WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:24.440 Okay, so good afternoon everyone, my name is Abelete and I am the owner of a company called 00:24.440 --> 00:35.440 Mithene, I have an embedded Linux engineer, I provide services for our clients and today 00:35.440 --> 00:43.440 I'm going to talk about how I updated a few pixel phones to Android 16. 00:43.440 --> 00:51.440 So don't get hang up too much on the versions on the slide, this is mostly for tickbait for the 00:51.440 --> 00:54.440 internet. 00:54.440 --> 01:01.440 So do we have an appellate sense problem in the consumer smart phone industry? 01:01.440 --> 01:12.440 The short answer to that is yes, we do have recently, OEMs, I've been providing five 01:12.440 --> 01:21.440 years of software update and more for the key players, but that was up until now generally around two 01:21.440 --> 01:22.440 years. 01:22.440 --> 01:28.440 And what happens when that turns ends, what happens is that your device is no longer supported, 01:28.440 --> 01:38.440 which means you no longer receive major OS upgrades, and this expose you to security issues 01:38.440 --> 01:41.440 and lack of feature improvements. 01:41.440 --> 01:48.440 So you are no longer receiving updates that are shipped built into the OS itself. 01:48.440 --> 01:56.440 I'm not talking about features that are delivered through application updates. 01:56.440 --> 02:04.440 Thanks to supply and demand dynamics, there have been a rise in companies providing business 02:04.440 --> 02:09.440 to business, alternative update channels to other companies, obviously. 02:09.440 --> 02:15.440 And case in point, last year at first then there was a company called Interior that was 02:15.440 --> 02:16.440 such a case. 02:16.440 --> 02:22.440 So if you haven't seen that talk, I encourage you to go ahead and see that. 02:22.440 --> 02:25.440 But what about you and me, individual users? 02:25.440 --> 02:30.440 What can we do when we end up with devices that are no longer supported? 02:30.440 --> 02:33.440 Is this a case for the custom ROM community? 02:33.440 --> 02:38.440 And first, I would like to define what is an Android customer. 02:38.440 --> 02:44.440 So we can compare custom ROMs to Linux distribution. 02:44.440 --> 02:51.440 If I take the case of, for instance, lineage OS, which is one of the key custom ROM, 02:51.440 --> 02:59.440 they can be compared to, so I would say that lineage is to Android what they then is to Linux. 02:59.440 --> 03:06.440 So basically, they are doing most of the platform work upon which other custom ROMs are relying 03:06.440 --> 03:09.440 to provide the reveals of Android. 03:09.440 --> 03:15.440 So those, these projects are providing the reveals of Android. 03:15.440 --> 03:26.440 And they give users the choice to run with or without Google Apps, depending on what you need to do with our device. 03:26.440 --> 03:38.440 One other thing to note before being able to use an alternative system image is to make sure that your device and search your OEM allows it. 03:38.440 --> 03:43.440 So the device needs to have a bootloader kit that can be replaceable. 03:43.440 --> 03:49.440 That means that you need to be able, when you choose to do so, to unlock your bootloader. 03:49.440 --> 03:53.440 Some manufacturer nowadays still does not allow that. 03:53.440 --> 03:57.440 And some of them are backtracking on that authorization. 03:57.440 --> 04:00.440 So some of them were allowing it up to now. 04:00.440 --> 04:05.440 And they are reversing course because of economic incentives. 04:05.440 --> 04:09.440 Also, you need to have access to some key software components. 04:09.440 --> 04:14.440 You need to have access to the sources to the Linux kernel, because Android is big on the Linux kernel. 04:14.440 --> 04:18.440 And you need to have access to the sources of the BSP for your device. 04:18.440 --> 04:32.440 So all the sources to the drivers and specific components that needs to be built into your device in order to ensure that the peripherals can work as expected. 04:32.440 --> 04:37.440 One thing to note is that Google has speedheaded project travel. 04:37.440 --> 04:47.440 I think it's almost a decade now that has significantly improved the situation by unifying the bills of the Linux kernel for Android. 04:47.440 --> 04:51.440 So it has improved the situation for us. 04:51.440 --> 05:00.440 So how do we deal Android for commercial smartphones after the end of live support for these devices? 05:00.440 --> 05:09.440 One thing you need to know is that the sources in Android for device are usually speeds in what we call trees. 05:09.440 --> 05:13.440 So we have the device tree. 05:13.440 --> 05:17.440 This is different from the semantic of device tree in the Linux kernel. 