[Moto E5 Questions & Answers] bubba1601:
That's my thread and yes the information is correct.

If you are not sure yourself that the information I have posted is correct, then I suggest you stop thinking about rooting your E5 or flashing custom ROMs.

You have to remember no one has tested the rooting/flashing procedures on PETTYL.

Everything that's listed here on XDA is designed for James/Nora/Hanna devices so no one has tested anything on our devices as it's newer and not many have it.

All the GSIs (custom ROMs) are only listed as working on the James/Nora/Hanna devices, there is currently no support offered for PETTYL, although technically they should work.

The devs of those other devices and the resources for them claim everything should work on our E5 as its treble compatible, but unfortunately that's not quite correct.

If you are really not sure about anything, or don't know if information is correct, you will have problems.

Im not being mean.....I really don't want anyone else to have the problems I have had and really wouldn't advise anyone to go through the process as it's fraught with issues, bad explanations and lacking important information.

Some files are incorrect for our device and some listed procedures for the other devices do not work on our E5.

BTW-my device is an E5 play XT1920-15 PETTYL SIM unlocked purchased from Argos.

Here's a list of the issue I found, it might be different for someone else as two people are saying they successfully rooted their PETTYL, and I couldn't.......

1. I had no issues unlocking the bootloader.

2. There are two versions of TWRP posted on XDA for PETTYL, but neither worked for me.

I used the James version.

3. I could not root my device.

Magisk installed but I could not get v17.3 or v17.2 to flash.

V17.1 did flash but magisk manager showed device not rooted and magisk not installed.

4. Flashing any GSI (Oreo or Pie) causes problems to the system sounds, ringtones, notification tones and music which is totally distorted and very poor quality.

The camera has very poor quality as well.

5. Lineage OS 15.1 is the GO version, you also should flash lineage before flashing other GSIs as you can't flash most GSis over stock.

6. You can use the full Google apps on a couple of android 9 gsis which makes your device a normal android, not an android Go device, but I would recommend not to bother with Android 9.0 GSis for this device as they are very buggy and very slow, and they use three times more battery than android 8.1 Go.

Also, live wallpaper and notification access still don't work on android 9.

Just remember as well the US E5 is much more powerful than our E5, and I assume thats why android 9 runs so crap on our E5.

7. You have a very complicated process to get your Google account working on any GSI, if you do it wrong, you will not be able to use your Google account at all and will get spammed with never ending notification from Google of using an "uncertified device"

8. If you run into problems and decided to return to stock, you cannot download the "retail_GB" stock firmware (SIM unlocked) for PETTYL unless you pay for it....the EE and Tesco SIM locked firmware is free to download, but neither work on the SIM unlocked version if you use non EE or non Tesco SIM cards.

9. Someone has posted a twrp back up of rooted stick for PETTYL.

It did not boot on my device and just kept boot looping.

That could have been a twrp issue and nothing to do with the shared back up - I couldn't get back into a gsi or stock to test it.

My post is warning to other PETTYL users- with my own experience.

What you choose to do is up to you but I really would not bother tampering with it, leave it be.

Stock android Go 8.1 is way better than anything else that's currently available for PETTYL right now, every gsi I tried had an issue of some description that affected performance so badly they were practically unusable.

Even though I'm back on stock now I still have sound issues, and many graphic glitches that makes my screen flash and glitch out randomly.

I'm sorry it's such a long reply, I wanted to give you as much information as possible so you have some idea of what's involved for our device., And let's just hope the situation for our device will get better soon.