GrapheneOS always strikes me as "perfect is the enemy of good". I don't necessarily need top-notch security features, I've been all right with all kinds of Android phones. The things I'd like are:
- ability to sandbox Google Play and Google Apps so that they live in their nice little Google bubble and have no control over my phone overall
- ability to run all applications sandboxed with fake permissions that I can whitelist for each application and without letting the app know it doesn't have the permissions it wants. Want location? Give the app a location point I've fixed for that app. (Or pass through real GPS location if I've chosen so.) Want contacts? Give the app empty contacts list. Or if I've allowed, give the app the contacts I've whitelisted.
The Android/Google ecosystem is all right in itself, I just want to limit all of it inside a cage that I control. I want the exact same for my browser: I want webpages to run in a highly controlled sandbox with my choice of spoofed environment and permissions instead of assuming any power over my system. Or my Linux desktop where I firejail or sandbox certain proprietary apps outside of my distro's repositories.
GrapheneOS has an OEM partnership with Motorola where they're working on improving their devices to meet our requirements because we won't lower our standards for updates and security features. A lot of work needs to be done for each supported device. There's a massive amount of work bringing the security-oriented, production-quality hardware memory tagging integration from Tensor to Snapdragon. We're working with Motorola and Qualcomm on it. If we simply ported it to many insecure devices we'd need have the time to work on features like this or the power to get an OEM and SoC vendor to work with us on it.
GrapheneOS has Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes for pretending all of the contacts, media and storage permissions are granted with the app unable to access any additional user data without the user explicitly adding it on a case-by-case basis. Unlike the recent iOS feature, apps can't see the Contacts permission group isn't granted and it supports giving less data than the whole contact too. It also supports labels for groups of contacts shared between apps.
Mock Location is a standard Android feature. We're working on a per-app Location Scopes replacement. We're also working on Camera Scopes and Microphone Scopes. We plan to continue down that road covering less major permissions too.
Sandboxed Google Play already works near perfectly with close to 100% app compatibility. It's only apps disallowing using a non-stock OS via the Play Integrity API or to a lesser extent certain other methods which aren't compatible. McDonalds is a major example. X forbids password login but you can use Vanadium to login with a passkey and then use that in the app. ~10% of banking apps do it but not most. We've convinced multiple banks to permit GrapheneOS, and that's going to become MUCH easier now.
This is very useful context. Especially around Contact Scopes etc. It's never made sense to me that iOS shares if the user is choosing to not share their contacts.
Apple seems to basically do privacy-related things to an 80% level but not bothering with getting it totally correct. This makes business sense because the extra 20% is way more difficult, but it's great to see GrapheneOS going all the way.
> We've convinced multiple banks to permit GrapheneOS, and that's going to become MUCH easier now.
I did not know that. That is very interesting.
On that topic, an honest question: what is the killer feature of banking apps that everyone is so hot on? Are we talking like retail banking or money transmitters? I am not using any bespoke banking apps, and I don't feel like I'm missing out, but maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.
What does detract from my GrapheneOS experience is the keyboard. It's just ok. I need swipe typing though, and I haven't found anything even close to gboard glide.
What, exactly, is sandboxed Google play prevented from accessing? Can I feed it a fake location or disable location access? Is it prevented from running in the background 24/7? Can I force it and just it through a VPN? Or is it just blocked from accessing apps and files that aren't in the sandbox? There are many such questions and all could be considered "sandbox".
In what ways has the pursuit of perfection harmed the good in their development? (Your words, I don't agree.)
Graphene does everything you're asking, except for the niche fixed location feature you specifically want, which you're welcome to request, or just implement yourself and make a PR.
I'm going to be a bit snarky here, but I always find the entitlement around features in open source software baffling. This isn't a multi billion dollar corporation selling you something. It's enthusiasts making you something (honestly, incredible), for free, in their spare time, outside of their daily jobs. They're doing their absolute best here.
Our approach is why we have a partnership with Motorola where we're working with Motorola and Qualcomm on improving security of the devices to meet our requirements. It takes longer to get things done the way we want but that's part of the purpose of GrapheneOS. For example, it took us longer to have our own network-based location and geocoding but now we have great implementations of both. Our network-based location currently closely matches iOS but is going to have full offline support developed for it. We're working on our own local model text-to-speech at the moment too, although our focus is currently Android 16 QPR3 related work as a higher priority which delayed it. We do plan to overhaul or replace all the legacy AOSP apps, but our priority has been working on things people can't simply replace by installing more apps.
> In what ways has the pursuit of perfection harmed the good in their development?
Their lack of device support means I am still running Google's Android and will continue to be until a GraphineOS-supported device that meets my needs becomes available. This means I'm not just lacking in security, but I'm also stuck with Google and all of their anti-consumer practices.
Running GraphineOS without all the security features they want would be better for me than what I currently have.
> GrapheneOS always strikes me as "perfect is the enemy of good".
GrapheneOS, as it ships, is rather bleak but you also need to consider that it is addressing the concerns of a very broad audience. That ranges from people who want to completely get rid of data leaking apps to those who want the apps but expect them to be sandboxed. Shipping two different versions won't really help them. It would only make more work on their end, with the results only reflecting two extremes. You are going to have some people willing to put up with some apps, but not others. You are going to have some people wanting some of those apps feeding fake data, but not others.
It's probably best to think of GrapheneOS as a base system that you build up to serve your personal needs, rather than thinking of them shipping it in a "perfect" state. While a handful of people will be happy with it in its default state, many will install something like F-Droid along with a collection of privacy preserving apps. Many others will install the Google Play Store along with a personally curated list of apps that reflect their needs, providing or denying access to their data as they see fit.
I believe the "build up" approach is the only viable way to handle this situation since we are talking about a group of users who are actively seeking out a third-party OS since they are particular about their needs. This isn't the typical consumer who will (gleefully or begrudgingly) put up with whatever the device vendor feeds them.
Our approach is why we have a partnership with Motorola where we're working with Motorola and Qualcomm on improving security of the devices to meet our requirements. It takes longer to get things done the way we want but that's part of the purpose of GrapheneOS. For example, it took us longer to have our own network-based location and geocoding but now we have great implementations of both. Our network-based location currently closely matches iOS but is going to have full offline support developed for it. We're working on our own local model text-to-speech at the moment too, although our focus is currently Android 16 QPR3 related work as a higher priority which delayed it. We do plan to overhaul or replace all the legacy AOSP apps, but our priority has been working on things people can't simply replace by installing more apps.
i don't understand, doesn't that make graphene the opposite of what that saying refers to? it's a real life project that has almost all of the features you mention while not being lagged down by pursuit of perfectionism?
That relates more to the public rhetoric surrounding Graphene than with how the OS itself operates imo. It's pretty practical and enables (or allows you to enable) everything that a typical Android does, except where Google Play Integrity checks fail, which is not in Graphene's control (e.g Google Wallet payments).
People bill it as making a ton of usability compromises in the name of security, but that doesn't match my experience. The only redeeming observation is that your phone _does_ lean towards secure-er and ungoogled defaults, which _does_ break functionality that a lot of people expect to "just work" OOTB. But it's trivial to restore it, and the upfront effort getting things to work is amortized over the lifetime of the device. It's maybe an hour's worth of work.
The counterfactual world where users need to forumcrawl how to get to secure/private defaults seems worse to me. By contrast, it's pretty easy to recognize when an app isn't working.
I agree with your post, but I wanted to point out one thing:
> People bill it as making a ton of usability compromises in the name of security, but that doesn't match my experience.
When you are talking about something like GrapheneOS, most of the people who are talking about usability compromises aren't worth listening to since they are looking for something that is pretty much the exact opposite of what GrapheneOS is trying to provide. While there are likely some legitimate criticisms in the mix, the compromises required for "works by default, for everyone" are pretty much the opposite of what GrapheneOS is.
I mean, GrapheneOS hits at least 2/3 of your demands pretty well.
