Lest you forget that modern computing exists because ATT built unix and then threw it out to the public, at speed, as they drove away from it as fast as possible. (Something about being an actual monopoly...).
There is at least one thing, on that list that I can almost assure you will be coming back (in concept and spirt) in the next 5 years. Likely open source, because google tossed it...
Meanwhile it has other very public and open winners: Golang, Kubernetes being two stellar examples of them not dropping something like a hot potato.
Yeah, its the "well, legally, we have to provide the source code, but we make it as painful and slow for you as we can without it becoming a blatant violation of the GPL."
I'm pretty sure there is a lot of code in Android that belongs to Google and is not part of an upstream GPL project. They would be completely entitled to stop sharing it.
Google hasn't been able to properly do / fix Android gesture navigation for more than half a decade now. The amount that edge swipes in things like photo editing apps are detected as backswipes (sometimes destroying 10+ minutes of editing) is laughable.
Technically this is because a lot of apps thumb their nose at the requirement to have safe areas around swipeable elements in their app, but as a user, that is not my problem to fix. It's Google's.
The workaround is so ridiculously easy too: only allow backswipes to count in the lowest 15% of the bottom left of the screen. Yet despite having hundreds of engineers earning millions on this problem for years, they haven't been able to either implement or even think of it.
The real fix would be to deprecate the three button layout in Android 18 and remove it in Android 19. Force apps to comply.
> Prior to moving it to Google Drive, they started squashing the history into a single commit prior to pushing release tags. The tarballs provided via Google Drive have exactly the same source code. However, they went out of the way to make it more inconvenient in several ways.
Ugh.
Also I can't believe it's been 10 years since they shut down Google Code.
That's the mainline kernel. Actual devices use various LTS kernels, for instance the pixel 9a uses kernel 6.1[1], which was hasn't been updated in a year[2]
I'm not sure which one the latest update for the Pixel 9a is using, I have an older Pixel 8. When I look at the Settings -> Android Version I can see it's using a build from January 2026 (also 6.1).
The repositories you have linked are not sufficient to build an Android distribution. In order to get the missing bits, you have to fill out a form: https://source.android.com/opensourcerequest and beg them, and if they decide you are worthy, they will email you a link to a tarball, which is hosted on Google Drive.
>At the time of writing, within ~12 months, in 2027, the 2027 Signature, Razr fold, and Razr flip will meet the hardware security requirements and should have official GrapheneOS support.
Motorola is currently porting GrapheneOS to their devices.
I knew it would be their higher end devices but I really wish they would have put it on their lower end as well.
I have a Moto G running LineageOS and it's my favorite phone ever. The ability to have my 800GB of music synced to a sdcard is something I'm loath to give up.
I had Motorola Moto Gs all from the first generation to the fifth or sixth, cheap and worked great, had everything one could wish for in a daily smartphone. But eventually they too started growing in size, and so I got an iPhone 12 Mini instead, that I still use to this day. I'm currently hoping I'll find something released in 2025+ that is the same size as the Mini or the old Moto Gs, but they are nowhere to be found...
I think I'll buy one of those new Motorolas with GrapheneOS just to hopefully vote with my wallet a bit, and make them port it/use it for more phones in the future, which just maybe might eventually be a "normal" sized phone again.
I would bet that what Motorola can change without trouble on the lower end is more restricted, too. Generally low end models use more parts that are old, off the shelf, and/or shared with several other models to keep costs low, and so major changes can quickly balloon costs.
> Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships
I've never really understood why we chase Android-alikes on mobile platforms instead of trying to build on mainstream Linux. I know some folks in the nix community (nix-on-droid and other projects) have tried to bring us closer to this, but projects like Graphene seem to have a lot of traction.
All the existing apps are on Android and iOS. Graphene lets you run them. You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
* before replying snarkily that Android is Linux, please take a long walk off a short pier, thanks
Porting traditional Linux desktop distributions to Android devices is meaningless, all you get is more instability, more unsafe and more trouble. Waydroid is a bad implementation on security and compatibility, just running Android in VM is better.
What's stopping me from using a browser to log in to my bank? Assuming my bank is one of the ones that requires you to lock down sideloading (they aren't, but i know many are).
Nothing is stopping you. You're free to use a desktop web app that either doesn't work or is terribly slow or has limited features on a mobile web browser. I'd love it if all apps were PWAs but that is not the case.
My broker has a much more fully featured web app then it does on iOS or Android. You can do things in a browser that the phone apps will send you to a browser to do. BofA is just as good of a web app. Maybe people are just used to using their phones?
I had to replace a credit card yesterday. Part of the default flow involves the call center sending a notification to your app.
When I told them my android version was too old, it took them twenty minutes to find out they could instead send a text message. That text message sends you to a photo-and-id verification service, but that's another issue.
Soon, there won't even be an alternative flow. There are a lot of places where there already isn't.
Are you sure? This seems like a forum with a lot of early adopters and a lot of late adopters still use browsers, email, text messages. Like, let me guess that your credit cars isn't capitol one. Not that it should be, but that would be more "normie".
> What's stopping me from using a browser to log in to my bank?
The "security module" they require you to install on your computer. In the past, when browsers had plugins, this was a browser plugin; nowadays, it's an always-on service (running as root) which exposes a local HTTP server which the bank site connects to to validate your computer. For an example from a major bank in this country (the same "security module" is used by several banks in this country), https://seg.bb.com.br/home.html is the diagnostic page for that "security module" (the FAQ page there has links to the installers).
Some older banks do have more features in their website than their app. It's usually the ones with the worse, most outdated UIs and almost useless mobile apps. After years of using several mobile-first neo-banks, I switched to a traditional bank and boy, was I not ready for the trip back in time.
@fsflover: and my mobile phone provider. And my insurance. And my eletricity provider. And my housing associations customer portal. Getting doctors appointments. Mortgage. Union. National retirement savings account. Some of these may have some alternative left, but far too many you will be left out.
Well, I can buy a train ticket without it, so I could still leave.
Do you mean to say that all these services require strong device integrity to function in Sweden?? In Australia, no local app that I'm aware of (banking, finance, government, medical) requires any form of device integrity - otherwise I couldn't use them. The only exception I've encountered is Google Wallet.
I wonder why there would be such a difference in policy between countries, not only in government but across the private sector? This doesn't make any sense to me. If anything, I'd expect Sweden to have a more sensible, left wing attitude than Oz.
In many countries, all major local banks require their phone app as the second factor to log in to the browser version of their online banking. Sometimes functionality is removed from the browser version and made available only in the phone app.
"Many" is doing a lot of work here. A more accurate statement would be that some banks in some countries require invasive apps, but fortunately it isn't the case everywhere (yet).
The relevant regulations are Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 and the earlier Directive (EU) 2015/2366.
While these laws are deliberately vague when it comes to specific technologies, they do require at least two independent factors from different categories, such as knowledge (password) and possession (phone).
That, in and of itself, wouldn't be a problem. The way most banks implement it, however, is by giving you two choices:
1. You use their mobile app (which likely requires device attestation and Google Play Services, so won't work on a plain LineageOS install)
2. You use their CardTAN device, which is extremely inconvenient to always carry around.
Sure, we nerds might argue they should just let us use our Yubikeys or regular old TOTP, but pretty much no bank implements that. (Why? Your guess is as good as mine.)
Personally, I had to buy a second stock Samsung phone just for banking apps. And yes, there are still alternatives (only very very few though), but no, none of them are convenient, for various unrelated reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if this continues to spread to the US too, under the sneaky disguise of "security".
I see people from US being surprised when they see success stories by people from EU stating "maybe it's a US thing" and people from EU being surprised when they see success stories by people from US stating "maybe it's a EU thing".
In reality, most of time it's just a matter of choosing the right bank wherever you are. I'm writing this on a GNU/Linux phone that does my banking just fine. I'm from the EU.
The bank itself. They want to see where are you, what you do and snoop on anything they can about you. Having a spywa^W sorry, bank app is the best way to do that.
Source: my bank which recently 'upgraded' a browser version to a glorified SPA which even renders as a vertical oriented app on a landscape 4K monitor.
Even Graphine is limited in what apps work properly compared to a normal google phone. You have to give up a lot in order to have privacy these days.
