Comment by thisislife2
9 days ago
GrapheneOS' approach is to focus more on security than privacy, because they believe increased security leads to increased privacy. Unfortunately, that means their hardware requirements pretty much limit the hardware that you can run it on (currently only the Pixel phone range). Worse, it also means they stop supporting a device when it reaches End-Of-Life as software security updates stop for it (see How long can GrapheneOS support my device for? - https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime ). Sad though - GrapheneOS on Sony Open Devices ( https://developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-d... ) would have been nice.
The whole reason why GrapheneOS is superior to its alternative is because they do all that.
I also with they could support non-Google phones, but that's a problem coming from the manufacturers, not from GrapheneOS.
My understanding is that there are close to half a million GrapheneOS users. And many potential users don't want to buy a Google phone. So it feels like it is starting to become worth considering for manufacturers...
I don't get why Fairphone doesn't look into that. Is it because they are not aware, or is it too hard for them to make hardware that is compliant with what GrapheneOS requires? Hundreds of thousands of devices may not count so much for Samsung, but they must definitely count for Fairphone.
> The whole reason why GrapheneOS is superior to its alternative is because they do all that.
What is "its alternative"?
> I also wish they could support non-Google phones, but that's a problem coming from the manufacturers, not from GrapheneOS.
The manufacturers aren't blocking the installing of GrapheneOS...
> What is "its alternative"?
I meant alternativeS, sorry. Well, anything AOSP-based that is not Android.
> The manufacturers aren't blocking the installing of GrapheneOS...
Of course they are not. But they produce hardware that is not secure enough for GrapheneOS to consider. I wish they saw value in GrapheneOS and produced hardware that met their requirements.
It's actually weird, because I'm convinced that it's completely worth it: just add those requirements to the design of one new model, and a potential of hundreds of thousands of people may buy it just for GrapheneOS.
GOS has minimum hardware requirements and most of the available smartphones don't meet them
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I'm not sure I fully understand this.
Why are GrapheneOS releases dependant on Google releases?
They are dependent on the AOSP releases (which Google develops) and on the manufacturer updates (and because GrapheneOS runs on Pixels, then it goes back to Google again).
I can understand relying on an OEM to provide hardware support for a given model - but I'm finding it hard to understand why they're unable to continue supporting a release just because the upstream removes support for something.
I'm not even really sure what you mean by "manufacturer updates".
The more I hear about this project, the less is sounds like an alternative OS and more it sounds like a thin skin around whatever shit Google throws out, to be honest.
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