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miroljubtoday at 12:53 PM4 repliesview on HN

GrapheneOS works only with Pixel devices, which doesn't make it much useful for the vast majority of Android users.


Replies

_emacsomancer_today at 5:09 PM

GrapheneOS is working with a manufacturer to change this:[0]

> We're working with a major OEM and the devices will be the future versions of existing models they have now. The devices will be priced similarly to Pixels. The initial devices will have a flagship Snapdragon SoC for the best security and support time. Snapdragon flagships have significantly better CPU and GPU performance than Pixels. Snapdragon provides high quality Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GNSS and cellular support as part of the SoC. eSIM and other functionality is also provided by the SoC. Snapdragon has decent image processing functionality included too, and good neural network acceleration.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1o32gpg/deleted...

microtonaltoday at 1:35 PM

Indeed. Sadly the reality is that most other Android devices are simply not secure enough. Many Android phones do not have a separate secure enclave (outside Pixel and IISC Samsung flagship and A5x range), so they are vulnerable to breaking PIN-based unlocking, side channel attacks, etc. Besides that they often only provide old vendor kernel trees, old firmware blobs, etc.

So, you have to wonder whether you want such a phone anyway if you care about security and privacy. If you don't care about security anyway, you could as well run /e/OS, etc.

Above-mentioned Samsung phones could perhaps make the cut, but don't support unlocking anymore (and when they still did, would blow a Knox eFuse).

show 5 replies
hypercube33today at 4:11 PM

Huge opportunity for Lenovo/Motorola here who have been the quiet Linux favorite for a while but we shall see if they even bother.

jasonfrosttoday at 6:57 PM

Sounds like a consumer problem for their own choices of vendor lock in