Description
We began our quest by looking at a bunch
of older devices near the five-year mark from the likes of oneplus HTC and Google but most of them were either no longer officially maintained by lineage OS our ROM of choice were weren't easily or cheaply purchasable or didn't have a removable battery and that last one is something we really want because no amount of fresh software is gonna fix a worn-out lithium battery we were actually getting kind of discouraged until we stumbled upon the LG g3 it was a pretty big deal when it launched back in 2014 with its top-tier specs and at the time super high res 1440 screen and today not only are there heaps of them for sale on eBay but they can be had fora mere $50 with replacement batteries from companies like iFixit coming in at under 20 bucks perfect now before you run out and buy one though make sure you get the version of the g3 that corresponds to your cellular carrier even though most of the changes between the variants are just the bloatware that comes pre-installed on them it's probably not worth risking using a different one unless you have no other choice so for us then the d 852 was the way to go oh not much in the way of packaging on this thing but hey Wow not bad this is in great condition there's hardly a scuff on it who original battery will definitely need the replacement one now as much as we hoped that this was going to be as simple as one two three click and you're done unfortunately Jake quickly discovered that it was going to be a bit more of an involved process now there are multiple methods of gaining the administrative access that we need to install our third-party OS otherwise known as rooting but none of them have been updated to work on the latest version of Android that LG rolled out for the g3 thankfully though unlike iOS we can downgrade Android with the easiest method being to roll back to KitKat then from there brooding is essentially one click then we can install our custom recovery software and install lineage OS now we'll have some more details in a forum post down below if you guys aren't familiar with this process before we begin the downgrade you guys need to know a couple of things one this tutorial is specific to the LG g3 if you're looking to flash lineage OS or some other rom to a different phone Google YouTube and the XDA forums are your best friends - this process will result in your phone being completely wiped you have been warned now let's get into it start by downloading and installing first the LG USB drivers and second the LG up dll then LG up itself this is the tool that we're gonna use to downgrade the phone once you have the software ready to go download and extract the respective KitKat ROM for your device we've got addy 852 and we'll be using the bell version specifically now we plug the phone into our PC go into settings about phone software info and tap build number until it says you are now developer filming it was that easy right then we go back into the main settings menu into developer options and enable USB debugging this will allow our computer to communicate with the phone you'll also want to swipe down on the notification tray and enable MTP USB mode on the PC open up LG up as an administrator select your device and the dot t OT file and click start give it a couple minutes and you'll eventually be greeted by your KitKat equipped g3 set up the phone quickly then head over to settings and enable USB debugging again with that turned on we can download and run the one-click purple Drake route sayyes to permanently rooting as this OS is
going to be wiped for lineage OS shortly
anyway and then we're actually getting really close now but before we can install our OS we'll need a custom recovery to be able to flash it this is where TW RP comes into play download the TW RP app from the Play Store onto the phone then copy over the TW RP file that's linked in the description select the file from your device's storage in the app and flash it then reboot to recovery mode now is actually a really good time to back up your install ofKitKat on the off chance that something goes wrong so do that and copy it over to your PC then we can wipe everything off the device as last but not least we'll need to grab the latest nightly build of lineage OS for our device and open google apps since they don't come with lineage OS by default and no Play Store on Android is a pretty rockin bad time so we select armed Android 8.1 and the nano version for that then once we've got both we can copy them over this into the device and then install restart the phone and well bound lineage OS is good to go from here you can install any missing google apps from the Play Store because basically none of them come by default and then you can optionally install the magic root if you'd like to do root related things not everybody's into that though so all that's left now then is to take this puppy for a little test drive for the $70 total that we spent is this a compelling option let's put it up next to our iPhone which believe it or not still costs nearly twice that much on eBay and find out well one thing's for darn tootin sure Apple while they definitely didn't have a screen size advantage at this point or resolution or resolution advantage definitely had brighter screams like that is a that is a market difference I don't even think we have phones and I think it's a lineage OS thing cuz as I recall when this was stock it was a little brighter I'm not a hundred percent sure and that sounds a little bit weird but I kind of feel like it was better before all right well why don't we go ahead and fire up a video dude some help yeah can we just go to the beginning ready three two one and go okay well whatever close enough cool there you go all right you got to give Apple credit for the color accuracy of their displays though even back then you can tell this is far more true to life than this is it's more washed out it's a little bit too warm screen is so much bigger on here yeah it's definitely gonna be better for content absorptionyeah so I downloaded pub G on both of
