There is a little bit of clumsiness in the way Google communicates with the public. What they really mean to say is: we need to be broken up.
J-Kuhn 44 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, its the "well, legally, we have to provide the source code, but we make it as painful and slow for you as we can without it becoming a blatant violation of the GPL."
RobotToaster 28 minutes ago [-]
Not quite, they could make you request it by post and send it on a stack of floppies.
steve_taylor 26 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like a cheap way to get my hands on some floppies.
afiori 24 minutes ago [-]
you are right a stack of printed qr codes is better
heftig 4 minutes ago [-]
No, that's too easily machine-read. Print it in a fancy calligraphy font or one with ambiguous characters.
newswasboring 3 minutes ago [-]
That's too convenient, cameras can read many qr codes at a time. Encode the binary on some punch cards.
mngnt 24 minutes ago [-]
> ...after making a request through Google Forms
This is even more ridiculous to me.
StrLght 39 minutes ago [-]
Do you really feel the need to start a witch-hunt? Shaming is one thing, but linking to personal profiles is simply unacceptable.
felooboolooomba 11 minutes ago [-]
This is absolutely not a witch-hunt. People in that position wield enormous power and take their paycheck and responsibility that comes with it. Linking to his professional linked in relation to his responsibility is nothing but professional.
blablablerg 33 minutes ago [-]
Why not, his linkedin profile is public and easily findable. This is not doxxing.
phatfish 8 minutes ago [-]
If you are worried about internet witch-hunts I'd stay away from the "creators" and content that Google platforms and makes money from on Youtube.
VulgarExigency 24 minutes ago [-]
anything but holding people accountable for their anti-consumer actions
StrLght 18 minutes ago [-]
Well, sounds like you have a rather weird definition of accountability. You do you.
brendoelfrendo 12 minutes ago [-]
He's the head of Android ecosystem; who else is accountable?
bflesch 14 minutes ago [-]
It's quite painful to resolve cognitive dissonance, so I understand the downvotes for your comment.
People are clever enough to reach high level corporate roles, but at the same time they're are too weak to emotionally process the consequences of their "work" on their human cash cows of below-average intelligence.
However with these kind of moral/ethical questions, it's really hard to draw the line.
Is working at Google and thereby facilitating the scamming of my grandmother worse than being an ordinary pickpocket or an lobbyist for big oil?
bflesch 20 minutes ago [-]
I think it's a stretch to call OP doing a "witch-hunt" here. That Android guy is a mini LinkedIn celebrity with 100k followers.
StrLght 19 minutes ago [-]
This doesn't excuse a message that literally reads like call to action.
bflesch 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm just thinking that someone who has 100k LinkedIn followers might be happy about any type of engagement, including nerdy rage bait.
owebmaster 17 minutes ago [-]
Public companies and their executives deserve the same treatment as the government and the politicians. It is completely fine to let them know that the people are upset with their decisions.
crest 4 minutes ago [-]
What would be wrong with a call to action addressed at someone likely in a position to stop this bullshit if he cared enough?
Hizonner 10 minutes ago [-]
You know what? Fuck that guy. And it's a public profile. LinkedIn is basically an advertising platform. If you are on it, you are putting yourself out there to the whole world, on purpose.
tfrancisl 1 hours ago [-]
I've never really understood why we chase Android-alikes on mobile platforms instead of trying to build on mainstream Linux. I know some folks in the nix community (nix-on-droid and other projects) have tried to bring us closer to this, but projects like Graphene seem to have a lot of traction.
inigyou 57 minutes ago [-]
All the existing apps are on Android and iOS. Graphene lets you run them. You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
* before replying snarkily that Android is Linux, please take a long walk off a short pier, thanks
t1234s 12 minutes ago [-]
Even Graphine is limited in what apps work properly compared to a normal google phone. You have to give up a lot in order to have privacy these days.
A pure linux non-android phone would be great however you wouldn't have access to properly working apps and would not be able to participate in modern society.
yjftsjthsd-h 42 minutes ago [-]
> All the existing apps are on Android and iOS. Graphene lets you run them.