05:17.440 --> 05:30.440 The device tree in Android is a set of configuration files that are needed to make sure that your specific device is configured for the build you are doing. 05:30.440 --> 05:38.440 So you can have multiple device relying on the same board, on the same base, how to platform. 05:38.440 --> 05:43.440 But there are different because they don't have the same IOs and the same territory for us. 05:43.440 --> 05:47.440 So the device tree will take care for different configuration. 05:47.440 --> 05:49.440 Then you have the Dendertree. 05:49.440 --> 05:58.440 Those are generally binary blogs and include source files that are needed to ensure that the hardware still function correctly. 05:58.440 --> 06:05.440 Typically, a camera hardware relies on vendor blogs. 06:05.440 --> 06:14.440 And the way to get those is either to extract them from the original stock image files. 06:14.440 --> 06:18.440 So within the community we have strips doing that nowadays. 06:18.440 --> 06:19.440 It's easier. 06:19.440 --> 06:32.440 Or if you're not a developer and not a kid to do that kind of work, you can search online for repository that already provide those kind of trees. 06:32.440 --> 06:35.440 Almost finally you have the kernel tree. 06:35.440 --> 06:45.440 So Android is based on the Linux kernel and you need to be able to read the kernel for your device to get a complete system image. 06:45.440 --> 06:50.440 And depending on the device, you can also have extractories. 06:50.440 --> 07:04.440 For instance, Samsung is known to have multiple extractories because they provide additional features that other manufacturers do not provide. 07:04.440 --> 07:14.440 And also for instance, Google may release for a specific year, a single year, multiple devices that share a common code base. 07:14.440 --> 07:22.440 So there will have some of that code base in separate trees, separating the common code base from the specifics of the device. 07:22.440 --> 07:31.440 So in that case, you also need extra trees in your in your build. 07:31.440 --> 07:43.440 Everything else apart from the device with the Vendertree and the kernel tree and those extra trees is a common code base for the Android custom ROM that you are building. 07:43.440 --> 07:51.440 So it could be considered as the basis of the distribution. 07:51.440 --> 07:56.440 So how did I end up choosing evolution X and for what device? 07:56.440 --> 08:05.440 Short answer to that question is that I chose evolution X because I considered it to be one of the best custom ROM around. 08:05.440 --> 08:08.440 I'm going to make enemies here, I think. 08:08.440 --> 08:17.440 But it's true. And the reason why I did it for the pixel for a is that it is the device I had at hand at the time. 08:17.440 --> 08:22.440 It was my daily device. And it started because two reasons. 08:22.440 --> 08:30.440 The first was that I bought it at the time of release and I used it until it reached end of life support. 08:30.440 --> 08:33.440 So that was around Android 13. 08:33.440 --> 08:36.440 I was wondering if I was going to buy a new device. 08:36.440 --> 08:39.440 I didn't want to because I very much liked that device. 08:39.440 --> 08:46.440 It was small and it got features that you cannot see nowadays in the device with that form factor. 08:46.440 --> 08:50.440 Have fun, jack, a reliable thing, a thing scanner. 08:50.440 --> 09:02.440 And what triggered me is that one year after the end of the support, Google issued what you may recon as the battery killer update. 09:02.440 --> 09:08.440 So basically one year after the end of support, they issued a mandatory software update. 09:08.440 --> 09:11.440 So you cannot choose to apply or not to apply it. 09:11.440 --> 09:16.440 And it was to mitigate a so-called issue about overheating battery. 09:16.440 --> 09:22.440 I was not in that case. My battery was functioning perfectly fine. My device was fine. 09:22.440 --> 09:29.440 And after receiving that update, I realized that my battery capacity was cut in half. 09:29.440 --> 09:38.440 So I was based and I started looking into an alternative system image to continue using my device. 09:38.440 --> 09:41.440 And the reason why I ended up using evolution X. 09:41.440 --> 09:46.440 One thing to note is that most of the custom ROM are based on lineage OS. 09:46.440 --> 09:54.440 As I said, they provide the tremendous work on the platform level for every mostly every other custom ROM to use. 09:54.440 --> 10:01.440 The reason why I didn't choose lineage was that I was already relying on the Google ecosystem. 10:01.440 --> 10:09.440 And I wanted to be able to get updates easily, not having to fiddle with installing the Google app separately. 10:09.440 --> 10:19.440 And also by the time I started this experiment, the official mentor for the Pixel for a attribution X left. 10:19.440 --> 10:23.440 So I need to be able to read the image for myself. 