Comment by Forgeties79
12 hours ago
> Google phones are surprisingly open and work well. Google takes a pro-user stance here that is extremely rare in the ecosystem, so why not support this product?
Because they will pull the rug here one day too. Why on earth should we trust them to keep this approach to their hardware?
The vast majority of smartphones don't allow installing another OS. Multiple Android OEMs have been restricting or fully phasing out supporting it. Among devices which do permit it, none have provided the hardware-based security features or driver/firmware update support needed by GrapheneOS beyond Pixels. Our hardware requirements are listed here: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
GrapheneOS has an official OEM partnership with Motorola Mobility and a subset of their next generation devices will be provided official support for GrapheneOS. They'll be providing us with a more minimal form of hardware support code close to the standard Qualcomm and other vendor code, so it will be cleaner than Pixels. Our partnership with Motorola is non-exclusive so we're free to support other devices with the help of other OEMs interested in meeting our requirements, but no other OEM is working with us yet.
We can't use devices with an end-of-life Linux kernel, no firmware updates, no driver/HAL updates and no support for important hardware-based security features we use. Several devices of a lot of the way towards providing what we need and several next generation Motorola devices will provide it. Other OEMs can do the same.
[flagged]
> copy your response
To avoid writing the same thing a 2nd time without forcing people to use a link and lose their place where they were reading.
> barely answers the question
We fully answered the question by explaining why we currently have to use Pixels and why we won't depend on Pixels anymore in less than a year. You're ignoring our explanation of our Motorola Mobility partnership. It explains why we need the partnership instead of adding support for devices without it too.
> But you answered with your text about how other smartphones don't have important "hardware-based security features".
No, we explained most devices don't even allow another OS and many of the ones which do cripple functionality including security so we can't support those. We also explained we need firmware, kernel, driver and HAL updates for a reasonable amount of time. We need the hardware-based security features we use to implement the core protections provided against attacks. It wouldn't be GrapheneOS without solid protection against remote attacks, apps and data extraction. We linked to https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices which lists out what we need. It's strange to ignore updates or put scare quotes around something we provided a detailed explanation for in the linked content.
You can't trust Google not to pull the rug. That's a big part of the reason GrapheneOS now has a deal with Motorola for the next generation of devices.
Don’t defeat yourself in a one person battle.
After all, it might rain tomorrow - but you should still go outside today.
My stance isn’t “give up.” My point is we should explore and expand non-Google alternatives for hardware.
they are already pulling the rug. Google took months to publish devicetrees for the Pixel 10. they've signaled (iirc) that they'll no longer make the Pixel line capable of running AOSP. the reason they even did at first was to make Pixel a reference implementation that vendors could use to port Android, but now they've announced a switch to an emulated device for that purpose.