I honestly haven't even felt the need to root my phone, let alone install a custom rom, for the past 10 or so years. Uninstall all the crap with ADB, toggle on Sensors Off from the hot bar, and don't worry about it.
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Android
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To be completely honest, if Google kills ROMs, I would just get an iPhone...
No way apple suck
For me, its still a no. If they kill sideloading, however, I'd probably go iPhone.
If they kill grapheneos I'm switching to a raspberry pi zero 2W with a touchscreen.
If you count Grapheneos, absolutely. I still regularly flash Lineageos to older devices too.
I don't know about others but I like my phones to actually last.
My previous phone was a Sony Xperia z1. It went with me for more than 7 years working great until I accidentally dropped it and the screen cracked. Changed the screen but it wasn't the same thing and the battery suffered too so decided to get another one, a Xperia 1ii. This november it's going to be 5 years since I got it and it's still going absolutely great.
But on both times they went great not only because Sony happens to make great hardware but because LineageOS - I've used it on other phones since it was CyanogenMod. As not everything in the world is perfect Sony gives no flying fucks about updates so in two years your phone is not going to get more official updates - enter LineageOS, GrapheneOS or what you like. I'm grateful those things exist, have donated to them and it will be very sad if one of those Google stupid movements make them vanish.
I have no alternative but used phone + lineageOS; the stuff you're mentioning (new phone with whatever crap they installed on there) isn't even on my radar as an option.
as to longevity, it's a stop-gap to hold us over until postmarketOS or any of its brethren are ready. banking on the benevolence of evilcorp to give us this thing for free for ever isn't a viable strategy.
I want VOLTE on postmarketos sooooo badly. Grab a 6T and just run it into the ground
FYI, Google's recent decisions only affects pixels. Android is still open source (for now at least).
Even if they close source it for the future, any code already released is already public forever. Customs roms can just continue on from the latest open source code and works their way into what's effectively a linux phone OS.
In the end, everything becomes ~~crab~~ Linux
Also: Happy lemon cake day!
Isn’t android basically just heavily modified and corpified linux for phones?
Uhm, what's the alternative? I don't want my phone to send my location 24/7 to Google or Samsung, whom I talk to and what websites I visit, maybe every single keystroke if the keyboard does weird things for machine learning or backing up word lists in the cloud... I want an operating system that has all of this disabled per default. And as far as I know that's some custom ROMs and there is no other alternative.
whom I talk to and what websites I visit, maybe every single keystroke if the keyboard does weird things for machine learning or backing up word lists in the cloud...
None of this has anything to do with custom ROMs vs stock Android. These are all problems at the application and settings level and can be solved without changing the operating system.
Idk, can you easily replace the Location Services? The captive portal checker? GCM with a different push service, or the built-in Webview with a better version, and have the permission system and the firewall of the operating system prevent proprietary apps from having too much access and phoning home, unless they're designed to allow it? ...I mean sure, you can replace the default keyboard without much effort. But I thought all of the other things were impossible on a stock ROM and then you don't even have things like storage scopes and so on?
The alternatives are:
Pinephone - which is, IMO, insecure because it lacks a user relockable bootloader with a custom key for verified boot (making it suceptable to evil maid attack and malware would persist through reboots)
Librem 5 - which is sold by a shady company (search "Louis Rossmann Purism" and you'll see why), and it also has terrible specs for the price.
Well, I already own a Pinephone and I can tell you it's not a viable alternative. It's awesome and great for tinkering. But try and use it for 2 days in real life and you'll buy another Pixel and fit it with GrapheneOS, just to get on with your day. At least that's what I did. It has minor hardware woes, major software issues, there is no modern standby and you just won't get a notification if your friends change plans. And it's 50 more annoyances like this each day. You constantly need to work around things like not being able to buy a train ticket. And the browser is as sluggish as on a first/second gen Android from 18 years ago. And a Librem isn't substancially better, just 3x the price.
(And I'm not sure about Rossman's take on Purism. They definitely made some bad decisions and severe mistakes. It is hard to do this. Projects run over budget. But it's not necessarily all malice. I think Rosmann exaggerates it a bit for Youtube clicks. It's more some stupid (and very questionable) business decisions. But there is more nuance to it.)
I think AOSP will stay open source for quite a while, so the forks can continue. What Google removed was access to the drivers for Pixels, which makes development for new phones or driver updates much harder.
So I think the custom ROMs will take more time for updates or some might even ask for money to use their ROMs (which is fair in my opinion).
