The Paranoid Android team started working on this new release after the Android 12 source code made its way to AOSP recently. The team continues the tradition of naming its releases after minerals, a practice that began with the Paranoid Android Quartz release (Android 10). “These last years we have seen quite a confusion when it comes to our Alpha builds, and we want to give a better and proper information about it. Alpha builds are specifically worked by each of our supported devices maintainer,” the team said in a blog post (via). “This means the number of alphas each device can get might not match what other devices will have, as Alphas are builds that might have bugs that we want you to help us find and fix, and with that we might have to push more builds for some specific devices.” Simply put, the frequency of Alpha releases may differ from device to device. This also means that some features from a particular build of Sapphire 12 could be missing on other builds. The developer team also points out that some new features included with the Alpha release may not see the light of the day with the stable update.
Paranoid Android’s previous release was “Ruby” based on Android 11
The Paranoid Android Sapphire Alpha is only available for the OnePlus 8 Pro right now. More devices, including the OnePlus 5T/7T, OnePlus 9R/Pro, OnePlus 8T, Poco M2 Pro, Redmi Note 7 Pro, Poco F3/X3, would gain support soon. Thankfully, the team is providing a full list of compatible devices on Twitter. The Paranoid Android team released alphas of the “Ruby” build based on Android 11 last year. Alphas usually launch shortly after the source code reaches AOSP. However, the stable build won’t arrive for at least a few months. This is because the team has to test out all the new features while ironing out the glitches. If you’re a fan of Paranoid Android ROMs, be sure to check out Sapphire 12. But remember that since this is an Alpha build, not all features may work as smoothly as expected. You can download the Paranoid Android Sapphire Alpha release through the Telegram channel here.