The Play services are "regular" apps with permissions that you can take away.
For contacts and files you get "scopes", i.e. you decide what the app can see, while the app is left to believe that it can see everything there is.
That said, I think the marketing of GrapheneOS could be better. Every introduction of GrapheneOS I've seen paints the image of Graphene being "Absolute security, no compromises", whereas in reality GrapheneOS is the most "Things need to work, no compromises. Then make the rest as safe as possible" custom ROM that I've used thus far (in particular regarding them allowing you to install Google Play, rather than using MicroG).
I would certainly be using GrapheneOS if only I could get one to run on something else than a Pixel.
I have a perfectly good phone whose bootloader can be unlocked and I can install LineageOS or other AOSP installations there but all I'm aware of and I've researched come short on the sandboxing and permissions. I'd be willing to use GrapheneOS without support for specific security hardware (if only they supported that configuration) just for the features mentioned but Pixel phones are just too expensive. I've always been more than happy with a decent low-tier phone and I don't see a technical reason to change that. Nothing wrong with my phone.
Mock Location exists but our Location Scopes feature will largely replace it for non-development use. Camera, Microphone and other scopes features will be provided too. We haven't fully fleshed out what the ones for other permission groups such as Phone will look like yet but it's planned.
There's a standard Mock Location feature in Android usable for it. We're making a better per-app Location Scopes feature as a replacement. Mock Location is global which has bad usability.
You can disable many system apps via the Settings UI. For ones where the naive heuristics or manual exceptions believe it may break something and have it disabled, you can use ADB. You can also uninstall apps from a profile including Owner with ADB instead of disabling them which is NOT a good idea but you can do it...
There's a standard Mock Location feature in Android usable for it. We're making a better per-app Location Scopes feature as a replacement. Mock Location is global which has bad usability.
Your Qubes OS comparison doesn't really work because Android distributions need extra work to support each new device, whereas for Qubes OS, they're probably using some virtualization framework that makes it pretty trivial to add support for CPUs without virtualization. There's nothing stopping you from starting a new fork that supports your motorola phone, for instance.
GrapheneOS is not QubesOS. We have our own approach and goals. Our approach includes heavily focusing on our resources on our mission which includes needing to do a lot of hardware-related work to deploy features like hardware memory tagging. We're actively working with Motorola and Qualcomm on improving their hardware to meet our requirements. We're also going to work with Qualcomm on improving Linux kernel security. It's not part of our mission to support devices where we can't provide our core feature set. It would drain a huge amount of our resources and lead to people buying those instead of devices with real GrapheneOS providing all the features. Supporting devices with less than 7 years of support also isn't very appealing when we have those via Pixels and can have the same for the new devices.
GrapheneOS does support budget devices. Pixel 8a, Pixel 9a and Pixel 10a are budget devices. It's true that they aren't on the low side of budget pricing at launch but they have 7 years of support from launch. Pixel 8a is approaching 2 years old but has over 5 years of support remaining. The only limitation in practice is that Pixels aren't sold officially in enough countries yet, which can be solved by our Motorola partnership. We don't need more than a range of devices fulfilling what most people want which are available internationally. People would still need to go out of the way to buy a device with GrapheneOS support if we supported more than the 20 models we do.
You're also ignoring all of the work we have to do on devices which is already a massive amount with 20 supported models of Pixels. We build specialized releases with minimum attack surface for each with plans to use per-device RANDSTRUCT and other similar features too. We could make most of the OS builds generic as AOSP has support for it but it goes against our goals. We also have to test it on each device ourselves before Alpha. Each device needs to be tested more broadly by our community.
Our goals have never included supported a huge range of devices. It would drain our limited resources and destroy our ability to provide what we do. It would water down what GrapheneOS provides and sabotage our ability to partner with OEMs. It simply doesn't interest us. People are free to use LineageOS but we strongly recommend avoiding the supposed privacy-focused forks of it which are worse at privacy and security. On nearly any device you won't get basic kernel, driver and firmware updates with LineageOS and it's not a privacy or security hardened OS. Their time is largely spent on device support and it massively slows down how quickly they can do updates too. They wouldn't have time to work on the kinds of privacy features we do let alone the security ones. It isn't as if they're not working hard on their project, they just chose different things to work on and we aren't choosing those over what we work on.
GrapheneOS will run on more than Pixels soon. It will start with a regular flagship and then both flip/fold variants. It can then start supporting lower end devices once they improve. The OEM is going to be helping us implement and maintain it which is the only reason it's going to be practical to do it. We already struggle to support as many devices as we do but it's going to be easier on our end to support the ones from Motorola than supporting Pixels due to collaboration.
Ahahah.... This thread doesn't show what you think does.
Unfortunately you come out as whining that the project focused on security doesn't want to support insecure hardware.
Go for it, fork, call it, say, ClayOS and have GOS on whatever you want. Why would someone else have to do something that's contrary to the project just because you want to lower the security?
If you feel like you can't get a reasonable reply from anyone on a given subject, it's possible that the subject matter is purely indefensible and everyone but you is wrong about it, or it's possible that there's one constant in all this which you're overlooking.
Anyway, in terms of laptop/desktop security, Apple's doing the best job of anyone on that front at present and is still moving in the direction of improvement. Overall, modern Pixels running GrapheneOS are still the most resistant to a variety attacks, compared to just about any consumer device with any practical value.
Most laptop/desktop hardware architecture is wildly vulnerable in some specific ways that Pixels and iPhones just aren't, and no amount of OS enhancements built on that foundation will fully overcome its limitations. Your refutation to that is typically, "But, Google." I get it. I'm no fan of Google, but their architectural chops on modern Pixels is excellent.
Suggesting in the next breath that people look at the Librem 5 or PinePhone while criticizing the security of GrapheneOS makes me think you might just be completely out to lunch on this one. The Purism project is just not a serious security project in so many ways, and while I appreciate the appeal of hardware switches, the rest of their approach makes the hardware switches and domestic supply chain option and shipping protocols little more than security theatrics. The Librem 5 is so easily compromised that the switches are practically a necessity, I suppose, because the hardware and the software (from the OS to device drivers and--gasp--closed blobs!) just isn't trustworthy. With the clever rhetorical games they play to overstate the reality of the device it's difficult to place any trust in them.
'You shouldn't use this device because Google drove the architecture,' just isn't as compelling to me as, 'you should use this device with outdated drivers, no secure element, no sandboxing, and no IOMMU, no hardware resistance to attacks, baseband isolation that's literally an all-or-nothing affair,' and so on, is a terrible followup recommendation which completely undermines credibility.
You're citing hypothetical weaknesses as a reason to dismiss GrapheneOS while advocating devices with numerous demonstrable weaknesses. The Librem 5 not only isn't very resistant to attacks, it's highly vulnerable to attacks. And then you complain when serious people stop engaging with you. (Not being a serious person, I persist.)
As a former PinePhone user, it's a wonderful effort and I love that they're doing what they're doing, but the device and its software is just completely lacking in security to any real degree. Which is fine, because that isn't the device's reason for being, but we shouldn't overstate its position, which you continually do.
All that said, I genuinely think if you take the time to really fairly understand the situation, you'll find value in GrapheneOS as a project. Whether or not it's for you is another matter, but the only reason I'm bothering to quibble with a faceless stranger on the internet over the issue is because I think the project is one of the most important consumer-device security projects of this era, and I massively hope it succeeds. The planet will be better off for it if it does. And yet, every single time it comes up you make the same lazy dismissals of it, ignore substantive responses, then invariably play the victim when people eventually tire of playing your game.
A broader ecosystem of supported devices is something I very much hope for, and am excited to seem take the step into working directly with one OEM, and I hope for more. The virtualization aspects of their roadmap are exciting, and I expect they'll bring great upstream contributions to whatever hypervisor they choose, as they have for AOSP. Their talks of targeting a laptop which meets their hardware requirements is incredibly exciting, and here's hoping it's a ThinkPad, which seems genuinely possible now.