We have waydroid for that.
> You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
Unless of course it uses those stupid integrity apis to block anything that isn't stock.
pteraspidomorph 12 minutes ago [-]
Graphene passes basic integrity, so most of them work. There is a list here:
What's stopping me from using a browser to log in to my bank? Assuming my bank is one of the ones that requires you to lock down sideloading (they aren't, but i know many are).
owaislone 27 minutes ago [-]
Nothing is stopping you. You're free to use a desktop web app that either doesn't work or is terribly slow or has limited features on a mobile web browser. I'd love it if all apps were PWAs but that is not the case.
georgeecollins 7 minutes ago [-]
My broker has a much more fully featured web app then it does on iOS or Android. You can do things in a browser that the phone apps will send you to a browser to do. BofA is just as good of a web app. Maybe people are just used to using their phones?
terribleperson 46 minutes ago [-]
I had to replace a credit card yesterday. Part of the default flow involves the call center sending a notification to your app.
When I told them my android version was too old, it took them twenty minutes to find out they could instead send a text message. That text message sends you to a photo-and-id verification service, but that's another issue.
Soon, there won't even be an alternative flow. There are a lot of places where there already isn't.
georgeecollins 3 minutes ago [-]
Are you sure? This seems like a forum with a lot of early adopters and a lot of late adopters still use browsers, email, text messages. Like, let me guess that your credit cars isn't capitol one. Not that it should be, but that would be more "normie".
Yeroc 51 minutes ago [-]
The websites don't have feature parity with the apps these days. Things like being able to deposit a cheque aren't available among other things.
Alpha3031 53 minutes ago [-]
Some banks are app only and/or build MFA functionality into their apps.
inigyou 52 minutes ago [-]
The 2FA code you need to get from the phone app to log in on a desktop. It isn't 2005 any more.
Aachen 44 minutes ago [-]
Apparently I live in 2005 then? I do 2FA with the same chip+pin method that I use to pay in the store. Works in any browser
patall 22 minutes ago [-]
Maybe that is possible in Germany. It is impossible here in Sweden.
Or in other words: of course you can have mobile bankid without a smartphone, just use a tablet computer ;)
patall 10 minutes ago [-]
@fsflover: and my mobile phone provider. And my insurance. And my eletricity provider. And my housing associations customer portal. Getting doctors appointments. Mortgage. Union. National retirement savings account. Some of these may have some alternative left, but far too many you will be left out.
Well, I can buy a train ticket without it, so I could still leave.
Consider switching your bank to one not forcing you into American megacorps.
stvltvs 45 minutes ago [-]
Highly location dependent. This is more true in Europe than in America.
tcfhgj 29 minutes ago [-]
my bank (and others) doesn't require the 2f to be a smartphone
jonathanstrange 42 minutes ago [-]
Right, 2FA. My bank wants me to log in to my phone app and then sends an SMS to the same phone to confirm the app transaction. It's super-secure.
saidinesh5 50 minutes ago [-]
The bank website typically needs the app to enable two factor authentication in a lot of places.
For eg. There's no browser based alternative to make UPI payments that i know of.
jambalaya8 41 minutes ago [-]
yeah, people suggesting Android is Linux are as annoying as people saying Digital Unix/Tru64 was OSF/1, or MacOS/OSX is now Darwin or OSF/1 or Gnu Hurd itself.
xnickb 45 minutes ago [-]
Some (European) banks/healthcare apps block GOS and require stock android. Just saying
protimewaster 16 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if practices will change any of there's ever a device that ships with GOS. Right now, many companies are happy to shrug off GOS, because they don't support "modified devices".
If any of the Motorola devices have GOS as a pre-installed option, now the companies don't have the excuse that the device is modified.
I'm guessing the companies will continue to be difficult, but it'll be amusing to watch, at least.
gunalx 25 minutes ago [-]
Yep. Had to change banks because of my old one suddenly dropping grapheme support by adding stupid attestation mechanics.
