Comment by fluffypony
17 hours ago
I don't want to gush about this too much, but it's SUCH a big deal. Graphene has languished with hardware support for so long - they basically only had Pixel devices as first-class citizens, which are not bad devices per se, but it's hard when you're spending most of your time doing something without the manufacturer's support.
There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.
This is such a strange comment that is full of contradictions. Pixels are supported because the manufacturer supports alternate OSes. I don't get what languishing means here. Pixel hardware lags behind the latest Snapdragon hardware, but it's not something that average people know or care about. So, you can gush all you want, but I don't see why it's a big deal. It's great that they found an OEM and it's great for the overall health of the project, but not because of gaming or the latest Snapdragon.
Does pixel support alternate OSes or it just doesn't get in the way of custom firmware developers?
And for the gaming aspect, there is a huge market for mobile gaming, specially in Asia, so having a manufacturer like Motorola adopting GrapheneOS as a first class citizen will improve the chances that high performance applications will have better performance in such OSes which is a big win.
The Google Pixel has first-class support for alternate OSes (not custom firmware like a Chromebook). The OEM has to go out of their way to support avb_custom_key as mentioned in https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/avb/+/mas... and I believe the GrapheneOS founder strcat was heavily involved in helping Google design this feature and flow for Android Verified Boot.
i mean, that sounds like a subjective distinction, but it lets you unlock the bootloader and then re-lock it with your own keys so eh..?
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Lets hope those Motorola devices will be smaller then current Pixels.
Since ~2023 all Motorola phones with Snapdragon SoCs (the ones most likely to support MTE as needed by GrapheneOS first) have been larger or equal to 6.5" screens.
I do hope however having a Snapdragon device will be beneficial to having postmarketOS support.
For now having Android-type OS on a daily driver is a must, but for older devices (thinking of 10 years time) I'd like to explore an OS which doesn't depend of Google open-source drops and delayed security open-source drops, which is the situation for ROMs without an ODM partner.
Do you mean to say that postmarketOS is somehow better on non Pixel devices? I would assume that Pixels are closest to upstream and have the longest software support life in Android world.
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"general" people really play actual games on phones? I thought the general public at most played with time waster freemium games
I wouldn't consider gachas to be "actual games" (sue me), but yeah, they do tend to have way more complex gameplay and graphics than the timewaster freemium games of yore. Genshin Impact is essentially a single-player MMO, it has an open world and lots of characters and different weapons etc etc.
still wouldn't bet the general phone audience find those games to be the the deciding factor in a phone
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The key enabler is the camera. Manage a flagship level result in a Motorola, that’s the main reason people pay for High end devices nowadays.
I’m seeing enthusiasts go out of their way to get vivos and xiaomis now that they are surpassing the western counterparts based solely on that.
I think it’s doable, pixels did it with meh hardware for years. But I’m not sure if there’s enough overlap between people who care about selfie quality and open source enthusiasts.
Motorola Signature and Motorola Razr Fold are ranked above the Pixel 10 Pro on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. There will be much better CPU and GPU performance via Snapdragon too. The compromises are mostly in terms of getting some security improvements while losing others but we'll still be able to meet all of our official security requirements.
I haven’t been able to see actual results that match those tests in the Motorolas sadly. Maybe it’s more accurate in technical terms but I haven’t found good results in practice.
>Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship.
This is very interesting to me! Does graphene OS manage to keep google’s processing? How does that work?
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I'm not holding my breath but it would be amazing to have root and be able to tap to pay without constantly playing cat and mouse with google.
Unfortunately from what I read a couple of times, including a month or so ago, GrapheneOS discourages and doesn't support rooting the phone for security reasons that seem vague to me and don't appeal to my need to actually own my phone and OS. You could still root it with some third party tools from what I know, but not having root as the default makes it less of a secure FOSS OS and more of a closed down toy.
As for payment apps and other crap that refuses to run if I, the owner and administrator of my own device, don't have admin access, I would just refuse to run it. What's next - websites refusing to work if I have root on my Linux desktop?
These reasons for not supporting the root have been stated on their discussion forum multiple times.
But they do not stop you from doing so, you can fairly easily build your own images with root enabled.
LineageOS also discourages and doesn't support replacing the core of the OS with a rootkit providing persistent app accessible root. GrapheneOS is no different from LineageOS in that regard. People do this with GrapheneOS regardless of our strong recommendation not do it. Our reasons for discouraging it aren't vague. It very directly harms the security model and is not a good approach to implementing any of the features hacked together through it. Those features should be properly implemented to fit within the overall approach taken by GrapheneOS. Giving root access to a huge portion of the OS harms security even if you never use the feature. It does not mean you can't do it, we only recommend you don't.
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>but not having root as the default makes it less of a secure FOSS OS and more of a closed down toy.
I don't get it, it's "less of a secure FOSS OS" to not have root by default, but it's secure to run random apps as root and breaking android's security model? What's the threat model here?
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Yeah, this is the deal breaker for me as well. The fact that I own my device is non-negotiable. It is the reason I left the stock OS and I'm not going back. The idea that I can't access my own files if an app doesn't explicitly give me access is wild to me. I understand there are security risks of a root permission but it is important to have that fallback when you need it and the existing permissions aren't sufficient.
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As far as I know, root and tap to pay are pretty much mutually exclusive, at least if you meant Google Pay? Unlocked and rooted devices do not pass remote attestation. And it's not just something you can fake when you have root, since it is anchored in hardware (the attestation certificate chain is signed by a hardware-backed key and contains the verified boot state and verified boot key).
I can tap to pay with google pay on my rooted pixel while the spoof key isn't blacklisted, IIRC it uses dumped credentials extracted from other devices but I can reliably spoof Play Integrity and SafetyNet. It would be nice to not have an adversarial relationship with my things for once.
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GrapheneOS doesn't give you root access, citing security issues it introduces. You could re-compile your own copy with root access, though not sure if we'll then be back to some non-certified OS that can't make payments...
Yikes. Nevermind. The whole phone security model is one of the worst things to happen to computing, the concept that you shouldn't own your device for safety is so fucked.
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>You could re-compile your own copy with root access, though not sure if we'll then be back to some non-certified OS that can't make payments...
GrapheneOS is already non-certified, for most apps that care, because it can't pass STRONG_INTEGRITY with play protect.
it's quite a big deal Motorola will have officialy devices with unlockable bootloader now that Samsung is ditching it and Xiaomi is making unlocking almost impossible, Sony reintroduced it but has probably the worst VFM in the market, so having Motorola with pretty good VFM (better than Pixel outside US) is big news, though they don't really make smaller phones and I'm worried about camera quality or gcam stability
> There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.
This might be true, but the priorities are depressing.