4 ms·

LineageOS Statistics

196 points by pentagrama 3mo ago

dvh 3mo ago
What are those names?
- zekica 3mo ago
  Code names for phones, all android builds (including official ones) have them. https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices.html https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices...
  - timschumi 3mo ago
    For a slightly more manageable list, the 590 of those that are or were supported officially are also listed on the LineageOS wiki [1]. [1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
    - nunobrito 3mo ago
      My device is not even listed there, so I suppose many others also run Lineage on plenty of unvendored devices.
- firebot 3mo ago
  Herolte is the galaxy s7(number 4).
m1keil 3mo ago
TIL waydroid...
pavon 3mo ago
Wow LineageOS really is a bazaar, and not a cathedral. * 74% of installs are unofficial builds, not ones released by LineageOS. * 2/3 of US installs are on non-phones (waydroid, nintendo switch, rpi, etc) * Most of the installs on actual phones are in China, Brazil and Vietnam * Less than 21% of installs are on versions that receive security updates, and less than 9% of installs are on the latest version (mostly because device's binary blobs don't support newer android versions?)
- notatoad 3mo ago
  i'm not sure all those "installs on actual phones" in china are real - 107k installs all on the same device, vs ~30k installs on the next most popular device. and 150k devices on an unknown carrier. is the Xiaomi Mi 8 really that popular for lineageOS, or is this some measurement artifact or common emulation setup?
  - darkwater 3mo ago
    I have an Mi 9 SE with Lineage and it's pretty well supported so the Mi 8 might just be as well...
  - rickdeckard 3mo ago
    The Xiaomi Mi 8 was the fastest-selling Xiaomi device of all time, it's estimated to have sold more than 20 Million units. It was so crucial to Xiaomi's userbase that they supported it with updates for almost 8 (!) years. So yeah, sounds feasible...
  - ulfw 3mo ago
    Likely phones used in massive phone centres
  - xbmcuser 3mo ago
    Mi 8 has a very good camera and battery life I am guessing it could be used as live streaming phone in china so still useful despite being an older device
  - GreenWatermelon 2mo ago
    Mine is Mi 9T, and I've been running Lineage OS for years now. Its codename is Davinci and according to dtats, it has almost 2k installs.
- burningChrome 3mo ago
  >> 74% of installs are unofficial builds, not ones released by LineageOS. One of the first versions of LineageOS I used was Evolution X on my Moms old OnePlus phone since it wasn't supported by the "official" Lineage version. Great track record of almost daily updates, and the customization you could do with it was phenomenal. The funny thing was I was running Ubuntu Touch on it before and it was super sluggish (totally not expecting that tbh) so switched to Evolution and suddenly the same phone was really snappy and the battery lasted for almost two days. But yeah, I'm not surprised many installs are just branched versions of the original since many of them you can run on phones that aren't supported by the official version.
yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago
Wow, that's not the distribution I expected; waydroid beats any other version... Though I guess that's not apples-apples since it aggregates any physical device running waydroid... And also I didn't expect unofficial builds to be so popular.
poisonborz 3mo ago
Wonder how much of those Waydroid installs are from scam farms. I can imagine some legit uses, but not this amount.
- Cider9986 3mo ago
  I'd be impressed if emulators are winning against big-tech in the spam wars. But perhaps there's spam uses that don't require the best antidetection. If emulators worked, what's the point of those giant phone farms? I don't know anything about this, so take it with a grain of salt. I am just under the impression that a cheap real android is the fastest cheapest way to get a trustworthy-looking device for spamming purposes.
goodpoint 3mo ago
That's really depressing.
RajT88 3mo ago
PSA: LineageOS has some unofficial builds which works on earlier gen Amazon devices. I turned an Echo Show from an annoying ad machine into the device a Chumby always could have been.
28304283409234 3mo ago
Note that these stats are based on opt-in data gathering.
Cider9986 3mo ago
Dipper is the Xiaomi Mi 8
XiS 3mo ago
It's quite sad to see these stats. It used to be the defacto standard for custom ROMs. These dwindling numbers make me think either people aren't as interested in custom ROMs anymore and using the (bloated/Google) factory ROMs or maybe there's some new standard. Didn't these numbers used to be much, much higher in the past? NB: Since I'm on GrapheneOS now I haven't looked back
- gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
  - Spoofing SafetyNet used to be trivial, and not many apps depended on it; whereas these days, it's between hard and impossible to spoof Play Integrity, and it feels like much more apps depend on it. (At least, that's why I stopped rooting my phone.) - If you want a non-bloated, mostly-AOSP ROM with updates for many years, installing LineageOS (or another third-party ROM) used to be the only option; whereas these days, the Pixel phones give you most of this, and you can just buy these in a store instead of needing to manually flash a ROM. - The stock ROMs from most manufacturers are less horrible than they used to be. I'm not saying that they're great now, but there's a pretty huge difference between most new phones today and a KitKat-era cheap Samsung phone. - As you said, I suspect that GrapheneOS has supplanted LineageOS for many of the enthusiast users.
  - Ampersander 3mo ago
    I believe a lot of the enthusiasm we had at the start of the smartphone age is also now gone. The phone is now a boring device made for scrolling and running apps that are mandatory to participate in modern society.
