Week 18, 2022: Development and Testing Updates

A couple of days back had checked with the developers reg this.
The consensus from the build team was that the effort to port to Android S is not much. With the entire team now focused on v1.0 the A12 porting will be taken up after v1.0 is released.

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Wow. Super amazing that you think it’s not that much effort to add an entire new branch into the equation on top of everything else you’ve already got going on.

No major rush, just was wondering if it was even in the plans at this point. Not only is it, but it doesn’t sound like it’s way too far off in the future. That’s pretty crazy.

The world moves really fast. Nice that you guys can keep up and move ahead.

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Ok, Got your point.
Thank for explanation

The announcement of Lineage 19 discusses ‘legacy devices’ and says that devices running a kernel version prior to 4.4 will no longer be supported.

I very much hope that /e/ will continue to support older devices - and earlier Android versions: extending the useful lifetime of so-called “legacy devices”, and avoiding the unsustainable “upgrade my phone even though it still works well” bubble, is the main motivation for me in supporting and using /e/OS.

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The idea of supporting older devices to prevent e-waste is at the core of /e/OS philosophy. That being said, not everything is in our control…lack of security or vendor patches, applications not supporting older OS versions are just some of the roadblocks we come up against. We will try our best to support devices for as long as possible.

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I just gave an old Samsung S3 (v0.19 Nougat) on which I replaced the front glas to a friend who used an old crappy wiko device (perhaps defective, not sure) and he is impressed. Admitted that his use case is very basic but nevertheless.

Hi,

as an eOS user with Samsung Galaxy S9+ still running on the Dev version of Oreo (0.20-o-20211210), and seeing that my device will get left behind unless I update it to the most recent version by hand, I would like to ask whether there will be some resources being put towards developing an easy and safe way to update ones phone. The last time I did a manual install was 2,5 years ago and I had to do it twice in order to get my phone up and running, and I’m simply not experienced enough to dare it again. I would bet good money that, if you developed an “Easy Installer” worth the moniker, you’d get a lot more people willing to try eOS on their phones. Right now, it’s quite a hassle for folks who are not as experienced in modifying Android systems.

In the end, I decided to instead get me a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S10+ instead, and am planning to put the latest eOS image on that to use, before updating my S9+ as well. Which is not a solution everybody might prefer. So please, think about putting some resources into developing a really easy way to install eOS on a phone, whether as a fresh install or as an upgrade to an already installed previous version. I am sure it would do wonders to your user base. :slight_smile:

I cannot explain why your phone may have been “left behind”. (Maybe I missed out that OTA upgrade only rolled out to stable and dev was left behind for all, idk). Are you aware that Easy Installer is expected to link to /e/ image ROM download. As of today the /e/ image being offered appears to be e-0.23-q-20220401175185-stable-star2lte.zip (although there room for confusion as the page heading is /e/ ROM latest dev build downloads).

Of course use of Easy Installer will delete your data and so require a manual backup in advance.

Edit. Please could you rule out that Updater is not disabled:
Settings > System updates > Top right 3 dot menu > Preferences > Auto updates check > Drop down menu.

Didn’t the S9 and S9+ get OTA upgrading?

It’s kind of unclear whether you are unaware of the Easy Installer, or whether you are aware but find it somewhat lacking.

OTA updates to the installed version, yes. Upgrades to the next higher version, no. That’s the trade off for installing the Dev versions vs. buying a preinstalled phone.

And yes, I find the currently existing Easy Installer only marginally more easy than the manual procedure, and with added software bigs on the Installer side. :man_shrugging:

The dev release channel gets OTA updates within the same major Android version as long as the respective major Android version gets supported by the /e/OS developers.

OTA upgrades to newer major Android versions were exactly what the developers had to put a lot of extra effort in and what should be available on the S9 and S9+ and what is currently in testing for the S7 and S7 Edge.

The incentive to get a preinstalled phone was and is to get it preinstalled (and to support the e foundation). Depending on the device the stable release channel might be exclusive to preinstalled phones, but this isn’t the case on every phone which is available preinstalled.

Well, you can’t change much about the way a phone gets installed, the Easy Installer does the same steps as the manual install, just in a guided manner without you having to use the command line. You will not get to just snap your fingers to get the job done.

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Unfortunately, the Nougat devices will most likely no longer be supported.

^^ You said it, unfortunately. The owner now has a very narrowed and basic use case, hopefully and probably he will not get hit by some security exploits. Fortunately there exists an unofficial LOS v19.1 beta