So no reason to buy a Pixel at all any more? Midrange performance, poor battery life, middling cameras, AI bloated software, all at flagship prices. Its one saving grace was Graphene support and that’s now gone too.
Just in time to move on to Motorola…
Pixel has 7 years of support so you could get Pixel 10 and use with Graphene OS until 2033 but yes, if you need to switch every year to the latest model than you can skip Pixel.
Google became the new Microsoft
I originally bought Pixels because they were the opposite of what they are now. Bloat-free devices (other than Google apps) that just provided the tools I needed to do things, while having excellent hardware security. Now it’s basically GeminiOS, and they’re solving the problem they created by throwing out security.
Every Pixel event for the past several years has been almost entirely about Gemini. A software feature. Which just goes to show that they have no hardware features.
Graphene choosing to die on the hardware MTE hill has always seemed weird to me. It’s one feature but it excludes 99% of the phones except the Pixel. GrapheneOS has so much to offer besides it, and nowadays they could use Rust as a workaround anyway.
Pixel has some great features and is an interesting deGoogled OS but their approach to security is just silly. It’s basically “we will not let anyone compromise on security because it could be bad PR for us”. They pretend they care about the brand but then they simply wont let majority of users use their OS. I think normal team would simply make Graphene OS available for other phones and then have some Graphene OS Extended Security version compatible only with select phones. Their purist approach only turns away potential users.
Apparently the Linux kernel can emulate MTE in software:
https://lwn.net/Articles/833353/
The software MTE support in the kernel apparently predates the hardware support of the same, based on the above link.
Admittedly I might be misunderstanding something here, my confidence level is only 65%.
p.s.: i just learned that this uses a lot of extra RAM compared to hardware MTE. there seem to be approaches to mitigate the RAM blow up, but this discussion is above my paygrade, so I have to bow out. That said, I think it is correct that the absense of hardware MTE should not be the end of the road for secure smartphone design.
I was so disappointed with my pixel 10. It’s kept a pixel 7 alive for years (great phone) and only swapped when the battery swelled. The 10 was no better and potentially worse, I replaced the battery on the 7 myself and lamented it’s loss to my son (he gets my cast offs). Such a good line of phones that’s clearly peaked.
I upgraded my pixel 6 to a 9 and this phone is much worse in most ways. I fail to understand how one of the richest companies in the world puts out worse products over time and thinks it’s alright
What do you find bad about the 9? I bought a used 8 to try GrapheneOS on, but the HW isn’t as good as my S23. I was thinking of maybe going to a 9 or 10 if I could make GOS my daily, not just for the better cameras and ultrasonic FP reader, but the desktop mode on the 8 is god awful. The output is so heavily compressed and only does 1080p, DeX just crushes it.
Writing this from my 7… hoping to get another one or two years out of it.
I’m on an 8 but I’ve been having battery issues. Not because the battery is bad but due to a software issue since an update about 6 months ago. If I’m not in WiFi whatever my most recently opened app is uses an insane amount of battery. If nothing is open then it will be a system app.
I have a 7a will use it until graphene support ends then its onto Motorola.
My understanding is that while the older Pixel phones had MTE capability, it was off by default and could only be enabled under the dev settings. Google did not enable it by default because Android depends heavily on vendor board support packages, proprietary SOC drivers, and HAL modules. Google felt that driver code quality from 3rd-parties is not clean enough to enable kernel-level MTE without risking bootloops and spontaneous reboots. Even worse for C++ apps, which often read slightly past their allocated memory blocks.
Instead, Google rewrote critical core Android system daemons using Rust. Like the keystore, Bluetooth stack, DNS resolver, and others. I believe using Rust essentially makes MTE unnecessary.
Also full synchronous MTE mode has high CPU/memory bus penalties (could be 5-10% under heavy memory loads).
Google probably decided that since hardly anyone used MTE anyway on earlier Pixel devices, they could use the space in the chip for other uses.
The point is that the post makes it sound like using a Pixel 11 under Android results in less security than before, but for most people there is no change since they never used MTE anyway.
