Android 11 on a Google Nexus 5 phone

I wrote about testing /e/OS on the older Google Nexus 5 device which we still have, and I like it a lot. The privacy aspect alone, using microG instead of the Google services, is wonderful. However, the latest official Android from Google is version 6 (codename ‘Marshmallow’), and the latest /e/OS is still based upon Android 7 (codename ‘Nougat’), so they’re both quite old even when the build on /e/OS is from October 2021.

But on the XDA developers’ forum, I found a much newer ‘unofficial’ version of LineageOS for the same device, based on Android 11. To install that, you need a bootloader which can repartition the device a bit, and then you can find links for the image and also for the ‘pico’ sized version of OpenGApps here. And together with the usual tools from Google and the howto from LineageOS, this is quite doable…

So by now my old phone looks a bit different again, in fact, *much* different from /e/OS:

LineageOS 18.1 on a Google Nexus 5

And, checking the OS version, it indeed shows Android 11 (the build is only a few days old):

LineageOS 18.1 means/is based upon Android 11

So *that* is interesting, isn’t it? Ok this is an unofficial build – thanks z3DD3r from XDA devs – but I’m very curios to check out this one…

This would have been a bit easier with the Pixel 3a which we just gave to my brother, because for that one you’ll still get official builds, even LineageOS for microG (that would be the ‘sargo’ image of LineageOS 19.1 (based on Android 12.1) from the LineageOS for microG pages…)

How cool… I’ll play around with the one a bit now, and keep an eye on the folks over at LineageOS – will they offer Android 13 for ‘sargo’? And next year, Android 14 for both ‘sargo’ and ‘sunfish’ (codename for my Pixel 4a)? I’ll keep you informed.

Edit, from 19:18 same day:

I rearranged the home screen a bit, and now that almost looks like my Pixel 4a phone with its original Android 13 from Google. Have a look:

LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) on a 9 year old Google Nexus 5 device

As always, thanks for reading.