I just switched carriers, too. Still have the LTE issue, plus now MMS isn’t working. Lol! Pretty sure that’s the new carrier’s fault, though.
Cheers!
P.S. VoLTE is working great, which is why I switched carriers.
Hi Mike.
Some background:
For a while, XZ1C (lilac) was an officially supported /e/ device. This was because, after successfully producing some unofficial builds for this device, and for Z5 Compact (suzuran), and Z3 Compact (z3c), I volunteered to become the maintainer of the official /e/ ROMs for these devices (all of which I happen to own, and all of which have been my ‘daily driver’ for some period of time).
My unofficial XZ1C /e/ builds, and the first official /e/ build, contained the excellent Sony stock camera app alongside /e/'s Camera application. I was asked to remove the Sony app from the build because, i was told, it was important for /e/ users to have the same experience across all /e/ devices. I was not prepared to do that (I did not - and still do not - accept the ‘identical experience’ argument), so I stepped aside as the maintainer of the official /e/ ROM for this device.
With no maintainer, the device stopped being officially supported by /e/, and I went back to producing unofficial and custom builds. The unofficial builds contain both camera apps; the custom builds contain only the Sony camera app, and many of /e/'s forked apps have been replaced by the upstream apps from which they were forked. (And of course they don’t include /e/'s Apps app 
)
I have recently made an unofficial R build for XZ1C, which seemed to work as well as the test R builds for the official devices. It does not contain the Sony camera app, because the maintainer(s) of the unofficial Lineage OS ROMs (on which all the /e/ ROMs are based) have not been able to make the Sony camera app work in Android 11 / R / LOS 18.
So to answer your question, at least in part. This device is my current daily driver, and I have no plans to change to a different device. If the current one breaks, I’ll find another on eBay or elsewhere. My plans for the future for XZ1C are:
-
to continue to build and make available unofficial and custom Q builds, for as long as /e/ continue to maintain the Q branch of their codebase. I don’t plan to move my own device to Android R until I have to, as I don’t want to give up the Sony camera app.
-
once /e/ releases
devR builds that are ready for daily use for their officially supported Sony devices, to build and make available unofficial ROMs for XZ1C, along roughly the same schedule as /e/'s releases (i.e. using thev0.nn-rtag in the /e/ releases repository). These builds will not contain the Sony camera app, which opens up the possibility of -
XZ1C again becoming an official /e/ device. I guess /e/ would be happy for that to happen, so long as I am prepared to do the duties of ROM maintainer. I haven’t yet decided whether or not I want to do that
-
to explore the possibility of providing OTA updates for my unofficial builds (for XZ1C and a small number of other Sony devices which are currently “stuck” on Android 7 / Nougat). I hope this will happen but it may not, and I make no promises about timescales
-
to keep all my source files (device and kernel trees, vendor blobs) available in freely accessible git repositories, so that anyone else who is interested can duplicate and improve upon what I have done.
As I said, all of the above are my current plans and intentions, but I make no promises or guarantees: circumstances change, and my plans may well change with them. But in the short term at least, I hope the XZ1C will remain a viable device, supported by /e/ - officially or unofficially - for as long as you, or anyone else needs it. Whether or not you want to buy one, on the basis of the above, is of course entirely a matter for you 
Sorry to go on for so long, but it wasn’t a “yes or no” question you asked
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I’m with you on this.
Hi @petefoth , thanks for the info , had to read that 3 times to digest it.
Two questions based on what you’ve said:
what is the benefit of an unofficial versus custom rom? Eg seeing as they both have the Sony app (and therefore neither can be official /e/) why have two variations?
And any idea how much longer Q will last before we have to move to R?
Cheers 
The custom builds are primarily for me: they fit my usage, and include only the apps I want.
The unofficial builds are to make /e/ - the official, unmodified version - available to users of XZ1C. I’m not trying to second guess /e/ about what most of their users want. I’m sure they did their user research and usability studies to come up with the official /e/ ‘look and feel’ and, at the moment, the /e/ UI and /e/'s default apps are what /e/ is, and many users are quite happy with them, and some people even like Bliss
No idea. But there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue to get updates for at least as long a LOS maintain the Q branches of their codebase. Once that stops, the “last” Q build won’t stop working, it will just slowly become out of date, missing out on security patches (most of which are patching “vulnerabilities” which, for most users, are almost entirely theoretical). There are millions of users who are quite happily using versions of Android that haven’t been updated in years. The Q software will carry on working at least as long as your hardware
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Hi there,
Very insteresting all this. I realised that I didn’t really understand why your work was not accepted. Anyway I’m with you and I hope you are going to maintain this for a long time because I’m not able to do that. I wish I could but my knowledge is equal to zero 
On an other subject,
I would like to know if you tried to uninstal pre-installed apps with this method Uninstall default apps - #29 by AnotherElk
And does it work on this build ?
The method is generic Android.