    - x______________ 3mo ago
      > The phone is now a boring device made for scrolling and running apps that are mandatory to participate in modern society. ..a boring ¡spyware! device that tracks and listens to you! Also you forgot to mention that you're sharing your personal and device details to our 1,893 e21 partners! Really though, I'm just waiting for that AI agent that will help me shop online on my phone.. That's my vision of a perfect future!! /s (how is this boring?:))
pizzaiolo 3mo ago
12 installs in North Korea
jeroenhd 3mo ago
Note that these are the statistics coming from people who are willing to share statistics. Quite a few privacy-minded individuals use these ROMs but don't want to send telemetry, which means those installs don't make it into the statistics. The large amount of Waydroid and Switch installs surprised me a little, but overall this is about what I expected in terms of distribution.
NoboruWataya 3mo ago
Why so many Waydroid installs?
virajk_31 3mo ago
I doubt whether those US numbers are real, lot of custom rom development/user base has been asian & european market in last decade even though the numbers have been decreasing over the decade (I don't have proof)...
- yorwba 3mo ago
  Using a custom ROM is not the same as using LineageOS in particular. Also, the numbers imply just 23% of LineageOS installs are in the US.
  - virajk_31 3mo ago
    Partially agree, as LOS is no where used as OEM and people familar with custom rom eventually would have used LOS (not mendatory but the numbers would relate)
linzhangrun 3mo ago
Notice the most LineageOS installs is Waydroid... I miss the free era from 10 years ago. Back then it was probably still called CM. Now manufacturers are extremely closed: Xiaomi started by making Android ROMs, but today the most practical way to unlock its BL is through exploits...
- DuncanCoffee 3mo ago
  I remember on xda with my Galaxy S Plus i9001 [1], we had: - dual boot [2] - Ubuntu touch [3] - different kernels with various optimizations, overclocking, etc - an absurd amount of ROMs, aside from CyanogenMod and LineagesOS there was ParanoidAndroid, Carbon, JellyBean, AICP, plus all the ROMs made specifically by users for this phone - the latest linux kernel, somebody just compiled it for AOSP, I think it was version 3 or 4 against 2, which was the standard for every other phone, it ended up on some tech news website I think It was a really great modding scene and a lot of people learnt stuff from that. Mainly by bricking their phones and having to fix them. [1] https://xdaforums.com/f/galaxy-s-plus-i9001-android-development.1270 https://xdaforums.com/f/galaxy-s-plus-i9001-android-developm... [2] https://xdaforums.com/t/app-kernel-dual-boot-s-plus.2462783 https://xdaforums.com/t/app-kernel-dual-boot-s-plus.2462783 [3] https://xdaforums.com/t/new-test-porting-ubuntu-touch.2382600/ https://xdaforums.com/t/new-test-porting-ubuntu-touch.238260...
trashb 3mo ago
Would something like E/OS be considered a Official or Unofficial builds? I suppose Unofficial since it is a fork?
- 306bobby 3mo ago
  Many forks change the telemetry to their own servers so they won't show at all
nicman23 3mo ago
they need to make a official GSI. until they do not they ll continue to decline.
- zb3 3mo ago
  Exactly. Of course not everything will work on every device, but they're not even going in that direction (like by incorporating/extending PHH patches) despite acknowledging that most devices won't be officially supported.
renjieliu 3mo ago
Surprised to see there're only one million devices with lineage OS installed. I personally installed it on a few amazon fire tablets. I thought it would be more than 10m devices at least.
- MYEUHD 3mo ago
  The stats collection is opt-in
firebot 3mo ago
Number 4 is still the Samsung Galaxy S7... I kind of miss that phone.
NooneAtAll3 3mo ago
> San Marino: 1 install I feel like there's a problem in privacy in this dataset...
rupx 3mo ago
No S22 Ultra support is wild.
40four 3mo ago
Recently installed LineageOS on an old Samsung tablet I had laying around. The thing was barely usable with whatever the highest Android version was it was comparable with. Now it works wonderfully! Really happy with it. Privacy features aside, Lineage can do wonders to revive old hardware
- ethagnawl 3mo ago
  My Nokia T20 is getting to this point and I wish Lineage was an option. Sadly, I don't think it has enough of a footprint for anyone to bother with writing the firmware/drivers -- I wish I had the time to give it a serious try. Seeing this class of devices reduced to e-waste really bums me out. :(
  - 40four 3mo ago
    Yeah, I was lucky. My Samsung device is officially supported. As you said, since no one else has had the interest to do it for your Nokia, it’s basically up to you to make it work, since they rely on volunteers. I wouldn’t begin to know how to take the base ROM and adapt it to a specific device, but I’d imagine any of the frontier LLMs could probably make quick work of it. It might be worth taking a weekend, and spending some tokens on coaching a model through the task?
varispeed 3mo ago
Interesting why there is no legal challenge for regulator to fine phone manufacturers for not allowing other operating systems. Any groups working on that?
throwawayk7h 3mo ago
Why so few in Canada compared to the U.S?
- timbit42 3mo ago
  Maybe they're using GrapheneOS, which is based in Canada. Could also be they opt out of the count.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
x______________ 3mo ago
Interesting to see 1 os install per country of millions of people (EG: last entry, 161 installs: 160 in Argentina, 1 in the UK)
Dwedit 3mo ago
Weirdly enough, my phone (Ocean) happens to be number 3 on the list, didn't expect that. But all the users are from Brazil for some reason? Is the phone really that popular?

