Comment by _vere
19 hours ago
Their hardware requirements do not say this, where'd you get that idea? Graphene has stated they'll work with the Motorola team on supporting their devices, starting with the successors of the Razr foldable and the signature line, but there really hasn't been any talk about how additional peripherals like aux would be a no-go. USB is also a security concern, which is why they give you the option to disable it outright, disable data or disable until after-first-unlock. I don't see what would keep them from implementing this for aux, although since it's unidirectional I'm not sure if it even makes sense to compare aux to USB. They've supported pixels with aux ports in the past, and I don't think it's inclusion would be a blocking criteria. The comment about the camera is also kinda misguided. They zero out the camera input if you disable it, unlike traditional android. You can have a camera toggle in your quick settings and keep it disabled literally all the time. Enabling it when you bring up any camera related app takes either pin or biometrics, having the hardware here really shouldn't be a concern since you can look at how the code handling it works yourself. I'm not trying to convince you to use a pixel or a Motorola phone, do what you want, but at least be informed about stuff like this when you state things as if they are facts.
> I don't see what would keep them from implementing this for aux, although since it's unidirectional
No electric circuit is unidirectional. Beyond the pause/play and volume commands that it supports (edit: and mic as mentioned in a sibling comment), Graphene would probably reason it's an easy way to externally read voltage levels and so an unnamed entity can mount side channel attacks with backdoored headphones
> since it's unidirectional I'm not sure if it even makes sense to compare aux to USB
Most phone aux support microphones and acting as an antenna for FM radio reception. I don't see how either could be used for a security exploit however.
>but there really hasn't been any talk about how additional peripherals like aux would be a no-go.
It's water under the bridge. You're NEVER getting a Graphene phone that supports a microsd. It won't happen. The AUX jack, you will biligerently be told to get a USB DAC or otherwise you are an old man yelling at clouds.
Graphene and Motorola will work together by happy accident. Tell ya what though, if they make a GrapheneOS phone with 3.5mm, dual sim, microsd, and >no notch or hole punch< and I will buy it. I won't even care how much it costs. All the Xperias I've owned were among the most expensive phones on the market.
It's unlikely for the Razr line to support microsd since those are foldables, and flagships like the signature line generally tend not to, but nowhere on their hardware requirements list does it say that a potentially supported device cannot have a microsd card slot, thats just wrong. There is nothing about a memory slot that would make the phone less safe inherently, they already support USB drives, internal emmc memory isnt that much more crazy than that, right? I just think its super weird to be like preemtively mad at them for an imagined aversion to supporting hardware that doesnt exist. I get that the people involved with the project can be a little prickly when you ask them for advice about stuff, but what do you expect them to do here? They support the devices they do not out of some sort of adherence to a skewed model of security, they actually genuinely need the hardware to be able to do all of the things they ask for, which currently literally only the pixel line offers. If a manufacturer like Sony who tends to do aux, microsd slots and no holepunch cameras were to adapt to their hardware standards (https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices) there would likely be an effort by people to get these supported, its not the lack of will from the devs, its the lack of support from phone manufacturers that has kept the line of supported devices constrained to pixels.