Android powered tablets can come in all shapes and sizes, but the LeapFrog Epic failed to grab the headlines here at XDA when it was released back in 2015. Being one of those "educational" tablets for children, the device runs on a highly skinned version of Android 4.4 KitKat. Inside this toy for tots is a quad-core MediaTek processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16GB of storage with SD card slot, and a 7″ 1024×600 display. Essentially, it’s similar to an Amazon Fire tablet from that era with a bunch of software imposed restrictions. Now —  almost 5 years after its release — the tablet has received a port of LineageOS.

 

XDA Senior Member blakegriplingph has worked with developers mac2612, R0rtiz, Kai2000, and Stricted to bring an unofficial port of LineageOS 14.1 (based on Android Nougat) for the LeapFrog Epic in a quest to repurpose these tablets by offering a close-to-stock Android experience. To install the ROM, you’ll need to unlock the bootloader of the Epic and install a compatible custom recovery image. Since there is no official bootloader unlock facility available from LeapFrog, the developers even came up with a hacked solution. Due to the nature of the unofficial unlocking method, it is advisable to create a complete eMMC backup of your device prior to the modding event.

There are quite a few caveats if you’re interested in this. First of all, the battery life in this ROM is comparatively worse than the stock software. Moreover, video recording crashes the camera app and 1080p video playback lags a lot because of missing hardware-accelerated decoding support. The NVRAM can't be properly handled, which might have its roots in lacking SELinux permissions. Granted, it’s far from being a stable custom ROM for the LeapFrog Epic, but it’s nice to breathe new life to what would otherwise be an easily-outgrown and thus discarded device. Head over to the thread linked below for the flashing instructions.

Unofficial LineageOS 14.1 for the LeapFrog Epic — XDA Thread