Anyone here with a rooted Android, LineageOS, etc in 2020?

Because my smartphone is not someone else's playground, and it is my right to fully manage it at my will.

Certain things like using a custom user agent with the G00gl€ chrome browser is still only possible with a rooted system. And although certain others are catching up such browser is still the best overall, imho.

Also, in the past I've seen certain applications go bad or rogue with updates. This is, losing useful features or whatever other mishaps. Applications like that get frozen in time, or just the great kick in the arse.

I stop rooting phones when www.blokada.org wet out. But I still have rooted tablet to cheat in android games :slight_smile:
Mike

I use AdAway, something you may be using already btw.

It needs root afaik.
Mike

I used to root my phones, until I was unable to install banking apps. I’ve heard this might be different now, but since have gone over to Nokia with Android one. I was pleasantly suprised to discover that you can uninstall most of the apps previously baked in, including most of the google apps.

Probably still not fully in control, but good enough for me now.

Yes, that’s exactly the ROM I’m running. No Magisk yet and also haven’t reinstalled TWRP since the reflash. Only extra mod I did was restoring a Moto symbol on startup in place of the warning screen. I did that through ADB and a Win10 pc. Funny enough the Galaxy S5 Neo (version SM-G903W) is a phone on my list to try and acquire. How is it performing?

/e/ is very interesting to me as they have bundled and streamlined LineageOS and microG. They have a beta build available for my G7 (river), so I’m likely going to give that a test run as well. A Galaxy S8/S9 running /e/ is something I’m considering… but

The kicker for me in all of this is having a non removable battery. No matter what OS I’m running, there is integrated hardware with proprietary drivers running the device. Nobody seems to know what exactly goes on ‘down-there’ and quite frankly, I don’t trust it. I want to reserve the right to remove power from the device at will. I don’t know when/how it has become acceptable for either corporate or gov entities to have such information and access to a wide open backdoor into our lives. Whether it’s my location, interests, conversations, or sleep cycles… Truly not information that anybody needs nor shall have. efff that.

In true BLF spirit though, I have some ideas on this. Going to give it a try and see what happens. But I’m thinking of using the space and port provided by 3.5mm jack to actually route one of the battery poles through, and create a “kill-pin”.

The problem with 3th part OS is that it have no proper camera driver and camera cant focus in dark like with original driver.

I’m really hoping the modular Fairphone gets to the U.S. soon. It’s probably not as sleek and slim as the latest and greatest blackboxes, but I would buy one for sure.

I can hear you man. While it may not be the same, how about a faraday bag?

A faraday bag effectively blocks all incoming or outgoing radiation from the device.

Other than this, as they are to cut-off power from a device's battery it would be necessary to install a (MOSFET) switch in its connector or somewhere else, or resort to somehow directly switching off the MOSFETs inside the inbuilt BMS in the battery. Which makes me think that a short circuit would attain that, for example, but needs to be well implemented. So a solution may be possible, but certainly a lot of hassle as things are now.

Sun, 10/18/2020 - 19:59

I have never experienced a problem even if using a "3rd party" OS. My experience is in fact awesome, with the 3rd party ROMs I've used being a lot more powerful than their stock counterparts.

Good idea with artificially tripping the cells inbuilt protection. I’ll need to study the circuits and micro controllers to see if that’s a practical way of doing it.

I already ordered a faraday bag yesterday. Going to put it to the test when I get it. This is my best option for the time being until I can get a device with a hardware kill switch.

look at dns66 for hosts functionality without root.
can be found on fdroid.
going to put lineageos on a note 9 soon.

I ran CyanogenMod then LineageOS on my 1+1 but gave up on Lineage due to the censorship and attitude of the devs and mods on the forum and subjects not allowed on the forum. No feature requests for one. Currently using Havoc rooted with magisk and swift black substratum theme on my current 1+6.

I’ve read but cannot confirm that recent versions of AdAway have added a non-root VPN mode similar to Blokada. Of course if you have root then you can just use it to modify the HOSTS file as usual.

As for root and custom ROMs I do root my phone’s but I don’t run custom ROMs. I like root for being able to backup apps and their data. It is very handy for apps that don’t have their own backup solution. Also it makes restoring my phone a bit faster since I don’t need to waste time redownloading all my apps.

