I was considering getting a LG G5. Some models support an older version of LineageOS and I love the replaceable battery.
What do you recommend?
Motorola’s Moto G series is usually supported and relatively cheap.
However, if you’re willing to spend a little bit more I recommend getting a Fairphone, if you can. Simply because they guarantee 10 years of device support after release and you can easily get original replacement parts.
So you won’t have to get a new phone just because the battery died.So I was about to say “I love my Fairphone 5 and recommend it wholeheartedly but it’s not supported by Lineage is yet, which is really frustrating, especially after its been out nearly a whole year”, but then I checked and - well, I’ll be damned - LineageOS does support the FP5 now so I know what I’ll be doing later on: eating chicken wings. But after that, upgrading my FP5 to LineageOS.
Yea it took some time until my FP4 was supported by lineage, back when it was new. But if the price is an issue I doubt OP would get the latest model, anyway.
I maintain that it’s cheaper to buy better and keep longer, but, yeah, Vimes’ Boots strike again.
@TheDorkfromYork i use calyx with the moto g52
Sidenote…I loved my LG G5. The modules you could get for it were so cool. I had three batteries just because I could lol. I was sad when they went away from the removable battery.
Why did you stop using the G5?
I upgraded to the G6. I honestly don’t remember what my reason at the time was.
in case you go for a cheap new phone, around here the best option are some Redmi ones. recently got a Redmi Note 9 and slapped LOS on it for a friend, for about 170€. since none are very recent models, sometimes I had to spend a good time searching for them in shop stocks
Don’t Redmi phones require an online account to unlock the bootloader?
Xiaomi ones do. Does Redmi require that too ?
yes, they do (redmi the same as other xiaomi phones) and that’s an important thing I left out.
I did create an account long ago with an alias email that i’ve used for the unlocking of several phones’ bootloader. it also requires a phone number for “verification” when you start the unlocking process, so for anonimity you’d need an unregistered burner phone number
so it does leave a trace in their books
Lineage supports the phone not the phone Lineage. Okay, not the important thing.
What is cheap? For me, the Fairphone is the cheapest because the /e/OS support is announced at least for five year (FP 5: 8 years). So the device is not the cheapest but buying a new one whenever firmware updates run out is more expensive.
I’m using LineageOS 17 on a used Samsung S8, which I bought ~1 year ago specifically because it was listed as having first class support for the OS on their page
Lineage17 on Samsung j3 2016. This 8 year old smartphone still works flawlessly.
i was wondering the same, my pixel 2 has a dying battery
Dunno if it is a viable new phone choice these days, but my op7 pro is still going strong with crdroid.
Same with One Plus 8. The only thing I miss is a SD Card and Jack port…
Still going strong with my op6T.
Here is the supported device lis fot those lookingt:
Devices
Devices with a lower opacity image are no longer officially supported and the pages exist for reference only.
You can show them by disabling “Hide discontinued devices” in the device filters below:
Its going be very hard to move away from my One plus 6T. Has been the best phone for trying out custom Roms, currently running /e/os on it. Just make sure you get an unlocked version
unlocked version? how do i tell if its an unlocked version or not? is there a good starting point to learn more about custom roms?
LG phones tend to lack good support for roms. That is probably not true for every device but I personally would avoid them along with Samsung. However, if the device is listed on Lineage OS wiki it has maintainers and support so it should work decent at the minimum.
From a brand perspective I would look at the device page and find the manufacturers with the most devices. Companies like Google and Motorola Mobility are good examples.
There used to be a really good website that allowed you to filter Lineage OS devices to find devices but I forgot the URL
I flashed Calyx to a refurbished Pixel 6a recently. It was quite straightforward and I love it so far.
Check out some of the LineageOS forks like iodéOS and LineageOS for microG too. They have builds for devices that are no longer being maintained by LineageOS, like the Sony Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact.
While the ad blocker integrated into Iodé is nice, their freemium model turns me away. Putting some ad blocking capabilities behind a subscription feels shady. Also they’re rather slow with updates. I’ve used it for a while and watched the ad blocker going from blocking virtually everything to blocking 66-75%.
It’s not shady, it’s just a business model. The goal of the lead developers has always been to turn iodéOS into a self-sustaining project that they can afford to work full time on. That’s why their headline feature, the iodé app, was partially closed source during its core development phase. Once they got it to a stage where it could be monetised, it went fully open source. At the same time, they notified all existing users on their forums and through the iodé News app of this change and offered a free lifetime premium subscription to everyone. There was no bait-and-switch, they looked after their community and were always honest about where the project was heading. The block lists locked behind the paywall are non-essential ones targeted more at parents - stuff like social media and porn. From a privacy standpoint, there is little difference between the free block list and the premium block list. I have devices running both and I notice zero difference in what’s being let through. This is particularly true if you’re using FOSS apps with zero tracking, which you realistically should be trying to do if you care about your privacy. Even in the unlikely scenario that there is some really pervasive tracker that gets through the free block list, you can just use a free service like NextDNS to block it.
As for security updates, it’s true that iodéOS is slower than alternatives like DivestOS, GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. iodéOS’s schedule is similar to LineageOS and /e/OS (also based on LineageOS), and usually runs about a month behind the aforementioned three. That is still a lot better than most stock manufacturer updates, by the way. However, I think whether this is an issue for you just depends on your personal circumstances. I don’t see all six of these projects in direct competition with each other, but rather covering different areas. If you have a newer Pixel, then for sure DivestOS, GrapheneOS or CalyxOS make more sense but LineageOS, iodéOS and /e/OS all support a wider range of older devices that aren’t supported anywhere else. If you’re using, or want to use, one of those devices then it’s no longer a question of update speed but rather whether you get updates at all. The reason why I started using iodéOS originally wasn’t because it was outright better than GrapheneOS or CalyxOS, but because it supported my existing phone.
