[HN Gopher] Show HN: A Mashup to find LineageOS supported phones...
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Show HN: A Mashup to find LineageOS supported phones that are
repairable
Author : onli
Score : 77 points
Date : 2020-12-31 12:34 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sustaphones.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sustaphones.com)
| marcelluspye wrote:
| Coincidentally, yesterday my father handed me his old Moto X 2014
| with a shattered screen, asking me if I wanted to do anything
| with it before he trashed it. I wiped it and installed lineageOS,
| which is what I'm using to write this comment; its definitely a
| less fluid experience than my full-dystopia-mode pixel 4A, but
| its a refreshing experience nonetheless and I could imagine it's
| great for people who want to treat their phone as a tool and not
| a perpetual distraction device (I would guess that even with
| further tinkering I would be hard pressed to get all my apps
| integrated sufficiently seamlessly so as to enable such levels of
| distraction).
|
| I watched a teardown video for the phone on YouTube and it
| appears the battery is replaceable, just not easily, whereas its
| given an "x" on this list (is this true of all phones?).
| Fortunately I don't seem to be suffering any battery-related
| problems at the moment, but I will be attempting to replace the
| screen, which does not seem to be easy on this dwvice.
| onli wrote:
| > _it appears the battery is replaceable, just not easily,
| whereas its given an "x" on this list (is this true of all
| phones?)_
|
| So, the listing for the Moto X 2014 is saying exactly that. A
| swappable battery means that you can just take off the cover
| and change the battery, without needing any tool. That's not
| the case here (at least it's not marked as having that
| feature). Instead an iFixit guide is linked with 'moderate'
| difficulty (unlike others that are very difficult, then I
| wouldn't even try). Maybe that definition of a swappable
| battery is not universal and should be explained on the page?
| literallycancer wrote:
| Interesting, but note that some phones listed here as battery not
| swappable & no guide actually have batteries that you can replace
| easily following a video tutorial. Further, it appears that only
| official LineageOS versions are taken into account, but for some
| phones much newer TWRP & LineageOS versions are available (such
| as the 2017 mido that has well maintained ROMs with Android 11
| and recent kernels). And even a screen replacement is only 20$ &
| maybe 20 more if you want to have a repair technician do it for
| you (it does involve heat gun and glue admittedly).
| onli wrote:
| Hey, the site only lists iFixit guides. Are some of those
| missing?
|
| > _Further, it appears that only official LineageOS versions
| are taken into account_
|
| That's correct. There are of course many more roms available on
| xda, unofficial lineage roms and other projects, but for one I
| do not know a structured way to list them, and second I think
| that if one decides on a device it should be based on official
| support by a bigger project.
|
| If there are more of those bigger projects that should be
| listed (and that have a list of devices they support published
| somewhere) I'm happy to add them to the list. It does not have
| to be only MoKee and LineageOS.
| bibinou wrote:
| How easy is it to find spare batteries?
| spiritplumber wrote:
| ebay or dhgate
| onli wrote:
| This site I made because I was searching for something like it.
| When my last phone stopped getting updates while being perfectly
| usable, apart from at Linux phones I searched for a repairable
| phone that was supported by Lineage, and found it very hard to
| see what is available. There are other (some very nice) Lineage
| device finders, but nothing I saw linked that data to iFixit
| guides.
|
| Repairable for now means "battery swappable or easy to change".
| Lineage is only one of two Roms listed, MoKee is the other one.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Lineage support is not really the full story though. For
| example, on the LG V20, Lineage does not support any of the
| specific hardware features of the phone (second screen, manual
| camera, etc...) so you are severely downgrading the user
| experience of the phone.
| snvzz wrote:
| There's good intent and I see a lot of positive feedback. I'll
| try to provide useful criticism instead.
|
| There's many issues with this.
|
| The primary one is that if I select battery replacement "easy", I
| also want to see "very easy". I consider it easy+. This is the
| expectation.
|
| Having said that, I need to be able to filter by screen size
| range, by screen time (e.g. oled) and by presence of headphone
| jack.
|
| If they can't do this much, the filters are of very limited
| usefulness.
| ajot wrote:
| Excuse me for hijacking your comment, but I would add filter by
| year of release. Older phones are very rare to find in mint
| conditions.
| onli wrote:
| That should already be there. Is the "Release" filter not
| appearing?
| Flip-per wrote:
| Thank you, this comes in handy and was really missing! It's sad
| that the newest phone supporting lineage 17.1 and a swappable
| battery is from 2015. Another nice feature would be to list the
| phones that unofficial lineage images exist for - like my moto G5
| which works very well.
| TekMol wrote:
| That is cool. So far I use phones with removable batteries
| already. Never really understood how to put LineageOS on them.
