Firmware update: LineageOS 20

Version 20 of LineageOS has become available. LineageOS is the successor to CyanogenMod and an open source operating system for smartphones and tablets. It’s based on a bare-bones version of Android and adds extra functionality, including root access, shortcuts in the notification bar, an extended lockscreen, and various themes for the interface. Furthermore, performance improvements can often be observed compared to the software that a manufacturer supplies itself. LineageOS version 20 is based on Android 13 and the release notes for this release are as follows:

20 – wow. I remember when these releases were single digits…

As many of us start traveling again and the world returns to normal, of course, it’s time for us to break the status quo! You probably weren’t expecting to hear from us until… somewhere near April according to our historical releases? HA! Gotcha.

With all that said, we have been working extremely hard since Android 13’s release last October to port our features to this new version of Android. Thanks to our hard work adapting to Google’s largely UI-based changes in Android 12, and Android 13’s dead-simple device bring-up requirements, we were able to rebase our changes onto Android 13 much more efficiently. This led to a lot of time to spend on cool new features such as our awesome new camera app, Aperture, which was written in large part by developers SebaUbuntu, LuK1337, and luca020400.

Now, let’s remind everyone about versioning conventions – To match AOSP’s versioning conventions, and due to the fact it added no notable value to the end-user, we dropped our subversion from a branding perspective.

As Android has moved onto the quarterly maintenance release model, this release will be “LineageOS 20”, not 20.0 or 20.1 – though worry not – we are based on the latest and greatest Android 13 version, QPR1.

Additionally, to you developers out there – any repository that is not core-platform, or isn’t expected to change in quarterly maintenance releases will use branches without subversions – eg, lineage-20 instead of lineage-20.0.

New Features!

• Security patches from April 2022 to December 2022 have been merged to LineageOS 17.1 through 20.
• ohmagoditfinallyhappened – LineageOS now has an awesome new camera app called Aperture! It is based on Google’s (mostly) awesome CameraX library and provides a much closer “to stock” camera app experience on many devices. Massive kudos to developers SebaUbuntu, LuK1337, and luca020400 who developed this initially, designer Vazguard, and to the entire team for working to integrate it into LineageOS and adapt it to our massive array of supported devices!
• WebView has been updated to Chromium 108.0.5359.79.
• We have introduced a completely redone volume panel in Android 13 and have further developed our side pop-out expanding panel.
• We now support GKI and Linux 5.10 builds with full out-of-tree module support to match new AOSP conventions.
• Our fork of the AOSP Gallery app has seen many fixes and improvements.
• Our Updater app has seen many bug fixes and improvements, as well as now has a fancy new Android TV layout!
• Our web browser, Jelly has seen several bug fixes and improvements!
• We have contributed even more changes and improvements back upstream to the FOSS Etar calendar app we integrated some time back!
• We have contributed even more changes and improvements back upstream to the Seedvault backup app.
• Our Recorder app has been adapted to account for Android’s built-in features, while still providing the features you expect from LineageOS.
  • The app was heavily rearchitected.
  • Material You support has been added.
  • The high quality recorder (WAV format) now supports stereo and there has been several threading fixes.
• Android TV builds now ship with an ad-free Android TV launcher, unlike Google’s ad-enabled launcher – we also support Google TV-style builds and are evaluating moving to it on supported devices in the future.
• Multiple Google TV features, such as the much more appealing looking Two-Panel Settings application have been ported to LineageOS Android TV builds.
• Our adb_root service is no longer tied to the build type property, which allows greater compatibility with many third-party root systems.
• Our merge scripts have been largely overhauled, greatly simplifying the Android Security Bulletin merge process, as well as making supporting devices like Pixel devices that have full source releases much more streamlined.
• LLVM has been fully embraced, with builds now defaulting to using LLVM bin-utils and optionally, the LLVM integrated assembler. For those of you with older kernels, don’t worry, you can always opt out.
• A global Quick Settings light mode has been developed so that this UI element matches the device’s theme.
• Our Setup Wizard has seen adaptation for Android 13, with new styling, and more seamless transitions/user experience.

Amazing Aperture

Due to technical reasons, starting from LineageOS 19 we had to ditch Snap, our fork of Qualcomm’s camera app, and began providing Camera2 again, the default AOSP camera app. This led to a poor camera experience out of the box, since Camera2 is too simple for the average user’s needs.

So, with this LineageOS version, we wanted to fix this, and luckily for us CameraX reached a usable state, being mature enough to power a full-fledged camera app, so we started working on it. After two and a half months of development, it can completely replace Camera2 and thus became the default camera app starting from LineageOS 20. Aperture implements several features that are missing from Camera2, for example:

• Auxiliary cameras support (device maintainers must enable it)
• Video frame rate controls
• Full control of EIS (electronic image stabilization) and OIS (optical image stabilization) settings
• A leveler to check the device orientation angle

As time goes you might see new features introduced as the app’s development is still ongoing!