LineageOS officially released version 16.0

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LineageOS is a community-driven, open source operating system based on the Android mobile platform, the successor to the CyanogenMod project that has been discontinued before. LineageOS supports a wide range of mobile devices and introduces many unique modifications and features beyond native Android.

LineageOS abandoning maintenance 30 models

The project officially released LineageOS 16.0 based on Android 9.0 (Pie). Since August, the LineageOS development team has been working hard to port the unique features of LineageOS to this new version of Android. Thanks to the extensive cleanup and refactoring in previous versions, the development team was able to focus more on functionality and reliability; in particular, both Privacy Guard and su addon have made considerable progress.

With some minor changes to the Styles API, it is now compatible with the default implementation that will eventually become the dark mode in Android. In the future, more and more third-party applications will follow the system style, which means that the Styles API will provide a more consistent experience across different applications.

As announced when the Summer Survey 2 results were released, the development team is and will continue to introduce new features to Trust. For example, blocking new USB devices when the device is locked. The trebuchet can now also hide applications and require authentication before opening them. This limit is limited to Trebuchet and is not system-wide.

The development team believes that the 16.0 branch’s functional completion is close to 15.1 and is ready for initial release. 16.0 is the newest and most active branch, and it will get nightly builds from March 1st, 2019. In addition, 15.1 will become weekly builds.

Currently, LineageOS 16.0 introduces only a small selection of selected devices. When you’re ready, and after the development team makes minor changes to the build script, other devices will start receiving builds to better handle the unique features of the most modern devices and the resulting complexity.

16.0 has the following significant changes compared to 15.1:

  • It’s now possible to set custom automatic update check intervals in the updater (never / once a day, once a week / once a month)
  • Calculator now supports dark mode through Styles API
  • Added “Mark as read” action in messages notifications
  • Exchange support
  • December 2018, January 2019 and February 2019 security patches have been merged
  • Webview has been updated to Chromium 71.0.3578.99

The LineageOS 14.1 version based on Nougat has been discontinued and the latest build was on February 7, 2019. But the branch is still open to receive security patches (as is the case with the 13.0 and 11.0 branches, which are still receiving security patches for community porting). 15.1 will still be in active development, but there will not be many new features.

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