With the recent changes to how Google is doing things with Android, is it even worth it anymore? Should I just accept whatever version of Android comes with whatever phone or are custom ROMs still worth it? Assuming they still exist after all of this, idk what’s going on.
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.
Hahaha, nice joke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootloader_unlocking#Android
That’s just confirming it’s generally extremely simple.
Last month I tried to unlock a Motorola phone. Guess what: There is no option to unlock the bootloader because it’s one of the models that can’t.
The year before a Huawei phone: I had to disassemble half the device to shortcircut something while running a custom made software on the PC.
Yeah now try to get an average user doing this… good luck.
And I’m not even scratching the part where some of your devices hardware is not working properly because the closed source firmware is not available.
A quick look at which recent phones (since 2022) can install LineageOS: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ Just 35 phones (Pixels exluded), including only a single Samsung phone!
Now compare that to installing Windows/Linux on a PC where you literally plugin a USB and hit install…
So it’s hard on some phones. Lineage OS support also isn’t any indication of how hard it is to unlock. The more popular devices are all easy to unlock.
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.