I was haphazardly checking for updates this morning, and was surprised and excited to see that my six-year-old phone gets an upgrade to the latest version of LineageOS, based on Android 10.
I’m really glad that there’s people out there other than myself that still love this device and want to keep using it. 
That’s neat. Does everything still work? Back in the long ago, I remember newer cyanogenmod releases could potentially not include drivers for your features. I had an HTC Aria which survived on CM updates until it ran into a problem with GPS functionality.
Well, Android 10 changes how device encryption is handled, so I couldn’t boot after updating. I did a factory reset (ie. wipe the data partition), and set up everything from scratch. That didn’t take too long, and everything seems to work fine now, so I’m happy with it.
Very cool! I have an old S8 (dreamlte) kicking around that I keep meaning to try and flash. The last time I checked Lineage didn’t officially support it yet, but that may have changed.
I just had a look and there doesn’t seem to be an official build. It does support the S9 and S9+ though, so I think I have a rough idea what my next phone will be if the S5 ever conks out.
A PinePhone?
I guess I could switch to Linux on my phone easily enough if I moved my 2nd factor authentication stuff to an open source solution.
I’m personally more interested in the PineTab though, because that fills a void of a type of device that I don’t own yet, but would probably find useful.
Back in 2014, before I left Google, I had bought a nice iPad looking 8" Android based tablet from Walmart which came with free 200MB data monthly plan from T-Mobile. With the sheer amount of applications available, combined with the 4G (not LTE) data plan, I found it to be very productive.
I eventually replaced it with a 10" Amazon Fire tablet. those are lacking in applications, and not cell features, seem to be targeted toward entertainment, shopping, reading, and browsing.
With the M.2 LTE (and GPS) add-on, and millions of applications to go along with it, it will be very productive. Now the shortage of LCD panels is causing them to be not produced.
