Its always good to try!
It would be nice to buy a phone that officially support GrapheneOS. I dont want to thinker with phones. I can image it is going to be the same experience as going from Windows to Linux. Things would actually work in a good way as a user wants to instead of locked down requirements.
GrapheneOS has partnered with Motorola and were supposed to see phones that come with GOS sometime in 2027
The idea that the Major Software Enshittificator which is Samsung would ever go along with this is incredibly naive.
Samsung was one of the first to fill their smartphones and tables with tons of useless “Samsung” software that can’t be removed by normal means, and even people who had their older and less insanely stuffed with junk devices got them forcefully filled with that crap via updates (making their older devices unusable, “incentivizing” them to get new ones).
Samsung hasn’t been consumer friendly for at least a decade.
Switching my fairphone to e/os today
Fairphone and samsung are absolutely not the same kind. I want to point fairphone is officially distributing /e/OS which is a niche of 2-3 brands. This company that is nowhere in size close to samsung also engages hardcore in device repairability making its phones be a flagship. If anything just let them be successful and tempt others to follow their lead. I would love graphene os to be better supported but just don’t put all the strain on the one doing good. (I type this from my FP6 /e/OS)
@furtiveParalysis @viov Fairphone should start the “fairness” that I can reinstall its OS like of a PC. It does not do that, IT IS CLOSED HARDWARE LIKE A SAMSUNG, so do not buy it!!!
There there, go buy one when you next need.
(links are in french but you surely haven’t searched at all before spreading hate in capital letters)
to Install e/OS/: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/a-safe-guide-to-install-e-os-on-your-fairphone/128019
to install android: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/18896094650513-How-to-manually-install-Android-on-your-Fairphone
Unlock the bootloader https://www.fairphone.com/fr/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-fairphone
I’m in the embedded market and have kept my first FP3 8 years it was pretty outdated technically but its fairness is intact (in fact it’s still in use).
It is not a FOSS hardware indeed, it isn’t like a samsung either, it is I think the top of the game among existing consumer solutions.
And I encourage everyone to write to banks and other service providers to provide apks directly or through F-Droid
We might be able to get them to provide APKs with some luck and finesse, but I unfortunately don’t see them publishing to F-Droid. F-Droid actually builds your APK from source themselves, and I don’t see banks giving up the source any time soon.
Actually, as I’m thinking about it, that may be true for F-Droid’s main repo, but I know other repos exist, so maybe they could host their own that you would just add to your F-Droid’s repo list?
I have a newer Pixel phone and I’m comfortable installing and running custom ROMs from doing so regularly back in the day - for those who’ve daily driven both, what are the reasons I should NOT switch from the stock OS to GrapheneOS?
You can’t use Google Wallet to pay with NFC, they don’t have Miracast, and Chromecast can supposedly work but I haven’t been able to get it to work. Those are the three major hurdles I’ve found, but getting away from Google was a priority so I’ll live without them.
NFC can have other providers other than Google Wallet, but I haven’t found any that I find trustworthy enough yet. Supposedly the EU is making an alternative.
I think this is about what I’ve heard to date on drawbacks, by as you mentioned, I think I’ll take the chance for the privacy benefits.
The EU already has alternatives, quite a few banks have their own NFC implementations.
Not yet. They have QR, and are working on NFC.
Fair. Unfortunately, mine don’t.
It’s not. It depends on how open the phone is and if it relies on exploits to root or if there’s an official method. Pixels are open and you can just install whatever you want on them, with open source drivers (although Google is trying to stop that too). So to install Graphene, for instance, it’s literally a web app with one or two clicks to do it automatically.
Agreed, some very talented and generous people worked to make it easier and easier, but less options over time when manufacturers started dropping and phones all consolidated and locked down more and more. Even when it was more complex in early days, and greater risk of a brick, you could often restore back to a stock ROM or dual boot in a way so actual risk was minimal if you just slowed down and followed directions - again provided by very generous people who just wanted to make things better.
Hardware should be software agnostic
That’s not how hardware works, like at all. I agree with the spirit of what you’re asking for but you can’t just wave a magic wand and put any software on any hardware.
