Unlocking the pixels also requires an internet connection, to determine whether the device has any restrictions on it.
From the grapheneos installation instructions:
"""
On device model variants (SKUs) which support being sold as locked devices by carriers, enabling OEM unlocking requires internet access so that the stock OS can check if the device was sold as locked by a carrier.
"""
This reads shockingly bad, but most of that won't apply to the new devices.
Like, it will be Qualcomm, it will support unlockng, relocking, custom keys and will not have a secret debug key - otherwise there simply would be absolutely no deal with GoS.
IMO these new flagships will not be fully impacted by these issues (if at all), considering how much of the partnership initiative started* at Motorola.
It was likely them providing the GOS team with source code of some of the most critical patches, when Google withheld it for months waiting for Samsung to release patches.
Why? I guess to get the bragging rights to have the most secure android handsets in the world, to improve their own codebase (GOS pushed a lot of patches upstream and perhaps the hardware).
I'm cautiously optimistic - given how allergic the team are to the notion of the enforced compliance imposed by Google, I think it's likely these new flagships will be automatically unlocked in the same way pixels are.
I never liked the idea of giving money to buy a Google phone so to get away from…Google. I think the irony is strong in this case so GrapheneOS was never that much appealing to me.
As for Motorola, I also wasn’t crazy excited about the deal but I was hoping for a cheap phone with GrapheneOS. It seems that it will be only available on flagship phones. Which means paying more for having a flagship with better security and privacy but some basic broken services (It’s not 2002 any more, I need to do contactless payments with my phone. And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault, when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is).
And at this very point, I pretty much lost interest on anything GrapheneOS has to offer. Put GrapheneOS on a $200-$300 phone and then we'll talk
Speaking of contactless payments on the phone, can someone explain to me why people use this? Literally, why do you need it? Is it because you have accounts for which you don't have a card? If an account has a card, a card is a superior technology to make payments - doesn't run out of battery, the phone does. Or is it because you think that carrying a card with you is a logistical challenge? Or something else?
Last time a custom Android distro (CyanogenMod) made a deal with a manufacturer, everything went belly-up. I have little faith that the same won't happen again. :-(
> Who did CyanogenMod partner with and what happened?
They partnered with OnePlus globally, then signed an exclusive deal with Micromax in India, catching OnePlus by surprise as they had to now stop selling their CyanogenMod-loaded phones in India.
GrapheneOS gives you a very secure device with some neat features that make it basically impossible to get to the data w/o the right pin (so we believe). To make that happen it uses some hardware features that make this possible (so the developers and we believe). You get a highly secure phone with an option to destroy the data on it by handing out the wrong pin. So if you don’t want the customs officer to see that shady stuff on your phone, this one is for you.
And the average Joe? Is that what he wants? Needs? Or is he rather looking for a phone that gives him back control over his data? No Google, no manufacturer spying on him. No option to remotely disable it, no microphone that you cannot trust to not be turned on anyway and so on? If that is what the average Joe is looking for then he doesn’t need GrapheneOS. All it takes is a custom ROM that removes these services.
However, I don’t really see the win here. Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
The way I look at this Joe is just moving problems around, not solving a single one, creating ten new ones.
Besides that: If anyone really wants to change anything ROMs need to be made for $100 phones, but that’s not an option because the manufacturer won’t make the $$ back via the data so the phone needs to be more expensive in the first place.
Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
but that either applies to GrapheneOS as well, or there actually are trustworthy alternative ROMs out there. GrapheneOS being one, /e/OS being another, for example.
there are more that i am less familiar with, so i can't talk about them, but /e/OS is run by Gael Duval, who has been running a Linux distribution before that for many years. and even tough there are criticisms against /e/OS including the claim that it overstates its security and supposedly hasn't removed all google connections, i will trust Gael based on his reputation far above anything coming from google. even more so compared to other OEMs who stuff their android versions with bad apps that you can't remove.
so no, i am not trusting a random guy on the internet. i am trusting someone with a known reputation, someone who i have actually exchanged private messages with, someone who i could even meet in person if i were to come to the right conference.