A pure linux non-android phone would be great however you wouldn't have access to properly working apps and would not be able to participate in modern society.
Not true, if you install play services you can run 99.9% of apps, i can even run all the italian apps from yhe goverment.
You are still using google but its running as user service and you can even revoke most of the permissions including location.
Running their sandboxed Play, I can run everything. The only thing I notice in the US is some banking apps (stupidly, idiotically, moronically) force 2FA on every login instead of trusting biometric entirely like they do on stock OS.
yea i straight up am not downloading apps anymore if i can help it. virtually zero companies put apps out to provide a better experience, they just do it to get telemetry data. which is why all these banking apps are just their website in some wrapper lol
yeah, people suggesting Android is Linux are as annoying as people saying Digital Unix/Tru64 was OSF/1, or MacOS/OSX is now Darwin or OSF/1 or Gnu Hurd itself.
Banks care very little about actual security. Some force you either to SMS codes, or to their app on a hopelessly broken platform based on shoving many untrusted spying apps onto one device and hoping some SW will be able to keep them apart.
Almost none support strong dedicated HW authenticators or second factors. Not even as an option to those who care.
Anyway it's always possible to just reverse their web api and use it directly. 2FA that consists of copying some code from SMS is no barrier, especially not on the Linux phone that you fully control.
I wonder if practices will change any of there's ever a device that ships with GOS. Right now, many companies are happy to shrug off GOS, because they don't support "modified devices".
If any of the Motorola devices have GOS as a pre-installed option, now the companies don't have the excuse that the device is modified.
I'm guessing the companies will continue to be difficult, but it'll be amusing to watch, at least.
What is the point of apps for these things in particular? I understand that some banks require an app for 2FA, but I don't see why anyone would want some invasive healthcare app on their phone.
Yep. Had to change banks because of my old one suddenly dropping grapheme support by adding stupid attestation mechanics.
They surely must have gotten feedback from me and others because the next update it worked again. But I and probably others where already a lost customer.
Everyone else mentioned the app support which is true, but for graphene specifically, they do not like desktop Linux at all because they don't like its security. They would much rather build on AOSP than desktop linux.
Seems like it's the same problem as chromium. Is it better to get off the Google controlled ecosystem? Yes. Is it easier to leverage the Google controlled ecosystem? Also yes.
People will tell you that chromium is "more up to date" as if Google wasn't the one setting the standards, making it impossible for anyone else to be similarly complete. Seems like we have a very similar problem here...
Like others have said, it comes down to apps mostly. But there is also the fact that Google and others have spent more than a decade optimizing the OS for appliances. Android was built from the ground up for mobile devices and handles things like background apps, notifications, and charging as expected on a phone. All of this could be ported or rebuilt, but the work has already been done for Android and billions of devices prove that it works.
You mean Microsoft proactively kept shooting devs in the kneecaps?
Leaving phones behind on old incompatible OS versions 2 times in 3 years and switching app frameworks 3 times in 4 years does not a good app developer experience make.
Piled on top of that, Google became actively hostile to 3rd party developers building support for YouTube (and Gmail and Gmaps, but those had workarounds / alternatives).
What a colossal disaster. I was a huge Windows Phone fan, so their yearly missteps were quite painful to watch. I was especially annoyed when my first gen WP wasn't going to get an upgrade to WP8. My HTC 7 Pro is still my favourite phone I've ever owned, but after that I finally gave up and switched to Android.
What about running the whole Android infrastructure, but on top of a non-Android Linux distro? And this, on top of a Android kernel (otherwise you won't have the drivers yo uneed)
The advantage being, we can manage packages using a regular Linux distro
This is exactly where my head goes. There's nothing special about this hardware other than its small form factor. Sure, some desktop apps would likely want a different skin, but thats hardly limiting.
You can't because a lot of apps check that the phone is controlled by Google with Play Integrity.
Google thought about this, don't worry. They learned their lesson after CyanogenMod tried to compete by offering an alternative. Non-Google Android are now dead except in China.
I dont think app support is all that important. Most apps are garbage as they are ime, so rebuilding from scratch, or using existing software that runs fine on linux, would keep me happy.
They did end up releasing Windows Subsystem for Android via the Windows Insider Program, which was enough for the OSS community to take it over after it was abandoned. It still exists and has worked quite well for my use case: https://github.com/MustardChef/WSABuilds
GOS is broadly compatible with most phone use cases out of the box--chat, mail, browsing. A Google Play profile lets me use almost all apps (including my bank apps, but I understand that's not true for everyone).
In principle I agree about a Linux phone, but the gaps are much greater. I am also sympathetic to the GOS team's arguments that sandboxing on Android is better, and important on a device that allows control of essentially my whole life (2FA apps etc.)
Yes, there's SailfishOS, there's Ubuntu Touch, and a couple more. It would be nice if one of them could gain traction so people can have a third choice.
This is not a good example. Pinephone Pro had a very small developer community (of volunteers) and thus quite undeveloped software. It was discontinued for this reason. Librem 5 and Pinephone are usable as daily drivers, albeit they do require compromises.
i recently put debian (mobian) on a pixel 3a and it's pretty solid, though i haven't tried it out as daily driver yet.
claude code makes stuff like that super accessible to do in your spare time. another example is installing debian on a synology 918+, there's no way i would've had the grit to do that without ai. it's open season for any gadget that's got a debug uart port.
Because without Android I can't run WhatsApp and my bank's app on my phone, which promptly reduces it to a paperweight. I wish it wasn't so, but reality refuses to cooperate, so let's just be happy that we've got GrapheneOS which is so good it has its own column in Cellebrite's support matrix.
Apps. We'd love a completely different OS and it is viable on desktop because web almost does everything but on mobile you're basically locked out of very essential functionality like banking, transit, messaging etc. The compatibility layers aren't good enough (yet) to offer a seamless experience.
Because it's a mobile platform and "GNU+Linux" is laughably terrible in this space.
It's almost like Android has put millions of expert dev hours into making it the most used OS in the world. Like GNU+linux on laptops only works the way it does because of android-upstreamed battery saver kernel features.
But a mobile is also people's most used devices with all of their data, bank accounts etc there - it has to be safe. And GNU+linux has not even a single thought about security, while android just has it worked out (every app runs as its own user, so it's even built on standard UNIX security).
A mobile OS also has to race to suspend and for that it needs cooperation from "apps" -- desktop apps just run, they don't care about anything besides SIGKILL. That's not a workable model on a mobile and android solves it.
And I say all that as someone who runs linux everywhere I can and I absolutely love it. It's imo the best kernel out there -- but the userspace is not where it should be and if anything, the correct question would be what can we take from Android and add to GNU+Linux. (And nix is fantastic, but it's a packaging solution, I don't really see how it comes into question here. I can run nix on my android phone just fine by the way)
Nix comes in because im tired of dealing with procedural solutions to things that should be solved declaratively. I run NixOS everywhere I can because I can actually reason about what is installed on the system. "Package management" like apt and pacman and even app stores has never done it for me.
As to your other userspace concerns... these are all solveable. Perhaps with some elbow grease, but devices like the Steam Deck prove that mobile linux isnt as much of a problem re: userspace as you claim.
Ed.: I'd also like to add that the fuss around security is _mostly_ Google propaganda. Android is not meaningfully more secure, _without application level changes_ than Linux.
This is something that no Linux phone enthusiast seems to understand.
Also if we use atomic distros with flatpaks and whatnot that mimic Android security the end user basically ends up having to essentially use Termux (but busybox or something similar) on their Linux phone as well
Stop repeating this nonsense, AOSP isn't any more "private" than Linux. AOSP is only more "secure" because, on some devices like Pixels, it exploits hardware features typically not found on general purpose computers. By default, Android also limits user control and takes root away. That may be a sensible design for an appliance, but it isn't something we should want on desktops.
I don't either. Don't we have free market capitalism? Why don't I have a Linux phone? And why do I need to worry that my government and banking apps won't work if I get a Linux phone?
I cant tell how tongue in cheek youre trying to be, but capital rules all. I don't have billions of dollars like the trillion dollar companies do, so I am not "free" to "compete" with them in any meaningful way. Same goes for these businesses convincing governments and banks that they have to do it their way or the highway.
