What happens to /e/ if LineageOS drops maintanance for phones?

/e/OS Devices /e/OS SmartPhones
1

Hello,
currently I am using a Samsung Galaxy S5 Plus (SM-G901F), LineageOS for microG 16 (Android 9).
I read about /e/ and think about buying a Galaxy S7 and try it with /e/. I find the project very interesting.

On the LineageOS homepage I saw that the ROM for the S7 is no longer maintained and the list of downloads for Samsung ends with Galaxy S5. This is very bad news.

AS LineageOS does not maintain Galaxy S7 and S9, does the /e/ team add security and stability patches?
If so, how long will the /e/ ROMs for S7 and S9 be maintained by /e/?

What are the plans for /e/ on the long run? Maintenance of phones by LineageOS is dependent on volunteers and can be dropped from one day to the other. This makes me wonder whether it is good to rely on /e/ when I decide to by a phone that is currently supported by /e/.

Thank you very much in advance for answering my questions and concerns.

2

You should ask yourself the same question regarding LineageOS, as well as microG.

And what perspectives does Samsung offer for the Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F), for example? With StockROM Android 8.0.0 (Oreo) it’s over! An upgrade to Android 10 is not planned..

And now?

3

I know what I have and have not with LineageOS for microG. I know that I am dependent on such projects if I don’t want Google on my phone and buy a new phone every few years. /e/ made the impression to me that it shall become a reliable long term alternative to stock ROMs which I would like to support with my little means if it turns out to be so. /e/ sells Galaxy S7, LineageOS does not and Samsung does not any more. Your post does not answer one of my questions. So I hope for a more helpful answer.

4

Main problem is that you get old vendor securitty patch, all the rest not problem and will be updated automatically with each new build.

5

Possibly /e/ support will be dropped as well. If it happens, you won’t get updates anymore, as far as I know. You would need to build it yourself, pretty annoying IMO.

6

no, if device already supported by /e/ it will be not dropped even if no more LOS support.

7

Well, the “survival” of /e/ and its services depends on several aspects - not least on enough money to keep full-time employees in the e.Foundation. Just think of the story of CyanogenMod.

8

I got this hopeful answer from e.foundation team to my question:

While indeed LineageOS has dropped support for some devices, we keep on maintaining /e/ for these devices including monthly security updates. In fact the version we have on the S7, S7 Edge, S9 and S9+ is stable enough for a daily use. There are minor bugs that we are still working on to make it rock solid.

1 Like
9

Isn’t /e/ kind of dependent from LOS? I still haven’t checked if there are builds from /e/ that are not available for LOS.

10

Even if device not supported anymore by LOS, sources for it still left, only one minor minus its that vendor security patch will be from last LOS build, before device was dropped, all other stuff will be updated to a latest version availiable with each new build, also, talking about /e/ dependencies from LOS, its about 11 devices that never was supported by LOS have /e/ officiall builds, for example Pixel 2 XL and a lot of Samsumg devices and last one what i want to say, that even for some reasons /e/ will drop some devices, you can always build for it manually, like i built unofficiall builds for around 100 devices, which was dropped by LOS and still not have /e/ support, but sources availiable, you can find them in unofficial builds forum section.