[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] manav907:
Hi i have had this Phone Micromax C1 since august 2017 and while its quite awful even at its current price point of 4000 Rs about 60$ once you root it and remove all the bloat virus and do some customizations it becomes much more bearable to the point that my peers can often be fooled into believing that it would cost 10000 to buy.

the phone has 2 major ROMs that are worth talking about both of them are technically stock ROMs of the device however while one of them is mainstream the other one is an actually a developer one to one port of android 7.0. have had both ROMs and i can tell while the developer build is much more pleasant, familiar it is terribly optimized(probably not optimized at all) and is thus slow. the mainstream stock ROM is actually quite awful in my opinion the initiator launcher is bad and the only way around it is to use a 3rd party launcher like the Google Now Launcher that I prefer to use.

Once I learnt about how magisk worked the processes of rooting was almost as simple as finding the stock boot.img since the bootloader can easily be unlocked from the developer options and then flashing can be unlocked via fastboot.

Now about what i really wanted to talk about.

i have started to "HATE" Micromax, while the phone was a gift to me since i never had a smartphone beside an even worse Micromax a102 on which i learnt about rooting and all that stuff. i still hate the C1. the hate was due to how bad everything software-wise is about the phone, not just the hardware. Since i didn't know about magisk and there is no twrp for this phone i somehow managed to find this leaked Developer ROM from a website called needrom.com (they used to give ROMs for free back then now they charge a subscription) i really liked the developer ROM because it was essentially stock android though since it was unoptimized and slow i did later switched back to the mainstream version which had virus in it. however, after finding out about magisk i had my phone rooted i was able to uninstall all the bloat that i could see on the surface level like the many Micromax and qiku apks that are either bloat or likey virus package deliverers. because of that, my experience was not that bad.

my experience was not that bad up until September of this year 2019. around this time i noticed an app that i never installed called xhelper i did some investigating about it and found out that it was a virus i tried to remove it since it was installed as a user app however it would install itself again later. around this time i learnt that cam scanner a popular document scanning app had Malicious code inside while i don't use such apps due to an emergency i had to use it and left it in my system, once i found out about the virus news i immediately uninstalled it i had uninstalled it prior to finding the xhelper app while using Greenify. this led me to believe that the virus was installed by Cam Scanner. Later on, while i did freeze it, it probably somehow manage to install another app called firewey which began to slow down my phone and show ads to me, and while i did freeze both of these apps and restrict their permissions it didn't help (there was also a 3rd virus app that i forgot its name). after this factory reset my phone a couple of times but it seemed that the virus and sunken too deep into the android system. i even used SP Flash tools to flash a fresh stock ROM but it didn't help (because Micromax had embedded the virus into the stock ROM i wast sure then but i am now), i actually reverted to the developer ROM i had mentioned earlier. which as i expected was free of virus.

however, it couldn't keep up with the load that apps in 2019 given even though i have no social media apps to speak off except whats app and Reddit (if you could even call them social media apps like Instagram, facebooks, tweeter etc). so i gave up on the developer ROM was walked back into the mainstream ROM while the first day was a breeze is nothing of note happened it was only at night that all the virus embedded into the ROM began to emerge, now i was sure that it was the ROM that was at fault since the developer and mainstream rom have different partition configurations they cannot be upgraded to and fro it requires flashing at bootloader level. this time when the virus emerged i was prepared to deal with them i had many apps that would help me quartine and locate these malicious apps like Greenify, Island, App Ops, Icebox, Link2SD, ES Explorer( and Malware bytes help find the last source of the malicious apps). Each of these apps while not mandatory with many alternatives available were a big help in the process of Quarantine and Removal.

As of now, i have my phone rooted with magisk cleaned up, in my opinion, all the malware, bloatware and malicious apps and is working well enough that it is still usable.

Apps that i think are Harmfull, have Malicious code in them or are bloatware

xhelper - com.mufc.firechi - confirmed virus

firewey - com.mufc.firewey - confirmed virus

initiator launcher - com.android.launcher3 - requires unreasonable permissions

File Browser - com.qiku.filebrowser - likely entry point of all virus since it requires too many permissions unreasonably

System Clean - com.android.sc - confirmed virus

Instruction - com.sprd.instruction.MainActivity - suspicious package name and app name, permissions

Patch System - com.android.core.patchsystem - likely entry point serves no real purpose

all Micromax and QIKU apps none of the Micromax Apps are required for the proper functioning of the device and while many of QIKU apps have suspiciously large permission requirement(because they likely spread the virus) they have better alternatives available

a note to all people who may have this device,

this had been a good device hardware-wise from its current price point of 4000 Rs. however most of its software is terrible and even harmfull to the user in case someone wants a cleaned ROM of this phone ( the one that i am using) please write bellow about your concerns and experience with this phone. while there is no way for me to extract the ROM in my Phone i can create a system partition flash image that can be flashed using the fastboot functions to allow a clean android experience.