If you've been salivating over the news of Google Pixel devices receiving reliable Android 12L versions, you may try pressuring your OEM to provide the upgrade to your device sooner. Alternatively, you may keep up with our custom ROM coverage, in which we spotlight the community's Android 12L ports. More people are welcomed to the celebration now that source-built Android 12L custom ROMs are available via the Descendant and Pixel Experience projects.
Descendant
The Descendant custom ROM is notable for providing a unique take on AOSP with a slew of features. The project's creators published the first official releases based on Android 12 in December 2021 and continued to update them until February of the following year. After a brief absence, the team is back with Descendant 12.1 Android 12L as the foundation, a slew of device-specific improvements, and a slew of new features.
The first significant change is the Descendant recovery: an unique minimalistic recovery that is now accessible for the majority of supported devices. You may get it as a standalone recovery or a boot image, as well as a flashable ZIP file for your smartphone. Face unlock is now embedded into the ROM, and a weather app with feed support is included. This time around, the build roster includes GSI targets as well.
The complete changelog of Descendant 12.1 is as follows:
- Bug fixes
- Solved an issue that was causing collision between Sony’s styled clock and weather
- Solved an issue that was causing wrong scaling for vibration icon in volume bar
- Solved an issue that was preventing Sony’s styled clock to correctly update time
- Solved a typo in Settings for the word “lockscreen” in English localization
- Improvements
- Improved fingerprint processes haptic feedback
- Improved Gestures Magic operativity on clean install
- Improved the amount of available apps tinted icon for launcher
- Interface changes
- Brightness bar transition from unexpanded Quick Settings Panel to fully expanded Quick Settings Panel has been improved
- New features
- Face Unlock has been added
- Fullscreen gestures, added in : Settings > System > Gestures > System navigation > Gesture navigation (gear icon)
- What’s new can now check and notify for Descendant system updates
- Weather app has been added and will feed weather infos to the system and users
Download Descendant 12.1 based on Android 12L for your phone
Pixel Experience
Pixel Experience, one of the most popular custom ROMs available, is sought after by many Android fans in order to replicate the software experience of the Google Pixel. Despite the fact that the project began delivering certified Android 12 releases in December of last year, supporters of the ROM have been requesting that its creators add some more features and produce a distinct "Plus" variation. The maintainers are finally ready to publish Pixel Experience Plus releases from this month's upgrade after rebasing the software on top of Android 12L last month.
Aside from increasing the security patch level to April 2022, the Pixel Experience team is now offering a variety of enhancements via the "Plus" version. You may, for example, access the network traffic monitor and per-app volume options, which are not available in the standard edition. Because the objective was to constantly focus on reliability and transferring over Pixel features, the overall experience does not change too much from the vanilla form.
You can find the comprehensive changelog below:
- Vanilla version
- April security patch
- Fixed charging animation not appearing
- Fixed unlock sound playing repeatedly
- Updated translations
- Others fixes
- LiveDisplay (color profile, display mode, reading mode, color calibration)
- Hide Notch support
- StatusBar shortcuts
- Rotation settings
- Lock screen display (media cover, music visualizer, power menu)
- Per-app volume settings
- Increasing ring volume
- Different gestures
- Power and Volume button customizations
- Network traffic monitor
- Brightness (brightness slider, auto-brightness, brightness control)
- Quick settings (quick pulldown, title visibility, vibrate on touch, rows, columns)
To date, more than 50 devices have received official Pixel Experience Plus support on top of Android 12L. Given time, more developers are likely to expand the list as they complete the device bring-up.
Download Pixel Experience 12 and 12 Plus based on Android 12L for your phone
It goes without saying that you should make a backup of your data before flashing any of these builds or any other modified ROMs. If its loss will have an impact on you, back it up — no excuses. These builds are primarily aimed towards consumers who wish to try out the most recent version of Android, Android 12L, as well as understand the dangers associated with third-party applications.