All this is the most compelling alternative to something like Apple, which, while great at leveraging the advantages of being the behemoth in the market, is too inherently motivated in its pursuit of commercial outcomes to be something I'm likely to want to use.
I lack any real hope that you'll come around on this one, but if you're going to play the game of linking to prior discussions to settle an argument, at least I now have a comment to link to, too. Thanks for fueling my future efficiency.
I don't want to gush about this too much, but it's SUCH a big deal. Graphene has languished with hardware support for so long - they basically only had Pixel devices as first-class citizens, which are not bad devices per se, but it's hard when you're spending most of your time doing something without the manufacturer's support.
There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.
This is such a strange comment that is full of contradictions. Pixels are supported because the manufacturer supports alternate OSes. I don't get what languishing means here. Pixel hardware lags behind the latest Snapdragon hardware, but it's not something that average people know or care about. So, you can gush all you want, but I don't see why it's a big deal. It's great that they found an OEM and it's great for the overall health of the project, but not because of gaming or the latest Snapdragon.
Does pixel support alternate OSes or it just doesn't get in the way of custom firmware developers?
And for the gaming aspect, there is a huge market for mobile gaming, specially in Asia, so having a manufacturer like Motorola adopting GrapheneOS as a first class citizen will improve the chances that high performance applications will have better performance in such OSes which is a big win.
I do hope however having a Snapdragon device will be beneficial to having postmarketOS support.
For now having Android-type OS on a daily driver is a must, but for older devices (thinking of 10 years time) I'd like to explore an OS which doesn't depend of Google open-source drops and delayed security open-source drops, which is the situation for ROMs without an ODM partner.
I wouldn't consider gachas to be "actual games" (sue me), but yeah, they do tend to have way more complex gameplay and graphics than the timewaster freemium games of yore. Genshin Impact is essentially a single-player MMO, it has an open world and lots of characters and different weapons etc etc.
it's quite a big deal Motorola will have officialy devices with unlockable bootloader now that Samsung is ditching it and Xiaomi is making unlocking almost impossible, Sony reintroduced it but has probably the worst VFM in the market, so having Motorola with pretty good VFM (better than Pixel outside US) is big news, though they don't really make smaller phones and I'm worried about camera quality or gcam stability
The key enabler is the camera. Manage a flagship level result in a Motorola, that’s the main reason people pay for High end devices nowadays.
I’m seeing enthusiasts go out of their way to get vivos and xiaomis now that they are surpassing the western counterparts based solely on that.
I think it’s doable, pixels did it with meh hardware for years. But I’m not sure if there’s enough overlap between people who care about selfie quality and open source enthusiasts.
Motorola Signature and Motorola Razr Fold are ranked above the Pixel 10 Pro on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. There will be much better CPU and GPU performance via Snapdragon too. The compromises are mostly in terms of getting some security improvements while losing others but we'll still be able to meet all of our official security requirements.
> There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.
This might be true, but the priorities are depressing.
Unfortunately from what I read a couple of times, including a month or so ago, GrapheneOS discourages and doesn't support rooting the phone for security reasons that seem vague to me and don't appeal to my need to actually own my phone and OS. You could still root it with some third party tools from what I know, but not having root as the default makes it less of a secure FOSS OS and more of a closed down toy.
As for payment apps and other crap that refuses to run if I, the owner and administrator of my own device, don't have admin access, I would just refuse to run it. What's next - websites refusing to work if I have root on my Linux desktop?
As far as I know, root and tap to pay are pretty much mutually exclusive, at least if you meant Google Pay? Unlocked and rooted devices do not pass remote attestation. And it's not just something you can fake when you have root, since it is anchored in hardware (the attestation certificate chain is signed by a hardware-backed key and contains the verified boot state and verified boot key).
GrapheneOS doesn't give you root access, citing security issues it introduces.
You could re-compile your own copy with root access, though not sure if we'll then be back to some non-certified OS that can't make payments...
Not sure how I feel about this. Motorola seems to be the exclusive provider of encrypted cellular networks and associated devices to the Israeli military [1][2].
I'm under the impression that basebands still require a proprietary/binary blob, basically rendering the security features of the underlying Open Source OS useless, since it sits between the user and outside connectivity.
How can GrapheneOS ensure that there are no hidden backdoors (ie: Pegasus-like spyware, which was created by ex-IDF soldiers via NSO Group), etc, in the baseband?
In the same way they can(not) do it on Pixel phones - and I would be surprised if Google was not already cooperating with the state actors. You do what you can. Even open source drivers (which are not gonna happen when operating within tightly regulated radio bands) won't help if there's a hardware backdoor.
The way I see it, I don't have much direct control over the actualities of that kind of nation-state spying stuff. However:
1. I can direct my consumer-dollars towards the vendors that promise to respect ownership and privacy in general, and they will also have the most to lose if they are caught enabling spying.
2. Defense in depth. Security features generally add to the spying's difficulty, expense, or risk of detection, and that in turn decreases the incentive for abuse.
This. I know some people who work for the former and they are always having to say "no, I don't work for that Motorola". The shared name is entirely historic.
I did. There's long term patent cross-licensing agreements between the two companies. Motorola mobility may be a separate company now, but they didn't start from scratch.
Let me give you another perspective - you cannot fight a foreign state that wants to hack your device and access your personal data. Even Apple iPhones, who often taut how "secure" their devices are, remain vulnerable to state spywares. A secured device, at most, will protect your data from the police or lay cracker or malware, who lack the means to use more sophisticated methods to access your data. When Android forks (like Lineage OS or Graphene OS) advertise that their Oses are more "secure", with better "data protection", what they mean is that their OSes try and prevent data leakages to the OS vendors (like Google or Apple or other BigTech) or to online services integrated with the OS or through system and user installed apps. In other words, "privacy and security" primarily means that they try and prevent surveillance capitalism.
None of it matters. If the device has a SIM card (virtual or physical), it will execute commands sent over the network. It's required by the GSM/LTE standards. The best you can hope for is to have separate SoC for the OS and separate SoC for the GSM/LTE connectivity, but that means double the power consumption.
defcon21 is from the pre-snowden world (2013), for anyone else wondering. Mobile landscape (our reliance on them, the central role they play in our lives) back then was a little bit different and indeed I'd not be surprised if most models support that the carrier can remotely read out any memory location or something
Perhaps you may be interested in Librem 5 or Pinephone, both of which have hardware kill switches for modem and available schematics. The latter even has most of the modem software freed.
Those devices have atrocious security at a hardware, firmware and software level. Their microphone kill switch also doesn't prevent audio recording. They aren't open hardware despite many attempts to mislead people with the marketing.
> The latter even has most of the modem software freed.
Pinephones have entirely closed source baseband firmware. They use a highly unusual cellular radio which includes both an incredibly outdated Qualcomm baseband processor with atrocious updates and security combined with an extremely outdated proprietary fork of Android running on an extra CPU core which isn't present in any mainstream smartphone. It's only replacing the unusual extra OS which has been done. That whole component doesn't exist on other smartphones and the only reason it's possible to replace it is because the whole radio has absolutely atrocious security. The radio is connected via a far higher attack surface USB connection providing far less isolation for the OS and the USB connection can be used to flash the proprietary Android OS via the fastboot protocol. The baseband firmware itself doesn't have any replacement available.
Security theater, it has absolutely no use. If you can't trust your hardware that it won't actively listen to the microphone without your knowledge and permission then what are you even doing with that device?!
> Not sure how I feel about this. Motorola seems to be the exclusive provider of encrypted cellular networks and associated devices to the Israeli military [1][2].
You're confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions. These haven't been part of the same company since 2011. We would happily support devices from Motorola Solutions with their collaboration too but have no contact or partnership with them as they're an entirely different company. We want to support more devices meeting our requirements and if people have issues with one of the choices due to their opinions on geopolitics they can use another.
