Great news arrives for those users who take advantage of the custom Paranoid Android ROM on their smartphone: already this week the first beta builds of the Paranoid Android Sapphire could (and should) arrive.
Through a very long discussion on Twitter, the development team tried to answer many of the questions received in the last two years and explain the absence of stable versions of the ROM in recent years.
Paranoid Android Sapphire is coming soon in beta
As many will know, the Paranoid Android is one of the custom Android ROMs most appreciated by the entire community; the most recent version, Sapphire, marked the rebirth of the project and the first Alpha version of the ROM came as a result of the launch of Android 12, version of the operating system of the green robot on which it is based.
Paranoid Android Sapphire, initially available in Alpha for the OnePlus 8 Pro only, was later made available on other compatible smartphones (various Xiaomi, Redmi, POCO and OnePlus) and, only recently, has reached, in alpha 3 version, four other OnePlus smartphones.
Now that I’ve explained everything, I am happy to announce the release of our Sapphire betas, based on the latest Android 12.1/12L code.
These betas won’t have OTA support, not initially, and we hope to integrate it as soon as possible, probably not with delta support.
— Hernán Castañón (@herna) April 19, 2022
Last month, in addition, the development team released the first beta build for the top range OnePlus of 2021, OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro: it was a build with obvious youth problems on which the development team was (and still is) working to solve them.
Now comes the official confirmation that the builds of Paranoid Android Sapphire Beta, based on Android 12L – 12.1, will be available, already this week, for “selected devices” and will be downloadable through the XDA-developers forum or through the official Telegram channel of Paranoid Android.
However, there will be no support for OTA (over-the-air) updates. The Paranoid Android project is carried out mainly by a team of students and enthusiasts, which is why the costs of maintaining the website and hosting have proved to be a small obstacle to overcome: the development team strongly hopes to be able to implement them as soon as possible.
Donations from the community to save the project
The official account of the AOSPA project, that is the Paranoid Android, relied on the words of Hernán Castañón, one of the reference figures of the development team, to answer the questions received in the last two years and to take stock of the situation on the current state of the project.
Hello, dear community.
We have some important information to tell and we need your help, so we would like you to have a look at this thread by our manager.
On this thread you will find answers to almost all of the questions we have received over the last 3 years. #stayparanoid https://t.co/BzI6bGBBJH
— Paranoid Android (@paranoidaospa) April 19, 2022
Within this very long discussion, there are so many issues touched: among these, the explanations relating to why there have been no stable versions of this popular custom ROM in recent times certainly stand out.
In a nutshell, Castañón says that the development team did not want to release anything that did not make them proud, with reference to what happened with Paranoid Android Ruby and Sapphire.
The absence of support for OTA updates is, at the moment, one of the biggest obstacles that has separated ROMs from arriving in a stable version. This strongly recalls the discourse related to costs and how these are, for a small reality like theirs, the contribution and support from the community are fundamental.
To “save” the project, and in order to provide an Android Paranoid that guarantees an experience similar to that of any other official manufacturer, the development team has started a sort of donation collection through PayPal.
In any case, the Paranoid Android Sapphire, which currently supports about 23 devices, will soon also arrive in a stable version, with or without OTA updates.