Because in a free market you can't compel someone to support your niche platform, nor even compel someone to create the niche platform you want. The market for a Linux phone is tiny because there's almost no reason for the average phone user to prefer it over android.
well, apparently not even Microsoft had enough capital.
It's almost like the free market only works when we have well-defined and regulated markets. This has been known by Adam Smith and quite logical, yet people expect Google and Apple giga-corporations with monopolies to somehow abide by the laws of selling grains on the market.
"Trust me guys, the free market will work, it's just that no-one ever earnestly tried it before!!"
No. This is the end state of any semblance of laissez-faire economics. Full stop. Massive accumulation at the top, power to those with capital, rags for the poorest.
Because the Android Runtime (ART) is very necessary to run APKs, and APKs are the only non-iOS standard for packaging mobile apps that is supported enough to be viable. Without it, you might get some open source apps to run on a linux phone, but you won't have banking apps, clash of clans, or a million other things people really would like to have on their phones.
Even AOSP has selinux enabled by default with very comprehensive and scoped policies. That, along with app isolation and permission system, already leaves desktop Linux far, far in the dust on security.
> I've never really understood why we chase Android-alikes on mobile platforms instead of trying to build on mainstream Linux.
Because there is no such thing as "mainstream Linux" when it comes to anything related to user-facing consumer software. Not on desktops, not on tablets, not on phones.
I mean you invoked "mainstream Linux" and "Nix" in the same paragraph. That alone should clue you into why this, absolutely, does not work.
"Linux enthusiests" would rather muck around with rewriting the same software over and over and over again because they dislike using GTK or whatever, and put monumental amount of efforts making new package managers, then, say, getting the ability to take simple photographs using a phone camera.
I mean... In that page there is no less then 25 different "Linux Phone OSes" listed.
None of them actually work.
They are all going to be slow, they are all going to burn through battery life. There is no meaningful security to speak of.
If I handed a unlocked "Linux phone" to somebody and said "take a photograph of me"... The chances of that actually working is slim to none.
Meanwhile we have Android OS that is proven to work. It is open source. It is used by, literally, billions of people. The security model is as good as it gets. It has better application support then Windows.
Taking something that works and then making it more secure and more open and more privacy focused is infinitely more productive and meaningful then trying over from scratch because you want a phone based around Nix packages or whatever.
Even if Google decided to close source Android from now on and be actively hostile to any open source kernel modules... Forking the Android that exists today and trying to make it work is exponentially more likely to yield positive results then, say, starting on a Debian-based "Linux phone OS".
And Android can still use nix-pkgs if you really wanted to.
The whole point of Linux is that everything is open and, with enough work, can be built upon. I don't want to have to reinvent my software (I'm refusing to say app because truly, its a boogeyman term) for another form factor beyond UI. Having a not-Linux phone means I need to. I brought up nix because I'm invested in the community and know some people who care about making software truly work on other platforms.
I don’t see PWAs becoming dominant so long as web development stubbornly retains its highly atomized “bring your own everything” philosophy. At the very minimum, there needs to exists a community-accepted web UI framework with a similar level of “batteries included”-ness in terms of scope and depth as that of SwiftUI/Compose, or preferably that of UIKit.
The existence of such a framework would make the various tradeoffs with going web-only sting less and make that the advantageous route, not just the cost-cutting route that it’s seen as now (and why those bad browser wrappers continue to proliferate).
If by "mainstream" Linux you mean something like postmarketOS, I'd suggest you look up reviews or give it a try yourself. A few months ago, people were reporting a hard time placing a call, taking a photo, etc.
A year ago or so, the ThinkPhone 23 (Snapdragon 8, 2023, a weird "flagship") was available for 229€ new on various retail stores. The phone also supports Mobian/PostmarketOS and the bootloader is unlockable with no adverse effects.
Out of nowhere, it received (along with other older phones) updates up to Android 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "sudden" update was just a side effect of Motorola preparing for Graphene to be released on these older phones.
I have a 'long life' Android device (Zebra EM45) that has only recently gotten its Android 15 updates; its committed through Android 16 so I assume it's also waiting on Qualcomm to get its act together and in gear for whatever final patches are required for the QCS5430. IIRC, QCOMM is promising "10 years" on the CPU.
I bought the Moto signature a month ago , I already assumed it prolly won't support graphene, since some of the previous replies on X indicate that the graphene team requires full hardware compliance with their requirements, and the Signature apparently is not compliant yet.
Anyway I ended up buying a really good smartphone.. just not a graphene supported haha :(
Also this is really great collab from moto & graphene as more vendors will officially recognize Graphene as legit OS (legel/OEM is different concept). I heard month ago Volkswagen banned graphene, hopefully we we will see moving things in opposite direction...
They didn't "ban" them, but they did enable some attestation feature that effectively "bans" anything that isn't Google Android.
Which still makes you wonder why Volkswagen is so keen on alienating what little is left of their customer base with completely stupid security theater.
Because the EU is run by lawyers and lawsuits. They probably decided there was a risk of being sued for insufficient security if they didn't enable every security feature, and they considered it as zero impact to customers because nobody uses graphene.
Yes, but that is still very confusing to me, because you're not paying other people money so that they just follow incentives without thinking, vision or backbone.
The whole idea of buying something is giving people money for their (assumed correct) judgement, which then leads to desired artifacts downstream.
The people at VW don't think about the customer. They are essentially bureaucrats who only live to expand their personal fiefdom in the bureaucracy. I bet that many in the IT-security team would insist that their team doesn't have customers.
I just wonder how they handle full Google's certification for hardware integrity + Google Play Store with GrapheneOS. They contradict on this part on the normal GrapheneOS mod and I don't see a way how they will not on Motorola phones.
Banking apps (e.g. Revolut) block GrapheneOS actively and many other apps too.
But it will be interesting times once they are out!
> Banking apps (e.g. Revolut) block GrapheneOS actively and many other apps too.
You've misunderstood something here. Revolut doesn't "block GrapheneOS actively". I'm running Revolut and most of my banking apps on GrapheneOS right now.
In my experience, there are two major categories of incompatibility:
- High levels of Google Play Integrity checks: app only works on releases of Android that have been allowlisted by Google. The only app that does this for me so far is McDonalds.
- Commercial root detection APIs: some of GrapheneOS' security features like "Secure App Spawning" trip root detection heuristics. This is the kind of incompatibility I usually run into for banking apps. You can disable individual features on a per-app basis these days to get around this.
I get that you don't like Twitter/Facebook/Reddit or whatever, but a clear solution to this problem is to hurt googles public image as much as you can and for that you need a platform with as large of a reach as possible.
Anyone has any idea if this changes current situation with nfc payments? Currently many banking apps do not work, and google pay is just unavailable, to my understanding it was related to secure chip on phone - as graphene wasnt "stocked" android os approved by google, i dearly hope this chnages with motorola
"The initial devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027. The initial devices will be flagships so they'll be higher end hardware than Pixels at a higher price. Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships."
I don't doubt they will cost more than the Pixel line, but I'm somewhat skeptical that the hardware will be higher quality. Perhaps my idea of what Motorola is capable of is outdated.
Google’s Tensor chipset is weak by modern standards, and Motorola is taking the strongest off the shelf processors from the best mobile chip designer (Qualcomm).
Pixel itself is very mediocre hardware, it's not hard to surpass. The battery is my main problem with it, my current pixel can't barely survive half a day of usage.
Realistically, most smartphones are made by the same ODMs. Since they don't make their own screens, shells, CPUs or modems, the only thing being set apart is the software.
