Disclaimer: I’m a software engineer that knows next to nothing about hardware, firmware, or drivers.

I used to work for a company that made an Android device. At one point we made a hardware revision where we changed display vendors for cost reasons. Whenever someone would accidentally flash the image for a device intended for the old display on a tablet with the new display, the display would get extremely hot and then burn out and stop working permanently after a few minutes.

Hopefully there isn’t a sneaky change like that in there.

I installed a ROM made for a OnePlus 10 Pro 256 GB storage on the limited edition 512 GB storage version without any problems. At that time the limited edition was released in China only, and I flashed an Indian ROM (more mobile channels available than on the EU ROM).

Worked like a charm (still using it), full storage available. So if it’s just the RAM, I doubt you’ll have issues, since drivers tell the software how to access it, not how much there is.

If the only difference in hardware is the RAM - then no problem at all, probably is going to work just fine. If there are minor hardware differences (most probably this is the case), probably is going to work almost fine, and some things may break - as always with custom ROMs the camera is the part most susceptible to weird behavior, but all in all there is basically no risk of any permanent damage, in worst case the phone will just not boot to system and you can reflash it. I can’t think of a reason for just the ROM to cause any lasting damage to your phone, so in my opinion you can go ahead.

Damn, is Lemmy really so quaint that these questions aren’t better served on more specialized communities?

I don’t miss (in fact I blocked the sub) askreddit with every question being would you rather sex your sex like this or sex your sex like that? But seems like a lot of super specific questions popping up here that could help build existing communities.

Try this in /c/phones or /c/technology perhaps?

You should try asking on a more specialised community. !android@lemdro.id

Generally it’s a bad idea. Most ROMs are designed for specific models. Even within the same model number, flashing the one from a different carrier variant can cause issues. I certainly wouldn’t risk my only device.

Disclaimer: this was a long time ago so things might be different now

I flashed the “international version” of Cyanogenmod on what turned out to be the AT&T version of my first android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S2) and nearly bricked it.

The install froze but I knew I should never interrupt a flash, so I left it there for about 2 hours until the battery died. However, the flashing process also replaces the battery manager firmware, so it was not possible to charge the phone until I flashed the correct ROM, and I couldn’t flash the ROM because the battery was dead.

Thankfully, that phone had swappable batteries so I solved it by buying a second one online (and waiting for shipping). But today’s phones’ batteries are usually soldered onto the board, so if it happened today I’d be SOL.

I personally wouldn’t chance it unless someone with the same device confirmed it was OK

If it’s just ram, not problem. If it’s more than just ram, also flash a custom kernel.

I used to have a Huawei phone and there was a way to change the model number. It was an extra step I had to do first, but since the hardware was otherwise the same, I did manage to successfully flash another regions ROM on my US model.