The problem is that even if somebody out there is willing to go to the work of making device drives, bootloaders and OS releases for the hardware, it still can’t happen because the information about how to talk to the hardware isn’t open, same thing for the bootloader and even if those things are reverse engineered often even the ability to install an OS there is locked down on the hardware.
As you correctly say, the dream of any software just running anywhere isn’t possible because that’s not how hardware works, but the current situation is not one were what’s blocking it isn’t just the natural architectural structure of hardware, it’s one where the hardware makers have purposefully and to quite an extreme level locked down their hardware so that even if people are willing to do the work of doing what it takes to run an OS there, they can’t because necessary info to use the hardware isn’t available and the hardware is even locked down against OS installations for those who don’t have the necessary cryptographic keys.
And the other way, too. The whole reason why Android chose Java was because it was, at the time, one of the better languages and runtimes for creating hardware-agnostic software. Now that a software ecosystem is in place, why should Google be able to control what hardware the already-written software runs on?
@GamingChairModel @Glitch How about formulating meaningful content? Your question is bullshit!
Exactly. This was less important before the internet got ubiquitous, but nowadays, when manufacturers can screw you remotely, it’s very important.
This kind of vertical integration, where a single entity controls both hardware and software shouldn’t exist.
It was very disappointing to find out that GOS was incompatible with every phone brand but one. It is coherent with the Zeitgeist: why care about security and privacy when users will dump all their information in Google and Facebook?
That’s borderline with the purity fallacy: that one should not deserve privacy and security because of one or more bad practice.
I believe not so many people give away “everything”, and many more probably don’t realize how much they give.
There are many reasons one would keep a FB account, or a Google account around. That does not mean that person abandoned all rights on privacy and even less on security.
And how would you recommend a soft transition if you’re in a all-or-nothing approach? One day on Google, FB, what’s not, and in an instant: new device, new OS, drop everything at once? Nearly no one will do that.
The reason GOS does not support more devices is not because of where other brands vs privacy and security, it’s a pure hardware requirements they don’t meet. If the Motorola devices are a commercial success, most likely other phone makers will be interested.
the Motorola devices are a commercial success, most likely other phone makers will be interested.
That’s not going to happen because Samsung earns more selling private data than selling phones
I wasn’t counting on Samsung. Indeed: Samsung already meets all the criteria to support GOS, but they cripple their phone upon alternative OS installation.
There are other phone makers left.
Very true. Covered that in my post on Europe
I’m not buying another phone until there’s one with no Android in it that appeals to my needs.
Fairphone? perhaps. Samsung? hell naw. Samsung heavily benefits from the spyware it builds into One UI and 99% of its user base do not care about the spyware.
But I do hope hope that Fairphone begins to embrace Linux support.Per GOS: Samsung has almost all hardware requirements to support GOS except… they purposely cripple their device upon installation of a third party OS. One can only suspect they indeed make money with their spyware stack!
Samsung heavily benefits from the spyware it builds into One UI and 99% of its user base do not care about the spyware.
They go out of their way to ensure that it cannot be disabled even if you do care about the spyware and try to uninstall or disable it.
What is the bottleneck holding Fairphone back from supporting Linux fully?
Qualcomm
It 👏 should 👏 be 👏 the 👏 law 👏 .
I don’t know how they managed to sneak locking a system to a single boot loader. And what about Qualcomm chips? They have a hypervisor OS, you say? A small operating system that can read all your memory? Updated as firmware?
Great, forcibly open source that system as well and tell them once and for all that they can fuck off. No, you don’t get to control another persons property - you disgusting goblin.
Either that, or ban the sale of such devices permanently across Europe.
Can you give me some reading on this? I am happy to make noise about an issue once I understand it.
There’s a lot of writing and history behind open source, open firmware and even open hardware, but the BIGGEST thing you can focus on is the transition from PCs to smartphones around the 2000s.
We went from you installing whatever boot loader and operating system that could run on your device, to a locked down boot loader that would only load the vendors operating system.
They hide behind security through obscurity, but it’s been debunked. The boot loader and even firmwares of devices have in certain cases been found to be gushing gashes of CVEs and bad coding - but only through decompilation and reverse engineering. In fact, after the 5 year warranty of your device is up, you should consider the security of your device highly suspect.
