20260508-android_nostalgia.txt

I've been disillusioned with Android since 11. It was the latest
version I had on my N0k1a 7.2 and I believe the beginning OS on my
newest phone. Maybe not. Regardless, I started using the 7.2 as a sort
of tablet and backup phone (VoIP). It just got glitchier and slower...
Maybe not slower, but definitely glitchier.

A few days ago, it died. It happened often enough that I didn't really
care. So I plugged it in to charge it. Normal. As soon as I see the 0%
of the battery, I turn it on. It boots. It gets to the lock screen. I
punch in my PIN and use my fingerprint to unlock it and...it shows a
black screen. This is just general sluggishness. I give it a little
bit, maybe 20 seconds. I pull down the notification bar. The
brightness slider is there...and nothing else. It soon reboots.

And it kept rebooting. I had to unplug it and leave it in a drawer.
It's my belief that somehow I started recording video in my sleep
(easy enough when you have your wired headphones in it: it gets
dragged under me regularly). I think it ate up all the available
internal memory and destroy the system's ability to boot.

Anyway, the next time I plug it in, it says I can try again or do a
factory reset. I try again, same deal. So after a long absence (most
of the day), I try it one more time. I pull off the factory reset.
It's nice: the original background on this device was pretty neat and
having a clean UI is always a plus. I went ahead and installed some
apps, mostly sideloading. I was going to use it with my DLNA server,
so I didn't load it with much media.

The next day comes. I've been using PMOS on my Pinephone for at least
a year by now, and I like it enough. I'm sure there will be no real
option for it, but I can look. The PM wiki has an entry for it, which
is fucking hilarious because it has swearing by I'm assuming the
original author talking about how stupid it is that HMD disabled the
ability to unlock the bootloader with Android 11. Good shit.

But I follow the directions to the letter... No dice. Then I look up a
YT video for how to actually boot into recovery and that works. Lame
that the directions didn't work, but I'm not too upset about it
considering it lists 0 users.

It directs me to, what else, an XDA forum post where it has 10 and 9
downgrades available. I think I wrote about it in 2020 or 2021 that I
really didn't like 10 because it nerfed my home app hard: it took away
the soft menu button. In order to unlock the bootloader, I have do
some adb and flashboot sorcery which I barely understand, but it
works. I have successfully upgraded to Android 9.

I'm also able to unlock the bootloader. I love the goofy "OMG ur gunna
gt haxX0red" text that accompanies every boot with the bootloader
unlocked. I try to install PMOS with pmbootstrap, but of course it
fails. I fix one of the errors, a version problem, but after the
second time it failed do to some checksum error and my fix didn't
change anything, I decided to go ahead and use Android 9 for a while:
no network, just adb apk installations and pure fun. I also made sure
to turn off automatic OS updates in the dev options.


It's sick. I did lose the three-button nav I prefer, but OMG, it has a
soft menu button. That is the tits. I'll gladly use this oddball
transition with a back button and gesture menu button if it means
that. I unfortunately can't find the 3-button option in the Gestures
menu, which is probably due to being an older OS version or just N0k1a
being retarded with custom menus.

The best part of Android 9 was that I didn't have to sign into my WiFi
just to set it up. When I did the first factory reset, Android 11
wouldn't let you use the fucking phone without an internet connection.
What a load of BS.

Anyway, just wanted to share some nostalgia from the last "good"
Android version that was actually backwards compatible and wasn't
totally trying to imitate Apple like more recent versions. IDK if I'll
ever get PMOS working on it, but if it's restricted to Android 9, I'll
take it.