I'll start caring once this arrives on sub $200 phones and only once my current sub $200 phone completely breaks down. Not that I have to pay - my company buys my phone either way. But for some reason you need to go sub $200 to get dual sim slots, an sd card slot and a headphone jack. And then your phone isn't even remarkably different from the expensive ones. Maybe the camera is a bit worse and that's it. They're all the same large bricks these days.
If you want to stick with a pixel maybe skip the Pixel 11 if you want to run GrapheneOS. There is some question whether P11 will actually support the MTE cpu extension which GOS requires for all devices it supports.
> ... There's a decent chance usable MTE will ship in Android 17 QPR2 and we'll be able to support it. We can't promise that since it's not up to us and no information has been provided about why MTE was unavailable at launch and still disabled in 17 QPR2 Beta 4.
- The Motorola flagship costs too much and he's worried it will no longer run on the Pixel 7a that he got for $200 or that there will be any cheap options.
But they said already there would be cheap options, and Motorola has a Moto G series that it would likely use.
- Worried about other stuff that existing Motorola Android phones do, like privacy violations.
...that definitely won't be in GrapheneOS, they wouldn't allow it.
- More things Motorola does as a company that are bad.
The current option being Google means, despite that, Motorola is probably better.
GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check. They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
>GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check.
Using "failing the vibe check" as your first argument fails my vibe check.
>They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
1. If you're talking about their post defending the use of AI in development, and that the reviews are still done by humans, that hardly seems "very AI obsessed" to me, unless you subscribe to r/antiai or something.
2. How is the use AI "the antithesis of their platform"?
I'm nervous because of how articulate, reasonable and numerous grapheneos's posts have been on HN recently. From experience it has a smell of getting a very good corporate comms person on staff, and that's a sign that a rugpull might be in the works. They shouldn't be able to afford somebody that good.
But of course, that's a can't win catch-22 situation; the comments really are very good and reassuring. I'd feel a lot better if they were partnering with 10 different Chinese manufacturers than Motorola, though.
edit: I want to see Graphene on $100 phones. That this is not a target is concerning, because if the average person had a choice between a $100 phone that had the guarantees of GrapheneOS and a $100 phone that had anything else on it, they would choose GrapheneOS. They'd be a household name in seconds; it would take government action to stop them from being the default and changing the expectations of the entire environment.
Youtube page, which has auto-generated transcripts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLEkUGuw374
tl;dw:
1. it's expensive
2. requires online connection and account to unlock bootloader
3. lenovo (the parent company) had shady behavior in the past
Unlocking the pixels also requires an internet connection, to determine whether the device has any restrictions on it.
From the grapheneos installation instructions: """ On device model variants (SKUs) which support being sold as locked devices by carriers, enabling OEM unlocking requires internet access so that the stock OS can check if the device was sold as locked by a carrier. """
https://grapheneos.org/install/web#enabling-oem-unlocking
connection != account
You can do the Pixel unlocking whilst driving by the random McD.
I'm quite surprised it flies with the team.
>connection != account
That's not much of a distinction considering that it's trivial to create an email/account (without a phone number, even!) with fake information.
That's a massive difference to me (you rightly called me out on that one).
One is 5 seconds on wifi, second is grumbly attempts to create throwaway email to create the throwaway account.
I agree in principle but disagree because I hate unnecessary friction.
> 2. requires online connection and account to unlock bootloader
That's horrible. I'm surprised the GOS team is okay with this.
Is it a fact that when these devices come the process to unlock will remain the same?
Needing an account to unlock the bootloader is a real bummer. I can live with issues 1 and 3. Thanks for the notes.
Regarding 2. they seem to refer to this: https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame...
This reads shockingly bad, but most of that won't apply to the new devices.
Like, it will be Qualcomm, it will support unlockng, relocking, custom keys and will not have a secret debug key - otherwise there simply would be absolutely no deal with GoS.
IMO these new flagships will not be fully impacted by these issues (if at all), considering how much of the partnership initiative started* at Motorola.