If the ROM ecosystem happen to die down, then my next step would be to get a open souce / hardware centered phone and install a mobile Linux distro.
I went the Pixel / GrapheneOS route earlier this year.
With google fuckibg around with drivers, I may go the open hardware route for my next phone.
I think the ideas that android is an open os died a long time ago. If the android flavour doesn’t have the Google Play binaries it is next to useless
I really enjoy graphene and the separate user profiles with no google integration.
If a google app, or something from play store is needed they've developed a compatability layer and sandbox for play services and store.
It's a lot of security toggles and permissions.
But not having Google sucking your data at every level of the OS is great.
Wirh the isolated profiles, you can still have a fully googled system which you can fully lockdown at anytime, while having a pure aosp high security profile.
It's fdroid and Izzy/codeberg and ironfox and termux and a few other repos on main.
I don't do snap/insta/meta/etc and have no need for apps that drain my soul, anyway.
Anyway, yeah, google fucking sucks.
I was going to go into a rant about Ubuntu and Snap but then realised you were talking about Snapchat, show how much I use any of those big tech “products”
Rant away!
I, too, dislike that snap as well.
Canonical are doing some not cool things these days.
Good thing mint has lmde as their backup plan.
Not useless. Maybe "useless" if you intend to use it as an Android device, but if you just want a Libre mobile OS built based on AOSP, not having Google Play is a feature.
Just build an OS branching from the latest AOSP source code and voila, it's practically a "linux phone", no need to build another linux mobile OS from scratch.
I mean, even without FOSS zealotry there are plenty of Android derivatives without Google services in them on weird Chinese emulation handhelds and SBCs and the like. Never mind fricking Huawei, at least until last year, and depending on how much you think their newer one counts as not-Android.
I remember my first custom ROM on a HTC and it was amazing ! Soooo fast, new features etc. Samsung s3 was pretty good & really fast, s8 was ok but it did make the camera crap. S10 really quite bad camera plus thanks to google play stuff I can't run most of my tasker stuff.
I still use 3.5mm headphones, aux cables etc so that will be the deciding factor in my next phone. If I can run a custom ROM thats a bonus in my eyes (tho if the camera is bad I'll go stock)
If you don't think about privacy, they are not worth it anymore imo. Used to run custom roms on everything, but galaxy OS (or w/e it's called) and pixel OS do everything you might want and more. Custom roms don't add anything anymore.
On a Chinese device though, I will always install a custom rom if I can. Unfortunately it's getting really hard or even impossible to unlock bootloader on most devices from China :(. They have amazing hardware, but shit software.
As someone who used to change ROMs and kernels almost weekly back in the day (when I had more time lmao), honestly, not really.
Stock android already provides so much these days that used to take a custom ROM to obtain. And what isn't, can be provided via a LSposed module or Magisk Module, which is MUCH easier to handle than a full tilt custom ROM
There's, one, exception though. If you want a custom ROM for a specific purpose then there might still be some utility there. Like GrapheneOS for privacy focus
Oh yeah, I used to absolutely wreck my battery life with custom ROMs that weren't optimized well.
But they had "kernel tweaks for buttery smooth performance!!! ^*^"
* oh yeah bluetooth, wifi, fingerprint sensor doesn't work, camera takes green tint pictures, phone app crashes, and I've had some hard lockups, but it's been my daily driver for two hours now and it's awesome!!1!
This is pretty accurate lmao
Never heard of such modules. What are they?
Those aren't modules in of themselves, more like plugin frameworks for hooking into the Android kernel/deep system functions that others can write plugins for.
LSposed can do more "cool stuff" but it's also a much bigger pain to keep it hidden from root detectors. I occasionally use an app called Card Emulator Pro that allows me to duplicate and then emulate any NFC card I tap to it that needs an LSposed module to work
Magisk Modules, can do less but is much easier to keep root hidden, most of my MM are for hiding root (like playcurl) but I particularly like isodrive for being able to use my phone to store and use bootable ISO images
I would probably hold off on buying a phone specifically for the purposes of installing a custom ROM on it, but existing users are fine for now. If you have an older phone that is no longer receiving updates then it is still worth seeing what's out there. Custom ROM installation is generally extremely simple and quick these days so there is little in the way of risk or time commitment.
I would probably hold off on buying a phone specifically for the purposes of installing a custom ROM on it... Custom ROM installation is generally extremely simple...
Hahaha, nice joke:
Most of those are extremely simple. I don't get why people shit their pants when they see the words "command line". You are following basic instructions and copy/pasting text; you would need to be illiterate or braindead to get tripped up by it.