I'm not selecting which phone I buy on whether the stock OS comes with lockscreen shortcuts. At best, a software requirement someone might use as a deciding factor is OS support and bootloader unlock. The real differences are in hardware: size, battery life, chipset speed, RAM or other local model enablers, picture quality (this part also depends on good software to be fair), included accessories, satellite connectivity hardware, headphone jack, gimmicks like UWB or FM radio support, whether it's a flip/fold phone, storage space / sdcard support... all hardware differences
If only this were true. Samsung makes arguably the best hardware, but I refuse to buy a phone with Facebook pre-loaded and unremovable, a second (worse) app store preloaded and unremovable, and a bunch of redundant samsung-branded copies of the google apps. The best android images are as close to vanilla AOSP android as possible -- this used to mean Sony or Google branded phones, except Sony doesn't really market phones in the United States anymore and the Pixel phones are diverging from AOSP
I'm writing this from a Samsung. Their store software hasn't ever gotten in the way and I like most of the UI changes they made besides the extra apps that you can mostly hide or remove (in my case especially because root, but alas I'd not encourage anyone to buy Samsung anymore without the option to control the hardware as if you own it)
Not to defend Samsung specifically, just that most phones' software is fine after a bit of setup whereas you can't download more RAM (don't believe the scams that are out there! :P). Even on Huawei I remember there were some things better than on stock but forgot what specifically (the only thing that comes to mind was a lockscreen menu that you could open with a gesture and I used all the time)
Apropos Sony, that was the only brand where I kept having issues because my mom, who had the phone, constantly had questions about what to do with some notification that the OS was pushing and we couldn't get rid of. Basically product ads, iirc to try this-or-that app or function
I do get what you mean about bloatware, just that it's more of a tie-breaker (saving you an hour of debloating, assuming you stay on stock) as compared to the permanent differences in hardware capabilities
The good news though is that by replacing the Pixel's stock OS by Graphene, you get something close to AOSP and arguably better. The hardware is nothing to write home about, but the phones are well priced and the bootloaders are unlockable.
Anyone want to place bets in whether this will be an unlockable bootloader, or some GrapheneOS only install path?
Sure would be nice to have phones that can be rooted, or OS replaced. I've been hopeful this would perhaps enable that, but I fret my excitement may be premature.
If google allows that for pixels, I don't see why Motorola wouldn't.
Besides, GrapheneOS would probably don't want to get into a situation where their keys are burnt into hardware non-modifiable. They had to revoke such a key once in order to protect their users (against an attempt to hijack the project).
Iirc they said they will be able to release Android updates like Android 17, for example, at the time it's released. This year it was a few weeks until it came to stable.
This somewhat indicates to me it will be available when the Motorolas release which should be on their regular release patterns. That's been May for the 2025 and 2026 Razrs.
This is good news but not so much good news for us poors. I was waiting four this announcement in hopes of getting away from google totally but with the 2026 Moto Signature going for $1000 I am sure the 2027 will be more so I will probably get Pixel 10 instead.
Maybe this will lighten the price on the Pixel 10's though...
If this is successful, I can see this trickling down to the lower end phones in the following years. If for no other reason than keeping their hardware as similar as possible.
All other phones will have a higher price tag due to memory hogging by datacenters. How much will that google pixel 10 be when the motorolla phone arrives?
> .. obtaining source code via Google Drive ...
Let this sink in. Google, this small tech company (correct me if I'm wrong), is peddling source code via tarballs on google drive.
Something the head of the Android ecosystem, Sameer Samat could be proud of on his CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameersamat
There is a little bit of clumsiness in the way Google communicates with the public. What they really mean to say is: we need to be broken up.
I am in awe at the amount of capital Google's market dominance affords them and the consistency with which they squander that capital.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
This is not the way.
Well.
Lest you forget that modern computing exists because ATT built unix and then threw it out to the public, at speed, as they drove away from it as fast as possible. (Something about being an actual monopoly...).
There is at least one thing, on that list that I can almost assure you will be coming back (in concept and spirt) in the next 5 years. Likely open source, because google tossed it...
Meanwhile it has other very public and open winners: Golang, Kubernetes being two stellar examples of them not dropping something like a hot potato.
Yeah, its the "well, legally, we have to provide the source code, but we make it as painful and slow for you as we can without it becoming a blatant violation of the GPL."
Not quite, they could make you request it by post and send it on a stack of floppies.
Sounds like a cheap way to get my hands on some floppies.
They don't have to be cheap.
you are right a stack of printed qr codes is better
No, that's too easily machine-read. Print it in a fancy calligraphy font or one with ambiguous characters.
Reminds me of Lavabit where the US wanted the encryption keys and they printed them out in a 4 point font :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Legacy
That's too convenient, cameras can read many qr codes at a time. Encode the binary on some punch cards.
Pretty sure cameras can be used to read punchcards too.
This sounds like a fun project. Somebody already did it, apparently: https://hackaday.com/2012/07/30/reading-punch-cards-with-an-...
Greenbar printouts.
I'm pretty sure there is a lot of code in Android that belongs to Google and is not part of an upstream GPL project. They would be completely entitled to stop sharing it.
Isn't that the point of Google Play Services? To keep their proprietary code separate, in a super-app that doesn't obey the GPL?
Google hasn't been able to properly do / fix Android gesture navigation for more than half a decade now. The amount that edge swipes in things like photo editing apps are detected as backswipes (sometimes destroying 10+ minutes of editing) is laughable.
Technically this is because a lot of apps thumb their nose at the requirement to have safe areas around swipeable elements in their app, but as a user, that is not my problem to fix. It's Google's.
The workaround is so ridiculously easy too: only allow backswipes to count in the lowest 15% of the bottom left of the screen. Yet despite having hundreds of engineers earning millions on this problem for years, they haven't been able to either implement or even think of it.
The real fix would be to deprecate the three button layout in Android 18 and remove it in Android 19. Force apps to comply.
> Prior to moving it to Google Drive, they started squashing the history into a single commit prior to pushing release tags. The tarballs provided via Google Drive have exactly the same source code. However, they went out of the way to make it more inconvenient in several ways.
Ugh.
Also I can't believe it's been 10 years since they shut down Google Code.
At this point, without Git commit history (assuming it is a bare code dump), is it still even possible to guarantee it is what Google says it is?
You can compare against old dumps.
Sometimes I wonder if randos peek in and see this terminology and think we’re all nut cases
> ...after making a request through Google Forms This is even more ridiculous to me.
> Google, this small tech company (correct me if I'm wrong), is peddling source code via tarballs on google drive.
What is the context for this? It's not clear from the linked social media post.
The Android kernel source code is in git: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/
Plus there's a lot of other Android source hosted on Google's git servers: https://android.googlesource.com/
Reported here, among other places https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-kernel-code-fo...
>The Android kernel source code is in git: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/
That's the mainline kernel. Actual devices use various LTS kernels, for instance the pixel 9a uses kernel 6.1[1], which was hasn't been updated in a year[2]
[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/tegu/
[2] https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/tegu-kernels/...
There are other kernel 6.1 branches there, e.g. https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/refs/heads/...
I'm not sure which one the latest update for the Pixel 9a is using, I have an older Pixel 8. When I look at the Settings -> Android Version I can see it's using a build from January 2026 (also 6.1).
The repositories you have linked are not sufficient to build an Android distribution. In order to get the missing bits, you have to fill out a form: https://source.android.com/opensourcerequest and beg them, and if they decide you are worthy, they will email you a link to a tarball, which is hosted on Google Drive.
3 years, checks out. Probably buddy buddy with someone. Reminds me of that 3rd Google Pay they made that they had to sack because it was so dumb.
Specific devices:
>At the time of writing, within ~12 months, in 2027, the 2027 Signature, Razr fold, and Razr flip will meet the hardware security requirements and should have official GrapheneOS support. Motorola is currently porting GrapheneOS to their devices.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49038982
I knew it would be their higher end devices but I really wish they would have put it on their lower end as well.
I have a Moto G running LineageOS and it's my favorite phone ever. The ability to have my 800GB of music synced to a sdcard is something I'm loath to give up.
I had Motorola Moto Gs all from the first generation to the fifth or sixth, cheap and worked great, had everything one could wish for in a daily smartphone. But eventually they too started growing in size, and so I got an iPhone 12 Mini instead, that I still use to this day. I'm currently hoping I'll find something released in 2025+ that is the same size as the Mini or the old Moto Gs, but they are nowhere to be found...
I think I'll buy one of those new Motorolas with GrapheneOS just to hopefully vote with my wallet a bit, and make them port it/use it for more phones in the future, which just maybe might eventually be a "normal" sized phone again.
Pretty much the same story. I am hoping my iPhone 12 lasts until I retire and I won't need to carry a smartphone anymore.
This!
Expandable storage is priceless to me and the main reason I opt for this product.
