What custom ROM is on your phone?
What custom ROM is on your phone?
Since we don't yet have a specific community for custom phone ROMs, let's discuss them here. Are you running a custom ROM? Which one? On what hardware? How is it?
GrapheneOS. I love it. I migrated from the Apple ecosystem about two years ago into the FOSS and Linux world and haven't looked back.
LineageOS on a Fairphone 3. It works well for what I do on my phone.
LineageOS with microg on a s10+. It works great, no issues with apps not working but still have minimal google dipping it's fingers into my life.
I only buy phones now that will support a custom ROM, I can't go back now.
CalyxOS on a Pixel 5. Its nice and micro G works fine in most situations. When I have the time though, I'm probably going to try graphine os with sandboxed google play and see how that works for me.
IodeOS on FairPhone 4.
I'm only running FOSS application on it.
LineageOS so i can use Android11 on pretty old hardware
also another one with LOS11+MicroG instead of GApps, same reason
GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7, having a great experience with it.
I went with good old lineageOS but I would like to pick up a Pixel device so I can give GrapheneOS or CalyxOS a go.
Unfortunately none. I have an S10e with a locked bootloader. This is the first android phone I've owned that I hadn't used a custom ROM on. The last Samsung phone I owned was an S4 and I hadn't kept up with the custom ROM scene, so I hadn't known the locked bootloader nonsense when I got the S10e.
It sucks because there are no note security updates for the phone even though the hardware is still in good condition. I can't justify replacing a working phone even if I could afford a new one. I'm hoping eventually a vulnerability will be uncovered that allows unlocking the bootloader. There was one a few years ago I think, but it got patched before I even knew about it.
GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6a and iOS on an iPhone in the other pocket lol
None ... yet. Hadn't even looked into the possibility since my Pixel 2XL, and I have no idea what I dug up all those years ago.
I'm now on a Pixel 6 Pro and would love to move to a privacy-focused OS; I'm already on KDE Neon on desktop for both my production machines as of May. Rexxit has motivated me to at least dip my toes in on mobile, but as with desktop Linux, I fully expect my first attempt to bring into specific relief what I'm looking for and then go try things until I find what I like.
Graphene and Lineage seem like the best starting options at this point, but I'd love to hear from anyone else on my hardware on their experiences. My use cases are vanishingly small: Signal for text, voice and video; the local transit app; music app (still haven't found one that makes be forswear any further experimentation) for my commute; mindless games (currently Royal Match) for my commute; 10-15 texts a week; and a phone call or two. I barely even use the camera except for work, and yes, I'm aware I purchased a phone utterly overpowered for my needs, but I'm picky about pixel size.
What recommendations do y'all have, either as a starting point or — perish the thought — an obvious daily driver?
I used to run CyanogenMod/LineageOS on my older phones, but since my S8, I've been using stock ROMs. Honestly not even sure a custom ROM exists for the S21. I'd love to make the switch if it does, however I know Google Wallet (Google Pay at the time) had a huge issue with custom firmware/ROMs and I don't imagine it's gotten any better over the years.
GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5, and I highly recommend it!
Also, it's "operating system". Not "ROM".
Pixel Experience
First I tried iode but after a short trip to Ubuntu Mobile I decided to try Calyx. Runs fine on my Fairphone
/e/OS - I bought a cheap Poco X3 pro, that was probably cheap because they show ads inside the OS. So now I got to have a cheap phone that's also private and fast (a friend bought the same phone, no custom ROM, and now complains about it being slow)
/e/os on a Fairphone 3 for a few months now. It's my first custom ROM, and it's been a breeze so far :)
Some quirks that I don't actually mind : when the phone is turned off and charging, the animation on screen doesn't update the current battery level (but idc, usually the phone charges at night), the phone calls volume is really loud (but I usually plug my headset in for calls) and the integrated vpn is sometimes slow enough to cause websites/apps to timeout (I can live with that).
I still have my old android phone mainly for my bank application.
Edit : typo
GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6. Works great! I've had to override the custom memory allocator one or two times for banking apps, but that's just flipping a switch in the app info.
Using GraphineOS on a Pixel 6. It's very nice! I haven't had any problems with it.
I've been using CrDroid on my Poco F2 Pro (LMI) for a long time now , have also dabbled with Elixir , Nusantara and a few others which was fun, I love custom roms and tinkering plus MIUI sucks badly.
Also the mire I tinker the deeper I go, I made my first magisk module this year , git pretty good at debugging and root files etc , plus I can restore my phone pretty fast now (I brick it every now and then lol)
This year I also got into battery replacement , I switched out my battery and my camera module, and switched out a samsung s9 plus battery, was pretty fun.
Grapheneos for years now
I'm running Evolution X on my Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro and have been for the past 3 years or so. The main maintainer uses this phone so it has always been pretty polished and feature rich.
Unofficial crDroid with Poco X2. No real issues, although I haven't been able to get SBC-XQ working which it supposedly supports.
Honor 10 with some old Lineage Android 8.1 without gapps, wife has Xiaomi Mix 2s running some old Xiaomi.eu with gapps
couldn't be bothered to upgrade to newer one, it's available for wife's one, but there is no point, if it wouldn't improve her life at all, as for me I would need to go to EMUI to have slightly newer Android but I will rather have clean Android, anyway looking for years for replacement compact phone with decent camera, currently Xiaomi 12 seems like best option for 400EUR
LineageOS for MicroG on a Oneplus 8 5g UW. It runs pretty smooth on this phone. Use to have a few minor bugs that got fixed eventually.
I really wish Verizon didn't abandon this phone, I'm stuck on Android 11 while all other OP8 models were updated to Android 12 and then 13 last year. Owners of this phone were supposed to get two years of updates and three years of security patches and we barely got a full year. The hardware is still more than enough for my needs so I can't justify an upgrade.
I use EvolutionX on my Xiaomi Poco F3 (Alioth), and it's the best custom ROM I have ever used features-wise and stability-wise.
ArrowOS with MicroG on Poco F3
None because blackberry locked the bootloader :(
I have Arrow OS A12L on my Cepheus, been quite good so far.
I used /e/ (now Murena IIRC) : really loved that I used Lineageos, and also SailfishOS as I have 2 smartphones compliant with this one. Now I use stock rom with a little debloat on my side for apps like facebook or netflix
I was using Arrow OS Android 13 until 2 weeks and then my bank decided that even though i wasnt rooted and just unlocked bootloader my phone is a security risk and i couldnt access the app so ive had to go back to MIUI for now. I actually noticed on the custom rom that it only ran on V12.5 firmware when Miui is on V14 firmware which I think added APTX Adaptive and other things. So im really on the fence about ever sticking a custom rom on this Poco F3 again