As long as a build is not as obscure as hiding the USB debugging/Android debugging (the name can vary) setting in the Developer options from you, you can do it.
1 Like
I have tried it in the past and it seems to work. I’ve not tried it in this build but it should work. For my own device I make a custom build, the the apps I don’t want (Apps, Mail, Message, /e/'s microG) removed and the apps I do want (F-Droid, Aurora Store, K-9 Mail, QKSMS, official microG, Lawnchair and Omega launchers) built in
Thanks a lot.
Actually there is only the calendar app that I don’t like and which I want to remove. So I’ll try the uninstall method. Thanks
I’ve done it and it seems to work very well. Thanks again. I don’t know what I will do without you !
I just tested Mint Mobile (on T-mobile network). As happened for @Xyguma, this different carrier connected to LTE automatically w/o toggling to 2G first. Unfortunately for me, the same MMS failure occurred, as with Ting (also on T-mobile network).
Back to Ting, and I have to toggle 2G/LTE to get LTE again. Hmmm…
I wonder if I should try reinstalling /e/…
I had a problem with MMS the first time I had an /e/ phone, a Samsung S7 pre-installed with /e/.
I called the operator and I just had to put again the information on the mms (in french sorry, the path is réseau et internet/point d’accès/ mms/)
I put what told me the operator and after it worked.
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The developer who maintains the unofficial LOS ROM on which my builds are based has posted this in the XDA Forums
However with the recent release of Android 12 switching to that
becomes worth it due to various improvements over those 2 versions.
However porting a new LOS to a that device isn’t easy and requires
quite some testing (and I can’t even promise I’ll succeed) So in
order to keep supporting multiple LOS/Android versions I’d need a
spare device for testing.Hence I’m asking if anyone would be able to donate an XZ1C to me for
that. Maybe someone knows someone who has an unused phone, maybe with
cracked screen but otherwise working or one which isn’t used anymore.
Again: I can’t promise anything in exchange and I know the XZ1C is
still such a good phone that prices aren’t exactly low. So this is
really meant as an outreach to the community in case anyone has
somehow access to an unused phone which I can use for testing and see
what I can do with that. Of course you can tell me which LOS version
you use yourself and I’ll try and take a bit of extra effort to
support that as long as I can.
If anyone has a spare or slightly broken device they can spare, it would be great to support this developer
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Oui, moi aussi j’ai pensé a ça. Malheureusement inutile…
My current operator says they don’t have any different APN settings. I did try the primary and then the alternate settings with the second operator I tested, but those still didn’t help with the MMS issue.
Both of those carriers are MVNOs that use T-mobile’s network, which requires VoLTE. My previous carrier was an MVNO on AT&T’s network, which is not requiring VoLTE yet. (And the XZ1c doesn’t have VoLTE on AT&T.) With the previous carrier, I had no issues with MMS, even after installing /e/.
Other /e/ users seem to be using the T-mobile network with no MMS problems, so I wonder if I just did something wrong during the installation process. 
[EDIT: I just did a backup-wipe-install-initial setup, then -restore, but that didn’t fix the MMS problem. Oh well…
Is there a simplistic crowd funding website where those of us interested could contribute small amounts eg €20-30 each to hit a fund target, the LOS dev could access that to buy a device?
If somehting like this were simple to set up and use the /e/ community could tap into for funding small future activity - eg buying a device for a dev/maintainer, or paying a dev for a specific piece of /e/ work.
Had a quick look at crowd funding sites, some require setting up a ‘funding’ page etc, but just an easy way to pool funds is more what I had in mind.
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Interesting idea - I’d happily contribute to the upstream developers who make my unoffficial bulids possible
I’ve started a conversation with the developer who works on XZ1C, and I’ll report back
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just spent 30 mins trying to find a suitable website fo micro dev payments, but didnt find anything!
There was even a french one kisskissbangbang, but all too complicated. If anyone has suggestions shout
Or if you can contribute a bit of cash, he has a paypal donation link in his XDA Forums profile
https://forum.xda-developers.com/m/flamefire.5366259/#about
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I’ve no problem sending cash on a once off for something like this, but this could be a good opportunity to test group payments from the /e/ community. Maybe it hasn’t a hope of working, maybe people dont want to pay for things, but if it did work it could be used again and again in the future and the /e/ ecosystem would benefit from it.
Here are two possible group payment websites, no idea if they are suitable yet, but we could take them for a test run if the XDA dev signed up to one of them and sent a link for us to share in /e/ - eg with the title “XZ1C device for R testing” and amount €180 - (or whatever they estimate)
Interesting idea, but it adds complexity (for the developer who currently has a PayPal donation link)
He has posted that
I’m currently in contact with (another devleoper) who might be able to get his hands on a working device which he can donate. But always good to have a backup in case that doesn’t work out in the end. So thanks again!
So we can donate now via PayPal, or wait and see whether there is still a need
1 Like