Bringing Android 16 (unofficially) to Moto G62
[NOTE: GPT PARAPHRASED THIS ARTICLE, AND I WILL SIMPLIFY IT LATER]
Towards the end of 2025, I bought a new phone. That meant I could finally experiment with my Moto G62 without worrying about breaking the phone I needed every day.
By then, it was already more than three years old, and the community around it had become much smaller.
I wanted to get a custom ROM running on it. A custom ROM is an alternative version of Android that you can install on your phone.
There wasn't an existing ROM base for the G62 that I could build on. I had to put together the device support first.
Starting with what already existed
Related Motorola devices already had official LineageOS support. This helped a lot. I could study how those devices worked instead of figuring out everything on my own.
But similar devices still have differences.
I had to understand which parts applied to the G62 and which parts needed to change. Existing code was useful, but I still needed to understand the assumptions behind it before using it for another phone.
This is what I mean when I say I brought up support "from scratch." The G62 needed its own device base, but I was building on Android, LineageOS, and work that other developers had already shared.
This is the kind of work I enjoy. Start with something close, understand how it works, and figure out what needs to change for the system in front of you.
Getting Android 16 running
On 18 January 2026, I published the unofficial LineageOS 23.2 release thread on XDA.
It was for the Snapdragon 695 variant of the Moto G62, codenamed rhodei. It ran Android 16, using Motorola's Android 13 stock firmware as its base.
The release listed the everyday features as working: calls, mobile data, VoLTE, Wi-Fi calling, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio, video, camera, fingerprint, sensors, GPS, and file-based encryption.
There were limitations too. The initial release was labelled beta and used unsigned debug builds. The macro camera was disabled in the stock LineageOS camera app because of a bug affecting other Snapdragon 695 devices.
Getting Android to boot was part of the work. Getting the phone to work reliably was the goal.
Other people built on it
Once there was a stable foundation, another developer used that device support to build more ROMs for the G62.
They could start from the work I had shared instead of repeating the initial setup. They did their own work to bring those ROMs to the phone, and my contribution helped make that possible.
That was the most rewarding part for me.
The phone's community was smaller, but there were still people who wanted to keep using it. My work became useful beyond the particular ROM I had built.
Work that other people shared helped me get started. Sharing my work then helped someone else get started.
Projects like this give me a reason to understand things more deeply than I would through everyday use. I get to read unfamiliar code, learn from other developers, and try things on an actual device.
And sometimes, that work gives an old phone a few more options.