10:23.440 --> 10:32.440 And this project provides very good documentation, which is very rare for developers to do so. 10:32.440 --> 10:38.440 We like writing good. We don't like writing the documentation. They have very good documentation. 10:38.440 --> 10:40.440 Could as to the team doing that. 10:40.440 --> 10:46.440 So my learning curve was facilitated by the fact that they have a strong and helpful community. 10:46.440 --> 10:55.440 People are very nice over there. And I started by first rebuilding the last known official release, which was 9.2. 10:55.440 --> 10:58.440 So this was the one based on Android 14. 10:58.440 --> 11:04.440 So they started before that, before the end of life, then they continue upon Android 14. 11:04.440 --> 11:08.440 So I picked up from there. I successfully rebuilt it. 11:08.440 --> 11:13.440 And I tried to keep up with the monthly security update because it mattered to me at the time. 11:14.440 --> 11:20.440 And then I got hooked and tried to jump to one major release to another. 11:20.440 --> 11:24.440 So let's see in more details how to do that. 11:24.440 --> 11:31.440 So basically, what you need to know about Android is that the sources are managed by your tool called repo. 11:31.440 --> 11:36.440 So repo is a superset on top of git. 11:36.440 --> 11:43.440 So it managed multiple repositories at once where git only managed one repository at once. 11:43.440 --> 11:46.440 So when you use repo, you need to first declare a manifest. 11:46.440 --> 11:55.440 The manifest is a file, a next and a file that defines where from where you are going to fetch all your sources. 11:55.440 --> 12:03.440 So as you can see, I'm declaring here the sources for my device tree, my inventory, my kernel tree. 12:03.440 --> 12:11.440 And you realize that I'm fetching most of the sources from lineage as they are providing the platform work, right? 12:11.440 --> 12:17.440 So who does for to do this job? Because it's a tremendous amount of work. 12:17.440 --> 12:24.440 And it's not easy to keep up with the pace at which Google is releasing this update. 12:24.440 --> 12:32.440 So once you have a working manifest file, you basically fetch all the sources with the command repo. 12:32.440 --> 12:36.440 I'm not putting the complete command here because it doesn't matter. 12:36.440 --> 12:41.440 You just need to know that repo repository with a specific set of arguments. 12:41.440 --> 12:43.440 And it catches all the sources for you. 12:43.440 --> 12:51.440 If you are, if you want to do this at truth by yourself, I encourage you to go to the week in the documentation of the project you are interested in. 12:51.440 --> 12:54.440 And that's the specific arguments. 12:54.440 --> 12:57.440 After fetching the sources, you need to configure the build. 12:57.440 --> 13:02.440 And also this is taken care of by the name of the manifest. 13:02.440 --> 13:13.440 So for my device, the specific common is lunch, lineage, some fish, which is the code name for the picture for A, AP2A, which is the code name for the release. 13:13.440 --> 13:16.440 So AP2A is the code name for Android 14. 13:16.440 --> 13:24.440 And then I'm doing a user debug deal here. 13:24.440 --> 13:29.440 Then you start compiling with the command and evolution. 13:29.440 --> 13:31.440 It basically started the build. 13:31.440 --> 13:35.440 After which you wait. 13:35.440 --> 13:38.440 And you wait some more. 13:38.440 --> 13:44.440 There was a talk yesterday about why Android deals are so slow. 13:44.440 --> 13:48.440 And there are, there are indeed very, very slow. 13:48.440 --> 13:51.440 A typical build on my dedicated mission. 13:51.440 --> 13:56.440 So not this laptop, but I have a dedicated build machine, which is an ND, 13:56.440 --> 14:00.440 Reson 7 machine. 14:00.440 --> 14:03.440 So it's not that all of a CPU. 14:03.440 --> 14:08.440 I have 128 GB of RAM and all SSDs. 14:08.440 --> 14:17.440 And it still takes me two hours and a half to complete a build from start to finish, which is a very long time. 14:17.440 --> 14:18.440 To do a bit. 14:18.440 --> 14:22.440 And this is, in the case where I only do one build at the time. 14:22.440 --> 14:29.440 If I run multiple builds, that time gets up. 14:29.440 --> 14:33.440 And the good side is that rebuilds are usually faster. 14:33.440 --> 14:44.440 So they take 45 minutes to, I don't know, from 30 minutes to 45 minutes, in my case, unless it tears. 14:45.440 --> 14:49.440 And when you are starting with that this kind of endeavor, it usually fails. 14:49.440 --> 14:58.440 We are going to see why, what kind of issues you can face when you are starting to rebuild your own system image. 