TL;DR
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Google has made it harder to build custom Android ROMs for Pixel phones by omitting their device trees and driver binaries from the latest AOSP release.
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The company says this is because it’s shifting its AOSP reference target from Pixel hardware to a virtual device called “Cuttlefish” to be more neutral.
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While Google insists AOSP isn’t going away, developers must now reverse-engineer changes, making the process for supporting Pixel devices more difficult.
It’s the year of the linux phone. /s
apple and google are doing their best to promote linux phones at this point.
dont buy american
one less reason to buy a Pixel, well done Google!
I don’t have any actual research, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pixel itself doesn’t really make money at all. One of those “get people hardcore into the Google ecosystem to get their money/data” things.
The absolutely criminal dark patterns that they pull on people via Google photos auto backup is insane.
Just in my own orbit 2 of my friends wives, my parents, and my in-laws all wound up paying Google because they thought they had to or lose all their photos. We helped most of them disconnect the autobackup (that they didn’t even know was activated) and move it to offline safely. But that was the most downright evil shit Google has ever done and literally a fire in me for manipulating the elderly and less tech savvy so blatantly.
devil’s avocado: this move has saved many people’s cherished photos from disappearing by having them auto save. before Google photos I’d run into cases (I used to do home IT support) where people had years of family photos disappear because they didn’t back them up properly. Having to communicate what happened was never fun.
is Google photos perfect? No, but it’s a great solution for people who don’t want to manage their data.
Yes, but that shouldn’t explicitly opt in, and they shouldn’t marry that product to Gmail and Google Drive if they are going to push it to enable by default.
Again, it’s really insidious. They push it so aggressively I had to disable it on my personal device twice, and I can’t just not use Google Photos app because it’s tied to the camera itself on pixel phones.
I agree with you, it’s insidious.
Given you’ve got a Pixel phone, you can save at least yourself from this problem by running Graphene or Calyx on it.
How badly would this affect graphine os?
What about the OS part of AOSP?
Don’t the ROM makers already fork AOSP to begin with?Unrelated: The top bar in this article indicating the article position is so fucking stupid. Guess what the scroll bar on the right hand side is for?
This is not good, this is why I don’t like permissive licenses.
Or in other words, cuck licenses.
Haha, great name, thanks for the link!
Now more than ever we need more work on PostmarketOS, Mobian, Gnome Mobile etc…
Bummer that it’s still so hard to find a somewhat modern, affordable phone that is Linux compatible
Why can’t we install it on a Samsung Galaxy A06 A065F DS ? They are like, less than 200$ new without contracts
Yeah, I’d totally buy a phone running one of those provided it does all the phone things properly: SMS/MMS, reliable calls, all day battery, etc. I don’t need fancy apps, I just need a working phone.
If I can get that, I could probably donate some time porting apps.
It’s so crazy (technically understandable, but still crazy) to me that reliably receiving calls is still such a major issue
I really want to give furios phone a shot. It’s apparently close to supporting my carrier.
That and a sailfish phone. The community one though didn’t support my carrier (think it’s mainly EU specced only.)
What I find missing most of the time though is any esim support. Makes me wonder if the hardware one that you can program an esim on works.
I plan on buying one when my current phone is no longer usable.
Why eSim? Does your carrier not support physical sim?
For traveling I find it much easier to just buy an esim
I want a phone with only cellular data, no calling, no sms, just an open source browser capable of webasm and webrtc
Sounds like a tablet, and that very well could be easier for someone to build than a phone.
Can we have one of those that fit in my pocket, like 6.5" max ?
We had those, they were called Pocket PCs. I too want them back. I loved the Dell Axim x51v. A tablet does the job, but it’s the same shitty OS.
I know someone at a company that built and sold a Linux phone 19 years ago.
You’re not upset you can’t find a Linux phone: you’re upset you can’t find one anymore.