It was likely them providing the GOS team with source code of some of the most critical patches, when Google withheld it for months waiting for Samsung to release patches.
Why? I guess to get the bragging rights to have the most secure android handsets in the world, to improve their own codebase (GOS pushed a lot of patches upstream and perhaps the hardware).
I'm cautiously optimistic - given how allergic the team are to the notion of the enforced compliance imposed by Google, I think it's likely these new flagships will be automatically unlocked in the same way pixels are.
Then buy Pixel A series, it has none of those cons. And I'd say at that price point, Tensor isn't even a bad processor.
Alright number 2 just convinced me I'll never use grapheneos.
1. So what?
2. This sucks but is basically required to protect against phone theft (though phones could be shipped in an unlock-once state, until you set them up)
3. So what? What company has never been shady?
I never liked the idea of giving money to buy a Google phone so to get away from…Google. I think the irony is strong in this case so GrapheneOS was never that much appealing to me.
As for Motorola, I also wasn’t crazy excited about the deal but I was hoping for a cheap phone with GrapheneOS. It seems that it will be only available on flagship phones. Which means paying more for having a flagship with better security and privacy but some basic broken services (It’s not 2002 any more, I need to do contactless payments with my phone. And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault, when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is).
And at this very point, I pretty much lost interest on anything GrapheneOS has to offer. Put GrapheneOS on a $200-$300 phone and then we'll talk
fwiw, they have said they are only starting with the flagships, and work down from there: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2037927786803765328#m
I think I saw another post some other time that it was because only particular snapdragon chips support the features they need?
> when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is
It’s just yours.
https://swappa.com/catalog/family/google-pixel
Speaking of contactless payments on the phone, can someone explain to me why people use this? Literally, why do you need it? Is it because you have accounts for which you don't have a card? If an account has a card, a card is a superior technology to make payments - doesn't run out of battery, the phone does. Or is it because you think that carrying a card with you is a logistical challenge? Or something else?
I don't carry a wallet, so I keep my cards on phone.
Last time a custom Android distro (CyanogenMod) made a deal with a manufacturer, everything went belly-up. I have little faith that the same won't happen again. :-(
I wasnt around when this happened. Who did CyanogenMod partner with and what happened?
> Who did CyanogenMod partner with and what happened?
They partnered with OnePlus globally, then signed an exclusive deal with Micromax in India, catching OnePlus by surprise as they had to now stop selling their CyanogenMod-loaded phones in India.
There are multiple things in play here:
GrapheneOS gives you a very secure device with some neat features that make it basically impossible to get to the data w/o the right pin (so we believe). To make that happen it uses some hardware features that make this possible (so the developers and we believe). You get a highly secure phone with an option to destroy the data on it by handing out the wrong pin. So if you don’t want the customs officer to see that shady stuff on your phone, this one is for you.
And the average Joe? Is that what he wants? Needs? Or is he rather looking for a phone that gives him back control over his data? No Google, no manufacturer spying on him. No option to remotely disable it, no microphone that you cannot trust to not be turned on anyway and so on? If that is what the average Joe is looking for then he doesn’t need GrapheneOS. All it takes is a custom ROM that removes these services.
However, I don’t really see the win here. Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
The way I look at this Joe is just moving problems around, not solving a single one, creating ten new ones.
Besides that: If anyone really wants to change anything ROMs need to be made for $100 phones, but that’s not an option because the manufacturer won’t make the $$ back via the data so the phone needs to be more expensive in the first place.
slaps Nokia 6150
Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
but that either applies to GrapheneOS as well, or there actually are trustworthy alternative ROMs out there. GrapheneOS being one, /e/OS being another, for example.
there are more that i am less familiar with, so i can't talk about them, but /e/OS is run by Gael Duval, who has been running a Linux distribution before that for many years. and even tough there are criticisms against /e/OS including the claim that it overstates its security and supposedly hasn't removed all google connections, i will trust Gael based on his reputation far above anything coming from google. even more so compared to other OEMs who stuff their android versions with bad apps that you can't remove.
so no, i am not trusting a random guy on the internet. i am trusting someone with a known reputation, someone who i have actually exchanged private messages with, someone who i could even meet in person if i were to come to the right conference.