14:58.440 --> 15:07.440 So this is the kind of issue I faced quite regularly from one release to another. 15:08.440 --> 15:16.440 It is an issue with what is called in a USB in Android, the framework compatibility metrics. 15:16.440 --> 15:29.440 Basically, those are external files that define which version of what software component you need to build into your system image to make use of your hardware. 15:29.440 --> 15:44.440 It is a way for vendors to use multiple boards for a same family of hardware by doing different system deals. 15:44.440 --> 15:51.440 So you want to do a build for the same family of boards, but with different iOS. 15:51.440 --> 15:55.440 So the difference will be in the configuration of the software you are using. 15:55.440 --> 15:58.440 And this is done in those FCN. 15:58.440 --> 16:08.440 Basically here, it says that the device manifest does not follow the framework compatibility metrics. 16:08.440 --> 16:11.440 So this is one of the issues. 16:11.440 --> 16:21.440 Another one, which is less frequent, but it can happen, is failure to build the Linux kernel. 16:21.440 --> 16:29.440 In this case, I ended up summing upon an issue where there was a breakage in the Linux UAPI. 16:29.440 --> 16:31.440 So the user API of the kernel. 16:31.440 --> 16:34.440 There was a specific type called structs. 16:34.440 --> 16:41.440 That was defined in the user space API, which was also defined by the GVPC. 16:41.440 --> 16:46.440 So we have two definitions by two different components. 16:46.440 --> 16:50.440 So I needed to do a local definition of that type in my kernel. 16:50.440 --> 16:55.440 And hopefully for me, this issue is already known, upstream. 16:55.440 --> 16:57.440 It was fixed in the Linux kernel upstream. 16:57.440 --> 17:03.440 But the picture for A is using kernel for the 14, which is quite old. 17:03.440 --> 17:06.440 So at that time, the issue was not fixed. 17:06.440 --> 17:14.440 So what I did instead of reinventing the wheel was I terri-picked the patch that was sent upstream to fix in the Linux kernel. 17:14.440 --> 17:18.440 And lastly, another type of issue I important. 17:18.440 --> 17:24.440 But this happens to me only once, which is a breakage of API. 17:24.440 --> 17:25.440 This is quite rare. 17:25.440 --> 17:38.440 What happened is that I have a software component written in C++, open source, which was pulling a library. 17:38.440 --> 17:43.440 I didn't know of for the Wi-Fi direct functionality. 17:43.440 --> 17:48.440 So this is related to casting in Android. 17:48.440 --> 17:54.440 And when pulling that library in and linking to the library, it was missing a symbol. 17:54.440 --> 17:59.440 That was not defined in the binary blob I was linking against. 17:59.440 --> 18:03.440 Hopefully for me, it was written in C++ and open source. 18:03.440 --> 18:11.440 So I just had to do a week definition in C++ of the missing library to fix the issue. 18:11.440 --> 18:16.440 I don't know what I would have done if it was close source or not C++. 18:16.440 --> 18:20.440 But I see how my finger crossed that this does not break. 18:20.440 --> 18:24.440 And it's a significant feature in the future product device. 18:24.440 --> 18:28.440 So it was a successful experiment. 18:28.440 --> 18:30.440 I was able to read the Android 14. 18:30.440 --> 18:38.440 And I took it upon myself to do the jump to Android 15, which was already at the time. 18:38.440 --> 18:43.440 The version the maintainers were working on. 18:43.440 --> 18:49.440 And then the jump to Android 16 using the same process. 18:49.440 --> 18:54.440 I got hooked because I was able to get a very old hardware. 18:54.440 --> 18:58.440 Very old according to the industry hardware. 18:58.440 --> 19:02.440 And that very up to the software on it. 19:02.440 --> 19:07.440 I had the Pixel for FID and Pixel 5 also in my cabinet. 19:07.440 --> 19:10.440 Those are small phones and old devices. 19:10.440 --> 19:18.440 So I did the same for those devices that are also abandoned on Android 13 or maybe 14. 19:18.440 --> 19:23.440 Because I realized that there are people that are still using those devices. 19:23.440 --> 19:25.440 I became maintainer at Evolution X. 19:25.440 --> 19:29.440 And I was able to add my three devices to their processor. 19:29.440 --> 19:34.440 And I think we have, after lineage, one of the biggest roaster of devices. 19:34.440 --> 19:41.440 So I really think we have one of the best custom ROM after them. 19:41.440 --> 19:49.440 One of the benefits for me joining as an official maintainer was to rely on the project CICD 19:49.440 --> 19:52.440 Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery Infrastructure. 19:52.440 --> 20:01.440 So on a set of servers and infrastructure to have some kind of automated build pipeline. 