Lower end devices simply don't have the hardware required.
I would bet that what Motorola can change without trouble on the lower end is more restricted, too. Generally low end models use more parts that are old, off the shelf, and/or shared with several other models to keep costs low, and so major changes can quickly balloon costs.
From the linked url
> Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships
What is your music workflow?
I got stuck in Spotify for new music but that obviously doesn’t work long term
GrapheneOS on a flip is my dream. I tried with the ZFlips a couple of times but Samsung's kitchen-sink approach is just not for me.
The 2026 Signature doesn't appear to be for sale in the US. Does this mean we have to wait for the lower end devices if we don't want a fold/flip?
Wow, I do not think any of these phones are available in the U.S.
The Flip and Fold are. I see them available on the Motorola US store page.
What I hope is that a compact and high-end device will have Graphene support.
I've never really understood why we chase Android-alikes on mobile platforms instead of trying to build on mainstream Linux. I know some folks in the nix community (nix-on-droid and other projects) have tried to bring us closer to this, but projects like Graphene seem to have a lot of traction.
All the existing apps are on Android and iOS. Graphene lets you run them. You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
* before replying snarkily that Android is Linux, please take a long walk off a short pier, thanks
> All the existing apps are on Android and iOS. Graphene lets you run them.
We have waydroid for that.
> You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone* because they won't let you, but you can on Android including on Graphene.
Unless of course it uses those stupid integrity apis to block anything that isn't stock.
Graphene passes basic integrity, so most of them work. There is a list here:
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Porting traditional Linux desktop distributions to Android devices is meaningless, all you get is more instability, more unsafe and more trouble. Waydroid is a bad implementation on security and compatibility, just running Android in VM is better.
There are other reasons for porting, like control over your own device.
> Waydroid is a bad implementation on security and compatibility, just running Android in VM is better.
What security problems does waydroid have that a VM wouldn't?
What's stopping me from using a browser to log in to my bank? Assuming my bank is one of the ones that requires you to lock down sideloading (they aren't, but i know many are).
Nothing is stopping you. You're free to use a desktop web app that either doesn't work or is terribly slow or has limited features on a mobile web browser. I'd love it if all apps were PWAs but that is not the case.
My broker has a much more fully featured web app then it does on iOS or Android. You can do things in a browser that the phone apps will send you to a browser to do. BofA is just as good of a web app. Maybe people are just used to using their phones?
Can you deposit checks from the webapp? That is the feature most often missing in banking webapps. It isn't something I need often, fortunately.
Looking down the thread I am also thinking maybe this is a Europe thing? I am usa.
That's not terribly compelling. Android and iOS banking apps also don't work, are terribly slow, and have limited features.
Eh? The bank apps I’ve seen appear to be webviews wrapping their mobile site. Much to my chagrin, I’ll add.
I had to replace a credit card yesterday. Part of the default flow involves the call center sending a notification to your app. When I told them my android version was too old, it took them twenty minutes to find out they could instead send a text message. That text message sends you to a photo-and-id verification service, but that's another issue.
Soon, there won't even be an alternative flow. There are a lot of places where there already isn't.
Are you sure? This seems like a forum with a lot of early adopters and a lot of late adopters still use browsers, email, text messages. Like, let me guess that your credit cars isn't capitol one. Not that it should be, but that would be more "normie".
> What's stopping me from using a browser to log in to my bank?
The "security module" they require you to install on your computer. In the past, when browsers had plugins, this was a browser plugin; nowadays, it's an always-on service (running as root) which exposes a local HTTP server which the bank site connects to to validate your computer. For an example from a major bank in this country (the same "security module" is used by several banks in this country), https://seg.bb.com.br/home.html is the diagnostic page for that "security module" (the FAQ page there has links to the installers).
The websites don't have feature parity with the apps these days. Things like being able to deposit a cheque aren't available among other things.
Some older banks do have more features in their website than their app. It's usually the ones with the worse, most outdated UIs and almost useless mobile apps. After years of using several mobile-first neo-banks, I switched to a traditional bank and boy, was I not ready for the trip back in time.
>deposit a cheque
That would be inconvenient if this was 1985.
Some banks are app only and/or build MFA functionality into their apps.
That would be a hell naw from me.
You know the web is also bits and bytes right? Someone who has a say should fix it so banks can do whatever they need right in the browser.
The 2FA code you need to get from the phone app to log in on a desktop. It isn't 2005 any more.
Apparently I live in 2005 then? I do 2FA with the same chip+pin method that I use to pay in the store. Works in any browser
Maybe that is possible in Germany. It is impossible here in Sweden.
Or in other words: of course you can have mobile bankid without a smartphone, just use a tablet computer ;)
@fsflover: and my mobile phone provider. And my insurance. And my eletricity provider. And my housing associations customer portal. Getting doctors appointments. Mortgage. Union. National retirement savings account. Some of these may have some alternative left, but far too many you will be left out.
Well, I can buy a train ticket without it, so I could still leave.
Do you mean to say that all these services require strong device integrity to function in Sweden?? In Australia, no local app that I'm aware of (banking, finance, government, medical) requires any form of device integrity - otherwise I couldn't use them. The only exception I've encountered is Google Wallet.
I wonder why there would be such a difference in policy between countries, not only in government but across the private sector? This doesn't make any sense to me. If anything, I'd expect Sweden to have a more sensible, left wing attitude than Oz.
Looks like it is possible in Sweden: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562094
Consider switching your bank to one not forcing you into American megacorps.
Highly location dependent. This is more true in Europe than in America.
my bank (and others) doesn't require the 2f to be a smartphone
Right, 2FA. My bank wants me to log in to my phone app and then sends an SMS to the same phone to confirm the app transaction. It's super-secure.
The bank website typically needs the app to enable two factor authentication in a lot of places.
For eg. There's no browser based alternative to make UPI payments that i know of.
How about for clients with no smartphones?
In many countries, all major local banks require their phone app as the second factor to log in to the browser version of their online banking. Sometimes functionality is removed from the browser version and made available only in the phone app.
"Many" is doing a lot of work here. A more accurate statement would be that some banks in some countries require invasive apps, but fortunately it isn't the case everywhere (yet).
This is a huge problem in EU countries!
The relevant regulations are Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 and the earlier Directive (EU) 2015/2366.
While these laws are deliberately vague when it comes to specific technologies, they do require at least two independent factors from different categories, such as knowledge (password) and possession (phone).
That, in and of itself, wouldn't be a problem. The way most banks implement it, however, is by giving you two choices:
1. You use their mobile app (which likely requires device attestation and Google Play Services, so won't work on a plain LineageOS install)
2. You use their CardTAN device, which is extremely inconvenient to always carry around.
Sure, we nerds might argue they should just let us use our Yubikeys or regular old TOTP, but pretty much no bank implements that. (Why? Your guess is as good as mine.)
Personally, I had to buy a second stock Samsung phone just for banking apps. And yes, there are still alternatives (only very very few though), but no, none of them are convenient, for various unrelated reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if this continues to spread to the US too, under the sneaky disguise of "security".
I see people from US being surprised when they see success stories by people from EU stating "maybe it's a US thing" and people from EU being surprised when they see success stories by people from US stating "maybe it's a EU thing".
In reality, most of time it's just a matter of choosing the right bank wherever you are. I'm writing this on a GNU/Linux phone that does my banking just fine. I'm from the EU.
And what do people without a smartphone use?
A hardware-based CardTAN device, which is super inconvenient. Or else they can't do any online banking at all.
crying in EU :(
Name five.
BAC in Central Americal https://www.baccredomatic.com
Well, it's kinda hard to scan a QR code displayed on your screen when the camera is attached to its back (semi-joking)
The bank itself. They want to see where are you, what you do and snoop on anything they can about you. Having a spywa^W sorry, bank app is the best way to do that.
Source: my bank which recently 'upgraded' a browser version to a glorified SPA which even renders as a vertical oriented app on a landscape 4K monitor.
Sounds like it's time for a new bank.
Even Graphine is limited in what apps work properly compared to a normal google phone. You have to give up a lot in order to have privacy these days.
A pure linux non-android phone would be great however you wouldn't have access to properly working apps and would not be able to participate in modern society.
