We have a partial port of GrapheneOS to the Pixel 11 series after a week of work on it. We're unable to complete the port due to lack of support for ARM hardware memory tagging in software, firmware and near certainly hardware. It appears Google cut an important security feature to save money.
Honestly, I expect it will become increasingly hard getting a company willing to do something like this. Lately, all of the companies have started heavily enshittifying and I don’t know many that still care about their customers. And it’s a domino effect - they know you ain’t going anywhere, all the others are just as shit. I remember a time where you had a 100 phones officially supported by Lineageos and were cheap. You could get a Xiaomi, Huawei for like a $100 and they would run lineageos almost out of the box. Or a Nexus 5 for a few extra bucks. As soon as they eliminated the competition, they’ve become closed entirely and are basically spying machines. I don’t trust Motorola will be trustworthy in the long term, if they capture any market. Just a few months ago, they were caught hijacking affiliate links on their phones (link). I don’t know when the consumer situation will change, but I’m not holding my breath for Motorola. Of course, if they make a good phone running GOS, I might try it if my pixel kicks the bucket.
GOS supposedly has 200k users. That’s 200k Pixel phones sold for the purpose of GOS. A bunch of companies used to buy Blackberries because they had the reputation of being the most secure. It’s a viable business model. They’ll be sold and marketed as “GrapheneOS compatible”.
Actually, Motorola has more market share than Pixel.
Though Google mainly cares about the software ecosystem, so they explicitly don’t care about Graphene since it’s not an outcome they want in the industry anyway.
Probably for the best. As they said, it frees them up to focus on Motorola devices, a company that’s actively working with them.
Honestly, I expect it will become increasingly hard getting a company willing to do something like this. Lately, all of the companies have started heavily enshittifying and I don’t know many that still care about their customers. And it’s a domino effect - they know you ain’t going anywhere, all the others are just as shit. I remember a time where you had a 100 phones officially supported by Lineageos and were cheap. You could get a Xiaomi, Huawei for like a $100 and they would run lineageos almost out of the box. Or a Nexus 5 for a few extra bucks. As soon as they eliminated the competition, they’ve become closed entirely and are basically spying machines. I don’t trust Motorola will be trustworthy in the long term, if they capture any market. Just a few months ago, they were caught hijacking affiliate links on their phones (link). I don’t know when the consumer situation will change, but I’m not holding my breath for Motorola. Of course, if they make a good phone running GOS, I might try it if my pixel kicks the bucket.
they are all trying to wall in thier customers in a garden.
GOS supposedly has 200k users. That’s 200k Pixel phones sold for the purpose of GOS. A bunch of companies used to buy Blackberries because they had the reputation of being the most secure. It’s a viable business model. They’ll be sold and marketed as “GrapheneOS compatible”.
I really hope so. 200k is peanuts for google, but probably significant for Motorola.
Actually, Motorola has more market share than Pixel.
Though Google mainly cares about the software ecosystem, so they explicitly don’t care about Graphene since it’s not an outcome they want in the industry anyway.