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Comment by jaredandrews | Hacker News Reader

I flashed my Pixel 3 to the CalyxOS [0] with Android 12 on Friday. It has been at least 6 years since I have put a custom OS on an Android phone... I was shocked at how smooth the process was using the provided installer. Took less than 30 minutes. This particular phone, I use solely for Android dev. Based on my initial experience with CalyxOS, I could definitely see myself switching to it for my daily driver.

[0] https://calyxos.org/

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Same boat. I just flashed GrapheneOS onto my Pixel 3a over the weekend, and the process was stunning compared to the days of CyanogenMod on my Nexus One. Notably, Graphene offers a WebUSB-based installer (https://grapheneos.org/install/web), so I was able to completely flash my phone from a browser without ever opening a terminal. Equally amazing and terrifying.

(Apparently there's some bad blood between Calyx and Graphene, which is a shame. Both seem solid.)

I guess the main issue here is the lack of Google Play Services, which may mean that you can’t reliably implement certain features or reproduce conditions that your end users will face. Perhaps it doesn’t matter for a dev-only phone, but if the device doubles up as a test device, this may be where a non-Google ROM falls down. I’d be wary of using CalyxOS as a base for a dev phone, for this reason.

You are definitely right about that.

I tend to work on apps that do not rely heavily on Google Play Services. BUT I should also add that this CalyxOS phone and an /e/ foundation phone I have, are 2 of about 10 Android phones of varying manufacturers and SDK levels which I am constantly rotating thru while developing. I like to make sure I am testing my stuff on a broad array of Android devices, including non-google ones. I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone use a non-google Android phone for _all_ dev purposes when targeting mainline Google Android phones.

I should also note that MicroG[0] attempts to solve this problem, with admittedly mixed results, but I have positive feelings about its future.

[0] https://microg.org/

I have a Pixel 3a XL I am seriously considering installing a custom ROM. One question though, how is the camera app? Is it as performant as the one preinstalled?

It's not as good.

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