LineageOS Biweekly Review: Jelly Browser, Bug Fixes & Vulnerabilities Addressed

To keep the community informed about the developments and changes take place in the weekly builds of LineageOS, the team behind LineageOS has made it a habit to post brief changelogs on a biweekly basis. These changelogs include the list of new features added, bugs fixed and vulnerabilities addressed.

The major highlights from the last two weeks are:

• The autobrightness slider, found in Quick Settings, can now be toggled in Settings > Status bar > Brightness
• Gello has been dropped in favor of Jelly. Read below for more information
• Jelly got various improvements, including desktop mode support
• FlipFlap can now be disabled from within the app
• Incorrect call durations in Dialer has been fixed
• Webview has been updated to the latest stable release (based on Chromium 58)
• Fixed a crash in some 3rd party apps that use the camera under some circumstances

LineageOS have now completely adopted the Jelly browser over it's predecessor Gello browser. The last few builds of LineageOS for devices with lower end hardware specifications shipped with Jelly browser. Being richer in terms of customisations and features, Gello required more system resources as compared to Jelly. 

Both Gello and Jelly are based on the open source variant if Chrome Web browser - Chromium. The LineageOS team have pointed out that the new upstream merges in Chromium sources rendered the updated version of Gello unreliable. On the other hand since Jelly browser is lighter as compared to Gello, it is easier for the LineageOS developers to maintain Jelly in par with the latest Chromium upstream merges. That's why the team have decided to include Jelly browser in all their official builds.

The LOS developers have also addressed a crucial vulnerability. It had been reported that the presence of su binary in LineageOS might compromise the security of the device. To address this issue, the LOS team have ensured that the su binary is accessible only when root access has been enabled under the Developer Options. The su binary can't be accessed otherwise. This will make sure that unprivileged processes can't use the su binary in a wrong way.

Lastly, Nextbit Robin (codenamed ether) - which had earlier been removed from the official roster of supported devices - has made it back to the supported devices list. However Nexus 4 (codenamed mako) has been dropped from official support.

Source: LineageOS

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.