I know that most customizability features that were once exclusive to custom roms are available for use right out of the box these days.
In the case of manufacturers like Samsung, I think,there are still no official builds of lineageOS for the newer phones after the galaxy s10 series.
I’m aware that GSI roms are available. My experience with GSI’s have been kinda bad. Most of the time they lack a lot of features which makes the phone not viable anymore. Then there are also the random UI bugs, which frustrate the hell out of the user.
I miss the old days when there were lots of custom roms, even for budget devices. I used to flash them when my phones were out of warranty. I could use my phone however I saw fit.
Is there no way to bring back these good times ? Or will the whole custom ROM community just shrink to the pixels and a select few devices ?
I used to install custom roms all the time back before knox on Samsung, now I cannot be bothered, usually something in the roms does not work among other bugs, it takes too long to keep up to date on rooting stuff etc, the support for roms is abysmal. I started to lose interest around the time banking apps started detecting root and not working, there were ways around it with magisk but it was complicated and could not find decent documentation on it.
It just became simpler to use what’s out of the box and the newer phones I started buying had very little in the way of custom roms to start with.
And that is the goal - make it such a pain in the ass to go with something that won’t track your every decision that we all give up because it is easier.
At least LineageOS with or without MicroG is fairly simple, with auto-updates in many cases. Once you get past Knox and install twrp, it’s easier.
GSI builds are generally easy, too, if it’s well maintained. I like Andy Yan’s ROMs.
It must be a long time since you ran a custom ROM. I use GrapheneOS and that is far from the case.
If the recent drama with the former lead dev of GrapheneOS is any indication, putting our trust in a singular entity in charge of custom ROMs is also risky.
Last I heard the person in question stepped down. Made me consider to switch to Pixel with grapheneos
Fortunately the lead dev is not the entire project and his tantrum won’t affect the stability of the project
Sure but the fact that anyone there could do it means fundamentally there is a risk present and that’s a bad position for a privacy centered organization. The others there MAY not do it, but they COULD.
Isn’t that the case with any project, open source or proprietary? Plenty of previously-respectable manufacturers have decided to just dump in a load of bloat/ad/spyware one release, at least with an open project there are security audits and the like so you know if something’s gone awry.
What drama
That’s a hell of a username…
Good to know that graphene OS is a good experience. I’m wondering how it is in practice. I just recently started thinking about leaving Google. I made a list of Google products I wanted to replace and frankly it’s overwhelming. One I really cannot live without is Maps. It’s just the damned best. And waze is owned by Google so afaik there is not much choice. Do you use the Google app sandbox thing on graphene?
Ps. Your username is terrifying.
I can definitely recommend GrapheneOS. Interestingly Google Maps actually runs fine without Google Play Services, but if you do need other Googly stuff then installing the Sandboxed Play Services is pretty trivial. Happy to answer any more questions about it if you want!
Thanks for the info! Do you use maps for navigation while driving? If so, does it work as smoothly as normal? Also have you used the Google wallet for tap payments on graphene?
I’ve not noticed any issues at all with navigation. Unfortunately contactless payments are one of the few things that don’t work.
I was afraid of that. Hmm, any other pain points that stick out? Are you able to use things like Google docs and voice? I know I’m probably wanting to have my cake and eat it too. It’s truly overwhelming how many Google services I rely on and I hate it.
Google docs is fine, I don’t use any of the voice assistant stuff but I think they do still work. I think the NFC payments are a bit of an edge case, I can’t remember the reason they don’t work but they are the exception.
Makes sense. I am guessing it’s some kind of app/device signature thing that ties deeply to the OS. How about android auto? What camera app do you use and how well does it work? I hope I’m not taking too much advantage of your willingness to answer questions :)
Snap… being able to use my phone to pay for stuff, outweighs having a custom rom.