They surely must have gotten feedback from me and others because the next update it worked again. But I and probably others where already a lost customer.
matheusmoreira 6 minutes ago [-]
Because without Android I can't run WhatsApp and my bank's app on my phone, which promptly reduces it to a paperweight. I wish it wasn't so, but reality refuses to cooperate, so let's just be happy that we've got GrapheneOS which is so good it has its own column in Cellebrite's support matrix.
Gigachad 1 hours ago [-]
Because you need app support. Not even Microsoft could pull that off.
jorvi 50 minutes ago [-]
You mean Microsoft proactively kept shooting devs in the kneecaps?
Leaving phones behind on old incompatible OS versions 2 times in 3 years and switching app frameworks 3 times in 4 years does not a good app developer experience make.
Piled on top of that, Google became actively hostile to 3rd party developers building support for YouTube (and Gmail and Gmaps, but those had workarounds / alternatives).
Yokolos 20 minutes ago [-]
What a colossal disaster. I was a huge Windows Phone fan, so their yearly missteps were quite painful to watch. I was especially annoyed when my first gen WP wasn't going to get an upgrade to WP8. My HTC 7 Pro is still my favourite phone I've ever owned, but after that I finally gave up and switched to Android.
What about running the whole Android infrastructure, but on top of a non-Android Linux distro? And this, on top of a Android kernel (otherwise you won't have the drivers yo uneed)
The advantage being, we can manage packages using a regular Linux distro
saidinesh5 45 minutes ago [-]
A lot of "non Android Linux distributions" like sailfish os actually use a lot of Android infrastructure to keep working.
Drivers doesn't just mean the kernel. It's the user space binary blobs and services that need to talk to the kernel to enable the hardware.
Other than that there's waydroid, alien dalvik etc.. that run another Android instance in a container.
The thing is a lot of Android applications use safety net/other methods to make sure they only run on. "Approved"/stock hardware.
tfrancisl 52 minutes ago [-]
This is exactly where my head goes. There's nothing special about this hardware other than its small form factor. Sure, some desktop apps would likely want a different skin, but thats hardly limiting.
realusername 25 minutes ago [-]
You can't because a lot of apps check that the phone is controlled by Google with Play Integrity.
Google thought about this, don't worry. They learned their lesson after CyanogenMod tried to compete by offering an alternative. Non-Google Android are now dead except in China.
tcfhgj 28 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft could, but abandoned just as they gained traction in Europe
tfrancisl 55 minutes ago [-]
I dont think app support is all that important. Most apps are garbage as they are ime, so rebuilding from scratch, or using existing software that runs fine on linux, would keep me happy.
inigyou 57 minutes ago [-]
Doesn't windows run android apps natively now?
dzikimarian 48 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't. There was a plan, but Microsoft abandoned it.
AstralSerenity 22 minutes ago [-]
They did end up releasing Windows Subsystem for Android via the Windows Insider Program, which was enough for the OSS community to take it over after it was abandoned. It still exists and has worked quite well for my use case: https://github.com/MustardChef/WSABuilds
owaislone 28 minutes ago [-]
Apps. We'd love a completely different OS and it is viable on desktop because web almost does everything but on mobile you're basically locked out of very essential functionality like banking, transit, messaging etc. The compatibility layers aren't good enough (yet) to offer a seamless experience.
gunalx 24 minutes ago [-]
Also almost any native desktop app forced to mobile has broken ux.
QwenGlazer9000 50 minutes ago [-]
Everyone else mentioned the app support which is true, but for graphene specifically, they do not like desktop Linux at all because they don't like its security. They would much rather build on AOSP than desktop linux.
compass_copium 59 minutes ago [-]
GOS is broadly compatible with most phone use cases out of the box--chat, mail, browsing. A Google Play profile lets me use almost all apps (including my bank apps, but I understand that's not true for everyone).