Not true, if you install play services you can run 99.9% of apps, i can even run all the italian apps from yhe goverment. You are still using google but its running as user service and you can even revoke most of the permissions including location.
Running their sandboxed Play, I can run everything. The only thing I notice in the US is some banking apps (stupidly, idiotically, moronically) force 2FA on every login instead of trusting biometric entirely like they do on stock OS.
I use my web browser to access my bank and tell banks that require apps to go fuck themselves.
> You can't have a bank account on a Linux phone
Somehow I do.
> Graphene lets you run them.
It seems not all of them, and that things will only get worse if recent news comes true.
I can't care less about "apps". Web is already powerful enough to do all sort of stuff on device.
That said, I think wasi containers support for a mobile OS would be a game changer.
(^ Here's a startup idea if you're looking out for one. I for one throw out all my devices from the balcony to get this)
You can run wasm components in tauri apps, and tauri supports building for android.
I haven't figured out how to make them talk with each other though. I imagine that's the place where I'd notice this lack of support.
yea i straight up am not downloading apps anymore if i can help it. virtually zero companies put apps out to provide a better experience, they just do it to get telemetry data. which is why all these banking apps are just their website in some wrapper lol
yeah, people suggesting Android is Linux are as annoying as people saying Digital Unix/Tru64 was OSF/1, or MacOS/OSX is now Darwin or OSF/1 or Gnu Hurd itself.
Banks care very little about actual security. Some force you either to SMS codes, or to their app on a hopelessly broken platform based on shoving many untrusted spying apps onto one device and hoping some SW will be able to keep them apart.
Almost none support strong dedicated HW authenticators or second factors. Not even as an option to those who care.
Anyway it's always possible to just reverse their web api and use it directly. 2FA that consists of copying some code from SMS is no barrier, especially not on the Linux phone that you fully control.
A lot of it is security theater plus lazy (as in "doing the minimum amount of work possible") compliance with regulations
Some (European) banks/healthcare apps block GOS and require stock android. Just saying
I wonder if practices will change any of there's ever a device that ships with GOS. Right now, many companies are happy to shrug off GOS, because they don't support "modified devices".
If any of the Motorola devices have GOS as a pre-installed option, now the companies don't have the excuse that the device is modified.
I'm guessing the companies will continue to be difficult, but it'll be amusing to watch, at least.
What is the point of apps for these things in particular? I understand that some banks require an app for 2FA, but I don't see why anyone would want some invasive healthcare app on their phone.
Yep. Had to change banks because of my old one suddenly dropping grapheme support by adding stupid attestation mechanics.
They surely must have gotten feedback from me and others because the next update it worked again. But I and probably others where already a lost customer.
same here... unfortunately, there are too few users of alternative Android distros for the banks to care...at all
most banking apps don't run on graphene
Stop parroting this. It’s not true.
Diminishingly few apps do not work, and it’s down to them.
Everyone else mentioned the app support which is true, but for graphene specifically, they do not like desktop Linux at all because they don't like its security. They would much rather build on AOSP than desktop linux.
Seems like it's the same problem as chromium. Is it better to get off the Google controlled ecosystem? Yes. Is it easier to leverage the Google controlled ecosystem? Also yes.
People will tell you that chromium is "more up to date" as if Google wasn't the one setting the standards, making it impossible for anyone else to be similarly complete. Seems like we have a very similar problem here...
Like others have said, it comes down to apps mostly. But there is also the fact that Google and others have spent more than a decade optimizing the OS for appliances. Android was built from the ground up for mobile devices and handles things like background apps, notifications, and charging as expected on a phone. All of this could be ported or rebuilt, but the work has already been done for Android and billions of devices prove that it works.
Because you need app support. Not even Microsoft could pull that off.
You mean Microsoft proactively kept shooting devs in the kneecaps?
Leaving phones behind on old incompatible OS versions 2 times in 3 years and switching app frameworks 3 times in 4 years does not a good app developer experience make.
Piled on top of that, Google became actively hostile to 3rd party developers building support for YouTube (and Gmail and Gmaps, but those had workarounds / alternatives).
What a colossal disaster. I was a huge Windows Phone fan, so their yearly missteps were quite painful to watch. I was especially annoyed when my first gen WP wasn't going to get an upgrade to WP8. My HTC 7 Pro is still my favourite phone I've ever owned, but after that I finally gave up and switched to Android.
What about running the whole Android infrastructure, but on top of a non-Android Linux distro? And this, on top of a Android kernel (otherwise you won't have the drivers yo uneed)
The advantage being, we can manage packages using a regular Linux distro
A lot of "non Android Linux distributions" like sailfish os actually use a lot of Android infrastructure to keep working.
Drivers doesn't just mean the kernel. It's the user space binary blobs and services that need to talk to the kernel to enable the hardware.
Other than that there's waydroid, alien dalvik etc.. that run another Android instance in a container.
The thing is a lot of Android applications use safety net/other methods to make sure they only run on. "Approved"/stock hardware.
This is exactly where my head goes. There's nothing special about this hardware other than its small form factor. Sure, some desktop apps would likely want a different skin, but thats hardly limiting.
You can't because a lot of apps check that the phone is controlled by Google with Play Integrity.
Google thought about this, don't worry. They learned their lesson after CyanogenMod tried to compete by offering an alternative. Non-Google Android are now dead except in China.
CyanogenMod became LineageOS and its still going strong, im typing this on an unofficial lineageOS build right now.
It still exists yes but Google tighten the screws to make sure it just keeps to be an hobbist project and not a competitor
Well for me I use Lineage without even MicroG and everything I need works - yes even banking
App support, stable ABI, uniform UI/UX, hardware vendor cooperation...
I dont think app support is all that important. Most apps are garbage as they are ime, so rebuilding from scratch, or using existing software that runs fine on linux, would keep me happy.
Microsoft could, but abandoned just as they gained traction in Europe
I miss my Windows Phone...
Microsoft can barely pull off their flagship desktop operating system, so that doesn't say much.
Doesn't windows run android apps natively now?
It doesn't. There was a plan, but Microsoft abandoned it.
They did end up releasing Windows Subsystem for Android via the Windows Insider Program, which was enough for the OSS community to take it over after it was abandoned. It still exists and has worked quite well for my use case: https://github.com/MustardChef/WSABuilds
GOS is broadly compatible with most phone use cases out of the box--chat, mail, browsing. A Google Play profile lets me use almost all apps (including my bank apps, but I understand that's not true for everyone).
In principle I agree about a Linux phone, but the gaps are much greater. I am also sympathetic to the GOS team's arguments that sandboxing on Android is better, and important on a device that allows control of essentially my whole life (2FA apps etc.)
once Huawei was forbidden from using Android - that's when people ie western markets & the world at large should've shifted. look at HarmonyOS.
in China - there's no google apps available on their 'android' versions.
their platforms are already performant and fluid - so people should build on that.
It's a shame that the newest version of harmonyOS isn't open source.
Because Android is miles ahead in terms of security, permission management, app separation, power management, privacy...
Linux crowd can not even agree on compositor, and if systemd or sudo is a good idea.
Why should Linux users have to agree? run what you want, it's your computer.
> Linux crowd can not even agree on compositor, and if systemd or sudo is a good idea.
This is actually a feature.
Yes, there's SailfishOS, there's Ubuntu Touch, and a couple more. It would be nice if one of them could gain traction so people can have a third choice.
I have a Pinephone Pro. It's nowhere near usable as a daily driver.
This is not a good example. Pinephone Pro had a very small developer community (of volunteers) and thus quite undeveloped software. It was discontinued for this reason. Librem 5 and Pinephone are usable as daily drivers, albeit they do require compromises.
i recently put debian (mobian) on a pixel 3a and it's pretty solid, though i haven't tried it out as daily driver yet.
claude code makes stuff like that super accessible to do in your spare time. another example is installing debian on a synology 918+, there's no way i would've had the grit to do that without ai. it's open season for any gadget that's got a debug uart port.
Because without Android I can't run WhatsApp and my bank's app on my phone, which promptly reduces it to a paperweight. I wish it wasn't so, but reality refuses to cooperate, so let's just be happy that we've got GrapheneOS which is so good it has its own column in Cellebrite's support matrix.
