Sense for example.

Even if you manage to find an APK for a given app, installing it onto a system that doesn't have the required framework could potentially cause issues ranging anywhere from force-closes, to even not being able to boot the device. Always have a backup of your device before attempting any such modifications and/or installations, so that you can restore your device to a working condition should something go wrong.

As an alternative, you can try and find a 3rd-party replacement app that mimics the functionality of a manufacturer-specific app you're interested in. In most cases, Android will allow you to set the downloaded app as a default instead of the built-in app. For example, there are a myriad replacement Contacts management, Dialer, and Texting apps available in Google Play Store (both free and paid varieties.) I'm sure some of those will have features that you like from Samsung's corresponding app.

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