I'd say you're paranoid. Nobody cares about you, and they won't invest billions just so they can see your hot nude pictures. There are much easier ways to get information out of a phone, no need for a backdoor.
If there were ever any backdoor in some phone, it would have been found. No smartphone company is gonna take that chance that someone will find their backdoor, it will literally kill the company.
Sometimes you become a target purely by chance. You may witness something you should not have seen, are at the wrong place at the wrong time, the "algorithm" glitches and increases your "thread level" by 5000%. In most of these situations preparations like running graphene os can be quite the boon.
Or think of friends and family. When they become the target, you are prepared, you have the knowledge and tools ready, you can be the guide that helps them navigate a hostile digital world.
This is such a low-iq argument I cannot even. Yes, nobody cares about OP, you, me, whatever - until they do. Not to mention general harvesting for profiling and propaganda reasons.
General: What do people in this city/country/region/etc are thinking - This is the main one where the data is used and collected, then grouped. It is extremely powerful information for targeted agenda whichever it might be.
Targeted: Oh, you or someone from your close ones went to a political protest? Too bad we have all this information to put you and your family in jail - This is where suddenly they will care about you, even when it is NOT YOU but someone from your close circles were the ones upsetting them.
Whether parent is paranoid or not, Pegasus literally is used to spy, just because the state might not care about his hot nude pictures does not mean they don't care about other phone usage.
"While NSO Group markets Pegasus as a product for fighting crime and terrorism, governments around the world have routinely used the spyware to surveil journalists, lawyers, political dissidents, and human rights activists."[0]
Information these they can be much as powerful as a bomb, for example, I could learn more about your calls and discover that you do something immoral but not illegal and use it to blackmail you.
I'm guessing you missed out on the Snowden revelations? Or the news articles about federal agents literally laughing at private dick pics.
And your second paragraph seems to go on the premise that the average person care if there is a backdoor.
I don't know why you wouldn't take security seriously, when even the US government is telling everyone to be careful where they supply their devices because of spying. Just don't trust them to point the finger the right way.
The UK government is known to spy on anti genocide protestors.
The US government is known to spy on anti ICE protestors.
If you have an opinion your government doesn't like, or a potential future government doesn't like, there's a good chance you have or will be spied on.
Perhaps you lack a single opinion worth caring about, but most people do not.
>If there were ever any backdoor in some phone, it would have been found.
Not only have MANY been found, but the whole security industry is aware of them and works with/against those backdoors.
This is kind of like a mechanic not knowing what a car's exhaust does...
If anyone from Motorola is reading this: Please add a smaller device to your Portfolio, about max the size of a Pixel 8. I'm not hoping for an audio jack any more but at least small it could be.
Currently running a Sony Xperia 5 V which farm factor is acceptable, and still will get a number of months of updates. And the winning point is that the bootloader can be unlocked and is supported by LineageOS.
The issue of "enthusiast phones" is not the same as for small phones. The problem that MKBHD is describing is that a company that starts as an enthusiast phone can not grow by getting the niche larger, so they need to start competing in the "average consumer" market. But a large, established company like Motorola and Samsung can for sure segment their product line to serve a particular demand.
I think the issue of small phones is that, while there people saying they would buy if it was available, no one is saying "I would buy one small phone at flagship prices, even if they don't have flagship features".
I'm not necessarily asking for a "small" phone as in 4.5" or less.
I'd like to have an Option around 6" and 150x70x9mm, which is not really small. Surprisingly the Pixel 8 has a smaller footprint than the Pixel *a variants while having a bigger display.
So my request would be a device around the size of the Pixel 8, having a similar battery size and if possible a headphone jack at a reasonable price point (350 bucks).
I consider the pixel 8 as really solid device for graphene OS.
They don't even need to fix the longpress for headphone remotes... Just a device that is the right size.
I watched the first video. One point they didn't mentioned is that their android example of the "last small flagship phone", asus zenfone 9/10, is about the same size as an iphone 12/13, not the mini.
Do regular iphones sell well? If so, the small flagship phones are not dead, because iphones are not dead. If iphones are not counted as small phones, then the small android flagship phones are dead long time ago.
>And the winning point is that the bootloader can be unlocked and is supported by LineageOS
Don't banking, security and payment apps detect the unlocked bootloader and prevent them from working on lineageos? At least that's what happened to me after i flashed lineage on my old tablet.
Because then what's the point of a smartphone if it can't do banking, payment, shopping, ticketing, etc? Use it as a gimped pocket web browser and ebook reader? There's not gonna be any mass market adoption for such "smartphones" until they can run all apps out of the box like vanilla androids and IOS phones.
Your average consumer isn't gonna wanna fuck around with signing keys and bootloader relock. Hell, even this tech savvy HN user doesn't want to do that because he has better things to do with his time. The days from my childhood when I always rooted my Android phone, installed custom ROMs with custom kernels, magisk, titanium backup, cerberus to make the phone "my own" are long behind me.
I run a Xperia 10 V. Great phone, great form factor, easy to unlock. It runs for days, almost a week, on one battery charge. Sony is doing something right here.
Oh, the guy who is still mentally on the level when he started his channel. And these shenanigans.... putting a phone in a mini coffin. sigh
Why it has to be a flagship? Sell them cheap. It's like AAA game makers cry about ballooning costs, and they make 60 hour games that literally nobody plays through....
Are we really sure "nobody actually wants it"? I need to help my family select the smallest possible phone every time. Meanwhile choices are dwindling and the remaining 2 models are either overpriced or outdated and so I need to tell them it's better to take a (whatever currently goes for) "medium sized" model, which shifts upwards every time I/they need a new one. No wonder that people don't buy small phones anymore if they don't exist
I don't buy this nonsense about small phones being a niche when so many people are actively seeking them out, both online and offline in my practical experience
It's just harder to make, heat dissipation or battery will be restricted, doubly so if you're a niche manufacturer without a big budget, or one who tries to keep it repairable and needs the extra space for screws. So I can understand that Fairphone doesn't release a small model (even if it means I simply cannot use it: I actually put my money down and bought one, but sadly had to sell it onwards after a few weeks of trying) but for Graphenorola I'm not sure that restriction exists. It may just not please everyone if the chip is underclocked for heat and battery efficiency reasons and so they're not likely to. Doesn't mean there's no market for a small variant for any manufacturer that has more than one device on the market
My mom's and my current phone (same model) is what I'd call medium sized (per 2019 standards, when it was new) and the battery life sucks, but I'd buy this model again anyway if it came out with a ≥2025 SoC because I can actually use it unlike nearly any other phone on the market. Not properly reach the top, but at least the left side so that'll have to do
Ironically I always find when these new devices like the fairphone come out, I'm disappointed and don't buy it because the screens are actually too small. They tend to focus on an unuseable middle point (probably in an attempt to please everyone).
All the flagships have huge screens, the big guys would have paid millions on market research, I can't understand why they arent just trying to achieve flagship parity (in terms of specs not price or software). No one is going to say it's unreasonable and they save themselves the market research
> The small form factor phones simply do not sell.
yeah, clearly nobody buys Samsung Galaxy S series for years, they are like the least popular Android phone model... /s
I'm running Pixel 6a (which was followed bu successors with worse screen:body ratio for years and only now the new Pixels finally matched and slightly improved the ratio, what a progress), but considering all the HW issues (baterries and displays) with Pixels I'd rather avoid it, the worst case will buy as next phone Xiaomi and hopefully somehow unlock it, if there is no suitable Motorola
edit: added HW issues explanation since I am rate limited on comments
The whole Moto G series has audio jacks, at least as of a year or so ago. I hope that Graphene makes it to those affordable models. I don't need high end cameras or AI on my phone. In fact AI is quite unwanted.
I think I went through the first ~3 or so generations of the Motorola Moto G, and they were great for the price, besides the fact that each generation it got bigger and bigger, defeating the original motivation I bought them in the first place. Eventually the iPhone 12 Mini was released and I moved to iPhone at that point.
