Here’s an unofficial Q build for this device
[EDIT] Corrected the link
I have flashed and run it on my device and it seems to run OK, but please make sure you have a working backup of your device before flashing it. Use at your own risk!
Note that the version of microG installed does not include the Exposure Notifications API
The Exposure Notifications API can be installed from ‘Apps’, as described in this post.
I have installed it, along with the UK NHS Covid-19 app, and the contract tracing / scanning seems to work. The ‘Venue check-in’ functionality doesn’t work, but that is true for other ROMs I have used (Lineage OS 17.1, Havoc OS 3.9.
First test results.
While each start a few seconds black screen.
WLAN gets lost sometimes and then reconnects.
Instead of LTE Internet sometimes starts with H+. After a few minutes LTE is there.
We waited so long, so overall it is a good start for a new /e/-supported Sony Mobile with Q.
To all other interested XZ1C-users: help testing it out!
With the second one is again the effect, that mobile data is not at once available. It lasts up to some minutes until the provider is identified and communication activated. Sometimes it helps to switch mobility or airplane mode on and off. Does anybody know something about this bug?
Here’s another one - this time built from the official v0.14-q tag
I have flashed this one and it seems to work When I dirty flashed it over the previous build, I some apps lost permissions, but they asked for them again next time they ran. It’s still at your own risk though!
@petefoth: Again a big thank you! I flashed it and it works better. I have still a delay of the connection to the provider but I think it is manageable. It is really great to have the 14 on an XZ1C.
@petefoth , Thanks for version 0.14! I have installed it and it is mainly working but just an issue with my mobile network.
After the e OS 0.13, I was testing Lineage OS 18 then discovered that you made e OS 0.14.
With Lineage OS 18, I could catch LTE (or 4G?) but with e OS 0.14 not able (it catch the mobile network).
I am going to redo the installation of Lineage OS 18 and check the steps, then redo 0.14 installation, because maybe I did something different and could be my mistake.
Apart from that, I was using it on WiFi, and worked fine.
Yes - sorry about that. 15 is being tested and should be available soon. Look at it this way - an early chance to test out the OTA upgrade functionality
Unfortunately, this device will no longer be supported officially. I do plan to continue making unofficial or custom builds as this phone is my ‘daily driver’. The next one should appear shortly after the official v0.15-q builds appear for other devices. It won’t have OTA support however, so you will need to install it manually.
Why not? That is not sustainable. I waited so long for this support and an OTA-update service.
And then there is only two weeks official support and that’s it?
Why? Sony phones are valuable phones and have to last long.
I want the phone for daily life of my wife. Manually updates are no way.
That is no good medium or long time strategy.
More and more I become gutted about /e/ and its strategy.
Firstly I am really sorry that this has happened, and I understand your frustration. The reasons it has happened are as follows:
The ROM includes the Sony Camera app and a settings panel called Xperia Parts. These have been in all the unofficial ROMs that I have built for liac, and they are in the first official release too. They are not present in the other two devices I support (z3c and suzuran), I guess because they are older devices.
As the ROM maintainer, I was asked to remove these from the lilac ROM, for reasons listed below.
Removing them is not straightforward, and I would have to spend quite a bit of my own time working out how to remove them. Experience suggests that it would be a long, error prone, and frustrating process In any case, I have no wish to spend my free time working out how to make the software worse, so I said that I would step down as ROM maintainer.
Without a ROM maintainer to support it, the ROM cannot be official.
I was given the following reasons for removing them
There is 3 reasons why we ask you to remove Sony Camera:
Consistency across all devices: we want each of our users to have
the same experience, doesn’t matter the device he is using /e/ onto
We avoid to embed proprietary apps inside /e/ (the only exception on
that is about MagicEarth, and we got some warranty with the editor)
Sony didn’t allow us to embed their camera app inside /e/
We know that proprietary camera apps are often working better than /e/ Camera (based on OpenCamera), but at the moment we have to deal with that. Users are still able to install Sony Camera by their own.
I am not convinced by reasons 2 and 3: this device is part of Sony’s Open Devices [1] program. The source for the Camera app is in github [2] and it appears to be licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 [3]. So as far as I can see, it is Open Source and not proprietary, although it is vendor- and device-specific.
So it comes down the the first reason, that /e/ want all their devices to provide the same user experience. I don’t happen to agree with that approach - which is why I stepped down as maintainer - but it is /e/'s project so they make the rules: if we don’t like the rules, we don’t have to play
As I said, I plan to continue making unofficial builds for lilac - with the Sony Camera app included. I will investigate the possibility of providing OTA support, but I make no promises, and it certainly wont happen very soon.
(An interesting point is that several other official /e/ devices are part of Sony Open Devices. It would be interesting to know whether the official /e/ ROMs for those devices include the Sony Camera app )
It’s still at your own risk though!