[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
In this thread I'll share with you my personal builds of LineageOS 21, 20, 19.1 and 18.1 for the Essential PH-1 (codename: mata). These builds are unofficial LineageOS builds, customized with my favorite tweaks and features, and with some interesting optimizations.

MAIN FEATURES

LineageOS 21 features:

support for MicroG (signature spoofing) -

read the 2nd post!

support for OTA updates

some debugging/tracing instructions have been removed from ART

loads of updates from AOSP master for ART

all system components built with aggressive LTO

improved bionic routines + ARM optimized routines

in-built support for many private DNS providers

PixelPropUtils & Pif, to unlock Pixel-only features in Google apps and pass Play Integrity

Mulch System Webview (from DivestOS) replaces the default Chromium WebView

"de-Googling" tweaks: SUPL, captive portal, NTP and DNS servers changed from Google to privacy-friendly alternatives (Kuketz, GrapheneOS, Quad9)

reduced memory footprint of several system components

updated 3rd-party libraries: SQLite

in-built F-Droid client & Log Viewer app

minor miscellaneous optimizations applied to several system components

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KERNEL FEATURES

Starting from build 2023-10-25, a new kernel is included in my builds. This is based on the latest CAF tag for the Snapdragon 835, with a few additional improvements, mainly for Energy Aware Scheduling. This means that all the tweaks and improvements I had previously made to my kernel are now gone, and I have to reimplement them from scratch, which I'll be doing over the next few weeks. At the moment, only these additional goodies are implemented:

lots of bug and security fixes backported by the Civil Infrastructure Project

memory management improvements

lots of debugging bloat removed from several drivers

DDR bandwidth boost when launching apps and in other scenarios

built with -O3 optimizations

many small, miscellaneous patches to improve performance and power consumption

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BUGS

Common to official/Nolen's builds as well:

NFC quirks (payments with Google Wallet are working, other usecases might or might not) - fixed in the 2023-03-11 build

Updater shows wrong percentage during OTA package installation - fixed in the 2023-04-11 build

microphone issues in some scenarios - WIP

Klik misbehaves when rotating the phone while viewing a previously taken picture (low severity bug); Klik sometimes quits when switching to front cam or B&W mode (high severity bug) - under investigation, read more about Klik's status here - updated 2023-04-12

some games do not load - fixed in the 2024-02-27 build and in subsequent official builds

SIM hotswapping does not work. Only insert a SIM when the phone is powered off, or reboot it after insertion

[LineageOS 21 only] an exclamation mark is persistently shown on the mobile network signal icon - under investigation: this is just a visual bug, mobile data/VoLTE work fine! - it disappears after the first reboot

Specific of my builds:

the fullscreen dark background in the notification pull-down view is now transparent - notifications are displayed directly on top of the currently active application. This doesn't affect functionality but is indeed unpleasant to the eye fixed in the 2023-03-21 build

CHANGELOG for LineageOS 21:

July 14th:

synced with LineageOS

fix for sensors not working

updates for ART and libc routines

other minor tweaks and improvements

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DOWNLOADS

LineageOS 21: on Github

LineageOS 21 recovery image: on Mega

Gapps: https://github.com/MindTheGapps/14.0.0-arm64/releases

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SOURCES

All my repos are on Github. In particular: device tree, kernel sources.

A BIG "THANK YOU" TO

the whole LineageOS team, and the multitude of great developers of the Android custom ROM scene, such as kdrag0n, kerneltoast (Sultanxda), arter97, nathanchance, neobuddy89, flar2, franciscofranco, frap129, the MSM-Xtended project, the crDroid project, the GrapheneOS team, the YAAP team, the DivestOS team and the xda user MuddyDog. I hope I have not forgotten anyone.