Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped

Retr0id

It's hard to tell, is this a new announcement?

jordand

GrapheneOS last said they should be able to support Pixel 11 along with the Motorola phones

podocarp

Not surprised, since it wasn't used in Android to begin with they probably thought nobody will notice if it's removed. And indeed, for the vast majority of people nobody will notice.

rickdeckard

Quite a bad signal-to-noise ratio in this link. It's an emotional discussion about Google not supporting MTE on Pixel 11 (old news of August, GrapheneOS had to roll back that statement in September [0]). Now the question is whether MTE will be enabled by Google as part of a future OS-upgrade, to which there is no definite answer AFAIK [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536384

mrbn100ful

Yes please buy the low volume phone from a 5% market share manufacturer. Someone high up got tired to pull over every pixel user at the border. With the new Motorola, TSA line are going to move faster that ever! If you care about privacy, stay away for the moto release and stick with pixel.

aftbit

The Pixel 11 is the first Pixel phone to be released after the RAMpocolypse. It has made a lot of compromises in the name of lowering cost. I am definitely going to skip that generation. I tend to upgrade every 3 years, but there really isn't a big driver to do so right now. My Pixel 8 is holding up great. If I broke it and needed to buy a new phone today, I'd probably get a used Pixel 10 instead of a new 11.

rgblambda

>It appears Google cut an important security feature to save money. If you're doing comms for a serious project, it's probably best not to speculate on the justification of an internal decision at a different org, even if you're reasonably sure.

microtonal

As others have said, this is not the most recent status update (it depends on future Google changes in QPR1 or QPR2). The much more interesting recent news IMO is that Google is not allowing (non-Samsung) OEMs to sell devices with GrapheneOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946698 See the last paragraph. For example, non-Samsung Android OEMs aren't allowed to directly sell devices with GrapheneOS and Google will only permit it within a quota. It can and is being worked around and there will be devices sold with GrapheneOS as the stock OS without Google restricting how many can be sold. My guess is that the workaround is that Motorola sells them with Google-certified Android. A third-party (non-OEM) buys them in bulk and preinstalls GrapheneOS. But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness. I'm surprised that (particularly non-US) regulators are not investigating them yet.

Pxtl

My pixel 7 is starting to get long in the tooth, I know I'll run it into the ground but I'm starting to wonder where I'll go for the next one now that Google is increasingly locking down their platform.

rkozik1989

Serious question about phone security: do phone application operating systems do anything to protect against the device's real-time OS from being able to access RAM/Disk that's being used by the application OS? Because if that cannot be controlled security at the application OS level is meaningless.

pbhjpbhj

So Arm built in MTE but Google have decided to prevent access to it at the firmware level? Have they introduced some other mitigations, for eg UAF, to improve memory safety? It seems possible that nixing MTE is to prevent stomping on some TLAs exploits?

rashidmanhas1

This one is old update I believe.

atlgator

Why does the announcement focus so much on Apple when they exclusively support Android?

mistyvales

Guess I should order the 10 to replace the 9a I dropped down the stairs.

ljhkkjl

Relying on Google hardware seems like a very bad idea. GrapheneOS would have much more adoption if they weren't so Google-obsessed.

jonaustin

Most recent comment from them (9/30) https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/41564-pixel-11-doesnt-yet-m... GrapheneOS: ``` We're not going to add support for the Pixel 11 series unless it ships MTE support. It has hardware level support for MTE but it shipped without firmware support for it. It's unknown why that's the case and it could be due to flaws in the hardware implementation which have to be worked around. It isn't yet clear if it's going to support MTE but we've decided we won't support it unless it ships. Android 17 QPR2 Beta launched for the Pixel 11 after we made our initial posts about this and added preliminary firmware support for MTE while keeping it fully disabled for the OS even as a developer option. It isn't clear if something is severely wrong with it or not yet so we can't make any commitment to supporting the Pixel 11 series. ```

t1234s

Google would be smart to adopt and fully support Graphine as a "Pro" version of its phone OS.

tedjohnson

The title should be "Google doesn't consider GrapheneOS at all" instead... Anyway, if it was somewhere around 2020, it would be completely forbidden to talk about such topics on their community channels, and you would be banned for even remotely criticizing Google (and probably even doxxed by their personal army of raged teenagers from PrivacyGuides). This is why the project lost the support of many people from the security scene. Now, everything indicates that the people they were banning and censoring were right about Google. Instead of listening to these critics and exploring non-Google alternatives, the project spent a massive amount of effort battling and brigading social media to suppress any criticism.

h4kunamata

GOS no longer depends on Google Pixel, and honestly, they should focus on Motorola as the main focus and ditch Google future releases. We should receive the first Motorola phones compatible with GOS somewhere in 2027.

m4rtink

Perfect being the enemy of the good ?