Glad to know privacy isn't budget friendly.
Unfortunately a lot of "budget" items are being subsidized by your personal information, and the smaller market for privacy-forward goods and services makes economies of scale harder.
Unless governments start passing robust privacy laws, it will just continue to get more and more expensive to live privately with modern conveniences.
The sad part is how little things actually cost to produce.
Things cost a lot to produce. It’s cheapened by underpaying laborers and underestimating the cost and impact of resource extraction and power consumption, and the current path of massively scaling up factories, overproducing, and driving the repair economy out of business by making “just buy a new one!” so affordable really looks like The Big Thing That Ends The Current Epoch that people will really struggle to comprehend when they learn about it in history class
I don't know what exactly you're referring to but I assume you mean the bill of material cost that sometimes goes around in headlines like "new phone only costs $150 to produce and is sold for $500" or something like that.
That's a flawed way of looking at it because it ignores things like:
And of course profit which ideally is used to finance the development of the next device and ofc the greedy execs at the end who put the rest in their pockets (that's the only part which you can actually cut)
Yeah, it would be great if they would support a range of devices from whichever OEM this is, at different price points.
Biggest challenge GOS has is that most hardware vendors do not meet their fairly restrictive hardware security requirements, and those few that do don't typically allow bootloader unlocking. Pixel devices up until now have been unicorns in those regards.
But I don't get why they insist on those requirements. Yes, Random Phone + Graphene is less secure than Pixel + Graphene, but still far more secure and private than Random Phone + Stock ROM. Insisting on having all features just makes it far less accessible. There are many regions and classes that can't buy supported phones or a new phone at all. And I can't even properly confirm that everything I want to use works on graphene, because I'd need to fully commit towards buying a phone first. Which, even used, costs a lot.
It's a limited development pool, and they focus on delivering the most secure mobile OS possible, within the constraints that their funding and resources allow.
There are other ROMS, such as CalyxOS that have expanded to a few other devices, and LineageOS which has even broader support.
They'd probably bitch and whine that every other phone doesn't have the absolutetely vital security feature called thingamabobSecurityModule™ without which apparently every other security feature and even their ROM itself doesn't work anymore; as they always do.
Second hand pixels are not that expensive. Or the a series. Though it would be cool if it could run on a cheaper burner phone.
Oh no, won't somebody think of Google's bottom line?!
Everyone out here guessing small OEMs for an official Graphene launch when it's obviously Apple.
Except that they mention Snapdragon, which Apple does not use.
They also mention “major Android OEM” Which does not apply to Apple.
tinfoil hat on It's obviously Apple funding this. They know most android users won't buy apples, they just want to weaken Google.
That’s fantastic. Does this help with the issue of Google releasing AOSP security updates at a slower cadence? Maybe working directly with an OEM resolves this?
I don't really know how this works, but if they have the cooperation of an OEM they should have the same access to AOSP security updates the OEM has, and access to hardware drivers from a company that's not trying to thwart them. I can see how this would be preferable to a basically antagonistic relationship with Google, who are making things difficult because they want all Pixel phones to run their stock OS. The thing I wonder is what motivates the OEM to continue a cooperative relationship with Graphene OS.
That’s exactly my understanding/ thought process as well. I was wondering the same in terms of why an OEM would cooperate, and my first thought was the increase in hardware sales. I’m not sure how big the market is, but I know the security crowd will flock to them if they’re partnering with GOS when that market share would have previously been Googles. I’m not sure how big that market is or if the 'juice would be worth the squeeze'.
I wonder whether there's some shared development agreement too. Perhaps the OEM stands to gain some software improvements for its own non-Graphene devices, or perhaps Graphene OS will become its mainstream offering. There has to be more to it than picking up the small percentage of customers who shop for privacy.
They're extremely talented in the security/mobile/os arena, why not contribute to one of the Linux mobile projects and kill two birds?
Because people want to use apps, which unfortunately don't exist on the Linux mobile projects. Banking apps are the biggest issue in fact. Obviously for a lot of other things, anyone can create alternatives.
