GrapheneOS is finally ready to break free from Pixels, and it may never look back
The makers of GrapheneOS have confirmed they are partnering with a major Android OEM to bring the OS to Snapdragon-powered flagships.
I'm somewhat excited but I'm still going to hold some back until they reveal who this mystery OEM is. I really don't want to move from one big corporation to another
It always seemed odd to me that you needed a pixel. I know it's for reasons but google is an anti-privacy company at it's core.
If they can break away from Google I will buy one next.
Depends who they go with. I for one would not be a fan of buying a Chinese phone but it will probably be Chinese.
please make the battery/hardware repairable
That would be nice but I do wonder how much the Graphene project is going to be involved in hardware decisions if it is a major OEM. Sounds like it'll be more just a phone where the OEM provides support of bootloader unlocks and installation of graphene
batteries and hardware (motherboards, cameras, etc) on most phones and laptops are achievably replaceable. not "I'm boarding a plane better change it in my lap" but like half an hour of work, which isn't that big of a drag every year or so. watch any youtube video tutorial to get a better sense. I'm not saying grams can pull it off, but if you're even tangentially tech literate, it's doable.
Too bad google stopped shipping pixel specific code in the AOSP tree. Maybe they wouldn't be contemplating dropping the pixel 11 if that was still the case.
I'm sure Google is very upset about it
My brainhole keeps saying it's Sony.
Maybe LG?
whoever they end up with, it's gonna be a new model, which means perfectly usable tech from the last 7-8 years is excluded, and it also means it's gonna be expensive. so good for them, I guess, but this news doesn't concern me in the slightest.
In a year or two it will not be new anymore and if the same model will be available with stock android it doesn't have to be very expensive.
my baseline is a 7 year old model with 8 GB RAM and SDM845 that I can get intermittently for $50. for that kinda money I get a LineageOS fully supported device that's blazing fast, safe and secure against any reasonable threat; I have zero concerns a lost or stolen device will compromise me. as a bonus, it just so happens it's one of the best supported devices for Mobian and postmarketOS. so, that's the baseline.
GrapheneOS value proposition is gonna be spend 10x that (at least!) for a marginally secure-er solution. that's a shite deal.
now if they partnered with LineageOS and other "let's revive old shit left behind" that would be a different story. imagine if Linux was available only on latest gen CPUs, would all of us be into it? I know I wouldn't be.
Everyone is posting this too much and I feel you are "jinxing it"
Im confused. Graphene has been saying this for at least a couple years. Is there a change now where they're actually finalizing something?
If I read previous articles right, Google has stopped shipping Pixel specific hardware drivers down to the android open source project, so any hardware support graphene figures out going forward has to be reverse engineered anyway.
So that's some additional motivation at least.
Sounds like Google is no longer giving security patches as quickly as the used to. I may be wrong.
It's more that Google is making it significantly more difficult for non-Google sanctioned projects to operate on Pixel phones and there may come a time when it's no longer feasible to develop GrapheneOS for the Pixel
They said for at least a couple of years that they want to expand to other phone models or that they're partnering with a major OEM?
The makers of GrapheneOS have confirmed they are partnering with a major Android OEM to bring the OS to Snapdragon-powered flagships.
That they are partnering with an OEM. I remember the chatterings around it happening at least a year ago if not longer.
That's a great temporary replacement for those of us who boycott google until the fsf phone is released
I can't wait!