Like, I understand the more the merrier, and so I don’t hate on the whole Pixel, ROM development thingy, but I just don’t understand the appeal of Pixel phones. If you want to be a photographer, get a camera. Other than that, you really don’t need that great of a camera on your phone. Given the condition of America and the police state and corporate surveillance, I don’t know why anybody with a damn look of sense would put their information on these major platforms, let alone even on the outskirts. Some people make money on social media, but a lot don’t. I stick to my guns and I’m on the internet and computers to learn to educate myself, not to dick around with stupid shit. We need something other than Android. And we have to be weary of open source, especially when it’s sponsored by Google. Google is a terrorist organization.
Being weary of open source is like being afraid to eat food that you watched somebody cook for you.
If you want to be a photographer, get a camera.
🤦♀️
Even professional photographers don’t have their cameras on them at all times, nor are they as convenient for just whipping out and taking a picture within 1.5s.
Plus, cameras are expensive and they’re another thing to carry around (idk about you but I don’t have infinite pocket space) and they’re another thing to keep charged, whereas you have a phone with you at pretty much all times anyway, because they’re effectively required for modern society.
You may as well be saying you don’t understand why phones can play music when you can get an MP3 player, that you don’t understand why they play videos because TVs exist, that you don’t understand why they have web browsers and plenty of apps, because PCs exist.
I stick to my guns and I’m on the internet and computers to learn to educate myself, not to dick around with stupid shit.
He said, on this Lemmy thread.
And we have to be weary of open source
Ah yes, that nefarious Open Source software. Tell me more about the evils of FOSS, Mr Balmer.
This would be sad if Pixel phones were worth buying, instead of being far inferior to midrange Motorola devices in battery life and performance while costing well over twice as much.
Anything being less open is sad regardless of your opinion of the hardware.
You must be ignoring the Motorola bloat that makes it’s performance beyond subpar somehow
People who use stock ROMs choose to suffer, just like people who choose to buy a Pixel that will either come unglued, push components through the display, or just constantly overheat.
All of which can be disabled.
I have never had a Motorola smartphone… But Canta is a thing :)
I mean, you’re getting a lot of downvotes, but I’ve gone Motorola -> Motorola -> Motorola -> Pixel -> Pixel -> Motorola.
Both my Pixels died in less than a year. Each had battery life which, while it did improve over a few weeks as Pixel’s optimization stuff took hold, never reached an entire day. Both were unacceptably fragile. Both failed randomly, just out of warranty.
And the Motorola I’m using now has none of those problems, was cheaper, is faster, has a better battery, has a better screen, and in some ways is more customizable (fuck that unmovable search bar).
Like, really. Motorola is a sleeper brand. Not perfect, but damn good.
See? Pixel devices are nothing but a trip to the lemon grove, but people with debilitating chronic ass pain tearfully refuse to accept that they wasted their money on GETBRAND. I take those downvotes as an unofficial census confirming how many people don’t know ball.
Which motorola?
If Pine64 can spec out a reasonably decent prototype of a phone and Purism can sell theirs for 2 grand (not worth it), then somebody else can legit come out with something just the same. Pine64 project and Purism cannot be the only communities that can somehow come out with these kinds of tech. Better yet, more people should be jumping to help out these guys to be free from Google and Apple dominance.
Teracube just came out with their 3 phone Teracube 2s, and of course there is Fairphone
Sundar Pichai strikes again!
AOSP can be fully abandoned and privately forked by Google without it technically being “dead,” but that abandonment would effectively kill the project.
The company says this is because it’s shifting its AOSP reference target from Pixel hardware to a virtual device called “Cuttlefish” to be more neutral.
This actually probably make sense, but they could still be cool and have pixel drivers be open source in a different repo if that was the only reason.
Yeah, just that this has shit to do with the stated reasons. Google hasn’t been an open source ally for quite some time now
Do you think it may be related to the monopoly issues they are currently facing?
Quite possibly, the GrapheneOS team seems to think so:
Yup, the entire culture of Google has nearly changed. It used to be coder- and innovation-driven, and open-source was a natural thing to support. Make more money by growing the pie, creating markets with new tech.