196 points by pentagrama 3mo ago

dvh 3mo ago

What are those names?

zekica 3mo ago
Code names for phones, all android builds (including official ones) have them. https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices.html https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices...
- timschumi 3mo ago
  For a slightly more manageable list, the 590 of those that are or were supported officially are also listed on the LineageOS wiki [1]. [1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
  - nunobrito 3mo ago
    My device is not even listed there, so I suppose many others also run Lineage on plenty of unvendored devices.
firebot 3mo ago
Herolte is the galaxy s7(number 4).

m1keil 3mo ago

TIL waydroid...

pavon 3mo ago

Wow LineageOS really is a bazaar, and not a cathedral. * 74% of installs are unofficial builds, not ones released by LineageOS. * 2/3 of US installs are on non-phones (waydroid, nintendo switch, rpi, etc) * Most of the installs on actual phones are in China, Brazil and Vietnam * Less than 21% of installs are on versions that receive security updates, and less than 9% of installs are on the latest version (mostly because device's binary blobs don't support newer android versions?)

notatoad 3mo ago
i'm not sure all those "installs on actual phones" in china are real - 107k installs all on the same device, vs ~30k installs on the next most popular device. and 150k devices on an unknown carrier. is the Xiaomi Mi 8 really that popular for lineageOS, or is this some measurement artifact or common emulation setup?
- darkwater 3mo ago
  I have an Mi 9 SE with Lineage and it's pretty well supported so the Mi 8 might just be as well...
- rickdeckard 3mo ago
  The Xiaomi Mi 8 was the fastest-selling Xiaomi device of all time, it's estimated to have sold more than 20 Million units. It was so crucial to Xiaomi's userbase that they supported it with updates for almost 8 (!) years. So yeah, sounds feasible...
- ulfw 3mo ago
  Likely phones used in massive phone centres
- xbmcuser 3mo ago
  Mi 8 has a very good camera and battery life I am guessing it could be used as live streaming phone in china so still useful despite being an older device
- GreenWatermelon 2mo ago
  Mine is Mi 9T, and I've been running Lineage OS for years now. Its codename is Davinci and according to dtats, it has almost 2k installs.
burningChrome 3mo ago
>> 74% of installs are unofficial builds, not ones released by LineageOS. One of the first versions of LineageOS I used was Evolution X on my Moms old OnePlus phone since it wasn't supported by the "official" Lineage version. Great track record of almost daily updates, and the customization you could do with it was phenomenal. The funny thing was I was running Ubuntu Touch on it before and it was super sluggish (totally not expecting that tbh) so switched to Evolution and suddenly the same phone was really snappy and the battery lasted for almost two days. But yeah, I'm not surprised many installs are just branched versions of the original since many of them you can run on phones that aren't supported by the official version.

yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago

Wow, that's not the distribution I expected; waydroid beats any other version... Though I guess that's not apples-apples since it aggregates any physical device running waydroid... And also I didn't expect unofficial builds to be so popular.

poisonborz 3mo ago

Wonder how much of those Waydroid installs are from scam farms. I can imagine some legit uses, but not this amount.

Cider9986 3mo ago
I'd be impressed if emulators are winning against big-tech in the spam wars. But perhaps there's spam uses that don't require the best antidetection. If emulators worked, what's the point of those giant phone farms? I don't know anything about this, so take it with a grain of salt. I am just under the impression that a cheap real android is the fastest cheapest way to get a trustworthy-looking device for spamming purposes.

goodpoint 3mo ago

That's really depressing.

RajT88 3mo ago

PSA: LineageOS has some unofficial builds which works on earlier gen Amazon devices. I turned an Echo Show from an annoying ad machine into the device a Chumby always could have been.

28304283409234 3mo ago

Note that these stats are based on opt-in data gathering.

Cider9986 3mo ago

Dipper is the Xiaomi Mi 8

XiS 3mo ago

It's quite sad to see these stats. It used to be the defacto standard for custom ROMs. These dwindling numbers make me think either people aren't as interested in custom ROMs anymore and using the (bloated/Google) factory ROMs or maybe there's some new standard. Didn't these numbers used to be much, much higher in the past? NB: Since I'm on GrapheneOS now I haven't looked back

gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
- Spoofing SafetyNet used to be trivial, and not many apps depended on it; whereas these days, it's between hard and impossible to spoof Play Integrity, and it feels like much more apps depend on it. (At least, that's why I stopped rooting my phone.) - If you want a non-bloated, mostly-AOSP ROM with updates for many years, installing LineageOS (or another third-party ROM) used to be the only option; whereas these days, the Pixel phones give you most of this, and you can just buy these in a store instead of needing to manually flash a ROM. - The stock ROMs from most manufacturers are less horrible than they used to be. I'm not saying that they're great now, but there's a pretty huge difference between most new phones today and a KitKat-era cheap Samsung phone. - As you said, I suspect that GrapheneOS has supplanted LineageOS for many of the enthusiast users.
- Ampersander 3mo ago
  I believe a lot of the enthusiasm we had at the start of the smartphone age is also now gone. The phone is now a boring device made for scrolling and running apps that are mandatory to participate in modern society.
  - x______________ 3mo ago
    > The phone is now a boring device made for scrolling and running apps that are mandatory to participate in modern society. ..a boring ¡spyware! device that tracks and listens to you! Also you forgot to mention that you're sharing your personal and device details to our 1,893 e21 partners! Really though, I'm just waiting for that AI agent that will help me shop online on my phone.. That's my vision of a perfect future!! /s (how is this boring?:))

pizzaiolo 3mo ago

12 installs in North Korea

jeroenhd 3mo ago

Note that these are the statistics coming from people who are willing to share statistics. Quite a few privacy-minded individuals use these ROMs but don't want to send telemetry, which means those installs don't make it into the statistics. The large amount of Waydroid and Switch installs surprised me a little, but overall this is about what I expected in terms of distribution.

