TL;DR
- Early builds of Android 13-based Lineage OS 20 have been released.
- The custom ROM was created for the Galaxy S7, S8, and Note 8.
- The ROM allows owners of these older devices to enjoy many of the improvements found in Android 13.
Android 13 has been rolling out slowly to a handful of devices over the last few weeks. Although the Android 13 beta is making its way to newer Samsung phones, many of the company’s older phones will be left out of the update. However, a new custom ROM could bring some hope to Galaxy S7, S8, and Note 8 users wanting to hop onto the Android 13 train.
If you’re still holding on to your Galaxy S7, S8, or Note 8 phone, developer Ivan_Meler has created early builds of Lineage OS 20 based on Android 13 for these phone models. According to XDA Developers, the recently released ROM is surprisingly stable and key functionalities such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, fingerprint reader, and more all seem to be working fine.
Once installed, users will be able to enjoy the vanilla Android 13 experience. This means you can use many of the neat new features that come with Android 13, as well as get regular security updates.
However, there are some important things to point out. First, it appears as of right now, the UI is missing some Lineage OS-specific features due to the ROM being an early build. Another problem to look out for is storage encryption and some of the network-related features on the S7 have been disabled. Additionally, the camera on the Note 8 is broken according to XDA.
Do you use ROMs? We’ve asked users this question and found that only about 22% out of 7,000 poll takers said that they use ROMs. Would being able to update to Android 13 be enough to convince you to install a custom ROM?