In principle I agree about a Linux phone, but the gaps are much greater. I am also sympathetic to the GOS team's arguments that sandboxing on Android is better, and important on a device that allows control of essentially my whole life (2FA apps etc.)
otekengineering 13 minutes ago [-]
i recently put debian (mobian) on a pixel 3a and it's pretty solid, though i haven't tried it out as daily driver yet.
claude code makes stuff like that super accessible to do in your spare time. another example is installing debian on a synology 918+, there's no way i would've had the grit to do that without ai. it's open season for any gadget that's got a debug uart port.
dzonga 31 minutes ago [-]
once Huawei was forbidden from using Android - that's when people ie western markets & the world at large should've shifted. look at HarmonyOS.
in China - there's no google apps available on their 'android' versions.
their platforms are already performant and fluid - so people should build on that.
RobotToaster 21 minutes ago [-]
It's a shame that the newest version of harmonyOS isn't open source.
throwIeoeor 48 minutes ago [-]
Because Android is miles ahead in terms of security, permission management, app separation, power management, privacy...
Linux crowd can not even agree on compositor, and if systemd or sudo is a good idea.
Cider9986 1 hours ago [-]
AOSP has way better security and therefore privacy than desktop linux.
geremiiah 57 minutes ago [-]
I don't either. Don't we have free market capitalism? Why don't I have a Linux phone? And why do I need to worry that my government and banking apps won't work if I get a Linux phone?
rcxdude 52 minutes ago [-]
Because in a free market you can't compel someone to support your niche platform, nor even compel someone to create the niche platform you want. The market for a Linux phone is tiny because there's almost no reason for the average phone user to prefer it over android.
fsflover 11 minutes ago [-]
> you can't compel someone to support your niche platform
You mean, a browser?
post-it 49 minutes ago [-]
Because you don't have capital.
attila-lendvai 40 minutes ago [-]
no, we don't, far from it.
(which doesn't mean there's not a lot farther from here).
realusername 23 minutes ago [-]
> Don't we have free market capitalism?
Not in the mobile world no, it's not a free market by any means
kotaKat 36 minutes ago [-]
All we had to do was build PWAs instead of native apps and instead all we did was build PWAs into bad browser wrappers.
StrLght 51 minutes ago [-]
AOSP is Linux.
If by "mainstream" Linux you mean something like postmarketOS, I'd suggest you look up reviews or give it a try yourself. A few months ago, people were reporting a hard time placing a call, taking a photo, etc.
Cider9986 1 hours ago [-]
Specific devices:
>At the time of writing, within ~12 months, in 2027, the 2027 Signature, Razr fold, and Razr flip will meet the hardware security requirements and should have official GrapheneOS support.
Motorola is currently porting GrapheneOS to their devices.
A year ago or so, the ThinkPhone 23 (Snapdragon 8, 2023, a weird "flagship") was available for 229€ new on various retail stores. The phone also supports Mobian/PostmarketOS and the bootloader is unlockable with no adverse effects.
Out of nowhere, it received (along with other older phones) updates up to Android 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "sudden" update was just a side effect of Motorola preparing for Graphene to be released on these older phones.
ledoge 52 minutes ago [-]
No current Motorola phones meet their hardware requirements. 2027 flagship models will be the first to be supported.
I bought the Moto signature a month ago , I already assumed it prolly won't support graphene, since some of the previous replies on X indicate that the graphene team requires full hardware compliance with their requirements, and the Signature apparently is not compliant yet.
Anyway I ended up buying a really good smartphone.. just not a graphene supported haha :(
Also this is really great collab from moto & graphene as more vendors will officially recognize Graphene as legit OS (legel/OEM is different concept). I heard month ago Volkswagen banned graphene, hopefully we we will see moving things in opposite direction...
hypfer 1 hours ago [-]
They didn't "ban" them, but they did enable some attestation feature that effectively "bans" anything that isn't Google Android.
