1

I have an old GT-S6310N (aka Samsung Galaxy Young). I don't want to buy a new phone, because they are kinda useless for me. I use my computers for everything I do. I use my phone only a few times a year to navigate with GPS or to call somebody, but even navigation seems to be broken now. A friend asked me to develop a project, which involves a small Android service polling from the background, so I need a phone to test it while developing. She has Android 8, so I thought maybe it is possible to upgrade my phone to that version too. Last time I tried to upgrade the OS was many years ago and as far as I remember even Android 5 was not allowed. I am curious about the whys and if there is a solution to this? Rooting and maybe bricking is something I can risk. I just don't understand that how are these new Android versions not compatible with old phones, when Linux is usually backwards compatible and Android is Linux based... It just depends on the drivers and resources right?

inf3rno
  • 131
  • 1
  • 6
  • @beeshyams Not really. I need an answer to why it does not work out of the box. I mean what is Android 5 missing that makes it incompatible with this phone? – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 09:51
  • You can upgrade a phone if the OEM does it, which is not possible in your case or by using a custom ROM (again you need to search if one exists for your device to move to Oreo)//Android is not Linux, only the kernel is based on Linux//, You have a device that is pre-Android 5 and you want to upgrade to 8. Lots of things have changed. Encryption for one. See the cdd for changes between 5 and 8. There would be more reasons, these are major ones that occur to me – beeshyams Nov 29 '20 at 10:02
  • 2
    The reason is explained on Why are there not generic phone OS installers? (and its related questions), and also that Android is not really Linux. The only way to update is to flash a custom ROM (if available) or build/port a new one if it doesn't exist. – Andrew T. Nov 29 '20 at 10:11
  • @beeshyams I don't see how comparing long documents like these CDD-s help for me. I don't have days to spend on this, I want to have a plan today about how to develop my service and do it in a few days. I am not sure what you mean by encryption. If it is not hardware accelerated (which I guess isn't), then it should not be a real problem. – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 10:41
  • @AndrewT. Do you think that I could install LinageOS on it? Can you confirm that if I write a service which uses WorkManager, then it won't work on Android 4? I am not sure where I can find compatibility data. For web development I normally do I would just check it on https://caniuse.com/ – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 10:44
  • Never mind, I found it. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element#ApiLevels https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 10:51
  • 1
    XDA Forums is usually the best for custom ROM dev, though based on a quick sight, I don't find anything higher than Android 5.0.2 on there. Otherwise, you can at least try using Android Emulator to test the app. – Andrew T. Nov 29 '20 at 11:00
  • @alecxs Okay, then it is more similar to development for embedded devices than for general computers. This explains a lot. – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 11:05
  • @AndrewT. What kind of emulator do you recommend? I used bluestacks on PC so far, but I am not sure if that is good enough. – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 11:07
  • 1
    I don't have any specific recommendations for emulators as I'm currently using the one from Android SDK. That said, this is getting off-topic, further comments may not be responded. – Andrew T. Nov 29 '20 at 11:11
  • @alecxs Actually your previous comment responded it, that Android does not contain the drivers for all of the devices and one has to make a custom build with device specific drivers and the vendors are too lazy to do it for old phones. I think for now I'll use an emulator and in the long run I'll build a custom OS for this phone. I wonder if BSDs are compatible with phones, but that is an entirely different topic. Thanks for the help! – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 13:56
  • 2
    that will be a challenge with 768mb RAM and 4gb storage ;) – alecxs Nov 29 '20 at 14:05
  • @alecxs It depends on the DE, for a FreeBSD with CLI it is more than enough. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-hardware.html I think the problem would be the CPU architecture and the drivers. – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 15:34
  • 1
    if CLI with VNC is sufficient for you a chroot container mounted from MicroSD Card would do it. there exist apps for that like Linux Deploy. even termux would do it. but that's completely unrelated to android development, not sure what your goal is. the proper way would be building AOSP android go from scratch https://stackoverflow.com/q/55646338 – alecxs Nov 29 '20 at 16:53
  • @alecxs No, CLI is not enough, but if that runs, then a lightweight DE would suffice. But I'll rather focus on the service now. – inf3rno Nov 29 '20 at 21:56

0 Answers0