I think you misunderstand what is being said.
The point is that the post makes it sound like using a Pixel 11 under Android results in less security than before, but for most people there is no change since they never used MTE anyway.
That’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying Graphene without MTE is less secure, which isn’t something they want.
Which you can read from their post here
We strongly recommend against buying Pixel 11 devices. Pixel 8, 9 and 10 have much better overall security for GrapheneOS. Pixel 10 is cheaper with similar hardware and MTE. Pixel 11’s Titan M3 should improve BFU security for users without a strong passphrase, but losing MTE craters AFU security.
It’s not an on/off kind of thing, MTE is a set of ARM extensions. Either the api to use them is clearly documented or, as in the pixel 11’s case, Google started to not document their implementation.
We know this matches their plan to obscure the AOSP code to eventually lock out anyone else from using their base.
GOS is not in a position to reverse-engineer api calls on what was formally documented hardware.
Instead, Google rewrote critical core Android system daemons using Rust. Like the keystore, Bluetooth stack, DNS resolver, and others. I believe using Rust essentially makes MTE unnecessary.
No. Rust being “memory safe” doesn’t mean rust apps can’t abuse speculation or buffer under/overruns.
The point is that the post makes it sound like using a Pixel 11 under Android results in less security than before, but for most people there is no change since they never used MTE anyway.
Read the BlueSky posts, Google didn’t force app devs to opt into MTE, so no one did.
Google probably decided that since hardly anyone used MTE anyway on earlier Pixel devices, they could use the space in the chip for other uses.
“Space in the chips”? Again, see the Bluesky posts.
Google is very clearly shifting over to a completely walled garden, because, same as Apple, it isn’t about the hardware performance and capabilities, it’s about control.
It’s an on/off kind of thing: https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2023/10/26/enable-mte-on-pixel-8/
https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mteYeah, enabling a bootctl flag is doable in any android version, it’s a prop available since Android 7. Again, it’s undocumented APIs at fault for the MTE not working in the Pixel 11.
Well, we had a good run. It was nice while it lasted…
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.
Guess I`ll wait for Motorola
When you are so, so good at security that your OS is compatible with 0 phones. Well done Graphene team.
No one can hack your users when you don’t have any.
This was the problem I had with custom firmware back when I modded Android phones — you never knew if the custom firmware developers/packagers were even going to support your phone until after you bought it.
One phone was widely supported? So you buy the next one and no one wants to support it for whatever reason. One developer says “if you buy me one I will develop for it” thinking no one actually will, and when the community actually does so, he flips it on Swappa and you never hear from him again. Shit like that.
But if you’ll pay iPhone 17 Pro prices for an iPhone 11 powered phone that comes with personal data collection out the wazoo, you’ll probably pony up for the more expensive Motorola phone coming out that they’ve (tentatively?) committed to.
Why on Earth would you buy a new phone BEFORE checking cfw support if that’s an important feature for you?
I think GOS is established enough it can pull through. Won’t be easy at all though.
I do hope Motorola can give some good official support as a manufacturer.
Motorola CFW support was spotty in the past, when they were an American company. Now they are part of Lenovo (? Not sure if they still are) so maybe they do things differently now. They always had decent hardware, and their Android forks were very minimal later on (in their independent time; before they were further from AOSP) and ran pretty good for the most part. But they did not like to update their phones. Motorola phones often shipped with the Android version they would EOL on. Motorola used to be a piss-poor choice for modding back then.
I expect better from them now, but I don’t predict it.
Also, I realise the issue is with Pixel, not Graphene. Still, I would be upset if I bought a Pixel 11 planning to de-Google it.
Simple solution: wait until they announce support before buying a new phone. Short of your current one breaking or no longer updating, you don’t need a new phone right now, you can wait.
If you do need one right now because of one of those reasons, sucks, but just buy the most recent one that is currently supported (the 10) or buy one that will EOL sooner than you’d like (maybe an 8 or 9, used/cheap) while you wait for the new one (the 11).
Hopefully the resale price on the 11 tanks (it won’t) then.