Apps. We'd love a completely different OS and it is viable on desktop because web almost does everything but on mobile you're basically locked out of very essential functionality like banking, transit, messaging etc. The compatibility layers aren't good enough (yet) to offer a seamless experience.
Also almost any native desktop app forced to mobile has broken ux.
Because it's a mobile platform and "GNU+Linux" is laughably terrible in this space.
It's almost like Android has put millions of expert dev hours into making it the most used OS in the world. Like GNU+linux on laptops only works the way it does because of android-upstreamed battery saver kernel features.
But a mobile is also people's most used devices with all of their data, bank accounts etc there - it has to be safe. And GNU+linux has not even a single thought about security, while android just has it worked out (every app runs as its own user, so it's even built on standard UNIX security).
A mobile OS also has to race to suspend and for that it needs cooperation from "apps" -- desktop apps just run, they don't care about anything besides SIGKILL. That's not a workable model on a mobile and android solves it.
And I say all that as someone who runs linux everywhere I can and I absolutely love it. It's imo the best kernel out there -- but the userspace is not where it should be and if anything, the correct question would be what can we take from Android and add to GNU+Linux. (And nix is fantastic, but it's a packaging solution, I don't really see how it comes into question here. I can run nix on my android phone just fine by the way)
Nix comes in because im tired of dealing with procedural solutions to things that should be solved declaratively. I run NixOS everywhere I can because I can actually reason about what is installed on the system. "Package management" like apt and pacman and even app stores has never done it for me.
As to your other userspace concerns... these are all solveable. Perhaps with some elbow grease, but devices like the Steam Deck prove that mobile linux isnt as much of a problem re: userspace as you claim.
Ed.: I'd also like to add that the fuss around security is _mostly_ Google propaganda. Android is not meaningfully more secure, _without application level changes_ than Linux.
AOSP has way better security and therefore privacy than desktop linux.
This is something that no Linux phone enthusiast seems to understand.
Also if we use atomic distros with flatpaks and whatnot that mimic Android security the end user basically ends up having to essentially use Termux (but busybox or something similar) on their Linux phone as well
Stop repeating this nonsense, AOSP isn't any more "private" than Linux. AOSP is only more "secure" because, on some devices like Pixels, it exploits hardware features typically not found on general purpose computers. By default, Android also limits user control and takes root away. That may be a sensible design for an appliance, but it isn't something we should want on desktops.
> AOSP is only more "secure" because, on some devices like Pixels, it exploits hardware features typically not found on general purpose computers.
You don't think, say, isolating apps has anything to do with it?
Why are we acting like isolating software is impossible on Linux? It isnt even difficult, there are about a dozen different models to choose from.
I don't either. Don't we have free market capitalism? Why don't I have a Linux phone? And why do I need to worry that my government and banking apps won't work if I get a Linux phone?
I cant tell how tongue in cheek youre trying to be, but capital rules all. I don't have billions of dollars like the trillion dollar companies do, so I am not "free" to "compete" with them in any meaningful way. Same goes for these businesses convincing governments and banks that they have to do it their way or the highway.
Because in a free market you can't compel someone to support your niche platform, nor even compel someone to create the niche platform you want. The market for a Linux phone is tiny because there's almost no reason for the average phone user to prefer it over android.
> you can't compel someone to support your niche platform
You mean, a browser?
Because you don't have capital.
well, apparently not even Microsoft had enough capital.
It's almost like the free market only works when we have well-defined and regulated markets. This has been known by Adam Smith and quite logical, yet people expect Google and Apple giga-corporations with monopolies to somehow abide by the laws of selling grains on the market.
"Trust me guys, the free market will work, it's just that no-one ever earnestly tried it before!!"
No. This is the end state of any semblance of laissez-faire economics. Full stop. Massive accumulation at the top, power to those with capital, rags for the poorest.
no, we don't, far from it.
(which doesn't mean there's not a lot farther from here).
> Don't we have free market capitalism?
Not in the mobile world no, it's not a free market by any means
Because the Android Runtime (ART) is very necessary to run APKs, and APKs are the only non-iOS standard for packaging mobile apps that is supported enough to be viable. Without it, you might get some open source apps to run on a linux phone, but you won't have banking apps, clash of clans, or a million other things people really would like to have on their phones.
Your point is valid for every flavor of Android except GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS’ security model makes that of desktop Linux look like a joke.
This is an objective analysis based on x86 security, GrapheneOS hardening (including isolation and hardened mem allocator), Pixel hardware security.
Even AOSP has selinux enabled by default with very comprehensive and scoped policies. That, along with app isolation and permission system, already leaves desktop Linux far, far in the dust on security.
> I've never really understood why we chase Android-alikes on mobile platforms instead of trying to build on mainstream Linux.
Because there is no such thing as "mainstream Linux" when it comes to anything related to user-facing consumer software. Not on desktops, not on tablets, not on phones.
I mean you invoked "mainstream Linux" and "Nix" in the same paragraph. That alone should clue you into why this, absolutely, does not work.
See here is the problem:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Software_Releases
"Linux enthusiests" would rather muck around with rewriting the same software over and over and over again because they dislike using GTK or whatever, and put monumental amount of efforts making new package managers, then, say, getting the ability to take simple photographs using a phone camera.
I mean... In that page there is no less then 25 different "Linux Phone OSes" listed.
None of them actually work.
They are all going to be slow, they are all going to burn through battery life. There is no meaningful security to speak of.
If I handed a unlocked "Linux phone" to somebody and said "take a photograph of me"... The chances of that actually working is slim to none.
Meanwhile we have Android OS that is proven to work. It is open source. It is used by, literally, billions of people. The security model is as good as it gets. It has better application support then Windows.
Taking something that works and then making it more secure and more open and more privacy focused is infinitely more productive and meaningful then trying over from scratch because you want a phone based around Nix packages or whatever.
Even if Google decided to close source Android from now on and be actively hostile to any open source kernel modules... Forking the Android that exists today and trying to make it work is exponentially more likely to yield positive results then, say, starting on a Debian-based "Linux phone OS".
And Android can still use nix-pkgs if you really wanted to.
The whole point of Linux is that everything is open and, with enough work, can be built upon. I don't want to have to reinvent my software (I'm refusing to say app because truly, its a boogeyman term) for another form factor beyond UI. Having a not-Linux phone means I need to. I brought up nix because I'm invested in the community and know some people who care about making software truly work on other platforms.
All we had to do was build PWAs instead of native apps and instead all we did was build PWAs into bad browser wrappers.
I don’t see PWAs becoming dominant so long as web development stubbornly retains its highly atomized “bring your own everything” philosophy. At the very minimum, there needs to exists a community-accepted web UI framework with a similar level of “batteries included”-ness in terms of scope and depth as that of SwiftUI/Compose, or preferably that of UIKit.
The existence of such a framework would make the various tradeoffs with going web-only sting less and make that the advantageous route, not just the cost-cutting route that it’s seen as now (and why those bad browser wrappers continue to proliferate).
AOSP is Linux.
If by "mainstream" Linux you mean something like postmarketOS, I'd suggest you look up reviews or give it a try yourself. A few months ago, people were reporting a hard time placing a call, taking a photo, etc.
A year ago or so, the ThinkPhone 23 (Snapdragon 8, 2023, a weird "flagship") was available for 229€ new on various retail stores. The phone also supports Mobian/PostmarketOS and the bootloader is unlockable with no adverse effects.
Out of nowhere, it received (along with other older phones) updates up to Android 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "sudden" update was just a side effect of Motorola preparing for Graphene to be released on these older phones.
No current Motorola phones meet their hardware requirements. 2027 flagship models will be the first to be supported.
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2058730195041812839
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2064124713501163912
Oh, that's unfortunate. I thought they meant support would be released in 2027, not that phones from 2027 would be supported only. :(
Not sure about other phones, but ThinkPhone 23 was supposed to get Android 16 anyway
https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-thinkphone-hands-on-...
I have a 'long life' Android device (Zebra EM45) that has only recently gotten its Android 15 updates; its committed through Android 16 so I assume it's also waiting on Qualcomm to get its act together and in gear for whatever final patches are required for the QCS5430. IIRC, QCOMM is promising "10 years" on the CPU.