The true purpose for an exclusive locked down boot loader is to maintain operating system monopoly, force uninstallable apps/services on a user, to then be able to track & canvas the user to sell on the data brokerage market - not to mention planned obsolescence, because if you can’t freely modify and update your firmware and/or boatloader, you could secure it for more than 5 years.
For a more balanced take and to see “both sides”, read this
Other than that, the LibreBoot mailing list will help you to unearth the hypocrisy and lies fed to us by hardware vendors.
Free the firmware, free the bootloader, free the operating system, free the drivers, free the software - and then the user can decide wether or not they want to run commercial software on top of all this.
Anything else is subservience.
Thanks for this, I am interested in the philosophy around FOSS, I am tech illiterate basically and like foss because I trust it more than US tech.
That too! I covered that in another of my recent posts on the Europe community on here
That is a big thing Europe can at least make happen and in Asian/African/Latin countries too.
I like your addition though that is all facts!! Let’s keep pushing countries to make that happen.
To make them undo what Google is trying to do currently and what Apple does for long time to have all those devices be fully changeable for the OS
Needs to become a movement everywhere!!! Just as StooKillingGames, and the KeepAndroidOpen movements
We need a catchy name for it
A Fairphone with GrapheneOS would be the tops
GrapheneOS doesn’t like Fairphone very much it seems…
They don’t seem to like anyone very much.
GrapheOS doesn’t like anyone. I don’t even think they should be treated as part of open phone community. They are hostile to everything that they didn’t make.
They are hostile to those who dont genuinely care about privacy and security like fairphone and murena who also spend time spreading hate and disinformation about grapheneos and the devs and owner
I all for spreading hate of graphene os devs* but I don’t think Fairphone is doing anything like that. Any proof?
*Just kidding. I think they are toxic but and their opinions on many topics should be ignored but there’s no need to hate anyone.
Their gripe seems more to do with eOS, but they kinda couple them together. Hardware-wise fairphone is only deficient in its security chip. I do agree with GrapheneOS in criticisms of eOS’s philosophy and security and privacy goals. The founder of eOS is a prick.
what led you to this conclusion?
Hmmm, maybe something like this: https://www.androidauthority.com/fairphone-murena-software-response-grapheneos-claims-3579637/
the graphene people never fail to stir pot. lol
they not wrong, but there’s better ways to inform other people.
Isn’t /e/os (murena) a seperate company from fairphone?
Yes, and I don’t know if it could even be classed as a collaboration. They just buy them and resell them with different firmware, basically?
I assume some part of acceptance is required for that in practice, but it isn’t like Fairphone ever advertised them as an official option (as far as I can tell or saw).
Well, Fairphone sells phones with e/OS preinstalled on their website so at the very least they like each other
So instead of seeing an opportunity to do the same, they burned bridges with one of the only companies not locking down their OS?
Security wise Fairphone isn’t up to GOS standards, so a collaboration wasn’t on the table either way.
If said standards are reasonable is a difficult thing to say. A few years ago I would’ve said that a normal person doesn’t need to be concerned that the police tries to break into their phone, but with the current state of things and the increasing rise of fascism, I’m not so certain anymore.
They are just saying that e/OS has delays of important updates that lag. Which the fairphine team then pretty much confirmed.
Am I a dick for pointing out factual information? Are they? When it comes to something like security and privacy there should be no compromises. The truth should be heard.
Fairphones are scams
In what way(s)? There are a lot of things I like about it from the research I did. I only didn’t get one because of e/OS and the battery life.
Sure would be the toppiest of tops!
We can encourage them to work together in their official communication channels too!
Would be good for both of them on every level. GrapheneOS learning to make their own phones, and Fairphone learning to make an OS while both being partnered
Edit: Be the change you want to see everybody!! Flood the gates with what we want!
Graphene already has a partnership with Motorola now so the assumption is some time (I’ve seen 2027 speculated) we may get a Graphene Phone from Motorola. Mixed feelings about them partnering with a company like that but we’ll see how it goes. I still keep thinking about finally getting a secondhand pixel 10 so I can switch to Graphene from apple.
