There LineageOS 19 is official: for the first time, the most famous custom ROM – and long-lived, if we count the “good times” in which it was called CyanogenMod – of the scene is based on Android 12. In fact, you may have already spotted it in recent months, but so far it was unofficial builds or, if you like, labeled as Beta; with yesterday’s announcement, however, the software is promoted to stable status. There are a lot of interesting news, but sadly also some bad news – specifically the abandonment of several older devices. But let’s go in order.
LINEAGEOS 19: THE NEWS
The full changelog is available by following the SOURCE link, below are some of the highlight focusing more on the news on the user side.
- No ads for the Android TV build launcher
- New icons for almost all apps, including system ones
- New default wallpaper and new set of wallpapers (also available for LineageOS 18.1)
- Volume panel completely redesigned compared to stock Android 12
- New wizard for initial setup
- Ability to customize the tone of the refill (also for LineageOS 18.1)
- Dark theme active by default
- New features, many bug fixes and other optimizations for:
- LineageOS Updater
- Gallery app (fork of the default AOSP one)
- Jelly (web browser)
- Recorder
- Etar (open-source calendar)
LINEAGEOS 19: GOODBYE TO SOME OBSOLETE DEVICES
With Android 12, Google made some major changes to the networking stack – in particular it moved from using Linux iptables to eBPF, which are theoretically more efficient; however, they are only supported by version 4.9 and newer of the Linux kernel, so older kernel-based devices are theoretically cut off. Theoretically there are methods to make eBPF backward compatible, but the performance and overall quality of the result are below acceptable, at least for now. It is not certain that things will not change in the future, but at present this is the situation.
LINEAGEOS 19: OFFICIAL FIRST BUILD
At the moment they are out build for 19 smartphones – for example all Google Pixels from 2 to 5a, some Motorola, Razer Phone 2, OnePlus 6T, ASUS ZenFone 5z and 8; the full list is, once again, available by following the SOURCE link. The team reports that if an unofficial build of LineageOS 19 is installed on your device, it is not necessary to reset the device, unless specifically mentioned by the dedicated release notes. Of course, the installation is reserved for modding experts who know how to juggle custom recovery, ADB, unlocking the bootloader and Magisk.