Now my reason for not using custom ROMs is as follows.

1. My current phone isn’t very popular for ROMs. I have a Pixel 2 and LineageOS only recently released official builds for it. Many custom ROMs have a limited number of devices they support so I find myself with slim pickings.

2. I find custom ROMs seem to have less and less exciting features with each new version of Android. I am fairly content with Google’s vanilla version of Android.

3. Whenever a new Android OS version is released, I am left waiting months waiting for the custom ROMs to switch to the new version. And once available, we are that much closer to the next Android version and the cycle repeats.

I always carefully pick what is going to be my next smartphone. I never buy a smartphone who was launched very recently, this way I can read plenty of reviews and also check the availability of custom ROMs at XDA Forums.

Not buying the latest also allows me to buy a high end smartphone for affordable price. Also, high end mobile SoCs are more powerful than mid range stuff even if a couple generations older, as far as I know.

Seriously? In my experience, a good custom ROM surpasses anything stock. They are meant to be this way.

For example, my AEX ROM features things like an amazing task switcher, without the need to install any other software:

Comparatively speaking, task switchers like the one which first appeared in Android Lollipop suck big time, imho.

So do you need to be on the latest version? I don't. I'm still on Android 8.1, works great. No hurry.

Old and bad are different things. A new version is not always better, I've seen quite a few new versions of whatever software turn into downgraded crap. It's me who decides when to upgrade, to the point of uninstalling certain applications because they upgraded themselves just because fLIck thee.

I have Lineage and don’t intend to ever switch to closed source OS. From my experience they tend to be riddled with things that are features for the manufacturers but misfeatures for the users.

I used to root my phones & load the latest ROM from CyanogenMod then LineageOS etc but as I got older I got a bit lazy & now just have a Motorola phone, which has a pretty stock version of Android 10 with only one or two Motorola Apps & does all I need.

Motorola will probably never push out Android 11 to my phone (G8 plus) but 10 seems to be OK & I’m happy with it.

I have rooted every phone I owned until this one (OnePlus 8T). I will not purchase a phone from the carrier or any phone which cannot be unlocked and modded.

My new phone (for a couple of weeks now) is pretty excellent out of the box, so I am trying out root alternative methods to get what I want from it. Most of what I want is available without root, and it doesn’t break Widevine so I can watch videos in “Full HD”. I may root it eventually if I run across anything that I can’t live without, but OTA updates are frequent from OnePlus and they keep it pretty clean.

When I do root, I am a big fan of Magisk. Practicing the principle of least privilege, I only grant root to apps I trust and only when they need it (not full time). Magisk hides from the “Karen” apps that like to complain, so typically no real issues there.

Custom ROMs can be cool, but as of my OnePlus 6T I have been pretty happy with the stock Oxygen OS (very slightly tweaked Android). Previously I used Lineage, Resurrection Remix, or even AOSP depending on the day (these days it is really easy to download a new one and flash on the go with TWRP or whatever).

Never tried to go completely Google free. They are going to track me everywhere anyway, so I just do what I can to limit the really invasive stuff.

I rooted all my phones up to the galaxy S5. When I replace that with an S7 I found I really didnt need to, although I kinda wanted to.

I main reasons for rooting:

Backup data to sd (Titanium Backup required it)
move all apps to sd (some could move, but early OS didnt allow much)
get rid of bloatware/apps I didnt want
ran better

If I didn’t move stuff to the SD I kept hitting memory limits.

By the time the S7 came out, they added more memory to the phone, and a “built in” sd card that acted as additional memory
Now I have a S10, I can move everything to SD w/o root, no issues with running out of memory.

That said, I don’t use my phone as a camera to document my life like some people, but I’m old.
I heard someone say that you can tell how old someone is by how far away their cell phone is from them when they are at home.
Mines 3 rooms away some times. I still have a land line.

I do too and since I plan to root, I get Pixels since I know they can be bootloader unlocked even when new.

That is pretty cool I must admit.

I need it as much as I need a new flashlight :wink:

While I could use all my apps on Android 9, 8, 7, or whatever, I enjoy having the latest version. It is another reason I like Pixel phones, I get updates to the latest Android and I get them rather quickly.