I would recommend it. Very worth it overall (As a user of a similar Pixel phone)
What are your use cases?
Afaik Fairphone is not interested in implementing some security features that GrapheneOS people consider a deal breaker
I wonder why they don’t want to, its not really in Fairphones to not do that
They are talking about specific hardware features. Which would of course be great, but you can imagine how they are not exactly at the toppiest toppy top of Fairphone’s priorities, when they are still struggling to be taken seriously by your mainstream Android buyer.
Consider that every hardware features is extra hard for Fairphone, on account of their very specific commitments to materials sourcing, labor practices, and longer term support.
They are a company with a lot of very complicated demands, for a still very low volume of sold devices. They need to pick their battles, and clearly being blessed by the church of Graphene can’t be that high a priority.
I wish we have more choice for linux phone
At least one. Just one actively manufactured phone with full hardware support 🙏
Fairphone should focus on helping the Linux options move along, no need waste resources on GOS, just another android ROM
Long term android should die off in place of Linux but its a long road
Have UT running on a Nord phone, they have made good strides over the years, appreciate their dedication
Agreed that Fairphone should do more but in all fairness, they already do some, at least. They sell their phones with /e/OS (French de-Googled Android) and it’s easy to unlock the boot loader. I’m typing this from my Fairphone 3+ with /e/OS and I had Ubuntu Touch installed for years.
I remember the GrapheneOS team saying that they won’t bring their OS to Fairphone, because the Fairphones don’t bring hardware support for security measures the GrapheneOS team doesn’t want to compromise on.
Definitely feels like a supply chain issue on parts for Fairphone to have this position. Hopefully Fairphone, GrapheneOS, and hardware venders can work this out on a later model.
Take anything the lead dev of GrapheneOS says with a grain of salt. He’s a little… Um, special.
While his perceptions of other people’s motives and meanings may be suspect, his technical analysis seems pretty spot on.
Honestly if I had to deal with degooglers and Linux fanboys as much as he did I’d probably go batshit insane. Kudos to him
His technical chops are without question. However he has been so over the top obnoxious to MANY other leaders in the privacy space. He really hurts his own cause by refusing to acknowledge there are other threat models that can be solved with other answers.
Agree, he’s a bit paranoid and delusional. I think that may speak to his psychological profile. Who designs an impenetrable OS except someone who is a little paranoid?
One might argue it would be more difficult to do if you’re not a little paranoid.
Let’s call a spade a spade: He is a raging asshole with severe clinical paranoia. I’m literally certain that if he saw this post he’d accuse me of being a shill for calyxos and to never fucking again interact with any grapheneos account. Both have happened to me before (Hence I refuse to ever interact with his troupe again, even though I use graphene and agree with the vast majority of its technical decisions; I have also stopped actively recommending it to anyone, the social media experience is simply way too attrocious).
I wasn’t going to go THAT far . . . but I can’t disagree with a word you wrote. Take my upvote.
So just to verify you still use it because you realize and know its the most secure option.
Idk maybe our threat models are different but I could care less if someone is an asshole or a paranoid schizophrenic - as long as I am having the most private and security conscious user experience available then who cares?
You could still recommend it, since you already seem to know it is the most secure or else you most likely would have switched by now, but just explain that the social media side of it can be disheartening.
I will say, I’ve never had a single problem in any of the GOS forum pages on there website. Not a single one.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend a project with a lead that is as verbally abusive and utterly unable to appreciate even highly constructive criticism as Micay, technical merits notwithstanding. I am fine when others recommend it though.
He stepped down as lead in 2023 but I do think he is still one of the directors or something like that. He doesn’t use social media anymore either because most people feel like you did about it and he was a dick I’ll admit that.
But man small price to pay for the most proven security on phones in my opinion.
Both tantalizingly close with respect to GrapheneOS. I wouldn’t expect Samsung to ever support the other two, but their phones are supposed to have every security element GOS expects. Only problem is that Samsung wants to make their own walled-garden ecosystem a la Apple.
I do remember reading somewhere that GrapheneOS are open to someone making a GSI (generic system image) port that would work with phones like Fairphone, which GOS don’t want to officially support due to a lack of security features. I wonder if anyone has started work on such a thing.
