/e/ first beta soon to be released

Next week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, we will release the first beta of /e/ mobile OS.

I will then describe choices that have been done, what’s in, what’s not in, what remains to do, what to test and how. And probably a challenge for testers.

Part of the tests will involve the use of /e/ services, such as /e/ identity accounts. This will be easy for our early backers who got an @e.email email address. As we cannot open these (beta) services widely yet, we will open such test accounts to a limited number of users. All those who already applied as testers will receive an /e/ test account.

Other testers will have to send an email to [email protected] with “test account” in subject (it will be processed automatically so check for typos). We will open a first batch of 100 test accounts, and a second batch of 200 test accounts.

Supported devices

Of course we cannot support the 17K+ known Android devices. As the /e/ ROM itself is forked from LineageOS we can build for all LOS 14.1 (Android Nougat) supported devices, and not yet for LOS 15 (Android Oreo) supported devices (work in progress).

Anyway we had to focus on a limited list of devices that we could test in real. And our build server infrastructure is also limiting this number at the moment (call: any hoster to lend some build servers to the e.foundation project?).

Anyhow, we have extended the list to several devices that were demanded a lot on our website, and we will continue to do so.

The list

The first /e/ beta release will be available as flashable ROMs (with daily OTA development updates) for the following devices:

Essential Phone (mata)FairPhone 2 (FP2)Google Nexus 4 (mako)Google Nexus 5 (hammerhead)HTC One (m8)Huawei Honor 5X (kiwi)LeEco Le2 (x520 / x522 / x526 / x527) (s2)Motorola Moto E (condor)OnePlus (oneplus2)OnePlus 3/3t (oneplus3)OnePlus X (onyx)Samsung A5 (2017) (a5y17lte)Samsung Galaxy S III (International) (i9300)Samsung Galaxy S6 (zerofltexx)Samsung Galaxy S7 (herolte)Xiaomi Mi5S (capricorn)Xiaomi Redmi Note4 (mido)Xiaomi Redmi 3S/3X (land)

We are also considering to include the following models for the release:

Moto G 4G (pergrine)Moto G 2015 (osprey)Moto G 2014 (titan)Moto G (falcon)Xiaomi Mi5S+ (natrium)Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (International 3G) (ha3g)Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE (t0lte)OnePlus One (bacon)LG G5 (International) (h850)

If you are interested by one of these models, please send us an email to [email protected] with subject: “TESTDEVICE model_codename” (example : Subject: “TESTDEVICE mastrium”)

For others devices, we still need to scale up our build infrastructure first, but as we will be releasing the source code, experimented users will be free to build for a specific model of their choice.

Stay tuned!

— Gaël (follow me on Twitter / on Mastodon)

As a non-profit project, we still need your support!

Read in real time about our latest product announcements here.

Other reference articles about “Leaving Apple & Google, my /e/ odyssey”:

• Latest development status: https://hackernoon.com/leaving-apple-google-a-global-eelo-development-status-1ee11bf80d06
• Leaving Apple and Google : my “eelo odyssey” — Introduction
• Leaving Apple and Google: my “eelo odyssey” — Part1: the mobile OS
• Leaving Apple and Google: my “eelo odyssey.” Part 2: Web Services