Now it seems it’s middle managers and MBAs calling the shots, and their strategy is generic business zero-sum mindset - lock down, restrict, extract. They still see the PR value in open-source, but that’s it.
Just becoming 1990s Microsoft or 1980s IBM.
Just another example of enshittification from a publicly traded company. Nothing really new here.
Would be great indeed, but “more neutral” in this case seems to mean vendor agnostic by abstracting the hardware away and have anything run on a closed source google container.
So I bought a pixel device (an old one) for nothing ?
Google is doing a good job of discouraging some of us from buying Pixel phones. But they don’t care because the number of people installing Graphene etc. is relatively very low.
Yeah but what now ? I mean the Linux mobile ecosystem isn’t exactly mature nor widespread
Does this mean Graphene is dead? Probably the real reason they would do this is to kill Graphene.
The GrapheneOS team is very aware of their dependence on google. They are planning to either find an OEM for their own line of hardware or a brand whose phones support their requirements other than google. That being said, it will complicate work a lot, but for now it would be to early to jump to that conclusion.
Also, Google couldn’t care less if <1% of buyers flash a custom ROM / OS on their phone, this is about tying the android ecosystem closer to google in general. Most other big phone manufacturers know this and are trying to come up with their own solution, like Huawei had to because of the ban when the orange man has been president the first time.
or a brand whose phones support their requirements other than google.
Wasn’t Graphene’s “selling point” for long being that nothing but Pixels can match their reqs? I don’t see why any current band would want to make it easier for them, and I also don’t see new brand significantly entering the market.
Graphene boiled themselves in their own frogpan.
Nah, you have it backwards. GrapheneOS didn’t choose Pixels for any reason other than they’re the only acceptably secure devices out there. I can’t imagine they want this to be the case.
That still sounds like choosing to me. Like, if your project requirements are so strict that it only works on the mornings of a Tuesday that falls in a prime number day that has a blue moon and where there are no ATP tennis matches going on (all pre-existing things you have no vote on), maybe you should re-evaluate if you actually want your proyect to have a viable audience.
Is it really so outlandish to want my phone to be unbreakable by cops?
In this year of 2025? No. But it still is basically setting oneself for failure from the perspective of Graphene, IMO. Like, the strongest protection in the world (assuming Graphene even is, which is quite a tall order statement) is useless if it only works on the mornings of a Tuesday that falls in a prime number day that has a blue moon and where there are no ATP tennis matches going on. Everyone else is, like, living in the real world, and the uniqueness of your scenario is going to go down the drain once your users get presented with a $5 wrench, or even cheaper: a waterboard. Because cops, let alone ICE, are not going to stop to ask you if they can make you more comfortable with your privacy being violated.
This is not a selling point but rather a unfortunate but comprehensible circumstance. Nexus and later Pixel phones have not been anything more than reference hardware without significant sales until the Pixel 6. Google has been a software company that has greatly benefited by android being an “open” platform you could contribute to and use their services on.
The App / Cloud ecosystem has gained a lot of competitors, so Google is doing their best to reverse this course of action by pulling more and more functionality out of AOSP into Play services and now into Cuttlefish. We can only wait and see how other phone manufacturers react to this.
We can only wait and see how other phone manufacturers react to this.
Honestly, it’s obvious how they will react. After all, they’d have to pass a certification process if they want to be able to ship Google stuff.
What i understand is porting over android 16 is gonna be slow.
It certainly feels like it is judging by the general moodshifts occuring. But I’m a moron, what alternative exists for a secure phone of comparable functionality? It feels like ditching phones is the only option to some extent(for me). If stupid, isn’t the phone the most vulnerable weakpoint open to attack?
This fits into Google tying Android closer to them, same with the recent move of only making release source publicly available.
They’re regretting having started Android as an “open” platform and want to gain control fast, maybe preparing for the current anti-trust trials they are facing in the US.
