I know that most customizability features that were once exclusive to custom roms are available for use right out of the box these days.

In the case of manufacturers like Samsung, I think,there are still no official builds of lineageOS for the newer phones after the galaxy s10 series.

I’m aware that GSI roms are available. My experience with GSI’s have been kinda bad. Most of the time they lack a lot of features which makes the phone not viable anymore. Then there are also the random UI bugs, which frustrate the hell out of the user.

I miss the old days when there were lots of custom roms, even for budget devices. I used to flash them when my phones were out of warranty. I could use my phone however I saw fit.

Is there no way to bring back these good times ? Or will the whole custom ROM community just shrink to the pixels and a select few devices ?

  • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    111·
    1 year ago

    I am presently using a super niche device. SUPER niche. So niche that I have been dealing really closely with the manufacturer, who worked with Qualcomm and made a specific firmware just to get wifi calling working for me in Australia.

    I have quizzed them so many times on why they won’t support rom development. You can unlock the bootloader, but the rom files are heavily encrypted. There’s no way to extract the boot IMG so we’re dead in our tracks.

    The manufacturer basically say that they have to fight so hard to gain google certification that they won’t do a single thing to risk losing it.

    They’ve been pretty generous with their warranty policies so probably another reason is they don’t want to risk anyone doing overclocking etc and then having to cover device repairs or replacement.

      • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        AGM G2 Guardian. It’s a pretty exclusive club mate. AGM gambled big and I don’t think it’s really payed off for them - they haven’t shifted enough units and their profit margin was super small.

        I work outdoors and live a pretty weird life, I was super super excited to find a decent snapdragon in a ruggedized device like this. The long-range thermal is legit, battery life is insane and it feels like a super high quality thing to hold. They’ve had a few little teething problems - some issues with fingerprint sensor for a few people, some screen flickering issues for others. I’ve been pretty lucky so far and I believe they are switching things up in manufacturing now.