Learn about Dumbdroid development
Work on Dumbdroid started in April 2025 to improve software support on the popular keypad phone Qin F21 pro. Support for other models, such as the F22 pro, Doov R77 pro, and R17 pro came after that.
Dumbdroid consists of a number of changes and improvements on top of Andy Yan’s GSI+LineageOS 21 builds.
You can download the patches for all of these changes here.
Version 2025-10-14
- Added or improved D-pad navigation in: Settings, Recents, Messaging app and the power menu.
- Removed the “Discover Trust” notification.
- Turned the “Lift to Wake” feature off by default.
- Removed D-pad volume adjustment during media playback as it interfered with phone usage too much.
- Added back Chinese fonts.
- The keypad backlight also serves as a notification diode for missed calls (configurable).
- Added the option to auto-confirm PINs shorter than 6 digits.
- You can start entering the PIN while the screen is off.
- D-pad center, left and right buttons control media playback while the screen is off.
- Power button rejects and ends calls by default.
- Pressing any button during a call will wake the screen.
- Fixed the phone call no-touch overlay persisting.
- Parental Controls apps is no longer device admin.
- Added battery saver setting to quick settings.
- Fixed various issues with OTA updates.
Version 2025-09-19
- Added a basic Parental Controls panel for blocking access to the Play Store and individual apps.
- Added a screen overlay to block touch input during voice calls on the R77 pro.
- Improved photo sharpness on the R77 pro.
- Fixed some key mappings and keypad backlight on the Qin F22 Pro.
- Improved keypad support in PIN entry.
- Fixed camera app crash when taking a selfie video.
- Added D-pad navigation to the Gallery app.
- Added back fonts for Asian alphabets that had been removed before to save space.
- Fixed the Updater to allow redownloading an update after an unbootable update is installed.
Version 2025-08-27
- New panel for browsing notifications using keys, mapped to the menu button (press it again to access quick settings).
- Added a setting to manually enable VoLTE.
- Bootloader is reported to apps as locked, by incorporating the TrickyStore code in the ROM.
- PIN can be entered from the lock screen without having to swipe up first.
- Back key erases the last digit in PIN entry and Dialer.
- Added back Google Speech Services in the gapps build.
- Added separate quick setting for Do Not Disturb.
- Fixed brightness control in quick settings.
- Improved quick settings UI.
- Various fixes in the Updater app.
- Call button starts the call when dialing a number.
Version 2025-07-25
- Added the capability of OTA updates (System->Updates). The user can choose between stable, testing and unstable releases, as well as switch between G-apps and vanilla through OTA.
- Changed the default power button behavior to go home on first press. The home button was remapped to menu (see below). These changes can be reversed by the user in the Button settings.
- Added a simple quick settings panel, for settings such as brightness, volume and airplane mode. The panel is navigable entirely with the D-pad, and is mapped to the menu (top-right) button by default, but can be remapped to other keys in the settings.
- Starting to type a phone number while in the default launcher will open the dialer app.
- Added a suite of preinstalled open source apps: Simple Music Player, Organic Maps and Breezy Weather.
- Improved boot times by removing unnecessary TrebleApp tweaks (thanks to Nagoor Babu Sir)
- Fixed crashes when trying the change the lock screen PIN.
- Switched back to 3-button navigation by default, but hid the panel, to get rid of unnecessary gesture nevigation. If updating, make sure to switch to 3-button navigation in System->Gestures for this to take effect.
- Added a shortcut app to donate to Dumbdroid on ko-fi.com.
Version 2025-06-27
- Made camera preview full-screen, and added D-pad bindings for taking photos and switching between photo/video/qr-code.
- Added the Traditional-T9 keyboard by default to the ROM (must be enabled manually by the user).
- Added a Dumbdroid logo during boot.
- Removed the “Wake the screen for notifications” setting because of the inability to turn off the screen when a permanent notification is present.
- Make the D-pad volume control also work during Whatsapp calls.
- Removed settings for physical buttons that aren’t present on the devices.
Version 2025-06-12
- Added a custom lights HAL to turn screen and keypad backlight on and off.
- Added volume controls using D-pad up and down while the screen is off or sound is playing.
- Tweaked default launcher settings and icon layout for nicer user experience.
- Added toggles in Settings->System->Buttons for the above controls.
- Fixed a crash in the Bluetooth module that made it impossible to use wireless earphones.
- Fixed Bluetooth by making the workaround from the Treble App to be enabled by default.
- Re-mapped the top right keypad button to Home, fixed D-pad center button, fixed the asterisk button.
- Switched to gesture navigation for Home/Back/Apps in order to remove software buttons from the bottom of the screen.
- Increased the default font size to make UI more readable.
- Fixed lock screen crashing by disabling an encryption feature.
- Disabled doze completely to fix notifications and other issues caused by disabled networking.
- Disabled the restricted networking setting by default.
- Removed VNDK snapshots unused by a given device to reduce image size by hundreds of megabytes.
- Replaced webview with a smaller version in order to reduce image size.
- Removed a bunch of preinstalled apps in order to reduce image size.
- Removed the Treble App.