I bought the Moto signature a month ago , I already assumed it prolly won't support graphene, since some of the previous replies on X indicate that the graphene team requires full hardware compliance with their requirements, and the Signature apparently is not compliant yet.
Anyway I ended up buying a really good smartphone.. just not a graphene supported haha :(
Also this is really great collab from moto & graphene as more vendors will officially recognize Graphene as legit OS (legel/OEM is different concept). I heard month ago Volkswagen banned graphene, hopefully we we will see moving things in opposite direction...
They didn't "ban" them, but they did enable some attestation feature that effectively "bans" anything that isn't Google Android.
Which still makes you wonder why Volkswagen is so keen on alienating what little is left of their customer base with completely stupid security theater.
Because the EU is run by lawyers and lawsuits. They probably decided there was a risk of being sued for insufficient security if they didn't enable every security feature, and they considered it as zero impact to customers because nobody uses graphene.
Yes, but that is still very confusing to me, because you're not paying other people money so that they just follow incentives without thinking, vision or backbone.
The whole idea of buying something is giving people money for their (assumed correct) judgement, which then leads to desired artifacts downstream.
No, the idea of buying is that you get something in exchange for money.
Yes, but not any something, but a specific something shaped by taste.
The people at VW don't think about the customer. They are essentially bureaucrats who only live to expand their personal fiefdom in the bureaucracy. I bet that many in the IT-security team would insist that their team doesn't have customers.
> I heard month ago Volkswagen banned graphene, hopefully we we will see moving things in opposite direction...
Why would anyone want a car app? Is being tracked by the car's telematics unit (cellular modem) not enough?
I was hoping for Fairphone support but they said it's not happening.
> Fairphones lack the updates and hardware-based security features expected by GrapheneOS.
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2089937246619128257
I just wonder how they handle full Google's certification for hardware integrity + Google Play Store with GrapheneOS. They contradict on this part on the normal GrapheneOS mod and I don't see a way how they will not on Motorola phones.
Banking apps (e.g. Revolut) block GrapheneOS actively and many other apps too.
But it will be interesting times once they are out!
> Banking apps (e.g. Revolut) block GrapheneOS actively and many other apps too.
You've misunderstood something here. Revolut doesn't "block GrapheneOS actively". I'm running Revolut and most of my banking apps on GrapheneOS right now.
In my experience, there are two major categories of incompatibility:
- High levels of Google Play Integrity checks: app only works on releases of Android that have been allowlisted by Google. The only app that does this for me so far is McDonalds.
- Commercial root detection APIs: some of GrapheneOS' security features like "Secure App Spawning" trip root detection heuristics. This is the kind of incompatibility I usually run into for banking apps. You can disable individual features on a per-app basis these days to get around this.
I get that you don't like Twitter/Facebook/Reddit or whatever, but a clear solution to this problem is to hurt googles public image as much as you can and for that you need a platform with as large of a reach as possible.
edit: they have X but didn't post it there https://x.com/GrapheneOS
Looking forward to this! Google is not competent enough to sell Pixels worldwide, it's a pain in the ass to buy one!
Anyone has any idea if this changes current situation with nfc payments? Currently many banking apps do not work, and google pay is just unavailable, to my understanding it was related to secure chip on phone - as graphene wasnt "stocked" android os approved by google, i dearly hope this chnages with motorola
I have a GrapheneOS phone and I pay with Curve.
I don't doubt they will cost more than the Pixel line, but I'm somewhat skeptical that the hardware will be higher quality. Perhaps my idea of what Motorola is capable of is outdated.
Google’s Tensor chipset is weak by modern standards, and Motorola is taking the strongest off the shelf processors from the best mobile chip designer (Qualcomm).
Plus the Samsung Exynos modems that they were using from Pixel 6-10 (11 switched to Mediatek) had worse power efficiency and performance vs Qualcomm.
So...what's your comment? Opposing Motorola's comment, in that they already buy the best? Supporting, in that their standards haven't dropped?
Comparing GrapheneOS on Google’s Pixel vs Motorola’s new phone. (I expect Motorola’s future offering to be more performant.)
Pixel itself is very mediocre hardware, it's not hard to surpass. The battery is my main problem with it, my current pixel can't barely survive half a day of usage.
Realistically, most smartphones are made by the same ODMs. Since they don't make their own screens, shells, CPUs or modems, the only thing being set apart is the software.
Except that it's all Android?
I'm not selecting which phone I buy on whether the stock OS comes with lockscreen shortcuts. At best, a software requirement someone might use as a deciding factor is OS support and bootloader unlock. The real differences are in hardware: size, battery life, chipset speed, RAM or other local model enablers, picture quality (this part also depends on good software to be fair), included accessories, satellite connectivity hardware, headphone jack, gimmicks like UWB or FM radio support, whether it's a flip/fold phone, storage space / sdcard support... all hardware differences
> Except that it's all Android?
If only this were true. Samsung makes arguably the best hardware, but I refuse to buy a phone with Facebook pre-loaded and unremovable, a second (worse) app store preloaded and unremovable, and a bunch of redundant samsung-branded copies of the google apps. The best android images are as close to vanilla AOSP android as possible -- this used to mean Sony or Google branded phones, except Sony doesn't really market phones in the United States anymore and the Pixel phones are diverging from AOSP
I'm writing this from a Samsung. Their store software hasn't ever gotten in the way and I like most of the UI changes they made besides the extra apps that you can mostly hide or remove (in my case especially because root, but alas I'd not encourage anyone to buy Samsung anymore without the option to control the hardware as if you own it)
Not to defend Samsung specifically, just that most phones' software is fine after a bit of setup whereas you can't download more RAM (don't believe the scams that are out there! :P). Even on Huawei I remember there were some things better than on stock but forgot what specifically (the only thing that comes to mind was a lockscreen menu that you could open with a gesture and I used all the time)
Apropos Sony, that was the only brand where I kept having issues because my mom, who had the phone, constantly had questions about what to do with some notification that the OS was pushing and we couldn't get rid of. Basically product ads, iirc to try this-or-that app or function
I do get what you mean about bloatware, just that it's more of a tie-breaker (saving you an hour of debloating, assuming you stay on stock) as compared to the permanent differences in hardware capabilities
The good news though is that by replacing the Pixel's stock OS by Graphene, you get something close to AOSP and arguably better. The hardware is nothing to write home about, but the phones are well priced and the bootloaders are unlockable.
I'm surprised it took them that long. I always found it odd that they would support Google phones only.
High end Motorola phones :((( where is my Graphene flip phone?
I wonder if this could enable a samsung dex-style desktop mode
> the updates and security features aren't as good [on lower end Motorola devices]
Having looked at some low-end Motorolas recently, this is accurate (albeit an understatement!)
it'd be great if you could dual boot with grapheneos hidden
right now if you have it with you graphene just needlessly raises suspicions, its unjustified but thats what it is
Anyone want to place bets in whether this will be an unlockable bootloader, or some GrapheneOS only install path?
Sure would be nice to have phones that can be rooted, or OS replaced. I've been hopeful this would perhaps enable that, but I fret my excitement may be premature.
If google allows that for pixels, I don't see why Motorola wouldn't.
Besides, GrapheneOS would probably don't want to get into a situation where their keys are burnt into hardware non-modifiable. They had to revoke such a key once in order to protect their users (against an attempt to hijack the project).
If they only "should" be available in 2027, that sounds like late 2027.
Iirc they said they will be able to release Android updates like Android 17, for example, at the time it's released. This year it was a few weeks until it came to stable.
This somewhat indicates to me it will be available when the Motorolas release which should be on their regular release patterns. That's been May for the 2025 and 2026 Razrs.
This is good news but not so much good news for us poors. I was waiting four this announcement in hopes of getting away from google totally but with the 2026 Moto Signature going for $1000 I am sure the 2027 will be more so I will probably get Pixel 10 instead.
Maybe this will lighten the price on the Pixel 10's though...
If this is successful, I can see this trickling down to the lower end phones in the following years. If for no other reason than keeping their hardware as similar as possible.
All other phones will have a higher price tag due to memory hogging by datacenters. How much will that google pixel 10 be when the motorolla phone arrives?