I also hope that the new GrapheneOS device from Motorola will be in the "smaller" size factor so it actually fits in my (apparently) tiny hands, but to be honest I'm probably getting one regardless, as iOS gets worse and worse every time I update it.
Lol, no, according to graphene, an aux jack is a security problem. So is a microsd. But the hole punch with the camera pointed at your face, that's just fine.
When my current phone dies, I'm basically returning to a dumb phone with a removable battery. Now that Xperia dropped open source, every phone out there is terrible and I just don't want any of them. Anything that would support a ROM has features to make my skin crawl.
It's the smallest phone available with a real telephoto lens. I think it was only available in India, but I got one on eBay because it has those two features (not huge with telephoto) I was looking for. I moved to it from a Pixel 6a because I refuse to go any bigger in physical size.
No, it's not small, but it's afaik the smallest model you can find that's still unlockable and runs any ungoogled OS
> I'll be forced to go back to dumbphones in the future... along with many others, I guess.
Going back to a dumbphone for me would mean changing my outdoor hobbies (like contributing to openstreetmap), so I'll take my losses and continue on a smartphone, but I share the sentiment. Power to you if you do it!
Check out their Razr Plus or Razr Ultra. The external display is 4" and fully functional, and it unfolds into a full-size phablet for when you need that. I'm a small-phone-liker and I've found it to be a great device, I'm very happy with mine.
Motorola has such great quality/price ratio and the user experience is decent. There's still some nagging and such but overall it's much better than the competition.
But I still can't get over my old iPhone 6. That phone size was just perfect. Easy to hold and do everything with one hand, easy to fit into any pocket.
I really want an Android like that. I don't need 3 cameras and bunch of other nonsense.
I'm glad to hear that. That means these devices will be a popular target, perhaps the popular target for alternative operating systems both Android-based and non-Android Linux.
with the advent of AI assists, I can't wait for people to start hooking up SoCs, GPUs, and other components burdened by proprietary driver and firmware to logic analyzers, and letting AI have a crack at it. I wonder what'll happen - this might well be the end of proprietary blobs, and I'm here for it.
That would be wonderful but cracking proprietary blobs which may be and probably are encrypted, would take massive amount of time, and later rework could take a lot of tokens and broken SoCs. Nowadays electronics are driven by software so one bit off and voltage can get 9V instead of 3V for example
Oh, This might be one of the few ideas I approve AI use of.
Cursor spent like Million dollars on creating a browser which people were able to make later with a 200$/100$ subscription in the same amount of days as cursor with human assistance.
I don't think that this can be "autonomous", we assumed that making browsers could be autonomous process but it wasn't. That was the take I took from it all.
Will this be an example of autonomous tho? I think we still need a human experienced with reverse engineering in the loop but it might significantly improve their workflow
I wish if cursor, instead of having burnt million $ to something worthless essentially, Could have atleast done this experiment.
I don't think the market of people buying used phones for the purpose of graphene is going to make a dent in profits for Google. It raises resale value maybe by say, $0, considering the price is set by the average consumer
that depends what you consider a healthy resale value, I bought my Pixel 6a with no issues for 100EUR :-) (and not because I care about Google's business, I don't have gapps in my phone, I just like good deals/VFM)
Didn't know more people are doing this. I am also using a used Pixel 4a which I got from eBay. Still has good battery. I don't see any reason to upgrade any time soon.
Speaking of battery, veeeeery soon phones will have mandated replaceable batteries in the EU. I'm just hoping my current moto (a $99 job perfectly adequate for absolutely everything I do) survives until then.
Aside: I've noticed over the years that phones die in one of the following ways:
- too fast charging (battery dies, charge controller dies)
- usb port dies
- screen broken
- all sorts of falls
A lether folio case, gorilla glass, and a Qi charging adapter solve all of those problems (the charging adapter also limits the current by virtue of being inefficient). It has a magnetic connector (it's a simple two-pin job and it doesn't have any issues) - in the rare occasion I want to charge up real quick, I can still hook up directly via usb c, and meanwhile the port is stuffed with the converter's plug which prevents it from accumulating dirt and fluff.
I'm glad to say that even despite many falls, some directly onto the screen, the phone itself still works very well, even if the case and glass protector are obviously ragged.
I hope once unlockable Moto's come around I'll be able to keep that one for a long while as well.
imo the RAM bloat/overly aggressive OS. on a similar aged device without zswap I couldn't run more than one maybe two things without the OS killing everything in the background. I think it was better before I got stuck updating to 15
Does anyone know where I can read more about which devices will be supported? GrapheneOS website devices FAQ doesn't list any Motorola devices, and the press release doesn't have much either.
As I understand that situation, GrapheneOS developers are super picky about hardware they want to support. So out of all android phones they decided to support only Google Pixel because only these phones provide good enough hardware support for security features they want to provide.
So likely no existing Motorola phones are good enough and only new ones, developed in collaboration with GrapheneOS developers, will be suitable.
They said on Twitter that future devices in the Razr (foldable) and signature line will be supported. The current devices by Motorola do not fulfill their hardware requirements, so no need to buy one yet. This is speculation on my part, but its not unthinkable that non-flagship support could happen eventually, although mid tier SoCs generally don't have the hardware required to support graphene (hardware memory tagging, sufficiently open secure element, etc), so in the medium term, it's unlikely that anything but the flagships will be supported by graphene.
There's no details yet, but I was reading it won't likely emerge until 2027 so ostensibly these will be models that are yet to be announced. Might even be models dedicated to grapheneos (and other open source roms as they mentioned here)
I'm pretty sure strcat was saying on a previous thread that it will only be future models, so nothing in their current line up in guaranteed to be compatible.
With Motorola being owned by the Chinese company Lenovo can these new devices be used in secure environments? I remember when Lenovo took over making ThinkPads they were banned in some secure environments because of Lenovo links to CCP.
Honestly I’d prefer Chinese backdoors over western ones. China is still a land far far away and I couldn’t care less about what they’d do with my data, unlike western alphabet boys who could freeze my accounts and assets for ”wrongthinking” in the future.
Iphone is made by Chinese companies too. Same with Tesla. A lot of those components made by purely Chinese companies and yes can be trace to individuals who are CCP. It is extremely hard to source another purely away from any Chinese connections. If you say the main company is USA, you seems to ignore how the pager exploding setup was done. Go into any IT rooms in USA and you audit it as zero from China even if you ignore Taiwan as recognized by American law as part of China. We can't buy anything truly made non-China. Even F35 has some components (and that is official, unofficial we dont know) made in China. Google want to sell Motorola to American companies, not even Pentagon or NSA bother back then. Think about it, how hard to engineer a backdoor exactly same components (say capacitor) or motors during shipment for those phones.
The true reason you can't trust a Chinese company, and other countries can't trust US companies, is the Western patent regime that allows various companies to sit on patents for absurd amounts of times, preventing others from selling you completely clean hardware on which every piece of software can be replaced.
The whole point about having an open platform from boot is you don't have to trust it. You run your own code from first power on.
Is it possible that it's backdoored, have a secret opcode / management engine? Probably, but that goes to everyone, as it's not practical to analyze what's in the chip (unless you're decapping them and all)
I don't know what secure environments you're talking about, if it's an airgapped system then you should be secure even when what's inside 'tries to get out'.
Korean and western made stuff guarantee to have such thing. CNC devices in Russia stopped working. Even NVIDIA gpu has back door according to China and NVIDIA had to settle this matter behind the scene with China government. At this point, your phone is 100% backdoorable by western government. The only thing protect you is you are non-threat and too small to be bother with.
Depends on what environment you mean. Chinese secure environments would see a Chinese OEM as an advantage vs. Google Pixels. In the US yeah you'd want a Pixel.
European tech is in shambles and everyone else is barely holding it together outside of tech.
That's the entire point of verified boot with custom keys, you don't need to trust Motorola or Lenovo. You can control what runs from the first boot, the threat model for a compromised supply chain is different from a backdoored chip. If you are worried about the latter that applies to every manufacturer including Google & Apple.
