Ask Slashdot: Are Custom Android ROMs Still a Thing?

Thelasko writes: Reading Kashmir Hill's series Goodby Big Five on Gizmodo made me consider switching to a custom Android ROM like LineageOS again. The Gizmodo articles make it seem that most phones are so locked down it is almost impossible to do. My last experience with custom ROMs confirmed that to be true for me. Is anyone having success? Why is LineageOS making builds for 185 devices if no one can use them?

Comments

Absolutely still a thing

[schklerg]

I run it on my One Plus & Samsung tablet. I will not buy a device that doesn't let me root it & run Lineage. It also enables me to run adaway & block trackers and other stupid parts of the android ecosystem which I do not like. I may eventually move to Purism & LibreOS though. Privacy respecting technology is unfortunately not mainstream, but it matters to some of us.

Re:Absolutely still a thing

[hojo]

I am in the same boat. I won't buy a device until I research its support by Lineage.

Anything other than unlocked is a dead end. I refuse to struggle to deal with artificial barriers on a product I ostensibly own.

If I can't block ads and restrict what any given application can access, then I don't trust the device. All of my devices are rooted and customized by me.

Re: Absolutely still a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that on your next purchase. You'll end up stuck with a 3+ year-old refurb or a low-end Chinese-made phone. Virtually every new phone released into North America or EMEA is now locked down with dm-verity in hardware.
If privacy and bloatware you can't remove are a concern, then you can count out OnePlus, Moto, ZTE, TCL (including Nokia), Xiaomi, or Huawei... the spyware resides in a Chairman Xi-approved proprietary baseband chip that does not expose its operations to the android kernel.
Don't believe me? Google it, FFS. There have been at least a dozen separate occurrences in the last two years of spyware / adware pushed to these devices by FOTA and have been documented beaconing out even without having a running OS.

Not just being a dick here... but making the point that good, trustworthy daily drivers are entirely crippled by crapware and it can't be fixed by something as awesome as Lineage because dm-verity prevents it. Never mind trying to continue using that expensive device once the magic two-year window hits... and the maufacturer decides to stop supporting the hardware with OS updates.

Personally, I think the fix is to get behind the right-to-repair movement and sue Qualcomm / Intel / Samsung / Avago (aka broadcomm). Going after the SOC manufacturers and compelling them to either remove dm-verity at the chip level and unlock bootloaders or force them to sign FOSS developers' custom ROMs would put the whole ecosystem back on track.

Yes, sure.

[aglider]

LineageOS Is lighter, faster, better. Zero bloatware, continuous development.
Need more?

Re:Unlocked Bootloader

[ctilsie242]

Community support is important. I have obtained phones and unlocked the bootloader... only to find that there are no ROMs available, and the only real option you have is to use a factory ROM with Magisk, so you continue to receive updates. This is better than nothing, but the best thing going is LineageOS.

I wish XDA would have a list of phones, which would be maintained/updated often (at least monthly) of phones to buy that are easily unlockable or rootable. That way, someone doesn't buy a Huawei device and then wonder why they can't do anything with it.

Is it even really worth the effort for most folks?

[King_TJ]

I remember playing with custom ROMs like Cyanogen, years ago, with my Samsung Galaxy phone on Sprint's network. Even back then, it created a lot of headaches for me. Nothing insurmountable, ultimately, but it wreaked havoc with things like Sprint's "visual voicemail" on the phone until some special patch came out to fix it, and there were bugs for a while where the phone would stop ringing on incoming calls.

After that, I swore off the custom ROM hacks, because I needed my cellphone for work as well as for just personal calls and entertainment. It's not worth having some cool new features and custom UI if it means I miss a few important client calls or the phone gets unstable when I'm counting on it.

(I wound up pretty much moving myself to the iPhone as I got more invested in the whole Apple ecosystem, and except for the stupid high cost of the latest XS series phones, I haven't regretted that a bit. If Apple doesn't start offering more bang for the buck by the time I'm ready to upgrade phones again, I *might* switch back to an Android. All depends on what the landscape looks like then, I guess. I'm good for another couple of years, I think.)

But I did have to tinker with the low-cost Androids again, trying to find my teenager a phone to use on a budget. I'm really disappointed in those options. Went with a Motorola E4 as seemingly the best of a bad bunch of cheap ones. At least it has the fingerprint reader on it and more RAM than most. Unfortunately, I couldn't put it on her "SimpleMobile" plan like I wanted to (they use T-Mobile's network), as it was carrier locked to Verizon. People told me, when I bought it, that "That's no big deal! Just pay a few bucks for an unlock code off the Internet and you're good to go!" Well, I'm finding out now that nobody does unlock codes for these anymore. All you get are some shady foreign people who want you to give them TeamViewer access to your Windows PC with the phone attached to it, to unlock it for you for a price. I've paid 3 different people now and not one has actually tried to remote in and do the job. Starting to wonder if it's all just a big scam?