Which still makes you wonder why Volkswagen is so keen on alienating what little is left of their customer base with completely stupid security theater.
inigyou 56 minutes ago [-]
Because the EU is run by lawyers and lawsuits. They probably decided there was a risk of being sued for insufficient security if they didn't enable every security feature, and they considered it as zero impact to customers because nobody uses graphene.
hypfer 50 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but that is still very confusing to me, because you're not paying other people money so that they just follow incentives without thinking, vision or backbone.
The whole idea of buying something is giving people money for their (assumed correct) judgement, which then leads to desired artifacts downstream.
inigyou 48 minutes ago [-]
No, the idea of buying is that you get something in exchange for money.
hypfer 47 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but not any something, but a specific something shaped by taste.
tsss 28 minutes ago [-]
The people at VW don't think about the customer. They are essentially bureaucrats who only live to expand their personal fiefdom in the bureaucracy. I bet that many in the IT-security team would insist that their team doesn't have customers.
jauntywundrkind 2 minutes ago [-]
Anyone want to place bets in whether this will be an unlockable bootloader, or some GrapheneOS only install path?
Sure would be nice to have phones that can be rooted, or OS replaced. I've been hopeful this would perhaps enable that, but I fret my excitement may be premature.
rh94 34 minutes ago [-]
Anyone has any idea if this changes current situation with nfc payments? Currently many banking apps do not work, and google pay is just unavailable, to my understanding it was related to secure chip on phone - as graphene wasnt "stocked" android os approved by google, i dearly hope this chnages with motorola
shaky-carrousel 33 minutes ago [-]
I have a GrapheneOS phone and I pay with Curve.
Kenji 7 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
closingreunion 26 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if this could enable a samsung dex-style desktop mode
exceptione 2 hours ago [-]
"The initial devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027. The initial devices will be flagships so they'll be higher end hardware than Pixels at a higher price. Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships."
tortasaur 2 hours ago [-]
I don't doubt they will cost more than the Pixel line, but I'm somewhat skeptical that the hardware will be higher quality. Perhaps my idea of what Motorola is capable of is outdated.
ai-astrologer 2 hours ago [-]
Google’s Tensor chipset is weak by modern standards, and Motorola is taking the strongest off the shelf processors from the best mobile chip designer (Qualcomm).
scrlk 2 hours ago [-]
Plus the Samsung Exynos modems that they were using from Pixel 6-10 (11 switched to Mediatek) had worse power efficiency and performance vs Qualcomm.
IAmBroom 2 hours ago [-]
So...what's your comment? Opposing Motorola's comment, in that they already buy the best? Supporting, in that their standards haven't dropped?
kvuj 2 hours ago [-]
Realistically, most smartphones are made by the same ODMs. Since they don't make their own screens, shells, CPUs or modems, the only thing being set apart is the software.
Aachen 35 minutes ago [-]
Except that it's all Android?
I'm not selecting which phone I buy on whether the stock OS comes with lockscreen shortcuts. At best, a software requirement someone might use as a deciding factor is OS support and bootloader unlock. The real differences are in hardware: size, battery life, chipset speed, RAM or other local model enablers, picture quality (this part also depends on good software to be fair), included accessories, satellite connectivity hardware, headphone jack, gimmicks like UWB or FM radio support, whether it's a flip/fold phone, storage space / sdcard support... all hardware differences
Retr0id 1 hours ago [-]
> the updates and security features aren't as good [on lower end Motorola devices]
Having looked at some low-end Motorolas recently, this is accurate (albeit an understatement!)
2 hours ago [-]
LoganDark 2 hours ago [-]
If they only "should" be available in 2027, that sounds like late 2027.
Cider9986 55 minutes ago [-]
Iirc they said they will be able to release Android updates like Android 17, for example, at the time it's released. This year it was a few weeks until it came to stable.
This somewhat indicates to me it will be available when the Motorolas release which should be on their regular release patterns. That's been May for the 2025 and 2026 Razrs.
mrdoe 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
StrLght 57 minutes ago [-]
Because it doesn't spam you with dickovers suggesting you log in when you open the link. But you're not really interested in this, are you?