And the whole issue of not being able to use most modern hardware with mainline Linux kernel because the drivers are closed source binary blobs. You have to use a device-specific kernels.
It's America, it's going to be Samsung.
Nope , Motorola has snapdragon and you can unlock OEM
My $$ was on moto as well - it's already about the closest thing to stock and they probably need the boost.
Whereas Samsung is fucking worlds apart for actual android
I've loved my Motorola's. They're seemingly the last manufacturer that realises that for a bunch of people (myself included) a good priced mid-range device is more than sufficient.
just recently (2 months ago), I bought a Moto G84 5G, specifically because it had a snapdragon processor (and therefore good custom ROM support), is officially supported by LineageOS and it was cheap (160 EUR). I never needed a flagship phone, the cheap phones ~200 EUR always worked fine for me.
I was using Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco devices before that, but it seems that they have gone entirely Mediatek in that price segment, which is a shame.
I hope so, I love samsung's hardware and having a secure OS option to get out from under their godawful UI / OS stuff would be amazing.
Samsung is the largest Android manufacturer by a wide margin, and make a bunch of their money using spyware. Seems unlikely they would give GOS the time of day.
Only took like twenty years
I thought Google's plans to kill AOSP effectively put a nail in Graphene's coffin?
Google has made it harder (it may kill AOSP in the long run but not yet) by delaying public release of source trees later than before. To counter that, they partnered with OEM, who in turn are partnered with Google, who are likely to get sources faster.
I still don't how they (and F-Droid) plan to bypass the whole de al with Google killing non-PlayStore aproved© apps, tho. GrapheneOS relies on that as well.
You can install apps freely with ADB so it will work that way or simply by removing google services, from what i understood(but i may be wrong) it's done by using google services so you need to uninstall them
Graphene doesn't rely on any Google Services. They compile the OS themselves and don't include those services.
If you want it, you have to choose to install them.
It does make sense it would be Nothing. I feel like the CEO reads the Youtube comments asking for GOS
Nothing isn't a "major OEM" but I think they'd be interested in it. Maybe they'll be next.
Can they please make it work for Samsungs? I made the mistake of getting an S23 and I didn't realize it was incompatible with all non-standard OSes.
Samsung phones blow e-fuses when you unlock their bootloaders, so there's no going back. I think this would prevent a proper GrapheneOS installation.
Perhaps Samsung could start shipping phones with GrapheneOS natively installed, but since the phone's owner would not have control of the OS, that would arguably not be GrapheneOS as we know it today. Or maybe Samsung could change their chain of trust implementation to be more like Google's, allowing the bootloader to be re-locked.
Wow. That is some grade A bullshit!
that reminds me, samsung has been advertising knox on their TVs now. samsung really likes permanently self damaging electronics
I have a pixel 8. I've wanted to degoogle myself for years. How risky is Graphene to install? Do I need to root it? Can I brick it? Are there things it does that Google doesn't? Apps that don't work for it?
If you use the web installer provided on GrapheneOS website, you can't fuck it up. Just make sure you use a chromium browser when you do it, for some reason it crashes on Firefox (but it didn't brick my phone, so don't worry)
No root needed, just follow the instructions on the website (read before doing it). You probably could brick it like anything else, but I didn't and I barely knew what I was doing (and like I said, it crashed on me when trying it via FF).
Neat things they do that Google doesn't (afaik):
Notable things that don't work:
Follow the instructions as they're presented and you'll be fine
Installing it will make rooting easier, but afik root is not required (though you will be accessing the device at the recovery/bootloader level, something with far more control than root)
Yes, pay attention, follow the instructions and you'll be fine though
Respect your privacy, allow you to sandbox apps which want to spy
Everything should work because of the sandbox function, the same cannot be said for most other custom ROMs unless the Google apps have been installed.
While they're at it, can they talk their oem into adding a headphone jack? Literally the main reason I don't already do Pixel + Graphene. (And yes I know one of the supported Pixel phones does have one, but it also happens to be the exact model that I have personally seen do the black screen of death, so no thanks).
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.