I'll start caring once this arrives on sub $200 phones and only once my current sub $200 phone completely breaks down. Not that I have to pay - my company buys my phone either way. But for some reason you need to go sub $200 to get dual sim slots, an sd card slot and a headphone jack. And then your phone isn't even remarkably different from the expensive ones. Maybe the camera is a bit worse and that's it. They're all the same large bricks these days.
If you want to stick with a pixel maybe skip the Pixel 11 if you want to run GrapheneOS. There is some question whether P11 will actually support the MTE cpu extension which GOS requires for all devices it supports.
Last thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536384
Latest tweet by @GrapheneOS on the topic (today): https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2097219485937660272?s=20
> ... There's a decent chance usable MTE will ship in Android 17 QPR2 and we'll be able to support it. We can't promise that since it's not up to us and no information has been provided about why MTE was unavailable at launch and still disabled in 17 QPR2 Beta 4.
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2097219485937660272#m
Summary:
- The Motorola flagship costs too much and he's worried it will no longer run on the Pixel 7a that he got for $200 or that there will be any cheap options.
But they said already there would be cheap options, and Motorola has a Moto G series that it would likely use.
- Worried about other stuff that existing Motorola Android phones do, like privacy violations.
...that definitely won't be in GrapheneOS, they wouldn't allow it.
- More things Motorola does as a company that are bad.
The current option being Google means, despite that, Motorola is probably better.
All I have todo is to enter my pin and the bootloader is unlocked. Dunno what the guy is doing.
version / phone model differences ?
Motorola Moto G54 5G.
GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check. They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
I would recommend being very careful with them.
>GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check.
Using "failing the vibe check" as your first argument fails my vibe check.
>They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
1. If you're talking about their post defending the use of AI in development, and that the reviews are still done by humans, that hardly seems "very AI obsessed" to me, unless you subscribe to r/antiai or something.
2. How is the use AI "the antithesis of their platform"?
They are not AI obsessed lol. They recognize the benefits and the drawbacks and use it responsibly.
It is kind of funny, because they're partly up in arms because the Mastodon thread linked to your slightly ambiguous comment.
People need to chill lol.
> They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
Benefits are massive if you have the discipline to stay as master and don't let AI overtake everything and make you lazy.
Which things you'd say are very suspicious?
And "they are suddenly very AI obsessed" sounds so alarming - can you point to something I could read?
[dead]
I'm nervous because of how articulate, reasonable and numerous grapheneos's posts have been on HN recently. From experience it has a smell of getting a very good corporate comms person on staff, and that's a sign that a rugpull might be in the works. They shouldn't be able to afford somebody that good.
But of course, that's a can't win catch-22 situation; the comments really are very good and reassuring. I'd feel a lot better if they were partnering with 10 different Chinese manufacturers than Motorola, though.
edit: I want to see Graphene on $100 phones. That this is not a target is concerning, because if the average person had a choice between a $100 phone that had the guarantees of GrapheneOS and a $100 phone that had anything else on it, they would choose GrapheneOS. They'd be a household name in seconds; it would take government action to stop them from being the default and changing the expectations of the entire environment.
> I'm nervous because of how articulate, reasonable and numerous grapheneos's posts have been on HN recently
Let me reassure you?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591796
You won't see GOS on the $100 ever, because they don't contain the hardware GOS relies on.
It simply won't work.
Of course you can fork it, adapt and run the less safe clone, but the official GOS won't.
...unless you accept refurbished ones, then the recommended minimum is Pixel 7a for approx 200€
(pixels 6, currently supported, approach EOL)
[dead]
tl;dr:
- GrapheneOS is only supported on Motorola's flagship devices, which the author deems too expensive
- Motorola historically has made unlocking the bootloader difficult, and GrapheneOS has not yet confirmed that this will become easier.
- The author does not trust Motorola.