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Also from my past experience: LineageOS don't care about privacy, Google DNS & internet connectivity checks points to Google servers; probably the telemetry works too.
About quality: very different results, highly depends from device. In mostly cases - camera apps quality is horrible 'cause vendors doesn't provide any code.
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. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…
> I don't want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware Why is it some communities still work like this? With Android dev, sometimes there's even some source on GitHub, but still a forum post is the main place to find the latest version, with the actual download from some questionable-looking download site. If you're lucky they include sha hashes at least. I've installed…
Samsung S5 and... nothing newest? Also from my past experience: LineageOS don't care about privacy, Google DNS & internet connectivity checks points to Google servers; probably the telemetry works too. About quality: very different results, highly depends from device. In mostly cases - camera apps quality is horrible 'cause vendors doesn't provide any code.
Samsung S5 and... nothing newest? Also from my past experience: LineageOS don't care about privacy, Google DNS & internet connectivity checks points to Google servers; probably the telemetry works too. About quality: very different results, highly depends from device. In mostly cases - camera apps quality is horrible 'cause vendors doesn't provide any code.
I don't know about the DNS, but Gapps don't come preinstalled, so I'd be surprised if it sent telemetry to Google by default. Either way, I'm sure it's possible to disable/redirect those things.
As for privacy in general, they offer a pretty unique feature that allows you to forcibly block granular app permissions after the fact, after granting them for the install. Because this isn't iOS it'll break some apps that don't handle it gracefully, but it's nice to have the option.
But yes, if you're trying to run Android in a privacy-minded way at all, you'll be making some sacrifices.
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While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.
>In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones. I agree with this wholly. Devices like iphones or the samsung devices are riddled with user-hostile features like KNOX, locked bootloaders, pre-installed payment gardens and proprietary blobs all over along with carrier locked, contractually defined handset ownership agreements. The state of open smartphones is rather nacient,…
There some threads here a couple weeks ago and on r/Purism, but it appears they have shipped 0 phones to customers so far. There are just a handful of pre-production units given to employees. Unfortunately it also sounds like they have spent all, or nearly all of the money they raised in crowdfunding, so how they are going to ship all the backorders is unknown.
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. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…
About HTC, I used to run Lineage my One/m7. After upgrading to the One/m9 I switched to AICP, and I'm very happy with it! AICP really let me down only once: I'm semi-religiously doing the weekly security updates. Once that broke the installation, because it was a major version upgrade (I think Oreo to Nougat). I suppose I should have wiped and installed it manually, but the AICP update center just enqueued it like a…
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If you're talking about simply unlocking the bootloader, that's as simple on most phones. I'm more referring to the general barriers put up to doing anything with your phone, either before unlocking (the OS itself is restrictively HTC-oriented) or after unlocking (S-ON, etc.) > Naturally HTC will from there on out decline responsibility for bricked phones, but which company doesn't? The fact that this is an accepted…
You can actually permabrick the hardware with a non-compatible or buggy flashed OS. It's an embedded device, so the Linux kernel has access to a lot of stuff that it wouldn't, e.g. on an ordinary PC.
But flashing itself can also go horribly wrong due to poor bootloader quality etc.
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My understanding is that completely de-googling the phone is somewhat hard because of Google Play Services being a prerequisite for many services. I understand that you can get by without it, but many people find that somewhat of a burden.
There is also microG, free reimplemetation of Play Services: https://lineage.microg.org/
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. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…
> I don't want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware Why is it some communities still work like this? With Android dev, sometimes there's even some source on GitHub, but still a forum post is the main place to find the latest version, with the actual download from some questionable-looking download site. If you're lucky they include sha hashes at least. I've installed…
For my own ROM [1] I spent days and a hundred of euros optimizing the cost of building by trying various cloud providers (fwiw my current best spot is scaleway GP instance with 600GB local SSD). As of today, I'm still at 6€ per builds (For standard ROM devs, that should be cut down to 2€ I'd say). There is simply no way I can afford a CI. (well if someone wants to give me money for that, please do!) I do my best to isolate components and have at least some kind of CI where I can, but that's hard work (And doing CI is my day job, and I consider myself rather good in it)
Even android's own CI is very far from what you'd call a modern CI. They basically just build master once every hour and pray for the best, and let the build cop fix that. They do have a mechanism where they try to build CLs in batches, but "try" is the keyword.
[1] https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki
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While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.
>HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices I've been using HTC devices for ages, and so far every one of them was dead-simple to unlock: Just go to the HTC developer page and enter your phone ID, get unlock code and enter on phone, done! Naturally HTC will from there on out decline responsibility for bricked phones, but which company doesn't?