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 ?
It just feels like I don’t need custom ROMs anymore. Nowadays, most phones already do what I want them to do. I used to be pretty deep in the custom ROM community, but nowadays I don’t even think about rooting my phone.
I guess the only use case for custom ROMs is the privacy aspect. But most people don’t care about it, so the support is abysmal.
I understand your bad experience with GSIs, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. The way custom roms have been made through the years isn’t sustainable for the long run. It’s too much work for the few people involved, that goes obsolete so fast. But with GSis, the projects will one day be able to maintain just a few images, and the porting community will just have to focus on unlocking the devices.
GSIs aren’t working 100% today, but it’s something still new in the perspective of manufacturers, and the tendency is to have better support with time.
Just to put things into perspective, my experience, as someone poor from a third word country, is just the opposite. In the past, only the more expensive phones had custom rom support, and the cheaper ones I got access to, wouldn’t even get results if I searched for the model on xda. Nowadays, even cheap chinese phones or the ones locally manufactured in here allow me to put a GSI and have a customized experience, up to date with security patches.
I think you meant it the other way around - “why custom ROMs have little device support” - right?
because for me it’s clear that companies just want to ship their own spyware and bloatware.
You do have a point. I wish projects like GrapheneOS and CalyxOS supported non pixel devices as well.
GrapheneOS’s reasoning is that Pixels are the only things secure enough for their needs
