The meteoric rise anddevastating fall of LG Mobilewas something to behold — the company went from a relative unknown to one of Google’s biggest partners in building out the Android ecosystem, then a series of lukewarm launches and budget cutbacks led to the dissolution of what was once Samsung’s chief rival in the smartphone space. Along the way, we got fantastic devices like the flagship G series and the multimedia-focused V lineup, but these incredible phones have beenlargely abandoned since 2021— until now.
Code commits on theLineageOS GitHub pageshow that the custom ROM is adding official support for 2017’s LG V30, one of the last handful of flagship phones to still sport a headphone jack and built-in DAC. The device maintainer notes that this is the first new LG device to get official LineageOS support in 6 years — a major, yet sad milestone.
The T-Mobile variant as well as all other sub-models of this audio powerhouse are getting LineageOS 20, which is based onAndroid 13. To put that in perspective, the last OS version upgrade most V30 users saw was Android 9.0 Pie in 2019, followed by scant security patches that ended in 2020.
Android’s open-source nature is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can lead to fragmentation and poor support from a device’s manufacturer — but on the other, independent developers with time on their hands andkernel source availablecan continue support for ancient devices like LineageOS has done here.
Currently, the Android 13 build for the LG V30 is not yet available on theLineageOS downloads page. But we’ve seen this process unfold many times before — once a phone’s ROM is added to GitHub, it usually makes its way to the official download page within a week. So keep checking back for a live link, and in the meantime, you may get your V30 prepped byunlocking its bootloaderandinstalling a custom recovery like TWRP.
