Unofficial LineageOS 19.1 breathes new life into your old Nexus 7 with Android 12L

Give your 2013 tablet a taste of 2022

Right now, Android is enjoying something of a tablet renaissance. Android 12L has been out for a couple of weeks now, and it's all about placing an emphasis on large-screen devices. We've seen what it can do for tablets like the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro, but wouldn't it be great if it could also breathe new life into older devices? That's just what one custom ROM project is doing, and if you held on to your old Nexus 7 2013, you can now check out Android 12L with the help of an unofficial LineageOS 19.1 release.

The second-gen Nexus 7 may have been a star back in the day, but looking at its hardware nearly 9 years later, this silicon's looking a little anemic (relatively speaking). Running a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro with up to 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, its internals are closer to what an Android Go device might be packing these days. But then again, we're in 2022 — it's been a long time. The tablet debuted with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, and Google offered updates through 6.0.1 Marshmallow.

This new release is based on LineageOS 19.1, but it's an unofficial build (via XDA), and installing this is clearly not going to be for everyone — not only is the very fact that this can run a modern build of Android a miracle, but the software itself is also in a beta state, and requires a number of hacks in order to get it working. For one, if you need to install Google apps, you'll have to repartition your device. Plus, once it does boot up, it'll probably be pretty slow — but that might be less of a beta-specific issue and more a consequence of this being, you know, a tablet released 9 years ago.

If you have an old Nexus 7 lying around, and you want to try giving it some new life, take this ROM a spin. It probably won't be much worse than using Marshmallow in 2022, at least.