The codec is basic, uses decades-old tech, and was trivially REed.

Lemmy instance choice does not check out ;)

and for testing you get a wackload of SBCs and Bluetooth chips and test that

I asked because I wasn’t aware of any consumer buds supporting Opus. I wasn’t aware of PineBuds, thank you for mentioning them.

keep in mind that it’s hard to get real numbers on LDAC because decoding is proprietary

I used to think the same. But as it turns out, a decoder exists. Maybe some people don’t want anyone to know about it to keep the myths alive ;)

EDIT: Also, as a golden rule, whenever anyone sees the words High-Res in an audio context, they should immediately realize that they are being bullshitted.

After testing LC3Plus, Opus, and AAC personally for bluetooth, LDAC claims are BS

How did you test Opus for bluetooth?

latency is significantly better then AAC (tested against libfdk) and marginally better then opus

In case you didn’t know, you can use 10ms (or even 5ms) frames with Opus instead of the default (20ms). 10ms should roughly match LC3plus’s default latency while still retaining high quality.

LDAC claims are completely bullshit.

LC3plus is worse than AAC quality wise (to be expected). Lower latency is the only thing going for it. And that’s just because AAC is a very high-latency codec. Opus (as a format) would win on both fronts, although there could be issues with creating a high-quality encoder for it that is not too complex, and power-efficient.

Your information is a few years outdated. lineageOS neither comes rooted, nor does it offer a native way to root anymore. Magisk became a thing with a whole community around it. It’s an unlocked bootloader hider, root manager (and hider), and a system patcher, all wrapped up in one tool.

With Magisk, you give root access to the apps that need it, hide root ability from apps that require non-root devices (those apps do that by pretending to need root). Also, the Magisk app can rename itself, which is important as some apps check against the name itself.

The future challenge is with Google trying to force hardware identification (Apple style). I have not been following developments regarding that though, since as others mentioned, my X years old phone is still serving me perfectly, and I have no intention to upgrade any time soon.