Not OP but I guess it’s where the threat model includes worrying about the foreign government actors. Like US infrastructure, government contracting or some major tech companies.
Readit News
- ability to sandbox Google Play and Google Apps so that they live in their nice little Google bubble and have no control over my phone overall
- ability to run all applications sandboxed with fake permissions that I can whitelist for each application and without letting the app know it doesn't have the permissions it wants. Want location? Give the app a location point I've fixed for that app. (Or pass through real GPS location if I've chosen so.) Want contacts? Give the app empty contacts list. Or if I've allowed, give the app the contacts I've whitelisted.
The Android/Google ecosystem is all right in itself, I just want to limit all of it inside a cage that I control. I want the exact same for my browser: I want webpages to run in a highly controlled sandbox with my choice of spoofed environment and permissions instead of assuming any power over my system. Or my Linux desktop where I firejail or sandbox certain proprietary apps outside of my distro's repositories.
GrapheneOS has Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes for pretending all of the contacts, media and storage permissions are granted with the app unable to access any additional user data without the user explicitly adding it on a case-by-case basis. Unlike the recent iOS feature, apps can't see the Contacts permission group isn't granted and it supports giving less data than the whole contact too. It also supports labels for groups of contacts shared between apps.
Mock Location is a standard Android feature. We're working on a per-app Location Scopes replacement. We're also working on Camera Scopes and Microphone Scopes. We plan to continue down that road covering less major permissions too.
Sandboxed Google Play already works near perfectly with close to 100% app compatibility. It's only apps disallowing using a non-stock OS via the Play Integrity API or to a lesser extent certain other methods which aren't compatible. McDonalds is a major example. X forbids password login but you can use Vanadium to login with a passkey and then use that in the app. ~10% of banking apps do it but not most. We've convinced multiple banks to permit GrapheneOS, and that's going to become MUCH easier now.
Apple seems to basically do privacy-related things to an 80% level but not bothering with getting it totally correct. This makes business sense because the extra 20% is way more difficult, but it's great to see GrapheneOS going all the way.
I did not know that. That is very interesting.
On that topic, an honest question: what is the killer feature of banking apps that everyone is so hot on? Are we talking like retail banking or money transmitters? I am not using any bespoke banking apps, and I don't feel like I'm missing out, but maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.
What does detract from my GrapheneOS experience is the keyboard. It's just ok. I need swipe typing though, and I haven't found anything even close to gboard glide.
Graphene does everything you're asking, except for the niche fixed location feature you specifically want, which you're welcome to request, or just implement yourself and make a PR.
I'm going to be a bit snarky here, but I always find the entitlement around features in open source software baffling. This isn't a multi billion dollar corporation selling you something. It's enthusiasts making you something (honestly, incredible), for free, in their spare time, outside of their daily jobs. They're doing their absolute best here.
Their lack of device support means I am still running Google's Android and will continue to be until a GraphineOS-supported device that meets my needs becomes available. This means I'm not just lacking in security, but I'm also stuck with Google and all of their anti-consumer practices.
Running GraphineOS without all the security features they want would be better for me than what I currently have.
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And how can they find out how well it meets that need other than receiving (respectful!) feedback?
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27926-per-profile-location-...
Currently there is a Mock Location feature, but it is globally scoped and not what you asked for.
GrapheneOS, as it ships, is rather bleak but you also need to consider that it is addressing the concerns of a very broad audience. That ranges from people who want to completely get rid of data leaking apps to those who want the apps but expect them to be sandboxed. Shipping two different versions won't really help them. It would only make more work on their end, with the results only reflecting two extremes. You are going to have some people willing to put up with some apps, but not others. You are going to have some people wanting some of those apps feeding fake data, but not others.
It's probably best to think of GrapheneOS as a base system that you build up to serve your personal needs, rather than thinking of them shipping it in a "perfect" state. While a handful of people will be happy with it in its default state, many will install something like F-Droid along with a collection of privacy preserving apps. Many others will install the Google Play Store along with a personally curated list of apps that reflect their needs, providing or denying access to their data as they see fit.
I believe the "build up" approach is the only viable way to handle this situation since we are talking about a group of users who are actively seeking out a third-party OS since they are particular about their needs. This isn't the typical consumer who will (gleefully or begrudgingly) put up with whatever the device vendor feeds them.
People bill it as making a ton of usability compromises in the name of security, but that doesn't match my experience. The only redeeming observation is that your phone _does_ lean towards secure-er and ungoogled defaults, which _does_ break functionality that a lot of people expect to "just work" OOTB. But it's trivial to restore it, and the upfront effort getting things to work is amortized over the lifetime of the device. It's maybe an hour's worth of work.
The counterfactual world where users need to forumcrawl how to get to secure/private defaults seems worse to me. By contrast, it's pretty easy to recognize when an app isn't working.
> People bill it as making a ton of usability compromises in the name of security, but that doesn't match my experience.
When you are talking about something like GrapheneOS, most of the people who are talking about usability compromises aren't worth listening to since they are looking for something that is pretty much the exact opposite of what GrapheneOS is trying to provide. While there are likely some legitimate criticisms in the mix, the compromises required for "works by default, for everyone" are pretty much the opposite of what GrapheneOS is.
That said, I think the marketing of GrapheneOS could be better. Every introduction of GrapheneOS I've seen paints the image of Graphene being "Absolute security, no compromises", whereas in reality GrapheneOS is the most "Things need to work, no compromises. Then make the rest as safe as possible" custom ROM that I've used thus far (in particular regarding them allowing you to install Google Play, rather than using MicroG).
I have a perfectly good phone whose bootloader can be unlocked and I can install LineageOS or other AOSP installations there but all I'm aware of and I've researched come short on the sandboxing and permissions. I'd be willing to use GrapheneOS without support for specific security hardware (if only they supported that configuration) just for the features mentioned but Pixel phones are just too expensive. I've always been more than happy with a decent low-tier phone and I don't see a technical reason to change that. Nothing wrong with my phone.
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How do you do that in graphene os?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42536302
First is very comprehensively delivered, second is halfway done, halfway in progress.
Good luck!
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That's fine. You don't have to be
How do I do that? Been using Graphene for many years but did not know this was possible.
Is that something that GrapheneOS fixes?
I fully agree with you. I never received a reasonable reply to this from GrapheneOS fans or developers. Latest attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47182376
Your Qubes OS comparison doesn't really work because Android distributions need extra work to support each new device, whereas for Qubes OS, they're probably using some virtualization framework that makes it pretty trivial to add support for CPUs without virtualization. There's nothing stopping you from starting a new fork that supports your motorola phone, for instance.
GrapheneOS does support budget devices. Pixel 8a, Pixel 9a and Pixel 10a are budget devices. It's true that they aren't on the low side of budget pricing at launch but they have 7 years of support from launch. Pixel 8a is approaching 2 years old but has over 5 years of support remaining. The only limitation in practice is that Pixels aren't sold officially in enough countries yet, which can be solved by our Motorola partnership. We don't need more than a range of devices fulfilling what most people want which are available internationally. People would still need to go out of the way to buy a device with GrapheneOS support if we supported more than the 20 models we do.
You're also ignoring all of the work we have to do on devices which is already a massive amount with 20 supported models of Pixels. We build specialized releases with minimum attack surface for each with plans to use per-device RANDSTRUCT and other similar features too. We could make most of the OS builds generic as AOSP has support for it but it goes against our goals. We also have to test it on each device ourselves before Alpha. Each device needs to be tested more broadly by our community.