them right yeah it's a big game like about a gigabyte yeah and it was completely done along with the like ten other apps I downloaded on this phone before pub G was even done on that one one though is that speakers yeah should we try it out this is before front-facing speakers were really much of a thing although the HTC one did do that around this time but Apple even though they were still doing just the bottom firing speaker that's still a lot better than a rear speaker that was one of my big complaints about this phone at the time yeah I'll crank this up what's the other dish is it harder to cover it up with your hands like either way you're gonna have to cut it right it sounds kind of crappy sound like a regular iPhone no it's it's it yes but not in the moral of the story they both kind of sound like garbage all right so gaming wise we have pub G mobile loaded it is capped at 30 FPS and we're on low settings but how you how you feel it's playable although I am seeing frame drops as well yeah it seems like that's a common trend with mobile games but I'm I'm definitely having an experience that I would say is acceptable it's kind of like Xbox 360 graphics but if you like play one of those games on a laptop that can't quite do it so gaming wise we're on a pretty even playing field but let's try web browsing so I think for this test we should just load up a couple of the same websites while you're already typing things great Alex it's working fine boy it searches for fu Jake really well okay what's the site we can load Ars Technica ready yeah three two one go all right so Android looks like it was winning a little bit there yeah this still hasn't even loaded all the way on their Ltd forum yeah sure let's let's go to the corporate site because I think we already did the forum earlier the lineis Media Group okay three two one go Oh iPhones really check in now I mean like final load time I think we'repretty close yeah true it did look like at the start there that this was going a little bit faster but I think that was just I mean overall they're both pretty similar I mean it look like the g3 was edging out a little bit at the start but overall acceptable usable pretty simple we can take a quick look at my NATO assets and for those not familiar it's very similar to your your stock Android experience so to speak so not a not a ton of like extras or anything like that but you can load up whatever launcher you want though so if you want to get the ruthless pixel launcher make it look like a pixel or any of them really even the Microsoft one is actually pretty good I don't know if you've seen that before cool whereas on an iPhone I think we can go deeper than this though because one of the things that Android was really behind Apple on in this era was rear camera quality oh yeah we know that software is a major component of mobile camera performance so I think maybe why don't you take some pictures run around get some other people's impressions and see what they think of our five year Android versus five year iPhone experience when we get to the camera the gap between devices starts to become a little more apparent we took three identical photos on each phone and threw a pixel three and as a modern reference and it's clear to see the g3 definitely falls behind a bit colors are more washed out and the noise is definitely more noticeable compared to the iPhone 6 now this is likely because lineage OS is supported across such a wide range of devices meaning its camera app isn't going to have the same image post-processing that's specifically tuned by the manufacturer for a given device you can tinker with these settings and the included camera app to help with this so we'd recommend doing that it actually looks like our older Android device be it the LG g3 or one from another manufacturer holds up shockingly well if you can get an OS like lineage OS that is fully supported with security updates I actually am blown away by how much phone we got for just $70 after we replaced the battery with a brand new unit which remember makes this thing because it's not like SOC s degrade over time functionally brand spanking new now it is missing some creature comforts we've got USB micro-b instead of type C it's not as durable it's not as fast it doesn't charge as quickly no wireless charging obviously mobile speakers have come a long way in the last five years this wimpy rear speaker here compared to the you know dual front or side but sounds kind of front firing speakers on something like a note 9 and of course no bio-metric authentication really did feel like going back in time compared to facial scanners or fingerprint scanners especially the ones under the screen and the like bottom line is unless you need i Message this is looking like a very compelling option if you want to save a buck and you've got the time to invest in it or if all that looks like way too much work an older iPhone is still a solid choice just make sure the battery is up to snuff speaking of being worth investing in how about a ring doorbell ring is on a mission to reduce crime in communities and with their 1080p HD resolution and 160 degree vision having one on your door is definitely a step in the right direction they've got an adjustable motion sensor two-way audio so you can talk to whoever's at your front door its Wi-Fi capable so you can always check what's going on wherever you are and it's powered by 8 to 24 volt AC so that's your existing doorbell wiring or the battery bank it connects via an app that can work on your smart phone or desktop with Mac and Windows support .
