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Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

Excellent project, and glad 10 finally came through. I never buy a phone that isn't supported by LineageOS, and it's the first thing I install when I get a new (or old!) one.

I see my Pixel is not yet supported though (by 17.1). Could not find a list of phones that should be getting support later on. Anyone know if I am missing something?

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Last I used Lineage (a couple years ago), device support was entirely community-driven. Basically someone has to come forward and say "I want to be the champion for device X", and then that person or Lineage had to have one of that device physically on-hand for testing, and then that person and any others who volunteer are responsible for porting each new version to that device and maintaining compatibility.

So the spread of devices tends to be based on how popular/beloved that device is by the community. This can partly have to do with price/specs, but it also has to do with how easy it is to maintain (does it have a locked bootloader? is it available internationally? does it have weird, proprietary drivers that are hard/impossible to get working?).

For example: the Samsung Galaxy S 3-5 are still supported. The S3 came out in 2012 (it was a great phone with an unlocked bootloader; I had one). On the other hand, I don't see any mainline Galaxies newer than the S5 on the device list.

OnePlus tends to be well-supported.

Nexus devices were well-supported, but perhaps the Pixels have gotten more locked-down? I haven't been keeping up with that sort of thing.

>On the other hand, I don't see any mainline Galaxies newer than the S5 on the device list.

They started locking their bootloaders, and nobody has been able to bypass the lock.

That can't be right, as e.foundation sell S7 and S9 preloaded. I haven't done it, but flashing instructions are at https://doc.e.foundation/devices/starlte/install for example.

The international Exynos version is crackable. The one that matters, the Snapdragon version that will work with US networks is not cracked.

You mean "the one that matters" to you? You realize most people don't live in the US, right?

Also, people that live in the US and don't want Qualcomm's insecure-by-design integrated baseband/application processors.

Shouldn't Exynos version work with US networks, too? It's all GSM, after all.

Kind of. The US has some different frequency allocations so it won't work in all areas.

Pixel boot-loader is locked if you buy it from a carrier rather than direct from google. The Nexus 6 I got from Verizon did not have a locked boot-loader.

I experienced this as well with my Moto G ("falcon"), an ultra popular budget phone from 2013 that was also supported by Cy/Lineage for years after it was abandoned by the manufacturer and carrier.

My own unit finally got itself stuck in a crash loop after two battery and one screen replacements that kept it tottering along.

LineageOS's supported devices are typically a bit older (e.g. Galaxy S6 but not, say, the S10). But support will likely come after some time.

Meanwhile, there's this new thing called Treble, where you can flash a generic ROM on any new Android phone. There isn't an official LOS Treble build (for various reasons), but it's a solution if you must have a 3rd party OS build.

Well, my Pixel XL is a bit older, and I happily run 9/16.0. Just can't find if it's planned to be lifted to 10/17.1.

I never buy one that can't run (any version) of LineageOS right now though. That's why I got this older Pixel in the first place. Its' the only way to get some sort of longterm updates and a degooglified Android.

OnePlus makes really good phones for good prices, and tends to have great support from Lineage. Only downside is that it's a Chinese brand. Of course you're replacing the OS wholesale, which would get rid of any traditional telemetry, but technically it's possible there's something nefarious in the firmware itself, depending on how paranoid you are.

> There isn't an official LOS Treble build (for various reasons)

could someone share what those reasons are?

Looks like the gsi (general system image) that vendors need to boot to demonstrate treble compatability - is mostly tested for exactly just booting/starting. So any phone that supports treble will boot gsi/boot an image derived from gsi - but not all phones will work with gsi - for a meaningful definition of "work as a full android phone".

In other words treble/gsi seems to be a bit of a half-measure - and if you "port" à given rom to treble/gsi - it still will only work on some subset of treble phones :'(

This is what I gleaned from some searching, anyway:

https://www.xda-developers.com/unofficial-lineageos-17-gsi-r...

(after first finding this, and being a bit confused):

"Changelog 16 - Smart Styles, Treble is trouble and Omfg Oreo"

https://www.lineageos.org/Changelog-16/

There's also annoying variations in GSI's - you need separate images not just for 32-bit vs. 64-bit but for A-only vs. A+B boot support, and sometimes for different "base AOSP" releases - GSI's for devices that shipped with Aosp versions 8.x, 9.x, 10.x are not always guaranteed to work consistently.

The Pocofone F1 is really cheap and really good. The only downside is the lack of NFC. I got my dad one last year with LOS as replacement for his Windows Phone which is no longer supported by WhatsApp.

> Could not find a list of phones that should be getting support later on. Anyone know if I am missing something?

Yes, the idea of supporting new phones on LineageOS is completely dead. You can find unofficial ROMs on the XDA forums, or you can use a phone that's had support for several years.

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