Since LineageOS rose from the ashes of the ever popular CyanogenMod custom ROM at the beginning of the year, the community has been hard at work releasing incremental updates on a bi-weekly basis. Each one brings new features and support for more devices. The previous update to LineageOS 14.1 arrived with support for 9 further devices, including the Moto Z Play and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5. The latest changelog includes additional support for just 1 extra device, the Nextbit Robin, which has been re-added. It also announces that the Nexus 4 will no longer be officially supported.

There are a few changes and bug fixes in the new version, such as the permanent switch to a lighter browser named Jelly. It was announced with the last update as an alternative to the heavier Gello and Google Chrome browsers, and now the decision has been taken to put all efforts into Jelly, which is much easier to maintain.

The most notable edit is a fix for a potential vulnerability with the su implementation. This could be an added benefit for older devices. It isn't quite Magisk, but now some devices can hide the existence of root when installed from Play Services, allowing them to pass SafeteyNet. Although, this is at the cost of having to manually enable and disable root, not automatically as in the case of Magisk.

For all the other changes take a look at the full changelog below.

Changes since 2nd May:

  • The autobrightness slider, found in Quick Settings, can now be toggled in Settings > Status bar > Brightness
  • Gello has been dropped in favor of Jelly. Read below for more information
  • Jelly got various improvements, including desktop mode support
  • FlipFlap can now be disabled from within the app
  • Incorrect call durations in Dialer has been fixed
  • Webview has been updated to the latest stable release (based on Chromium 58)
  • Fixed a crash in some 3rd party apps that use the camera under some circumstances

While there can't be many people still using the Nexus 4, it's still sad to see it reach this point (for me at least, it was the first phone I truly fell in love with — I miss it so). With the regular addition of new devices and features, LineageOS continues to prove a worthy successor to the venerable CyanogenMod.

UPDATE: 2017/05/16 9:34am PDT BY

We've been informed the Nexus 4 is actually just "taking a break" in order for the kernel to get some important security patches. So this means new releases should be on the way. Take a look at the links below for more info:

Thanks, Henning Lund.

UPDATE: 2017/05/20 2:15pm PDT BY

The Nexus 4 is back after a short hiatus. Thanks again, Henning.

Source: LineageOS