NoboruWataya 3mo ago

Why so many Waydroid installs?

virajk_31 3mo ago

I doubt whether those US numbers are real, lot of custom rom development/user base has been asian & european market in last decade even though the numbers have been decreasing over the decade (I don't have proof)...

yorwba 3mo ago
Using a custom ROM is not the same as using LineageOS in particular. Also, the numbers imply just 23% of LineageOS installs are in the US.
- virajk_31 3mo ago
  Partially agree, as LOS is no where used as OEM and people familar with custom rom eventually would have used LOS (not mendatory but the numbers would relate)

linzhangrun 3mo ago

Notice the most LineageOS installs is Waydroid... I miss the free era from 10 years ago. Back then it was probably still called CM. Now manufacturers are extremely closed: Xiaomi started by making Android ROMs, but today the most practical way to unlock its BL is through exploits...

DuncanCoffee 3mo ago
I remember on xda with my Galaxy S Plus i9001 [1], we had: - dual boot [2] - Ubuntu touch [3] - different kernels with various optimizations, overclocking, etc - an absurd amount of ROMs, aside from CyanogenMod and LineagesOS there was ParanoidAndroid, Carbon, JellyBean, AICP, plus all the ROMs made specifically by users for this phone - the latest linux kernel, somebody just compiled it for AOSP, I think it was version 3 or 4 against 2, which was the standard for every other phone, it ended up on some tech news website I think It was a really great modding scene and a lot of people learnt stuff from that. Mainly by bricking their phones and having to fix them. [1] https://xdaforums.com/f/galaxy-s-plus-i9001-android-development.1270 https://xdaforums.com/f/galaxy-s-plus-i9001-android-developm... [2] https://xdaforums.com/t/app-kernel-dual-boot-s-plus.2462783 https://xdaforums.com/t/app-kernel-dual-boot-s-plus.2462783 [3] https://xdaforums.com/t/new-test-porting-ubuntu-touch.2382600/ https://xdaforums.com/t/new-test-porting-ubuntu-touch.238260...

trashb 3mo ago

Would something like E/OS be considered a Official or Unofficial builds? I suppose Unofficial since it is a fork?

306bobby 3mo ago
Many forks change the telemetry to their own servers so they won't show at all

nicman23 3mo ago

they need to make a official GSI. until they do not they ll continue to decline.

zb3 3mo ago
Exactly. Of course not everything will work on every device, but they're not even going in that direction (like by incorporating/extending PHH patches) despite acknowledging that most devices won't be officially supported.

renjieliu 3mo ago

Surprised to see there're only one million devices with lineage OS installed. I personally installed it on a few amazon fire tablets. I thought it would be more than 10m devices at least.

MYEUHD 3mo ago
The stats collection is opt-in

firebot 3mo ago

Number 4 is still the Samsung Galaxy S7... I kind of miss that phone.

NooneAtAll3 3mo ago

> San Marino: 1 install I feel like there's a problem in privacy in this dataset...

rupx 3mo ago

No S22 Ultra support is wild.

40four 3mo ago

Recently installed LineageOS on an old Samsung tablet I had laying around. The thing was barely usable with whatever the highest Android version was it was comparable with. Now it works wonderfully! Really happy with it. Privacy features aside, Lineage can do wonders to revive old hardware

ethagnawl 3mo ago
My Nokia T20 is getting to this point and I wish Lineage was an option. Sadly, I don't think it has enough of a footprint for anyone to bother with writing the firmware/drivers -- I wish I had the time to give it a serious try. Seeing this class of devices reduced to e-waste really bums me out. :(
- 40four 3mo ago
  Yeah, I was lucky. My Samsung device is officially supported. As you said, since no one else has had the interest to do it for your Nokia, it’s basically up to you to make it work, since they rely on volunteers. I wouldn’t begin to know how to take the base ROM and adapt it to a specific device, but I’d imagine any of the frontier LLMs could probably make quick work of it. It might be worth taking a weekend, and spending some tokens on coaching a model through the task?

varispeed 3mo ago

Interesting why there is no legal challenge for regulator to fine phone manufacturers for not allowing other operating systems. Any groups working on that?

throwawayk7h 3mo ago

Why so few in Canada compared to the U.S?

timbit42 3mo ago
Maybe they're using GrapheneOS, which is based in Canada. Could also be they opt out of the count.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

x______________ 3mo ago

Interesting to see 1 os install per country of millions of people (EG: last entry, 161 installs: 160 in Argentina, 1 in the UK)

Dwedit 3mo ago

Weirdly enough, my phone (Ocean) happens to be number 3 on the list, didn't expect that. But all the users are from Brazil for some reason? Is the phone really that popular?