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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

Would it be so bad? The recent Androids have been going downhill. E.g. the mandatory edge-to-edge nonsense.

Got to say, I like the current Android versions. In the early days I flashed my Motorola Defy every second month with some cool new ROM. Always rooted and Xposed, always enabling something new.

Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need. OneUI 8.0 and Android 16. For work (app de) I also have a Pixel 7a, always with the newest Android Beta. Also works well.

Even the entry level phones work OK to pretty good now. My Samsung A16 5G (also for work) functions surprisingly well for 150€.

> Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need.

Maybe, but it is fully under Google and Samsung's control, and is choke full of spyware. You couldn't pay me to use a stock (Googled) Android phone for this reason alone.

Back when I used Android phones, tweaking was pretty important to me too. I still remember when I installed CyanogenMod on a Motorola XT1565, those were the days... Eventually, LineageOS, and then some new phones happened, not all of which were rootable, though I eventually ended up with a OnePlus 7 Pro which was pretty tweakable and even opened the possibility of bootloader re-locking, until a TWRP bug wiped my device and I pretty much stopped tweaking. Was never quite able to get EdXposed working right again...

How well is rooting supported on these newer Android versions/devices? If I install LineageOS on my device, for example, I can be reasonably sure that Magisk will work fine. But how well does it work on a stock, locked-down ROM?

Most devices doesn't have unlockable bootloaders now thus you can't even root them unless it was a popular device and a temporary /finicky hack was found.

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