1 hours ago [-]
afavour 1 hours ago [-]
Tell me you're in a bubble without telling me you're in a bubble.
(Mastodon is, of course, also a bubble. But largely by design. A lot of more tech-leaning folks decamped there any stayed there)
EDIT: ah, OP is just a troll that only ever seems to comment when someone mentions a short form social media network that isn't Twitter.
nunobrito 2 hours ago [-]
An Android distro with dubious funding that only runs on high-end hardware from NSA suppliers.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll keep using Lineage on any cheap smartphone under the sun.
Retr0id 1 hours ago [-]
Security-through-obscurity (i.e. using a custom ROM on a lesser-known device) does have some upsides, since you're less likely to be compatible with off-the-shelf exploits. But this is much less true now that LLMs exist, and anyone who can afford the tokens can port any exploit to any and all vulnerable devices.
Who maintains the kernel+driver trees used by the LineageOS port you're using? And what's the modem's security like?
jambalaya8 29 minutes ago [-]
Just gave me something else to be annoyed about today ("anyone who can afford the tokens can port any exploit to any and all vulnerable devices.")
Not sure that is exactly correct yet but guessing not long til it would be. Bleh.
Retr0id 21 minutes ago [-]
I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is true already (Well, it's true for the specific exploit/device pairings I've tried, I've not tried to construct an omni-exploit)
Are you also one of those people who think AES is backdoored because the NSA recommends it?
dwedge 1 hours ago [-]
A member of the NSA also provided the ECDSA P-256 curve seeds but totally can't remember why
Alpha3031 20 minutes ago [-]
It would be funny if it actually was intentionally selected, but for DES-like instead of Dual EC reasons, and they're just too embarrassed by Dual EC to admit it.
nekusar 1 hours ago [-]
Ridiculous comment.
This is a known adversary and highly skilled opponent org who has even attacked senators in charge of their appropriations. I find anything they say or do to be highly suspect and default guilt until cleared.
And backdoor isn't the same as mathematical vulnerabilities. I can easily see them pushing an encryption that would give them 10 or 20 bits complexity reduction.
So no, I don't trust AES either.
inigyou 54 minutes ago [-]
Hitler ate sugar so I don't.
unethical_ban 60 minutes ago [-]
Since we're speculating here, I hope whatever phone you have allows you to lock the bootloader (My oneplus doesn't after installing LineageOS). And certainly NSA has no way of infiltrating AOSP or less hardened chipsets.
m00dy 2 hours ago [-]
so you think whole thing is a honeypot ? I mean you're not alone.
asf1279 1 hours ago [-]
I found the promotion of GrapheneOS by Richard Medhurst on X after his phone was snatched and then allegedly rebooted (within 18 hours?!) very weird.
He is adamant that the state could not read his phone but all he has is their assurance that they could not read his phone. Of course they'll say they couldn't read it if they are after his contacts and network rather than after him.
(You could equally say that I am a deep state shill who is trying to discourage people from GrapheneOS. That is also possible, but I'd really prefer something like LinuxFromScratch for phones.)
officeplant 47 minutes ago [-]
>Of course they'll say they couldn't read it if they are after his contacts and network rather than after him.
From what a friend working in a state police cyber crime office says, "Cellebrite can't currently, unless its a Graphene OS user that's far behind on updates"
They also said iOS is equally safe unless you're an update or two behind.
Cider9986 40 minutes ago [-]
GrapheneOS seems to do better than anything else at preventing AFU exploitation based on the leaks.
iOS will be quite good BFU but on iOS the auto reboot (brings phone to BFU after 72 hours without unlocking) is, well, 72 hours. On GrapheneOS it's 18 by default and can be as low as 10 minutes.
Good luck on that, Cellebrite :)
dwedge 1 hours ago [-]
I ran Graphene without a Sim card for 2 months and as soon as I added a Sim card (with of course, difficult to vet networking) the phone is always hot and the battery life reduced by half. Might be a coincidence but also made me rethink how I feel about Graphene
inigyou 53 minutes ago [-]
How many apps have network permission? Did you install anything from the play store at all? As a rule of thumb, the play store and everything on it is spyware.
