Lineage OS review – Incredible Android Nougat ROM

Lineage OS has not only replaced CyanogenMod but has taken its legacy to a whole new level. The Lineage OS has become the most popular Android ROM in a short time. Over 10 million users have flashed the new OS on their mobile device.

Lineage is a great ROM based on the Android Nougat operating system. It is RAM efficient and CPU friendly. The ROM has a nice user interface and it supports various mobile devices.

I’ve been using Lineage OS for a month. Here’s my review of this latest Android ROM.

Lineage OS – Android Nougat ROM review

The free Android ROM ships in a ZIP file. The size of the archive is about 350 megabytes. Visit Lineage OS website to get the ROM.

Lineage OS supported OEMs

• ZUK, ZTE, Micromax YU, Xiaomi (Redmi and Mi series).
• Wingtech, WileyFox, Sony, Samsung, OnePlus, OPPO, NVIDIA.
• Nextbit, Motorola, Lenovo, LeEco, Huawei, LG, HTC.
• Google, BQ, Asus, ARK.

How to flash Lineage OS on your phone?

If the Lineage OS is compatible with your mobile phone, follow the below steps:

1. Download the Lineage OS zip file from the official website.
2. Download Google Apps ZIP archive.
3. Move these two files to the root directory of the MicroSD card.
4. Download TWRP and flash it. Now make sure you’re able to access the TWRP interface by booting your phone in the recovery mode. To do so, turn off your mobile device. Now press and hold the power and volume buttons for a few seconds.
5. Create a Nandroid backup of your system on the MicroSD card. Once TWRP creates the backup, navigate to the main interface of TWRP and select wipe option.
6. Select the system, data, internal storage, Dalvik cache checkboxes and confirm the wipe operation by dragging the slider that appears on your screen to the right.
7. Open the main window of TWRP and select the install option. Now, add the zip file of the Google Apps and LineageOS to the queue of files that TWRP should flash.
8. Confirm the flash operation. TWRP will take up to 30 or 50 seconds to flash the two archives.
9. Reboot your phone after TWRP finishes flashing the archives.

Features review

Notification Panel

The notification center of the Lineage OS comes with an option to adjust display brightness and 8 tiles of various utilities of your phone. Above the brightness slider, you’ll find icons to open the user management interface, change the position of the tiles and open the settings panel.

Gallery app

The gallery app of the Lineage OS has three sections – timeline, images, and videos. The app shows the media files saved on the ROM or MicroSD card in a grid interface with three columns. It allows you to view slideshows of the pictures. It supports the bulk selection and deletion of videos, images, and albums.

The image editor in the Lineage Android Nougat ROM is built in the gallery app. It enables you to adjust the color, brightness, contrast of photos. The editor lets users crop, straighten, rotate images and apply effects to them.

Root Access

The Developer Options interface of Lineage OS has an option to enable root access for ADB. To grant root access to apps, you must flash the SU (Super User) module with TWRP.

Lineage OS Security

Encrypt phone: Lineage OS provides an encryption tool that can encrypt media files, third-party and pre-installed apps data, documents, accounts, etc.

The data encryptor will take 1+ hours to accomplish its task. To make sure that you don’t lose data when the encryptor tool is running, you must charge the phone’s battery up to 100% or you should connect the phone to a charger. The charger must be plugged in.

Smart Lock: When you turn on this feature, your mobile phone will be unlocked when you’re holding it or when the mobile is in your house, office, at any other trusted place or near a trusted device. The device can be your smartwatch, Bluetooth speaker, etc.

Screen Pinning: This feature ensures that the screen you pin is always in front of you until you unpin it.

Lineage OS App Drawer

The ROM has CM style app drawer that supports two layouts, compact and sections. The 2nd layout displays a list of large size app icons. The drawer sorts app by their name and it displays a search box. Icons in this layout are arranged in an N x 4 matrix. N is the number of rows. This value depends on the number of apps you’ve installed.

The 1s layout i.e. section flaunts icons of the applications in a grid interface. The section style drawer features smaller icons. It also includes a search box.

Lineage OS Settings

When you select a setting from the settings interface, LineageOS will compile a list of settings and it will display the same as a menu. Hence, you don’t have to tap on the back button of the phone to access the main settings panel.

Battery Life

My Android phone has a 2200 mAh battery. Before flashing Lineage OS, I used to charge the phone two times a day. After installing Lineage, the battery lasts for over 24 hours on a single charge.

Lineage OS offers various battery saver modes. If you want to play games on your phone, turn on the performance mode else select efficiency mode.

The OS displays a graph of the battery usage. It also shows a list of applications and services that are using the phone’s battery the most.

Performance

Lineage OS delivers rock solid performance and it is stable ROM. I’ve used nearly all features of the ROM. Lineage hasn’t reported a single error till date.

To improve the performance of your Android device further, you can turn off some background apps and change the power saving mode.

Updates

Stable nightly builds of Lineage OS are released every week. To update the OS, open phone settings, scroll down and select About phone option. Now, tap on the LineageOS updates option.

Conclusion: If your device is running on an older version of Android, download and flash the Lineage Android Nougat ROM.