| Maybe a link to an easy tutorial per phone would be nice.
|
| Another good resource to find phones with removable battery is
| this chart:
|
| https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/sets/3
| onli wrote:
| Thanks. To link specific instruction is a good idea. For
| lineage there is always the wiki page, so you can go to
| https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ and then click on the phone
| you have and there will be an installation manual. Not always
| 100% you need to know, but a good start. I should link those,
| the url scheme is regular, that should be an easy change.
|
| _Edit:_ The Lineage link now goes to the device wiki entry,
| where the installation instructions are also linked.
|
| For the removable battery, the idea here really is to go one
| step further. When almost all modern phones have no removable
| battery the next best thing is having a battery that is easy to
| replace, even if it is not directly swappable.
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| Unfortunately installing Lineage is going to vary wildly by
| device (rooting device, installing custom recovery, installing
| lineage then gapps). Depending on the device there might not be
| support for all of the device features (bluetooth not working,
| for example).
|
| I have found the best way to see what lineage options looks
| like for a particular device (and root, recovery, install
| requirements) is to check the XDA device forums for specific
| devices before phone purchase.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| When I was picking out a phone, I pulled down the LineageOS wiki
| git repo and did some pattern matching on the YAML files that
| they store device information in. Worked fairly well for me at
| the time, but was a terrible user exexperience for the average
| Lineage OS user.
| onli wrote:
| The lineage wiki device data is used to gather a lot of the
| information displayed here :)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| That's great! Too bad the ifixit data is noncommercial ;).
| spiritplumber wrote:
| This is brilliant, I'll use this when I buy my next phone, thank
| you
| myself248 wrote:
| Heck yeah, still using a Galaxy S4 myself. I need to look into
| VoLTE hacks though, because I've been getting nastygrams from my
| provider suggesting that it may be relegated to voiceless tablet
| duty soon unless that can be addressed.
|
| I'm not aware of a good source for "supports VoLTE natively /
| with hacks / not at all" data, though.
| swiley wrote:
| On android you can just use data for voice anyway via eg
| signalwire.
|
| I still haven't found a good VOIP client for desktop
| linux/pinephone.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >On android you can just use data for voice anyway via eg
| signalwire
|
| You can't call to and receive calls from normal numbers
| through it, can you?
| aegis4244 wrote:
| Yup. You can. For free too. Mostly.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Who is your provider?
| myself248 wrote:
| Ting.
| lvs wrote:
| This VoLTE situation is a serious problem, it appears. Is the
| open source Android community basically screwed as soon as 3G
| is turned off? There are a lot of 4G phones that seem to
| support VoLTE only when flashed with their OEM firmware.
| yorwba wrote:
| There are some devices (e.g. Mi A1) where the link to the "easy"
| iFixit guide 404s. Not sure whether that's an issue with the
| iFixit API or the way you're using it.
|
| It would be nice to be able to link to specific queries and
| individual results.
| onli wrote:
| Yeah, not sure how to handle that. It seems like the guide has
| been deleted. But the rating is correct, I researched the Mi A1
| specifically, the battery is easy to swap out. So the
| information still seemed useful to me.
|
| With other devices it could be that the parser needs
| improvements. The guides can have flags and there are maybe
| some that need to be respected or displayed. You did stumble
| over another example?
| maciekmm wrote:
| For me it's usually the volume buttons that die first, not the
| battery.
| nmridul wrote:
| I use software controls as much as possible now. Even for
| locking the phone. This elongates the hard switch life.
| scns wrote:
| This is awesome, thank you so much.
|
| So far i used geizhals (https://geizhals.eu/?cat=umtsover&xf=162_
| LineageOS+Support%7...), but this is so much better since you
| implemented filters for version and release date.
|
| Good job, i'll stop raving now, promise.
|
| (edit: formatting)
| onli wrote:
| The tester at my side pushed for having the filters before
| showing the site, so thanks, she is smiling now :)
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| Thank you for this!
|
| I have been trying to decide on which Android device that I need
| to buy that supports official versions of Lineage and it would be
| nice if it could be easily repaired as well.
|
| My favorite phone so far has been a six year old Motorola.
|
| The battery lasts for several days without a charge and doesn't
| send any data out that isn't necessary according to tcpdump and
| my PiHole.
|
| (Which is probably why the battery lasts so long)
|
| Google Android is an absolute dumpster fire and cheap devices
| often come with preinstalled malware and rootkits abd even
| expensive Samsung devices are loaded with too much bloat.
|
| But my old Moto is not on the approved list so I have to compile
| a new OS which was fun but gets old real quick.
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(page generated 2021-01-02 23:01 UTC)