I saw a blog post awhile back, I believe over at LineageOS, that said that 95% of users were using 5 phone models, and all the other phone models used taken together only accounted for 5%. I’m assuming /e/ is in a similar situation. Eventually the phone I’ve flashed /e/ to will die, and I’ll have to get a new one. I’d like to be ready and know which phones are the most e-popular (and hence, most crowd-supported). Is there someplace I can view these stats?
@hkmike I was thinking the same thing and came across some posts on stats
I was trying to figure out which compact phone was most likely to be supported by Lineage for the next 2 years. To do this I looked at maintainer and community activity of a few devices to see how much backing there was. It’s not an exact science, and as was seen with (i think) the galaxy S7, a maintainer can leave without much prior notice at any time.
My limited understanding is sometimes all it takes is a small number of dedicated manianters to keep a deivce up to date on Lineage (or /e/), so it does not necessarily have to be a largely popular (number of downloads) device in order to survive.
if you are ok with a generic image, you can take the /e/ Android GSI. This is an image for many phones that support Project Treble: Device support (Project Treble)
These are actually all new phones that can unlock the bootloader and came with at least Android 8.1 out of the box.
However, some functions may work on one phone and not on another.
I use the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9pro, a top phone, with the GSI image. The fingerprint sensor does not work on my phone, which does not bother me because I do not want to use it anyway.
In the car, no reception strength is displayed, even if I have full Emfpang on the phone. However, phone calls etc. work. I do not listen to music via Bluetooth in the car.
Unfortunately, the GSI is not yet officially supported by the e foundation, but I hope that they will start sometime, then I must not always create :-). Currently, the computer next door also hums again to create images…
Thanks @manoj. I was looking for a bit more extensive list. After asking on their IRC, I was told about this list: https://stats.lineageos.org/ for LineageOS. With the relationship between the two mods being as strong as it is, digging down into those stats should help me to determine how future-proof various phone models are for future purchases. Long live /e/!
