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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...
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.
Bought a Pixel 10 Pro instead of the new 11 Pro.
Worse display, price more expensive, no upside to the older model.
Literally said to myself "Yeah...no. No, thank you" when looking at the specs vs P10Pro
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.
My personal issue is that it (9 pro) is very slow compared to the 6 pro. Searching the settings for example takes many seconds to find anything while on the 6, it was near instantaneous. Often times it is quicker to just navigate through the settings menu myself. The camera feels sluggish to operate after successive quick captures. Loading the camera gallery takes a few seconds of refresh to show new photos I've just taken. The rounded corners on the screen are too rounded and it cuts out text and icons (like the Fullscreen and rotate icons). And I think the battery life with the same services and apps running is not an improvement. So it's a more expensive phone for what I perceive to be a loss of quality however superficial it might seem as I write this down
Same boat, I've honestly considered just buying a secondhand unlocked 6XL and installing graphene on it. I've not been happy with my 9.
Writing this from my 7... hoping to get another one or two years out of it.
I have a 7a will use it until graphene support ends then its onto Motorola.
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.
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.
Motorola is unfortunately gonna be in the same boat too when it comes to the prices. And I highly doubt GOS is gonna focus on their cheaper phones because they notoriously have poorer software. So now, it seems GOS is gonna be an exclusive feature. If you want it, your gonna have to pay for it.
I personally don't trust Motorola due to having poor experiences with their budget phones. Its not worth with unless you shell out the money.
If you want it, your gonna have to pay for it.
Older Pixel phones are not that expensive. Why would you need the latest one?
Even though that's true. Phones really shouldnt be expensive. GOS isn't supporting the older phones, I think the oldest you can go now is the pixel 7. Since GOS is stopping for the Pixel 11, Is there any other alternative OS that can be used for pixels? Or where are the other phones that supports GOS?
Google is closing in on their phones. GOS users in a time span of 3-7 years (depending on the pixel they have) would unfortunately have to find an alternative after that lifespan unless GOS starts supporting other phones that isnt breaking the bank. GOS as well is basically closing off their OS market. Which is why I made that comment. If you want the OS now, they're gonna make you pay for it.
Huawei, Xiami and other Chinese brands still exist, not sure which models or brands support it but there are still multiple who support you running your own OS on them.
I know, but Im spcifically speaking on GOS and how they as well sound like they are closing themsevles off.
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.
Wish they'd focus on phones NOT made by major corporations like Google and Motorola, and instead focus on small companies' phones like Fairphone, Pine64, Purism, Jolla, etc.
They can't. They require extremely up to date firmware and very short update cycles. Only large corporations with huge phone platforms are able to do satisfy that.
Can Graphene OS achieve their privacy targets and principles in different ways that encourage collaboration with non-corporations?
I refuse to believe that GOS can't agree to graduated privacy provisions according to the capabilities of Linux and sustainable/repairable non-corpo companies and their phones.
They don't want to, which is fine for their goal of having the absolutely most secure phone possible.
Short-sighted goal in my opinion. They could be the leader in privacy for smartphones from the bottom up, including hardware and software.
GOS's work with Motorola might just lead Motorola to be that group as they always have for decades, so my issues might go away anyways.
Just getting arrogant, self-isolating vibes when they have soooo much good will with the tech community on building privacy from the ground up in some of the most important intelligent devices in our lives.
Why can't GOS join a working group with ISO or IEC or IEEE or other groups to create roadmaps and tiers of compliance so that other manufacturers have means and methods of approaching GOS's lofty goals.
That is mincing words but as long as they don't change their requirements (which they don't want to) they actually can't, without failing those requirements.
Using a widely-available phone with good performance, decent quality, and long term security support, meant that more people could access it. I still can't buy a Fairphone without going through an overseas middleman, then hoping I have no warranty issues, because they don't sell to Australia. If something goes wrong with my Pixel, the shop I bought it from is minutes away.
Those that can purchase these Linux phones should.
Those that can't purchase these Linux phones should purchase whatever is next best.
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.
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.
they are all trying to wall in thier customers in a garden.
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.
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.
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.
Guess I`ll wait for Motorola
