As noted by the news release from CalyxOS and Mastodon thread from GrapheneOS, Google did not release the Pixel device-specific source code alongside their Android 16 AOSP release like they usually do. I think many of us, including myself, are hoping this will be published in the near future, but considering they moved AOSP development behind closed doors earlier this year, it’s more likely Google has stopped publishing this section or their code altogether, making development of custom ROMs for Pixel devices significantly more difficult. Sad news for the Android ecosystem, and for open source in general.
Google is slowly closing access to everything. It’s a boiled frog situation. All the red flags are there. We’re fucked.
keep the faith - we are not fucked, we just need to move to different systems entirely.
While this was an inevitable move, it makes me curious if they are hitting a point where Gemini is becoming so integrated in all their software stacks and they’re just insanely paranoid about any precious “AI” code leaking that they just decided to close the gates early.
Probably for the best long-term. Having this weird dependency on the generosity of a corporation was always a liability. Whatever comes next can hopefully avoid it.
Hopefully someone like the EU, to combat ewaste, eventually requires all hardware manufacturers to sell their mobile hardware with bootloader/firmware flashing unlocking requirements. The work then will be for the community to write support for all these various makes and models of device, but the endgame being actual device freedom. Although with the world seemingly leaning hard into Authoritarianism and Fascism, it might not end up being the right time and freedom will remain underground.
A pity too, all phone hardware at its core is generic ARM computers with various devices connected to fairly generic interface busses. They just encrypt bits of code so the sauce to make things work is hidden.
I remember a couple of months ago it was reported here that Google was making Android closed-source and I commented that this will be the end of custom rom’s and this was received by the community poorly as many stated that they would still be releasing the code but not their AOSP apps (or something like that) but I already see the writing on the wall. Google doesn’t want to be open-source, they where in the past because that gave them free coders to fix their shit and make them more profitable, but now they just want our data and the open-source community is against that, so they are closing doors to the community in order to be able to truly make money with people’s information. Wouldn’t surprise me if the next Pixel in the works is going with a similar approach as the iPhone and only allow for an eSim as well.
Terrible news ofc, but I hope no one panic buys a different phone or anything (assuming they already have one). This is just to say, your phone isn’t immediately obsoleted right now, so give it a little while before you switch anything out.
What about someone currently on a Googled version of Android on a non-pixel that want to get a privacy smartphone?
I don’t have a good answer. I would probably wait to see if this kills GrapheneOS (on pixel devices) or not, then use that info in my decision process.
Less reason to buy a Pixel, then.
Uhg then what? Samsung’s got too much of their own shit data harvesting crap on top of the Google stuff. All other phones basically have shit cameras. Time to go to iPhone? Seems they’re all the same at this point 😜
Honestly if Google is going to close all their shit, then yeah, absolutely.
So, hear me out, but what if we all go back to feature phones? Smart phones are convenient, but do the pro’s weigh more than the cons at this point? I am also including mental health into this btw.
If you’re in Europe, Fairphone is an option. I’m pretty happy with mine.
Graphene is centered around security. I’ve heard bad things about Fairphone in that regard - the Graphene team even talks about them in the replies on that thread.
Respectfully to the Graphene team, they say that about literally every other OS.
Read their comment and I’m left scratching my head. Their role in security with the straight android phone (not the /e/OS version) is simply pushing security patches as/when they get them from the Android team, as they’re using straight Android. Security is handled by Google for Android, not them. When it comes to /e/OS, no idea how good/bad it is, but apparently Graphene has some beef with Murena (the people who make it), at least according to their comment.
Not at all knowledgable about mobile kernels and drivers to comment on the rest of it. I do know Fairphone 5 uses an unusual CPU normally used for SoC as that was the only CPU that was both good enough to run Android reasonably while simultaneously providing very long-term driver updates (they’re aiming for a minimum of 8 years of updates).
Come to the Fruit side!
The reason I went android was because it wasn’t the fruit side.