Our goals have never included supported a huge range of devices. It would drain our limited resources and destroy our ability to provide what we do. It would water down what GrapheneOS provides and sabotage our ability to partner with OEMs. It simply doesn't interest us. People are free to use LineageOS but we strongly recommend avoiding the supposed privacy-focused forks of it which are worse at privacy and security. On nearly any device you won't get basic kernel, driver and firmware updates with LineageOS and it's not a privacy or security hardened OS. Their time is largely spent on device support and it massively slows down how quickly they can do updates too. They wouldn't have time to work on the kinds of privacy features we do let alone the security ones. It isn't as if they're not working hard on their project, they just chose different things to work on and we aren't choosing those over what we work on.
GrapheneOS will run on more than Pixels soon. It will start with a regular flagship and then both flip/fold variants. It can then start supporting lower end devices once they improve. The OEM is going to be helping us implement and maintain it which is the only reason it's going to be practical to do it. We already struggle to support as many devices as we do but it's going to be easier on our end to support the ones from Motorola than supporting Pixels due to collaboration.
Unfortunately you come out as whining that the project focused on security doesn't want to support insecure hardware.
Go for it, fork, call it, say, ClayOS and have GOS on whatever you want. Why would someone else have to do something that's contrary to the project just because you want to lower the security?
Bizarre. Just fork it mate.
Anyway, in terms of laptop/desktop security, Apple's doing the best job of anyone on that front at present and is still moving in the direction of improvement. Overall, modern Pixels running GrapheneOS are still the most resistant to a variety attacks, compared to just about any consumer device with any practical value.
Most laptop/desktop hardware architecture is wildly vulnerable in some specific ways that Pixels and iPhones just aren't, and no amount of OS enhancements built on that foundation will fully overcome its limitations. Your refutation to that is typically, "But, Google." I get it. I'm no fan of Google, but their architectural chops on modern Pixels is excellent.
Suggesting in the next breath that people look at the Librem 5 or PinePhone while criticizing the security of GrapheneOS makes me think you might just be completely out to lunch on this one. The Purism project is just not a serious security project in so many ways, and while I appreciate the appeal of hardware switches, the rest of their approach makes the hardware switches and domestic supply chain option and shipping protocols little more than security theatrics. The Librem 5 is so easily compromised that the switches are practically a necessity, I suppose, because the hardware and the software (from the OS to device drivers and--gasp--closed blobs!) just isn't trustworthy. With the clever rhetorical games they play to overstate the reality of the device it's difficult to place any trust in them.
'You shouldn't use this device because Google drove the architecture,' just isn't as compelling to me as, 'you should use this device with outdated drivers, no secure element, no sandboxing, and no IOMMU, no hardware resistance to attacks, baseband isolation that's literally an all-or-nothing affair,' and so on, is a terrible followup recommendation which completely undermines credibility.
You're citing hypothetical weaknesses as a reason to dismiss GrapheneOS while advocating devices with numerous demonstrable weaknesses. The Librem 5 not only isn't very resistant to attacks, it's highly vulnerable to attacks. And then you complain when serious people stop engaging with you. (Not being a serious person, I persist.)
As a former PinePhone user, it's a wonderful effort and I love that they're doing what they're doing, but the device and its software is just completely lacking in security to any real degree. Which is fine, because that isn't the device's reason for being, but we shouldn't overstate its position, which you continually do.
All that said, I genuinely think if you take the time to really fairly understand the situation, you'll find value in GrapheneOS as a project. Whether or not it's for you is another matter, but the only reason I'm bothering to quibble with a faceless stranger on the internet over the issue is because I think the project is one of the most important consumer-device security projects of this era, and I massively hope it succeeds. The planet will be better off for it if it does. And yet, every single time it comes up you make the same lazy dismissals of it, ignore substantive responses, then invariably play the victim when people eventually tire of playing your game.
A broader ecosystem of supported devices is something I very much hope for, and am excited to seem take the step into working directly with one OEM, and I hope for more. The virtualization aspects of their roadmap are exciting, and I expect they'll bring great upstream contributions to whatever hypervisor they choose, as they have for AOSP. Their talks of targeting a laptop which meets their hardware requirements is incredibly exciting, and here's hoping it's a ThinkPad, which seems genuinely possible now.
All this is the most compelling alternative to something like Apple, which, while great at leveraging the advantages of being the behemoth in the market, is too inherently motivated in its pursuit of commercial outcomes to be something I'm likely to want to use.
I lack any real hope that you'll come around on this one, but if you're going to play the game of linking to prior discussions to settle an argument, at least I now have a comment to link to, too. Thanks for fueling my future efficiency.
There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.
And for the gaming aspect, there is a huge market for mobile gaming, specially in Asia, so having a manufacturer like Motorola adopting GrapheneOS as a first class citizen will improve the chances that high performance applications will have better performance in such OSes which is a big win.
For now having Android-type OS on a daily driver is a must, but for older devices (thinking of 10 years time) I'd like to explore an OS which doesn't depend of Google open-source drops and delayed security open-source drops, which is the situation for ROMs without an ODM partner.
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I’m seeing enthusiasts go out of their way to get vivos and xiaomis now that they are surpassing the western counterparts based solely on that.
I think it’s doable, pixels did it with meh hardware for years. But I’m not sure if there’s enough overlap between people who care about selfie quality and open source enthusiasts.
This might be true, but the priorities are depressing.
As for payment apps and other crap that refuses to run if I, the owner and administrator of my own device, don't have admin access, I would just refuse to run it. What's next - websites refusing to work if I have root on my Linux desktop?
I'm under the impression that basebands still require a proprietary/binary blob, basically rendering the security features of the underlying Open Source OS useless, since it sits between the user and outside connectivity.
How can GrapheneOS ensure that there are no hidden backdoors (ie: Pegasus-like spyware, which was created by ex-IDF soldiers via NSO Group), etc, in the baseband?
[1] https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3808
[2] https://www.motorolasolutions.com/newsroom/press-releases/mo...
1. I can direct my consumer-dollars towards the vendors that promise to respect ownership and privacy in general, and they will also have the most to lose if they are caught enabling spying.
2. Defense in depth. Security features generally add to the spying's difficulty, expense, or risk of detection, and that in turn decreases the incentive for abuse.
Easy but for missing Step 1 of “Colocate with friends and business partners”
Ill leave you to investigate how != they are
Motorola Mobility is largely owned by the Chinese government.
The Chinese government is not gonna share your data with Israel/USA.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215079
See presentation at DEFCON21 about SIM cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31D94QOo2gY
> The latter even has most of the modem software freed.
Pinephones have entirely closed source baseband firmware. They use a highly unusual cellular radio which includes both an incredibly outdated Qualcomm baseband processor with atrocious updates and security combined with an extremely outdated proprietary fork of Android running on an extra CPU core which isn't present in any mainstream smartphone. It's only replacing the unusual extra OS which has been done. That whole component doesn't exist on other smartphones and the only reason it's possible to replace it is because the whole radio has absolutely atrocious security. The radio is connected via a far higher attack surface USB connection providing far less isolation for the OS and the USB connection can be used to flash the proprietary Android OS via the fastboot protocol. The baseband firmware itself doesn't have any replacement available.
makes me feel good about it.
If there were ever any backdoor in some phone, it would have been found. No smartphone company is gonna take that chance that someone will find their backdoor, it will literally kill the company.
Or think of friends and family. When they become the target, you are prepared, you have the knowledge and tools ready, you can be the guide that helps them navigate a hostile digital world.
This is such a low-iq argument I cannot even. Yes, nobody cares about OP, you, me, whatever - until they do. Not to mention general harvesting for profiling and propaganda reasons.
General: What do people in this city/country/region/etc are thinking - This is the main one where the data is used and collected, then grouped. It is extremely powerful information for targeted agenda whichever it might be.
Targeted: Oh, you or someone from your close ones went to a political protest? Too bad we have all this information to put you and your family in jail - This is where suddenly they will care about you, even when it is NOT YOU but someone from your close circles were the ones upsetting them.
"While NSO Group markets Pegasus as a product for fighting crime and terrorism, governments around the world have routinely used the spyware to surveil journalists, lawyers, political dissidents, and human rights activists."[0]
Information these they can be much as powerful as a bomb, for example, I could learn more about your calls and discover that you do something immoral but not illegal and use it to blackmail you.
