On Jul 27, 2020 “The Linux Experiment” uploaded a video “Android without Google: the /e/ Project blew me away!” Which introduced me to the E Foundation. I was blown away by the idea behind the project, and figured I’d see if my devices were compatible. Sure enough 2 of the devices I had laying around had support!! I had to try this for myself.
First device is, Google/Huawei Nexus 6p (Angler) (2015) - It was running “dotOS” (DroidOnTime) Android 9, by PixelBoot. I could not get Linage working on it due to a Vendor error and the only other roms I could get working are; Resurrection Remix (by voidz777), and Pixel Experience (by PixelBoot)
- Resurrection Remix -
Summary
I did have an alright experience with Remix, but a lot of apps were not compatible and I had some overheating issues with max brightness during a regular day of use.
- Pixel Experience -
Summary
This was almost unusable. Everything was extremely laggy, and due to the vendor issue, there was also a radio issue with the wifi, and almost nothing working. After trying to flash everything again, it just wasn’t worth it. The device ran extremely slow, and I could not use anything without it chugging behind.
- dotOS -
Summary
The last rom to try, which by far was the best user experience…at the cost of battery drain, even while plugged in with max brightness. My performance was comparable to the original Pixel XL (2016) in 2018-2020! All apps I wanted to use are compatible, no real chugging outside of typical lag from an older device and slightly longer wait times when loading anything or multitasking. Really the only issue was the battery.
Google Nexus 6p - Not coming directly from stock I Immediately ran into issues similar to this post made by Serjical! Reading around the forums and noticing a few other users had a very similar issue but it looks like once you flash Google’s stock ROM, and the correct Vendor ID, etc- Everything should work? I could not get e-0.11-o-2020082870470-dev-angler.zip working even after flashing stock! So I figured going directly to e-0.10-o-2020080666690-dev-angler.zip would be better? YES! Yes, it actually worked after a couple of hours of fiddling and searching for solutions. Everything seemed to work out of box, wi-fi, bluetooh, etc. I have NOT tried to pop in a SIM card, so I cannot say if that works from my experience. A lot of the stock apps are actually based on once I already used before so that was nice not to learn anything new and made the switch smooth! I only downloaded a few other apps on the side, other than a new gallery app, youtube go, Signal, NDS4droid, and Scrambled Exif- all the stock apps have and do everything I would need in a daily driver.
Stock Gallery app - I had a lot of issues with it crashing upon opening, or not showing up when trying to crop photos for icons, or applying a wallpaper other than stock, etc. I could not find much information on the E forums other than some users did have issues with stock apps not working, or doing similar things to what I experienced. So I needed to grab an alternative to solve previously mentioned issues! No big deal!
E on the Nexus 6p by far has been a very pleasant experience! Signing up for the account was only a bonus to get the full experience. I have already recommended most of my friends who have compatible devices to give this a try! Most of them are as excited as I was so I look forward to hearing about their experience in the future.
The Second device is; OnePlus One (Bacon) (2014) - This was running LinageOS but recently fell out of OTA updates and required manually installation of them…I got lazy and felt like this was a good excuse to give E a try on this device as well. Not that I had any issues with Lineage, just felt like trying something else! I can say downloading e-0.11-n-2020082970471-dev-bacon.zip and following the instructions went perfectly smooth compared to the 6p! One single flash, and reboot- everything worked completely in one go. Even all my data was ported over without any issues (I wasn’t expecting that, it was a nice bonus.) The Android version is much older being Android 7 Nougat vs the Nexus 6p which is running Android 8.1 Oreo. That’s the only thing that bums me out. I might go back to Lineage without GAPPs on the Oneplus One, and keep E on the Nexus 6p.
I hope my experience can help anyone else who wants to try out E on their device or specifically the OnePlus One and Nexus 6p! Thank you.
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