I was given an old Samsung S4 for use at work recently, for scanning QR codes with primarily.
I’m an iPhone guy, so am lost with Android, but the version it was locked to was ancient and massively out of date. I did a bit of research, and after a few hours of trial and error I’ve got it running on Lineage 14.1, with a few useful apps downloaded from F-Droid. It’s gone from an old hunk of trash to a perfectly usable device that won’t win any awards for its benchmarks, but is spot on for what i need it to do.
Only 14.1? Now granted, there’s so many different models that it might not apply to all of them, but the european/and qualcomm jfltexx for instance runs 18.1 just fine
(well, it’s showing its age with Android 11, but still very usable)Yeah, it might be able to go newer, but as I said, Android is an alien land to me, and what I seemed to find on XDA Forums was that this particular model of S4* is only supported as far as 14.1. There’s so much info out there that it’s too easy to get overwhelmed, so I got to a point that enabled what I needed and left it. Willing to accept any further advice, mind.
*Turns out there are several variations of S4, ranging from the I9500 Exynos processor one I have here, to several different versions running Qualcomm silicon.
Ah, the Exynos variant. It’s not even listed as being supported at all, so good to hear that it worked anyway
Yeah, it was disappointing to say the least to see people on YouTube showing how to install 18.1 on an S4, then discovering that this one can only go up to 14.1. But that’s still two Android versions more recent than the official support, so I’ll take it.
Better than nothing, that’s for sure.
I wouldn’t dream to use any stock android at this point. Been on LOS forever and each new phone I buy either check if Los is available or, in one case (my current phone) I ported Los for it myself.
How hard is it to port LOS? I’ve been wanting to do it for a couple obscure devices I have but I’ve read the documentation and felt overwhelmed.
Its hard but rewarding, and perfectly doable given you want to do it.
Note that there are a few mandatory requirements for a port to be feasible, like unlocked bootloader and vendor sources available for kernel.
As newby, you also want already existing ports to start from.
Also, some powerful hardware to build on (32+gb ram, 10+ cores, 100+GB storage).
Also older (up to A11) can be real bitches, after A12 things are improving a bit.
How do you port it? Don’t you need access to the device tree files iirc?
You need to copy or grab or create the device tree files. Usually by cloning a similar device. Vendor files are extracted from stock rom. Kernels, you need an official release from vendor to start width.
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It’s a sub-brand Xiaomi phone from a couple of years ago. Going strong… From A10 to A13 and next year A14 too…
Redmi? If so thanks for your work.
You are welcone in any case. Its a rewarding and also tough experience.
Haha i knew i recognized that name! Thank you for your hard work. I hope we get to see lineageOS 21 on our shared phone.
This is the way
I put lineage OS on devices that are too old to get updates on any other platform. Zombie devices basically. They’re doing great work. Delaying e-waste.
What if your device doesn’t officially supported? There are some “unofficial rom” on some forums but I don’t trust them.
When we’re talking about devices that aren’t getting security updates anyway, you shouldn’t be using them for anything sensitive, even with direct lineage OS builds. Without baseband hardware driver updates, you’re an extreme risk for a drive by exploit.
From my threat model perspective, lineage OS makes a vulnerable device useful, but not for anything sensitive.
A game phone, a VPN phone, a webcam, a sync thing endpoint, a crypto miner, a kid’s phone, lots of uses. But not banking, not passwords.
If the build isn’t coming from lineage os, I question why not? It just takes one maintainer to keep the build going. At best you’re going to get a point in time build, you’re not going to keep getting operating system.
I am pretty sure lineage os does get regular updates on my oneplus 3t.
If we could fix the issue with non working Google Wallet/Google Pay, that would be great.
But it is also worrying that there there seems to be only Apple and Google Pay in Europe - no alternative solution for wireless paying.
Other than that, Lineage OS on my 9T feels great. Battery life got almost doubled and it feels great to use a device with all current security patched installed. Next step would be to use a completely degoogled version with only FOSS software installed - just for some app there are no real alternatives available: Banking app, Fitness watch app, Carsharing app etc
The bigger problem is the community dying from OEMs not releasing their tools/locking their bootloaders (fuck you Samsung???)
Samsung and the carriers. The easiest way for most people to get a phone is on a carrier plan but surprise surprise. They OEM lock devices so that users can’t swap firmware or root. Doing so would allow them to go to another carrier. As if hanging a lease contract over your head wasn’t enough.
I don’t purchase mobiles from carriers. I still don’t have choices though. I’m sure there’s plenty of people like me.
If you don’t purchase from carriers then there are lots of options out there. Fair phone makes a pretty decent phone new phone, pixel is great after you degoogle it. Older one plus phones are generally a steal. If you wanna get really adventurous (test bleeding edge totally free software with no restrictions) there’s the pinephone. Just be warned that one is straight up unusable as a daily driver imo. There are tons of great options if you purchase through channels other than carriers. What just sucks is phones that you would typically buy that would be unlocked are no longer unlocked if your only choice is through a carrier. I even remember a while back some phones would lock their bootloader when you brought your unlocked phone to their network if they sold a equivalent version of the device. I haven’t seen that in nearly 10 years though and I think it had something to do with oversight on manufacturers behalf and poor choice of distribution of firmware.
FP5 is not available in the US, and FP4 has about 2-3 years of support left.
Pixel is the only real option, at least till Google does the embrace and extinguish strategy and fucks the custom ROM community over.
OnePlus devices no longer have much custom ROM support because they took away the unbrick tool.
I think Nokia devices don’t have an unbrick tool either.
Motorola devices can be unlocked but not much custom ROM support (at least, from Lineage OS) either.