20:01.440 --> 20:05.440 Because having worked in the industry, 20:05.440 --> 20:11.440 I know that there are companies that have not that kind of level of CICD infrastructure. 20:11.440 --> 20:16.440 And having this allows us to provide OTA updates, 20:16.440 --> 20:20.440 which means users can get updates over the air, 20:20.440 --> 20:24.440 but without having to refresh their device every time. 20:24.440 --> 20:26.440 This is a huge win. 20:26.440 --> 20:29.440 And it means that we are at the level of OEMs. 20:29.440 --> 20:34.440 And we're doing this basically for free. 20:34.440 --> 20:37.440 This is huge. 20:37.440 --> 20:48.440 And I also was surprised that there are quite a significant numbers of people that are interesting in still using their phone. 20:48.440 --> 20:54.440 They don't want to follow the trend and just buy new devices just because the market says so. 20:54.440 --> 21:02.440 And it is important for us to be able to keep this trend alive. 21:02.440 --> 21:04.440 So what next? 21:04.440 --> 21:08.440 I will personally strive for more monthly safety updates. 21:08.440 --> 21:15.440 So right now I try to update my device at least once a month to provide security updates for my users. 21:15.440 --> 21:21.440 And because I also use evolution X on the daily basis, my personal phone, personal and work phone. 21:21.440 --> 21:23.440 So this is important to me. 21:23.440 --> 21:26.440 And I also strive to do major OS upgrades. 21:26.440 --> 21:30.440 So I went from 14 to 15 to 15 to 16. 21:30.440 --> 21:34.440 And hopefully I will be able to do the jump from 16 to 17. 21:34.440 --> 21:35.440 Hopefully. 21:35.440 --> 21:40.440 But we need to keep in mind that Google is changing the name of the game. 21:40.440 --> 21:55.440 So starting from 20 to 26, the announced that they will only do the code drop of the open source Android project twice a year instead of doing continuous release before. 21:55.440 --> 22:07.440 So we are only going to get the the code drop in Q2 and Q4 of each year, which means we have we will get more what to do every year. 22:07.440 --> 22:11.440 If they keep with the promises. 22:11.440 --> 22:33.440 Finally, I would like to encourage you to contribute to project as users or as developers because our community is based on the fact that we need to keep contributing to open source software. 22:33.440 --> 22:38.440 Without contribution to open source software, this kind of project cannot happen. 22:38.440 --> 22:44.440 So evolution X rely on contributions and lineage OS rely on contribution. 22:44.440 --> 22:54.440 So whatever you can do provided documentation, help testing or anything, please do so as long as you can and as much as you can. 22:54.440 --> 22:56.440 Thank you very much. 22:56.440 --> 22:57.440 That's it for me. 22:57.440 --> 23:09.440 If you have questions, now will the point. 23:09.440 --> 23:13.440 So I have a phone of 2014, I think. 23:13.440 --> 23:14.440 Okay. 23:14.440 --> 23:16.440 Problem going to update tomorrow. 23:16.440 --> 23:21.440 And I thank you all incredibly for this for this project, I think it's amazing. 23:21.440 --> 23:32.440 Something that I miss sometimes because I often handle these old phones are the kind of really shady structure out on look to bootloader. 23:32.440 --> 23:38.440 It just like has the vendor for a specific code and then do this and this and this and this. 23:38.440 --> 23:43.440 And this kind of stop me sometimes because I don't want to install a frame software. 23:43.440 --> 23:56.440 I have some insights or something under the documentation for for this kind of cases that will allow more people to install custom ROMs. 23:56.440 --> 23:57.440 Okay. 23:57.440 --> 24:02.440 So the question is regarding to the status of bootloader when it is unlocked on devices. 24:02.440 --> 24:12.440 Do we have a way to facilitate the installation of custom ROMs in the communication between our laptops and devices to do that kind of work? 24:12.440 --> 24:21.440 So nowadays we basically rely on ADD and fast-world to write software to automate that process. 24:21.440 --> 24:33.440 And there are two major custom ROMs graph in and colleagues who are providing web UI based in solution to us to automate this process. 24:33.440 --> 24:37.440 So it's easy for people using this custom ROM to install it. 24:37.440 --> 24:43.440 We still don't have it at evolution X but this would be a way to facilitate installation. 24:43.440 --> 24:52.440 But keep in mind that if you choose a custom ROM that provides OT updates and you are following the official releases, 24:52.440 --> 25:00.440 the hurdle you have to overcome it only once the first time after that you have OT updates. 25:00.440 --> 25:03.440 So this is also a solution. 25:03.440 --> 25:08.440 So yes, it's not easy but it can be done. 25:08.440 --> 25:10.440 Thank you very much.