Hey, I got a old phone (Motorola e5 cruise) which has a unlocked bootloader. I though about installing leneageOS on it, but it’s not on the supported device, but similar Motorola’s are supported, what do recommend to do? I definitly wanna avoid the risk making it unusuable, but I would rly like to have a alternative AndroidOS on it.
This might not be what you want to hear, but you’re wasting your time. I have been there. Every one of these fucking android foans has its own foan-specific modifications to the kernel which can be found nowhere else, and not in a good way. You will need to be familiar with these modifications. Then, there are the userspace device drivers. Yes. Userspace device drivers. Android has them. Much of the hardware on your foan will not work without them. You will need to be familiar with every bit of hardware on your foan that you want to get working. These bits really add up. Camera (front and back), wifi, modem, audio, bluetooth, charging (yes, often a foan will not charge without drivers for the foan’s power manager), accelerometer, magnetometer, storage (onboard and sdcard), video, touch, etc… If you want your port to become official, that extends to literally every bit of hardware on the foan, period.
It will take weeks of real time to learn the Android operating system and to finish porting an unsupported foan, and when you’re done, there will be like three people globally who will use your work. Your foan is one of literally hundreds of other android foans that are all just as (un)popular and that all require the same amount of work to port.
But above all, android does not deserve your time, nor does it deserve anybody else’s. The development end of the android operating system is a terror to look upon. Just to compile it requires hundreds of gigs of SSD hard disk space and about 20 gigs of RAM. It deserves to be burned to the ground.
Take that time, convert it into legal tender, and use that money to buy one of the phones that the opensource community has agreed to support—a fairphone if you want something androidous and worky, and a pinephone if you’re feeling adventurous and want to see what the opensource phone world looks like without android (preview: quite a lot nicer on the development side, still a little broken but definitely usable on the user side).
Thank you that you took the time to write this comment and for the commet itself, I will think about the last thing you mentioned.
Btw. “foan” is spelled “Phone”
You’re welcome, though.
And while it is true that porting your old motorola would be a waste of time from a strictly economical standpoint, it would still be a valuable learning experience. And people waste their time on the internet all the time lol.
I would only say that rather than porting lineageOS to your motorola foan, you would be better employed porting postmarketOS to your phone. It is a much nicer operating system to work with.
PostmarketOS also has a handy list of the good phones. These are the best phones for modding because they are the best known, the best supported, and in a couple cases were specifically designed for modding. For a more gentle introduction to phone hacking you might be better off installing postmarketOS on one of these to start.
I use “foan” to refer to the nerf-tier android phones that are badly made, difficult to modify and repair, lose their upstream support in two years, and whose creators are openly hostile to the opensource community, i.e. most android phones.
Check XDA to see if there’s an unofficial port.
what do recommend to do?
Port lineageOS to it.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could try to build your own version of LineageOS for your device. Hardest part is probably going to be figuring out drivers for the kernel.