Which options are you talking about? I can hardly see anything other than the Pixels for devices released in 2023 in terms of custom ROMs. At this rate, I’m OK with having to manually patch security updates with Magisk every time and sideload (need to figure out how I will back up my device, do not fancy a factory reset every time)
Edit: would you happen to know how one can apply security patches with KernelSU?
Fitness watch app
Check out Gadgetbridge!
Ironically, I always end up rooting lineage just to pass the security checks to make Google pay work. Smooth one Google
I pay with my phone using grapheneOS and the banking app of my bank, it works perfectly without Google-Pay.
Check out /e/os, the only problem I found is it is more difficult to interact with some google services and others are not supported but you can always use a browser to access them
What even is the purpose of Google Pay? I don’t know anyone who actually uses it but some people act like its a necessity? We have cards that you can just tap these days. Isnt that making Google and Apple Pay useless?
It allows you to pay with your phone? I don’t even carry a wallet around anymore, just my phone.
I don’t know where you’re from, but in the UK it’s pretty common to pay with Google Pay or Apple Pay. Even had the advantage of allowing you to pay a higher amount than you could with a contactless card.
The point is not needing your card. Where I’m from using apple/google/Samsung pay is very popular. Many young people don’t even regularly carry their wallet.
magisk delta + play integrity fix has worked well for me. using google wallet without an issue
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There’s Bitcoin and lightning network :)
You can’t pay with it at the till, though.
For the needs of “degoogled but fully functional Android OS” these days at the end of 2023, the options are LineageOS for most phones, GrapheneOS on a Pixel, and that’s it? Or are there more projects at this point?
/e/OS and many others. Look up your model on xda-developers.com, where most ROMs are published. The most commonly supported devices are Google Pixels because AOSP is officially developed by Google for them.
CalyxOS.
Most phones from one year back, yes. If you want something from 2023 it better be an FP5 or a Pixel
Calyx is great. It comes with microG baked in. Also it’s got a great installer. Note that you can opt to keep the bootloader unlocked if you want to root it.
iodeOS, calyxOS, /e/OS are all good projects. divestOS are also good,
but probably not usable for most, because of the lack of google play alternative.it now works with unprivileged microg. However use of microg is still is unsupported and unrecommended according to the website.paranoid android seems to still be a thing. The introduction on the website is sparse, and I havent tried it. So I cannot speak for how good it is.
DivestOS added optional support for unprivileged microG fairly recently, so its definitely usable.
DivestOS https://divestos.org/ same developer for Mull browser
Mull or Mulch?
Both https://divestos.org/pages/our_apps Mull is based on Firefox and Mulch is based on Chromium
Ah ok, thanks!
What are the stats for Graphene and Calyx?
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They both should work, you won’t get notifications for Teams though unless you flash microG or GAPPS.
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For microG (what I would recommend, since its much more private than regular GAPPS/full Play Services), you can just flash a LineageOS for microG build for your device instead of the official LineageOS. You can get them here. It covers the same devices that Lineage itself does. Same installation process, just using their files instead of Lineage’s.
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Microg is included as a fork of lineage. It usually would be another rom you flash. (Essentially, spoofing Google Play services requires code lineage doesn’t want to include)
For gapps, you get them as a .zip file. These are variations of the “update.zip” format for updating phones. You flash this in recovery right after you flash your lineage rom. Google “universal gapps” and look for their site.
I have both of them running on my lineage-powered phone.
Why shouldn’t they work, let me check
There isn’t a version of LineageOS available for my phone : (
Which phone? If there’s a will, there’s a way, if you want then find “manifest” file for your phone and compile recovery then compile lineage os and flash it, there’s instructions how to compile step by step and how to flash
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You did great by trying! Have you ever tried different ROMs? I for my part am very happy with /e/ OS.
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Just curious, what phone?
PS: The r-slur is a slur
Its a LG Rebel LTE
Wish my phone supported it
Me too
You mean, *LineageOS devices.
you won’t believe what lineageOS is based on
Installed it on my old oneplus 6 who’s only issue was battery life to get it from android 11 to 13 now that it is back to my daily driver since my Samsung s20 broke. It’s running great
Having a OnePlus 7 Pro and I was thinking about switching OS to get Android 13 and current security patches. Are there any cons to switching OS? What about basic functionality (NFC, WiFi/data connections, Bluetooth, Calls and so on)? I guess I need to somehow save app data if I don’t want to lose 600+ tabs, had any experience/issues with that?
How about the performance and battery life?
WiFi, mobile data, Bluetooth and VoLTE all still work fine. Performance and battery is about the same as when I used oxygenOS11 for about a week before going to lineageOS. Only con is the need to wipe the phone so make sure things are all backed up! I missed a few folders and photos before wiping the device.
OnePlus 7 Pro owner here. Currently running the Pixel Experience ROM. Pretty stable. Although I haven’t really tried NFC as there no use for it where I live. You can check out the xda thread.
Unfortunately it seems to suffer from the same problems that other custom ROMs like GrapheneOS have these days. The same goes for if you root your stock OS. Like all the normal Android stuff works (even better) but as soon as you want to for example use the tap-payment features or the ID stuff from your government it doesn’t work. Also good luck trying to use for example Samsung smartwatches
I have reasonable luck with magisk and root/unlock hiding plugins.
Many days it just feels like you aren’t allowed to own your own device and you have to make a choice whether you can use a device the way you like or use those apps. I wish PWA were more common because they meet many of my needs and has many of the security features that the anti root apps are looking for anyways.
I have no issues with Gpay on custom roms. You need the right moduls to make it works. Also, Zygisk is a thing.