I had the opposite experience. I was pleasantly surprised by the battery life you can get when your phone isn't full of shitware apps and even when you do install shitware, the OS helps you confine it.
dwedge 25 minutes ago [-]
It happens in every profile. Only one has the play store and is rarely used, doesn't run in the background
Cider9986 39 minutes ago [-]
You can ask on the forum for troubleshooting. Pixels just have bad performance unfortunately.
What Pixel do you have? Modem quality varies and signal strength could play a role. My 9a gets hot in areas with poor reception but is fine at work where I get over a gigabit down.
dwedge 1 hours ago [-]
9. I left it with 70% battery for 5 hours and came home and it was red hot and dead. In a city with no reception issues.
zache6 1 hours ago [-]
That's strange. Have you tried the stock OS and had the same problem?
unethical_ban 1 hours ago [-]
Did you check the forums or research for any benign reason that could happen? I've run Graphene on Pixel 9 and 10 and never had such battery issues.
Let this sink in. Google, this small tech company (correct me if I'm wrong), is peddling source code via tarballs on google drive.
Something the head of the Android ecosystem, Sameer Samat could be proud of on his CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameersamat
People are clever enough to reach high level corporate roles, but at the same time they're are too weak to emotionally process the consequences of their "work" on their human cash cows of below-average intelligence.
However with these kind of moral/ethical questions, it's really hard to draw the line.
Is working at Google and thereby facilitating the scamming of my grandmother worse than being an ordinary pickpocket or an lobbyist for big oil?
* before replying snarkily that Android is Linux, please take a long walk off a short pier, thanks
A pure linux non-android phone would be great however you wouldn't have access to properly working apps and would not be able to participate in modern society.
We have waydroid for that.
> You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
Unless of course it uses those stupid integrity apis to block anything that isn't stock.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Soon, there won't even be an alternative flow. There are a lot of places where there already isn't.
Or in other words: of course you can have mobile bankid without a smartphone, just use a tablet computer ;)
Well, I can buy a train ticket without it, so I could still leave.
Consider switching your bank to one not forcing you into American megacorps.
For eg. There's no browser based alternative to make UPI payments that i know of.
If any of the Motorola devices have GOS as a pre-installed option, now the companies don't have the excuse that the device is modified.
I'm guessing the companies will continue to be difficult, but it'll be amusing to watch, at least.
They surely must have gotten feedback from me and others because the next update it worked again. But I and probably others where already a lost customer.
Leaving phones behind on old incompatible OS versions 2 times in 3 years and switching app frameworks 3 times in 4 years does not a good app developer experience make.
Piled on top of that, Google became actively hostile to 3rd party developers building support for YouTube (and Gmail and Gmaps, but those had workarounds / alternatives).
The advantage being, we can manage packages using a regular Linux distro
Drivers doesn't just mean the kernel. It's the user space binary blobs and services that need to talk to the kernel to enable the hardware.
Other than that there's waydroid, alien dalvik etc.. that run another Android instance in a container.
The thing is a lot of Android applications use safety net/other methods to make sure they only run on. "Approved"/stock hardware.
Google thought about this, don't worry. They learned their lesson after CyanogenMod tried to compete by offering an alternative. Non-Google Android are now dead except in China.
In principle I agree about a Linux phone, but the gaps are much greater. I am also sympathetic to the GOS team's arguments that sandboxing on Android is better, and important on a device that allows control of essentially my whole life (2FA apps etc.)
claude code makes stuff like that super accessible to do in your spare time. another example is installing debian on a synology 918+, there's no way i would've had the grit to do that without ai. it's open season for any gadget that's got a debug uart port.
in China - there's no google apps available on their 'android' versions.
their platforms are already performant and fluid - so people should build on that.
Linux crowd can not even agree on compositor, and if systemd or sudo is a good idea.
You mean, a browser?
(which doesn't mean there's not a lot farther from here).
