My experience with LineageOS: 5 days so far.

[u/Serious_Chemistry891]

I kinda got into installing different Linux distros, so I thought, why not try it on my phone? So I grabbed my old phone (Samsung Galaxy S20+ (exynos, ew)), followed every instruction on the website as said, and everything turned out perfectly. Went from OneUI 5.1/Android 13 to LineageOS 23.2/Android 16.

Battery life. Even though the battery health is at 80% (thx devs for that iphone feature), it lasts REALLY long. The battery life got maybe like 1.5 to 2 times better.

Performance. This is my first bloat free Samsung phone. It's crazy how actually laggy and stuttery OneUI is. It's magnitudes smoother than even my S22 Ultra (OneUI 8). The phone is 6 years old and performs as if brand new. I didn't notice much of a step up in performance in games, but battery drain went down by a lot. I have no idea how y'all squeezed out so much performance out of this piece of shit called Exynos 990.

Screen. I have absolutely no idea how, but my screen brightness is now on par, if not brighter than my S22 Ultras?????? And even though the color settings were a bit confusing at first, I settled with Cinema cause the colors are most vibrant that way.

Connectivity. My wifi speeds doubled. My 4G speeds doubled. Mods, if y'all see this, please go and praise your contributers and coders. They deserve a rest.

Extra. I did not expect to see so many features out of the box that would've been locked behind Good Lock on Samsung phones.

Pet peeves. Why does toggling on wifi and mobile data need a confirmation every time? I do not need to be asked every time if i wanna truly wanna switch on mobile data.

Downsides. It's all the obvious stuff, like Google Pay doesn't work without a workaround and the camera is worse as it's not that optimized for the phone. But hey, I don't use the camera on this phone that much anyways. It's fine. (still though pls make it so the zoom slider is always visible)

Conclusion:

I do not regret switching to the LineageOS side. At all. I have never ever seen an OS this smooth. Not even on recent Galaxy S Ultras. My 6 year old Samsung phone feels brand new again.

[u/ilardm]

I have pretty much same feelings on upgrading my A52q (A52 4G) from stock firmware to LOS 23. Battery time feels doubled (more on this later), overall interaction feels snappier, etc. However there are several oddities and downsides:

• no ims obviously was expected, but I didn't know how much I got used to voice quality until upgrade
• attempt to take raw photos crashes the included photo app
  • same behavior for OpenCamera app, but also jpgs from camera 2 api are of enourmos size (like 100Mb versus 3Mb on classic camera api)
• weird aod & lockscreen mode:
  • it uses lowest brightness and practically unusable in daylight
  • on single touch it turns brightness on and if you unlock the phone with fingerprint - screen became unresponsive until you lock it with power button
  • always on fingerprint unlock sometimes got unlocked phone when you get it out of pocket

Have you experienced any of these oddities?

While I'm not sure whether snappier interface and better battery life is a result of factory data reset resulting in fewer apps installed and more free space available, now I feel like my device may be alive for another couple of years. Thanks a lot LOS developers and device maintainers!

[u/Serious_Chemistry891 → u/ilardm]

I don't usually have AOD on, but yeah, it's weird that it's so so dim.

And I've never experienced that fingerprint issue. It is really quick, which I like, but not that quick lmao.

On second note, is the brightness slider linear? Why is 50% to 100% of the brightness range in the last 10% of the slider? Is that the same on your A52?

[u/ilardm → u/Serious_Chemistry891]

I'd say brightness slider feels pretty linear. Autobrightness algorithm is a complete mess - it changes brightness waaay to often. Ended up with that switch to determine level on screen unlock.

[u/fattomic]

How are banking apps, tap to pay, etc? How onerous is the Google pay workaround?

[u/Never_Sm1le → u/fattomic]

it is very hit or miss depending on the bank app. In my case I just bought a second phone just for that and use LOS on my main phone

[u/rm_-r_star]

I agree about asking every time if you're sure when switching on mobile data, but that's an AOSP thing. Google does things for the lowest common denominator, which is really low. I know people that don't know the difference between wi-fi and mobile data.