LineageOS Android Distribution

LineageOS is great, my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own. You basically have to get phones according to their popularity in a certain subgroup: for example currently one HTC model and two LG models are supported, but close to everything from OnePlus.<p>I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only partially working) I don&#x27;t want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware. It just looks like a prime target for all the intelligence services of the world, and a nice target for hackers. With official builds there&#x27;s at least some accountability somewhere to mitigate this.

Been using lineageOS 16 on my OnePlus phone for years.<p>LineageOS has allowed me to use my perfectly fine phone much much longer than the normal upgrade cycle. And this has saved me money.<p>More importantly my phone remains in use rather than being thrown away and a new one purchased saving about 4 phones from landfill (my guess based on a 2 year upgrade cycle).<p>Apple with all their environmental goodness claims locks their phones down from both custom rooms and from re-use after donation. Most donated phones have an iCloud lock with no way to contact the previous owner to request an unlock,

LineageOS is very nice, also because it gives you the same experience of different devices. You know that it will be easy to have root, you know you won&#x27;t have to learn again where every menu is, you don&#x27;t expect too many surprises.<p>I had a Fairphone 2 before and I used LineageOS on it. Then I decided to change it, got a second hand OnePlus 5, installed again LineageOS and it&#x27;s just the same thing, except the phone is faster and doesn&#x27;t have a few hardware bugs.<p>I actually choose the OnePlus also because all OnePlus models seem to be well supported by LineageOS, which is probably related to the fact the OnePlus releases quite a lot of things as open source[1] (another good reason for the choice). On top of that, it seems to have a good quality&#x2F;price ratio. I am quite happy of the choice.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;OnePlusOSS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;OnePlusOSS</a>

I have used CyanogenMod, and later LineageOS, for quite some time and was pretty pleased with it.<p>The problem is it seems to be past its prime. It dropped support for mainstream phones more and more and is currenly limited to either very old handsets or rather exotic manufacturers.<p>The most recent Samsung S series they support is from 2014, almost six years ago. CM and LOS were also popular on the Nexus 4 and 5, these were completely dropped as well and even the successors do not have a recent Android version at this point.<p>All of this coupled with long delays of moving to the most recent Android version. Many phone were still on Nougat LOS, when there was already Pie.

LineageOS was great a few years ago when I used it with my older Nexus devices, but it doesn&#x27;t seem as maintained nowadays. There&#x27;s no images for the newer Pixel devices and no Android 10 support, which is a huge shame.<p>Magisk&#x2F;stock is what I&#x27;ve been using of late.

I just wish that LineageOS just picks couple of devices that they can support. So, me as a &quot;not highly technical&quot; user can just buy that specific device. The current at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;download.lineageos.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;download.lineageos.org&#x2F;</a> where they list every device is confusing and hard to track which is the phone most are working on. Pick one and work on it. With enough people using it, hardware makers will have a strong case to sell device that is &quot;Lineage OS compliant&quot; even if it&#x27;s shipped with Android.<p>Like how GrapheneOS has focused on Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL.

I currently use a Galaxy S8+ and it still works perfectly fine. However, it isn&#x27;t compatible with LineageOS. I know that the next phone I purchase LineageOS compatibility will be a prerequisite.

I adore LineageOS and official support has now become my #1 factor in choosing a new phone. I&#x27;ve been running it on my Oneplus 5T which was already two generations behind when I bought it and there hasn&#x27;t been a single day in over a year of ownership when I thought it wasn&#x27;t fast or responsive enough. It&#x27;s incredibly stable, there&#x27;s no bloatware, and I get updates every night, which means I&#x27;m always on the latest security version.<p>If this thing ever breaks or dies I&#x27;ll probably get a Zenfone 6 (I recall Asus actually openly distributed kernel sources with the express purpose of helping out the open source ROM community) and I&#x27;m excited to see how LineageOS runs on that.

Samsung S5 and... nothing newest?<p>Also from my past experience: LineageOS don&#x27;t care about privacy, Google DNS &amp; internet connectivity checks points to Google servers; probably the telemetry works too.<p>About quality: very different results, highly depends from device. In mostly cases - camera apps quality is horrible &#x27;cause vendors doesn&#x27;t provide any code.

I remember a ROM distribution similar to this, where the maintainer&#x2F;company also sold used phones with it preinstalled. I thought it was LineageOS, but looking at the LineageOS site I&#x27;m definitely remembering that wrong. Does anyone know the name for what I&#x27;m describing?

Also check out &#x2F;e&#x2F; for other device support and better privacy. The device list is at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doc.e.foundation&#x2F;devices&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doc.e.foundation&#x2F;devices&#x2F;</a>

iPhone user here. Increasingly curious about Android. If I installed LineageOS on a pixel3a, how much information would be going to google by default? How easy is it to avoid google altogether?