Well … if you know any VPN which is working in China with a decent speed, for bypassing the GFW censorship, I’m in.
I already paid for Astrill actually, which has great results in China compared to other leaders (Express VPN for example).
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No, I’m sorry, I definitely don’t anything on how to survive in China.
Just did a search, and found:
https://thebestvpn.com/reviews/astrill/ (which is mixed)
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqda_mz6fYc
But honestly, I’m totally naive about what it takes to survice in China…
But still, this answer is highly unprofessional, because it does not take so much to use the VPN service on Android. Except, maybe, read the programming manuals
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If nobody has an old 14.1 flash zip stored on a computer or can extract it from a backup, then the only way to downgrade I know of would be install /e/ - though it’s modifications to Lineage OS could maybe interfere with your intention again.
I kept lineage-14.1-20180808-nightly-FP2-signed.zip just in case.
If anybody else needs it, just send me a message.
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Just to explain why VPN is vital for me :
The chinese internet is kinda in a big bubble and the only way to access the world is through a VPN. No VPN = no google, no youtube, no dropbox, no gmail, no play store, no googlemap, no news about the world … actually almost nothing but very invasive chinese apps collecting and sending all your data “somewhere” continously and consuming the battery in a few hours.
I have been trying ExpressVPN which seems to be the leader but it was slower than a countryside connexion in 2000.
Thanks so much !
I made a backup of last LOS 14.1 build and addonsu too, also including the last Lineage OS for microG 14.1 build. All of them properly signed:
┌─╼[roboe]╾─╼[~/Devices/android/FP2/LineageOS backups/14.1_last-release]
└╼ $ ll
total 323708
drwxr-xr-x 2 debian debian 4096 ago 16 15:39 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 debian debian 4096 oct 21 11:30 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 566692 ago 16 13:39 addonsu-14.1-arm-signed.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 93 ago 16 13:39 addonsu-14.1-arm-signed.zip.sha256sum
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 330886000 ago 14 02:47 lineage-14.1-20180808-nightly-FP2-signed.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 110 ago 14 02:45 lineage-14.1-20180808-nightly-FP2-signed.zip.sha256sum
┌─╼[roboe]╾─╼[~/Devices/android/FP2/LineageOS for microG backups/14.1_last-release]
└╼ $ ll
total 332592
drwxr-xr-x 2 debian debian 4096 ago 14 02:46 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 debian debian 4096 oct 21 11:30 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 340557015 ago 14 02:42 lineage-14.1-20180808-microG-FP2.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 debian debian 103 ago 14 02:38 lineage-14.1-20180808-microG-FP2.zip.sha256sum
I can serve as a mirror to @AnotherElk, 
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Just to mention …
https://download.lineageos.org/extras currently still offers the 14.1 addonsu and weather provider downloads, but just in case, I kept those, too 
.
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Why not using Orbot? #Tor
Thanks for suggesting. I’ll try once I’m back in China, and see if I can get a decent speed ! 
Tor may deliver widely varying speed. It might be interesting to evaluate different vpn provides, or using openvpn with the connection details, if you vpn provider tells you those
Looks good! I think openvpn is a great app. Give it a try 
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I’ll keep this in mind yes.
For now, I just did the hard reset to LOS 14.1 and finished configuring all my apps, launcher and everything. I got what I wanted : everything works fine like before, including Astrill.
No motivation to redo everything again just for a try 
But I’ll do one day !
Well, a working astrill app does not prevent testing openvpn, just to be sure
With LOS14, you can always fall back to the original app
You are right. I’ll try it out as soon as I get back to China and will let you know !
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Extra info, just in case you consider other workarounds: some friends of mine that went to different parts of China in a two-weeks travel recently reported success with a WireGuard VPN (UDP) deployed manually in a rented VPS. I can ask for the VPS location if you’re interested. There are a few VPN providers offering WireGuard, too.
I just tried to connect to Astrill from OpenVPN, but it seems not to work well… very slow to connect and most of time it fails …
They just updated their APK.
I’ll try again to update to LOS 15 with their new app. But it means that I have to wipe all my LOS14 system … if it doesn’t work again, how can I get all my system back with all data, all settings, as if I didn’t wipe anything ?
First, you can (and should) make a backup in twrp. So you can restore LOS15.1, if necessary. Please keep in mind that everything under /storage/emilated/0 is not backed up by twrp, so if there’s something important (e.g pictures, downloads,…) you should save this also (on pc or external sd card)
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