VICTORY, MY FRIENDS!!! I have painstakingly upgraded this old phone to stock OS Android 10 (having to manually incrementally update from certain versions to another), upgraded everything and FLASHED A NEW ROM! Lineage 20 running Android 13! And bonus, thanks to the angels at XDA I have got root back on AND can still use my bank app and Google Wallet and have system wide ad blocking.
I will have to spend a decent amount of time later this week configuring the launcher and display etc. My only one stupid mistake was forgetting to use whatsapp's own service to backup messages to the cloud before doing all this; it apparently didn't detect wifi and hasn't done an automatic backup since the 22nd - and ye olde titanium backup can't restore data given that the app was running off such an ancient OS.
It all sounds silly but it really is a point of extreme and irrational inertia/avoidance updating things that substantially change the UI/UX of my phone (worse still changing the phone itself). This REALLY feels like dusting out the cobwebs and making a fresh start! :)
If I can get my banking and national login apps from my home country onto this phone off my iPhone (because that's the only thing it worked on), I'll be singing. e: banking might be a go, although again I stupidly should've disabled the digital token before all this, I'll have to sort it out in person in a few weeks. but national login is absolutely airtight, I might need to use a burner phone for the rare time I need that login thing. think mygov but on 30593095039403493094 steroids - I hate it, tbh, way too much info in one place.
Ran into a major snag though I forgot to disable 2FA on my uber account and I've booked an uber carshare thingo for my trip next week. Authenticator app hasn't saved all the thingos. Can't for the life of me remember what my "backup codes" were. Hopefully they'll respond to my request for help
If my oppo was officially supported I'd use Lineage. Would be great if you could use banking apps on it though. It can be pretty handy to payid for stuff on the occasional times a merchant is down etc.
Is it a really old model? Seems to be Lineage available for damn near every phone out there. I definitely appreciate having my banking app available when I need to transfer money - also for some godforsaken reason my bank only allows a particular type of savings account to be created from within the latest version of the app, not on the phone, not on the desktop, not even in person!
Biggest success was adding my card to Google Wallet. Took several tries
No it's only a few years old. But from memory it's not unlockable... just checked and it's still the case. Oh well, next time I need to replace a dropped phone I'll make sure I can get something that can be unlocked.
So your banking app works on Lineage? If so that's great.
Ah okay, that's really unfortunate. I use an older OnePlus that is insanely dev friendly (unlock bootloader from within the settings menu!! No waiting for the correct star sign and pressing the right button combo 0.0492049 milliseconds after boot...) I would've thought Oppo phones were not that difficult to unlock either but I guess they decided to lock down the less dev oriented devices (That said - I have no idea if recent OP phones are that dev friendly either).
Some day when this phone physically gives up the ghost I am going to try and find another OnePlus or Fairphone or whatever that can be easily unlocked.
I actually don't know if my Australian banking app works on unrooted Lineage. It very well might as it's extremely basic. My foreign banking app definitely wouldn't (I had to install a slightly older version to get it to work even with all the other root hide features). Google Wallet probably wouldn't have either.
I rooted my phone anyway for other reasons but I had read in the forums that some people had to root their phones in order to hide the custom ROM from those apps, even if they had no intention of using root at all! Which sucks for people wanting to just extend the lifespan of their phones that are EOL for official OTA updates.