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.
"""
There is little information available about the future devices. I think they are just extrapolating from prior unlockable Motorola devices. IMO it's not worth speculating until there is some official information or someone has actually tested on one of the devices.
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure reading on Mastodon that it was another OEM that provided them with embargoed patches, but I can't find the Toot now.
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.
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
The problem is that there is now midrange or lower midrange phone outside the Pixel a series that provides the minimum necessary for device security, namely a separate secure processor to store secrets and MTE.
In fact, Snapdragon CPUs had no support for MTE until Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (a flagship chip) and almost no Android phones outside Pixel and Samsung flagships have a separate secure processor (pretty much everyone else uses TrustZone, which is very vulnerable to attacks, see e.g. the recent vulnerability where most Mediatek phones could be extracted under a minute in BFU).
And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault
Seriously, it is not GrapheneOS' fault and it does matter whose fault it is. With your mindset, nothing is going to change ever... If you cannot live without contactless payments, at least send a message to your regulator that Google is using Play Integrity to enforce its monopoly.
They said I never liked the idea of giving money to buy a Google phone so to get away from…Google..
For most people it's a non-argument though - they are feeding data into the Google ad machine every day (even more so if you are using a phone with Google-certified Android). But suddenly buying the Android phone with the best device security is a problem.
But from the rest of the message, they are setting up a set of constraints that is impossible to solve.
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?
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.
Don't? He has mentioned in multiple interviews that security hardening is only for pedophiles and spies (sort of implicating GrapheneOS). They are inaccurate about /e/OS being degoogled. They install F-Droid packages through a proxy (CleanAPK.org) that they do not want to reveal the purpose or owner of, which combined with the Android Trust On First Use (TOFU) model is a big red flag. And then we haven't talked about all the kernel trees, firmware trees, and Android releases that are way behind and have hundreds of known vulnerabilities.
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.
Yes their policies are great. They misinterpreted my comment and accused me which annoyed me. The comment I replied to in this current thread was talking about their communication on HN so I provided an example where I was caught in the crossfire of their current communication. To add on to this they flagged to death my non-rule breaking comment which is not cool—it's now restored.
Not a big deal. I agree and it was probably a mistake but it appears a little trigger happy.
Ironic, considering you're one of their most prolific supporters here. Every time I see a positive GOS headline on HN it's usually with your username next to it.
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