Not in the mobile world no, it's not a free market by any means
If by "mainstream" Linux you mean something like postmarketOS, I'd suggest you look up reviews or give it a try yourself. A few months ago, people were reporting a hard time placing a call, taking a photo, etc.
>At the time of writing, within ~12 months, in 2027, the 2027 Signature, Razr fold, and Razr flip will meet the hardware security requirements and should have official GrapheneOS support. Motorola is currently porting GrapheneOS to their devices.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49038982
Out of nowhere, it received (along with other older phones) updates up to Android 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "sudden" update was just a side effect of Motorola preparing for Graphene to be released on these older phones.
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2058730195041812839
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2064124713501163912
https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-thinkphone-hands-on-...
Anyway I ended up buying a really good smartphone.. just not a graphene supported haha :(
Also this is really great collab from moto & graphene as more vendors will officially recognize Graphene as legit OS (legel/OEM is different concept). I heard month ago Volkswagen banned graphene, hopefully we we will see moving things in opposite direction...
Which still makes you wonder why Volkswagen is so keen on alienating what little is left of their customer base with completely stupid security theater.
The whole idea of buying something is giving people money for their (assumed correct) judgement, which then leads to desired artifacts downstream.
Sure would be nice to have phones that can be rooted, or OS replaced. I've been hopeful this would perhaps enable that, but I fret my excitement may be premature.
I'm not selecting which phone I buy on whether the stock OS comes with lockscreen shortcuts. At best, a software requirement someone might use as a deciding factor is OS support and bootloader unlock. The real differences are in hardware: size, battery life, chipset speed, RAM or other local model enablers, picture quality (this part also depends on good software to be fair), included accessories, satellite connectivity hardware, headphone jack, gimmicks like UWB or FM radio support, whether it's a flip/fold phone, storage space / sdcard support... all hardware differences
Having looked at some low-end Motorolas recently, this is accurate (albeit an understatement!)
This somewhat indicates to me it will be available when the Motorolas release which should be on their regular release patterns. That's been May for the 2025 and 2026 Razrs.
(Mastodon is, of course, also a bubble. But largely by design. A lot of more tech-leaning folks decamped there any stayed there)
EDIT: ah, OP is just a troll that only ever seems to comment when someone mentions a short form social media network that isn't Twitter.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll keep using Lineage on any cheap smartphone under the sun.
Who maintains the kernel+driver trees used by the LineageOS port you're using? And what's the modem's security like?
Not sure that is exactly correct yet but guessing not long til it would be. Bleh.
Completely random public example: https://github.com/BuSung-dev/Root-My-Galaxy-Payloads/pull/1... (where GLM 5.2 is credited with the port) (Check out the other PRs in that repo for other similar examples)
This is a known adversary and highly skilled opponent org who has even attacked senators in charge of their appropriations. I find anything they say or do to be highly suspect and default guilt until cleared.
And backdoor isn't the same as mathematical vulnerabilities. I can easily see them pushing an encryption that would give them 10 or 20 bits complexity reduction.
So no, I don't trust AES either.
He is adamant that the state could not read his phone but all he has is their assurance that they could not read his phone. Of course they'll say they couldn't read it if they are after his contacts and network rather than after him.
(You could equally say that I am a deep state shill who is trying to discourage people from GrapheneOS. That is also possible, but I'd really prefer something like LinuxFromScratch for phones.)
From what a friend working in a state police cyber crime office says, "Cellebrite can't currently, unless its a Graphene OS user that's far behind on updates"
They also said iOS is equally safe unless you're an update or two behind.
iOS will be quite good BFU but on iOS the auto reboot (brings phone to BFU after 72 hours without unlocking) is, well, 72 hours. On GrapheneOS it's 18 by default and can be as low as 10 minutes.
Good luck on that, Cellebrite :)
I had the opposite experience. I was pleasantly surprised by the battery life you can get when your phone isn't full of shitware apps and even when you do install shitware, the OS helps you confine it.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org