0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
And your second paragraph seems to go on the premise that the average person care if there is a backdoor.
I don't know why you wouldn't take security seriously, when even the US government is telling everyone to be careful where they supply their devices because of spying. Just don't trust them to point the finger the right way.
The US government is known to spy on anti ICE protestors.
If you have an opinion your government doesn't like, or a potential future government doesn't like, there's a good chance you have or will be spied on.
Perhaps you lack a single opinion worth caring about, but most people do not.
This is kind of like a mechanic not knowing what a car's exhaust does...
All in all: Thank you for making this possible.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR9zBsKELVs * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZdbbN3FCzE Not about small form factor, rather enthusiast phones don't last
Currently running a Sony Xperia 5 V which farm factor is acceptable, and still will get a number of months of updates. And the winning point is that the bootloader can be unlocked and is supported by LineageOS.
I think the issue of small phones is that, while there people saying they would buy if it was available, no one is saying "I would buy one small phone at flagship prices, even if they don't have flagship features".
And still in every phone topic people complain about phones being too big... I'd love to have a smaller affordable smartphone.
I'd like to have an Option around 6" and 150x70x9mm, which is not really small. Surprisingly the Pixel 8 has a smaller footprint than the Pixel *a variants while having a bigger display.
So my request would be a device around the size of the Pixel 8, having a similar battery size and if possible a headphone jack at a reasonable price point (350 bucks).
I consider the pixel 8 as really solid device for graphene OS.
They don't even need to fix the longpress for headphone remotes... Just a device that is the right size.
Do regular iphones sell well? If so, the small flagship phones are not dead, because iphones are not dead. If iphones are not counted as small phones, then the small android flagship phones are dead long time ago.
Don't banking, security and payment apps detect the unlocked bootloader and prevent them from working on lineageos? At least that's what happened to me after i flashed lineage on my old tablet.
Because then what's the point of a smartphone if it can't do banking, payment, shopping, ticketing, etc? Use it as a gimped pocket web browser and ebook reader? There's not gonna be any mass market adoption for such "smartphones" until they can run all apps out of the box like vanilla androids and IOS phones.
Your average consumer isn't gonna wanna fuck around with signing keys and bootloader relock. Hell, even this tech savvy HN user doesn't want to do that because he has better things to do with his time. The days from my childhood when I always rooted my Android phone, installed custom ROMs with custom kernels, magisk, titanium backup, cerberus to make the phone "my own" are long behind me.
Why it has to be a flagship? Sell them cheap. It's like AAA game makers cry about ballooning costs, and they make 60 hour games that literally nobody plays through....
Are we really sure "nobody actually wants it"? I need to help my family select the smallest possible phone every time. Meanwhile choices are dwindling and the remaining 2 models are either overpriced or outdated and so I need to tell them it's better to take a (whatever currently goes for) "medium sized" model, which shifts upwards every time I/they need a new one. No wonder that people don't buy small phones anymore if they don't exist
I don't buy this nonsense about small phones being a niche when so many people are actively seeking them out, both online and offline in my practical experience
It's just harder to make, heat dissipation or battery will be restricted, doubly so if you're a niche manufacturer without a big budget, or one who tries to keep it repairable and needs the extra space for screws. So I can understand that Fairphone doesn't release a small model (even if it means I simply cannot use it: I actually put my money down and bought one, but sadly had to sell it onwards after a few weeks of trying) but for Graphenorola I'm not sure that restriction exists. It may just not please everyone if the chip is underclocked for heat and battery efficiency reasons and so they're not likely to. Doesn't mean there's no market for a small variant for any manufacturer that has more than one device on the market
My mom's and my current phone (same model) is what I'd call medium sized (per 2019 standards, when it was new) and the battery life sucks, but I'd buy this model again anyway if it came out with a ≥2025 SoC because I can actually use it unlike nearly any other phone on the market. Not properly reach the top, but at least the left side so that'll have to do
All the flagships have huge screens, the big guys would have paid millions on market research, I can't understand why they arent just trying to achieve flagship parity (in terms of specs not price or software). No one is going to say it's unreasonable and they save themselves the market research
yeah, clearly nobody buys Samsung Galaxy S series for years, they are like the least popular Android phone model... /s
I'm running Pixel 6a (which was followed bu successors with worse screen:body ratio for years and only now the new Pixels finally matched and slightly improved the ratio, what a progress), but considering all the HW issues (baterries and displays) with Pixels I'd rather avoid it, the worst case will buy as next phone Xiaomi and hopefully somehow unlock it, if there is no suitable Motorola
edit: added HW issues explanation since I am rate limited on comments
I also hope that the new GrapheneOS device from Motorola will be in the "smaller" size factor so it actually fits in my (apparently) tiny hands, but to be honest I'm probably getting one regardless, as iOS gets worse and worse every time I update it.
When my current phone dies, I'm basically returning to a dumb phone with a removable battery. Now that Xperia dropped open source, every phone out there is terrible and I just don't want any of them. Anything that would support a ROM has features to make my skin crawl.
It's the smallest phone available with a real telephoto lens. I think it was only available in India, but I got one on eBay because it has those two features (not huge with telephoto) I was looking for. I moved to it from a Pixel 6a because I refuse to go any bigger in physical size.
> I'll be forced to go back to dumbphones in the future... along with many others, I guess.
Going back to a dumbphone for me would mean changing my outdoor hobbies (like contributing to openstreetmap), so I'll take my losses and continue on a smartphone, but I share the sentiment. Power to you if you do it!
Motorola has such great quality/price ratio and the user experience is decent. There's still some nagging and such but overall it's much better than the competition.
But I still can't get over my old iPhone 6. That phone size was just perfect. Easy to hold and do everything with one hand, easy to fit into any pocket.
I really want an Android like that. I don't need 3 cameras and bunch of other nonsense.
Cursor spent like Million dollars on creating a browser which people were able to make later with a 200$/100$ subscription in the same amount of days as cursor with human assistance.
I don't think that this can be "autonomous", we assumed that making browsers could be autonomous process but it wasn't. That was the take I took from it all.
Will this be an example of autonomous tho? I think we still need a human experienced with reverse engineering in the loop but it might significantly improve their workflow
I wish if cursor, instead of having burnt million $ to something worthless essentially, Could have atleast done this experiment.
I WILL be buying their flagship model.
My go to for Graphene has been used Pixels from eBay. Because I can’t give money to Google in good conscience.
Aside: I've noticed over the years that phones die in one of the following ways: - too fast charging (battery dies, charge controller dies) - usb port dies - screen broken - all sorts of falls
A lether folio case, gorilla glass, and a Qi charging adapter solve all of those problems (the charging adapter also limits the current by virtue of being inefficient). It has a magnetic connector (it's a simple two-pin job and it doesn't have any issues) - in the rare occasion I want to charge up real quick, I can still hook up directly via usb c, and meanwhile the port is stuffed with the converter's plug which prevents it from accumulating dirt and fluff.
I'm glad to say that even despite many falls, some directly onto the screen, the phone itself still works very well, even if the case and glass protector are obviously ragged.
I hope once unlockable Moto's come around I'll be able to keep that one for a long while as well.
(y’all know this one https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... )
So likely no existing Motorola phones are good enough and only new ones, developed in collaboration with GrapheneOS developers, will be suitable.
> We're collaborating on future devices
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116159602850585685
Samsung had something as ambitious years ago, but it went nowhere https://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-promised-make-old-pho...
Stay tuned
Dead Comment
Is it possible that it's backdoored, have a secret opcode / management engine? Probably, but that goes to everyone, as it's not practical to analyze what's in the chip (unless you're decapping them and all)
I don't know what secure environments you're talking about, if it's an airgapped system then you should be secure even when what's inside 'tries to get out'.
European tech is in shambles and everyone else is barely holding it together outside of tech.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo