LineageOS 19 based on Android 12 will be official with builds for selected Pixel phones

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LineageOS 19 based on Android 12 will be official with builds for selected Pixel phones

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a number of unofficial builds of LineageOS 19 based on Android 12, but now this third-party ROM is officially available.

Announced in an official blog post, LineageOS 19 offers a major update to one of the most popular third-party ROMs on Android. It’s worth noting that the official update is actually based on Android 12.1 / 12L, but due to Android’s transition to quarterly maintenance releases, the team has decided to drop “19.1” in favor of “19.”

Since Android has switched to the quarterly maintenance release model, this release will be “LineageOS 19”, not 19.0 or 19.1.

LineageOS 19 is first launched for a range of Google Pixel devices along with 29 other handsets. Unfortunately, there are no builds for the Google Tensor-powered Pixel 6 and 6 Pro yet. Multiple devices are set to be added as those who maintain individual device buildings provide updates. The official change log is quite extensive, as you can see below:

LineageOS 19 update change log

  • Security patches from March 2021 to April 2022 have been merged into LineageOS 16.0 to 19.
    • 19 builds is currently based on the android-12.1.0_r4 tag, which is the Pixel 6 series tag.
  • WebView has been updated to Chromium 100.0.4896.58.
  • We completely redesigned the volume panel that was introduced in Android 12 and instead made it a pop-out expansion panel on the page.
  • Our branch of the AOSP Gallery app has seen a large number of fixes and improvements.
  • Our Updater app has seen a large number of bug fixes and improvements.
  • Our web browser Jelly has seen a number of bug fixes and improvements!
  • We have contributed a number of changes and improvements upstream to the FOSS Etar calendar app, which we integrated some time ago!
  • We have contributed a number of changes and improvements upstream of the Seedvault backup app.
  • Our Recorder app has seen several bug fixes, enhancements and added features.
  • Android TV builds now come with an ad-free Android TV launcher as opposed to Google’s ad-enabled launcher.
  • Android TV buildings now come with a key manager that allows us to support custom keys on a wide range of bluetooth and IR remotes.
  • Our adb_root the service is no longer tied to the build type property.
  • Our extraction tools now support extraction from most types of factory images / packaged OTA images, which greatly simplifies unit upbringing and blob extraction.
  • High-touch polling rate support has been added to our SDK, enabling it to be enabled on supported devices.
  • The AOSP Clang tool chain is now the standard tool chain we use to compile our kernels.
  • Qualcomm’s Snapdragon camera has been dropped, and devices that previously used it will now use Camera2.
  • Dark mode is now enabled by default.
  • We have a brand new setup guide with all new Android 12-style icons, animations and lots of new configurable pages!
  • We have a brand new set of icons for almost all apps, including system!
  • (18.1 also) We have a brand new standard wallpaper, and a complete set of wallpapers to choose from, check them out! These wallpapers are designed with Android 12s Monet theme features in mind, so try them on and see what accent color you like best!
  • (18.1 also) Wi-Fi screen is available for all devices that choose to sign up, either via Qualcomm’s proprietary interface or the newly restored older Miracast interface!
  • (18.1 also) We now support custom charging sounds for different types of charging, wired or wireless.

There are a number of other changes in LineageOS 19 that affect networking. A rework of the privacy-oriented built-in firewall, limited network mode and isolation features per. app was required to comply with AOSP’s new restricted network mode.

Unfortunately, due to some other AOSP changes, namely removal of iptables in favor of eBPF, some older devices may not be updated to LineageOS 19 – at least for now. The LineageOS team offered this explanation:

The problem is that only devices with Linux kernel 4.9 or later have the necessary capabilities to make use of eBPF. Normally, these things can be backed up to older core versions, but at the moment even something as close to version 4.9 as 4.4 proved challenging due to the large number of commits and structural changes in BPF’s introduction. Those of you on a 4.4 kernel, fear not, a backport has been created, but for devices using kernel versions 3.18 and below, this may be the end of the road.

If you would like to download and install LineageOS 19 on your device, you can find the full list of supported hardware on the official Lineage Wiki or check out the blog post for the dedicated build list.

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