Alternative operating systems for your phone
Death comes for all technology, even if you have a lovely form factor.
Prolonging the life of your old phones.
If you’re anything like me you use an Android phone, you don’t use it for that much, and its usability extends far beyond how long its manufacturer provides Android updates. This leads to a collection of old phones that are still kind of useful, but a little slow, and definitely out of date with security patching.
You might be able to use your old phone as a backup, or for a side project. Or you might be able to extend its life by going to an alternative operating system beyond the manufacturer supplied Android. But in either case the main constraint is the type of phone you have, whereas - understandably - the developers put their OS front and centre. So I’ve collected a list of all the URLs for each current1 alternative to Android that might work on that old devices of yours. You should probably check top to bottom:
| Operating System | URL for supported devices list |
|---|---|
| LineageOS | https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ |
| Postmarketos | https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices |
| /e/OS | https://doc.e.foundation/devices |
| Halium | https://docs.halium.org/en/latest/supplementary/devices/index.html |
| CalyxOS | https://calyxos.org/#:~:text=personal%20data%20personal.-,Supported%20Devices,-Pixel |
| GrapheneOS | https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices |
| Replicant | https://www.replicant.us/supported-devices.php |
When I’m feeling particularly clever, and my task lists are feeling empty, I’ll write something that can interrogate all of these lists at once 2.
I’m not making any promises but I intend to add something about recycling old phones as well once I’ve researched that a little. If none of the above work for your old phone, do consider that option.
But in the meantime I hope the table above makes it easy for you to do something useful with that old tech…