[Galaxy S3 Neo Original Android Development] helloyello:
Some general considerations, just summarizing again my use case and expectations. I'm using the phone (S3 Neo) for both private and business purposes, expecting stability, security and seriousness form it. Given the end of the product life cycle, old model, stock ROM unmaintained, I've been looking for an alternative for the ROM, that's before throwing the device and buying a new one, and considered LineageOS a good match, "stable" and "official". Now, it turns out that LOS is more of a hobby & enthusiasts toy and not that much of an alternative and I don't mean to offend anyone, but still highly respecting the efforts of the devs & contributors. As already mentioned, I was following the developments of LOS (14/15/16) here in the forum and noticed the struggles with making all the peripherals work (camera, NFC & co), considering these as not that much important compared with core functionalities like making phone calls and be able to properly connect to the internet.

There were some developments upstream at Google (Andorid Pie - 9) that I found dumb, nothing LOS folks can help with, and some cosmetic glitches in the actual LOS16 that I could live with.

The really big issues, IMHO, are the rather childish (and really stupid, too "enthusiastic") choice to overclock the CPU and the sloppy work done for the networking part.

- these SoCs are not designed to be overclocked, but optimized (sized) by the manufacturers & system designers to perform stable in both the thermal and power parameters. You just don't want LOS to be a phone killer, reducing even more the lifespan of the already old and tired electronics and putting way more stress on the power components and battery.

- the networking part looks really bad, not only focusing on the hidden WiFi connecting issue, but in general. It looks like some sloppy work has been done there just to make it work somehow. Apparently the Android OS isn't recognizing the WiFi adapter as being up and running, hence the cross symbol I get on the WiFi icon in the status bar and the status message "connected, but no internet" (or something like). Then the openvpn issue, which I believe is still caused by the sloppy network connectivity and configuration work. openvpn is the default FOSS VPN solution I believe everyone is using and also my default method (I literally depend on it) to connect through public WiFi & mobile data.

The suggestion with moving and focusing (accelerating the development and adoption) to LOS17 was based on the fact that the devs are already focusing on it and fearing they won't care that much with the "old" LOS16. Then, you mentioned already in the gitlab 401 bug report that you have the possibility to manually connect to a hidden and saved network (why isn't that also available in lOS16?), the workaround is already there and LOS17 networking doesn't look so broken.

I haven't tested LOS17 yet, but I might give it a try, even in it's alpha/beta stage - not considering it for day to day use, I have a workaround to connect manually to the hidden WiFi and will be able to check if the WiFi connection (Android networking) is properly brought up and system updated, and testing openvpn.

On the S5 Neo, that phone acted as a workhorse for many years and its internal flash wasn't really protected, but hammered with media files and browser cache. The S3 Neo I protected from the very beginning, moved all the media stuff to the external SDCard (changed it every year - 10EUR costs) and disabled the browser cache (storage) and other apps local storage features.

How it died? - I was flashing back the stock ROM with odin - phone with 100% battery, it started, I left the room and turned back some minutes later, just to find the progress bar in odin stuck at ~60% and the phone dead, overheating, both phone and battery. Disconnected it and pulled out the battery, left it to cool and tried to power it/connect it/etc without success. Realized I own a S5 Neo brick ;)

Tried to save the display and managed to break it (it fell apart in its elementary components), juts looked over on youtube for confirmation, everyone broke the original display, impossible to disassemble it clean.

Then I literally broke it into pieces with my fingers, amazed how weak the whole case & structure was. It felt like cardboard. :)

I feel sorry about it now, not because I liked it, quite the contrary, I hated it, it was big and badly designed and the display was already having burn-in stains, but more because I cannot play with LOS16 anymore on it. As far as I remember, LOS16 was running fine on it, I had no issues with the WiFi - neither hidden ESSID problem, nor LOS(Android) not recognizing the WiFi adapter as being connected...and I haven't had a chance to try openvpn on it...

Well, it was one of my thoughts, but as already described above, I doubt it's the driver. I'm more inclined to consider the sloppy work in the networking part of LOS16, or, maybe some patches for other phones breaking the networking on S3 Neo. I still don't have a clear understanding on how the source code of LOS is maintained and adapted for each individual phone. If the patches for other models are already applied in the core LOS code, then maybe reverting them for the S3 Neo target would be a better try.