What's wrong with LineageOS for this use case?
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Lineage is the answer here.
I have a few old phones running it, works great
I have it on my og pixel xl, but the battery is toast. I really like that phone, but it won't work unless plugged in. I sad
I do have Lineage installed at the moment, it works well enough for some projects but GrapheneOS seems like a better long-term target for others. I think another part of it is that it seems hard and I want to see if I can do it.
This is not feasible. You are not going to become an expert in mobile development on a timeline that makes any sense. Even if you did its still a massive under taking to port an end of life phone to work with a version of an OS that was never built to work with that phone, that's assuming its possible.
Just buy a used pixel 7a and start learning to develop apps on that.
I am considering that option, but part of the motivation is that I already have the device (two, actually) and I want to see what I can do with them. I don't want to just throw away perfectly good electronics if I can recycle / repurpose them. And since it's more of a hobby pursuit, really the only timeline is how long I can keep the hardware functional. I've already irreparably destroyed two phones, but I have also done a few successful screen / battery replacements, so I think I can get several more years of life out of these if I keep an eye on the batteries.
PostmarketOS recently added support for the Pixel 3, and I'd recommend that instead of what you've proposed. That gives you a great way to tinker with it alongside an active development community, without being completely on your own.
That's what I just did with my old 3a that was collecting dust after it went EOL, and it's been a really fun project.
That is a good point, and PostmarketOS is definitely one of the options in the mix. I actually didn't know it had official support, will have to give that another spin. I have Postmarket on another device but I've never gotten it running on a Pixel 3.
The GOS developers never recommended their OS on older pixels that don't have support on them anymore. Some people, however, still wanted to use their older Pixels, though I have no coue exactly how one could go about that.
I think it makes sense that they don't advise it, they have limited resources and I don't blame them for not spending them on older devices. I think the only reason it would make sense to even try this is if you had two Pixel 3's just collecting dust and were hunting for a project for them.