I use the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 already for 2 years.
In the past I had issues with the camera, with the bluetooth, excessive data consumption at times, and due to the layout of the screen the center of the “status bar” on top is (still) hidden. But I can live with it. Now the bluetooth works better. What I install as for basic features: lawnchair, F-Droid, Aurora store, Fairmail, and Brave.
I also use the /e/ online services - ecloud - (paid plan for 20Gb data or so?) with nextcloud. This I must say it works amazingly well and I think it is hosted in France.
I plan to stay with this project and keep supporting it for as long as I can. Maybe someday I will also try to install it on a tablet.
So odd to read some of these posts. I run Moto G4 / G4+ / G4 Play phones and not only is /e/ being supported on these older phones with regular updates but /e/ is the least buggy of all the ROMs I’ve had on these phones. I’ve run Stock, Lineage, AOKP and now /e/. Stock stopped being supported some years ago, Lineage about 2 years ago, AOKP about 6 months after that. /e/ just released another update in January.
Everybody gushes about the latest and greatest but there’s something to be said for the solidity of older OS’s that have been debugged and tested over several years. I’m grateful to the /e/ team for the effort they put into “obsolete” phones and “obsolete” Android OSs. If I could, I would communicate directly with the support staff, let them know how I feel and help them out in any way that I could.
You may talk smack about /e/ and the people who help out but for me, they are a godsend, especially with the way things are here in the states. I don’t know if you keep up with the news but things are rapidly going south here. Any alternative to Big Tech is appreciated and /e/ is a great alternative.
If /e/ volunteers were being treated as badly as implied in some of these posts, I think that older phones with fewer users would have their support dropped, which leads me to believe that volunteers are leaving Lineage OS, since they have dropped support for older phones. AOKP probably dropped support because their Moto programmer got a different phone …
This is an understatement frankly. We are under daily privacy and technological assault that shows no end in sight. Not a political statement, just an opinion: it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king and right now, as far as privacy centric alt-tech OS development in the mobile device space goes, /e/ is king.
I think it better to nurture this state than seek to tear it down. Destruction is easy, creation not so much.
Give the guys a break. They have no way of knowing the particular issues you had, and had the issues fixed a couple of months later. But they get blamed for it. As far as reinstalling stock Android goes, that’s the fault of Google and the phone manufacturers. As far as marketing goes, they only have so many resources available. That will get better with more widespread adoption. I’m sure they are doing the best they can. And the US market? The /e/ OS cannot be installed on a phone with a locked bootloader, which is true of most phones sold in the US. I was lucky enough to obtain a phone my mother purchased while she was in London. There is a shortage of used phones upon which the OS can be installed, as it is. I think the strategy is to partner with a manufacturer who will make phones with the OS installed, for sale in the US market., since most US phones will not be compatible.
Not to be a tin-hat conspiracy theorist but, at least here in the US, all criticism and alternatives to the existing power structure are under attack. Perhaps /e/ is too and for the same reason.
That’s why all my phones are Motorola. If you pick up one that has not been through the fingers of a provider like Verizon, you can go out to a particular Motorola web page and get the bootloader unlock code. Gotta love a manufacturer that doesn’t treat their customers like idiotic sheep.
Ah, so there are domestic sources… I do like my Samsung phones however, and compatible Exynos variants are still to be found. I can even find brand new S9s, yet. I think they are up to S21 now. My current one is a Galaxy S7 Edge, which may or may not quit working on the Cricket/AT&T network shortly (it’s past deadline). Oh well, I have another provider lined up.
I had no problem finding an Exynos phone, and found a USA seller to boot. The process from day one for me (on 2 different phones) was a little rough, and not something your average normie is going to bother with.
This is just my opinion, and I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes – but to my eyes, I see a lot of potential, and with that a bit of lost opportunity in improving the /e/ experience, let alone spreading the word to the masses. It may be a cultural thing, or maybe some of /e/ foundation’s goals/plans are not being shared publicly yet (that’s completely understandable). More staff (the right kind of people) and funding would probably do wonders. I am planning to become a full-blown customer with a purchased tier of cloud storage, etc. but right now /e/ is not in a dead-reliable state for me - their future holds promise, but it’s murky right now. Not being a nay-sayer or hater, I’m being realistic. So we shall see.
Despite my cynicism, I give the /e/ team a lot of credit, and I’m glad that they’re at least doing something. Nobody in America seems interested in creating a privacy-centric competitor to Google’s ecosystem (AFAIK)…I hope that changes over the next few years. The number of people who are actually paying attention to such matters, and don’t want to settle for being another frog in the slowly boiling pot is growing.
Samsung phones are nice but notoriously difficult to root / unlock, at least here in the states. I think that Motorola phones are nice enough and, importantly, less expensive …
Yes, the US Snapdragon models have a locked bootloader. I did find an exploit that rooted an S7 I used to own. I cannot find the exploit anymore.I’ll probably switch to Motorola, if rootable Samsungs become hard to find.
Samsung is constantly closing exploit paths on their phone. Much better to go with a manufacturer that has created an unlock path for you …
Just make sure that the Moto phone you get is unlockable and has /e/ support. Last time I checked, the only “G” models being supported were the “G4 / 4+ / 4 Play” and the “G7” models. Hopefully, someone will lend support for the “5’s” and other models.
I think the exploit still works. I did it with Oreo, and that is the last OS offered by the providers for that phone. Thanks for the information you provided. I’ll keep it in mind in case I ever need it. Anyway, it is possible to root an S10 (new ones can still be found, and official /e/ is in the works). Not sure about S20.
