Ok. Thank you for the info! I must have missed it at some point.
Community builds for all official devices have been removed from the installation instructions.
The plan is to support only one build type per device. Either community or official. Since we had released community builds for these devices earlier and still have a large number of users on those builds, we keep the community builds also on our servers.
The idea is to persuade users of community build on these devices to move to the official builds. Bug fixing becomes easier that way as developers have to focus on only one build type.
You can access the community builds for these devices by adding community to the image url as @aibd pointed out by replacing the āofficialā word with ācommunityā
to
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Concentrating resources on one build type is completely reasonable.
But I think it will be hard to persuade current community users to switch to official if the situation will be as you described that official builds of new Android versions will only get released after an OTA upgrade to the new Android version was made possible, which might cause a huge delay because of the extra development and testing effort involved per device and per upgrade step, as is evident currently.
And I donāt think the resources which dropping community will free up are going to improve this situation dramatically (as community is easier to handle as you described), or does your internal math suggest that this will work out to everybodyās satisfaction?
Currently Iām expecting just a cut instead of persuasion, and this is totally not a problem in the moment official caught up with the Android version, but it could become a problem later with new Android versions and the OTA upgradability requirement.
Iām not advocating for keeping community in parallel to official on a device, and Iāll just deal with any situation at hand when it comes around without much blinking of an eye. This is all banal problems here, other kids are starving as the saying goes (or get bombed or shot).
But persuasion would look like this: Once official caught up to the same Android version community is on, with community builds then being stopped, Murena would just get the official builds released onto the download pages for manual install continuously including new Android versions as was usual not so long ago, then do the occasional OTA upgrade for users who want to wait for them without blocking manual install in the meantime.
Minimal friction and potential dissatisfaction.
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I am at the same point,
i donāt want to wait 2 months or 2 years for an automatic upgrade,
i want to be able to do it when code is released, even āmanuallyā like for all other devices.
That should force me to build āunofficialā, or switch to AXP-OS
We understand the frustration in the delays in the OTA OS upgrades on official devices. The community builds for official devices have not been stopped. We will continue to build the community builds for these devices.
In parallel we are working towards removing the delays in the release of the OTA OS upgrade builds. That requires some complicated development work which increases in complexity on older devices.
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Perhaps I am the only person who find it strange ,that upgrading ,tkaes such a long time.
While Android 17 is at the point of release ,several most of the /e/ roms are on A15 or lower
The feedback to speed up the development of OS version updates has been passed to the development team.
usually, Lineage upgraded code release is about six months delayed regarding AOSP, and /e/ upgraded code release about six months delayed regarding Lineage.
It donāt hurt me.
Good points. Maybe the challenge comes from supporting so many devices. If efforts were concentrated on a smaller amount of devices delays might be reduced?
Or maybe some devices should be prioritized over others.
Either way, I can understand the challenges of the /e team and I hope they find a way towards a more serene and efficient model.
Itās still strange that the FP6, released last year and the flagship of Murena, isnāt yet in A16. Even iodeOS offers A16ā¦
You have smartphones that are on 3.7 but A16, others on 3.7.2 but A15, itās a messā¦
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Unfortunately this kind of discussion keeps reappearing so I guess itās a deeper issue of internal coordination and public communication. There are 8 official devices on Android 12 which are end of life for over 14 months now plus 3 on A13 which is also no longer supported. That is simply not good. We donāt know about the real state of development, though, those weekly updates are nice but of course there is much more going on behind the scenes. It is also true that most custom ROM including Lineage offer more up to date OS versions but they donāt support that many devices or offer seamless OTA updates/upgrades or easy-to-use installers as e/OS does. And in the end itās all free of charge, even though some users bought Murena phones or donated money, but that doesnāt carry an enterprise like this. Free OSās keep disappearing (Calyx, Divest), that shows just how hard it is for these kind of projects.
Just my two centsā¦
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The /e/OS version is not directly related to the Android version.
And then there can be hotfixes not every device needs, resulting in different version numbers being available for different devices.
Thereās no mess in this sense.
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If being behind with the Android version doesnāt impact security or functionality I donāt really mind, especially if the new features it offers are not useful.
One of the things I liked about Ubuntu was that it was trying to be its own thing.
Iād rather see e-os develop in its own direction than to keep up Androids pace, just because people got used to it.
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I really dont unterstand the stress of the Discussion in General.
Feature releases (like big 4.0) are much More important to me than OS upgrade - As long As security updates Are on point (they improved a lot) 
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As you are answering my post ā¦ I thought I made very clear the discussed point is not worthy of stress for me right now.
But you value security updates, and rightly so.
Now, what if your device somehow stays on an older Android version, falls out of security update support for a certain amount of time because of it, and it could very possibly have newer Android with security update support already via manual installā¦ if not for it being Murena policy that new Android including manual install will only get available once it is possible via OTA upgrade by the updater, which is a much higher hurdle to clear and should take considerably longer to achieve than just releasing the builds for manual install without waiting for the OTA upgrade to be ready?
Well, hopefully in the future the streamlined build concept will result in devices not falling out of security support because of old Android unnecessarily, and this scenario will stay hypothetical.
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Send us a video testimonial to win a Murena Fairphone (Gen.6) & Fairbuds XL or a Murena Workspace subscription of 2TB for 2 years! Check out the details here
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I think that might be off-topic, Manoj 
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I canāt imagine many e/os/ users, worried about privacy, making videosā¦
Maibe using The Guy Fawkes mask (used by Anonymous group) 
I was wondering how users may react to this announcement which is why I posted the link in this thread to get some feedback.
The announcement section where the original thread is posted does not allow comments.
Passing on the feedback to the team.
One option for those who would like to share would be to be creative in sharing their reasons for moving to /e/OS without sharing any details about themselves.
A similar effort was made on the fairphone site
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Yeah, I think itās a bit of a strange move, too. In an age when any video can be manipulated using AI, Iād actually advise everyone not to send a video of themselves to anyone or anything, unless they retain complete control over itāwhich usually isnāt the case.