What, MTE is such a promising tech and for security and now that we need all security we can get. WTF this is terrible development. You cant go backwards when the world needs getting even more secure.
Such a shame. Google themselves barely utilised it in their stock builds. I wonder if there is some silicon or development overhead they decided to cut.
I'm optimistic about the Motorola partnership and when my 9 Pro is EOL I'll definitely look at how that's played out.
Google likely cut MTE to reduce the die space required by CPU cache. It saves them money on a feature they never deployed by default and only used for a few processes as part of Android Advanced Protection Mode (AAPM) without enabling it in the Linux kernel. Their security team should have gotten it deployed by default for a large portion of the OS by now and then it would have been much harder to justify removing it. The small performance impact of asymmetric mode is irrelevant for the vast majority of the OS and it can also be used in the near zero cost asynchronous mode. We use synchronous in the kernel for security reasons but they didn't have to do that.
It's a completely different story for GrapheneOS where it means losing one of the main kernel and userspace security protections. This is one of the only ways we can significantly harden the Linux kernel with existing security features. The Linux kernel has always been a huge security liability for Android and AI models are making that much more obvious to everyone.
Google will likely end up heavily using MTE in the future. Pixel 11 devices won't be able to benefit from it. They're at the start of 7 years of updates but they won't be getting the benefit of future updates enabling MTE. Pixel 8 and later will benefit from Google likely expanding use of MTE for AAPM and eventually beginning to use it by default. It's unlikely Google will stop working on expanding MTE due to the Pixel 11 hardware decision. Multiple other OEMs are interested in MTE for devices made for businesses and governments even if Google decided it wasn't worth the cost for Pixels.
The supposed "security team" is busy fighting Google engineers connecting to internal systems to do their work. E.g. somebody figured how to control the coding AI agent from their phone -- red alert, ban all access from phones to AI for everybody (even with corporate accounts).
You say that like it's a bad thing. If I am trusting Google with all sorts of personal information, I expect robust access controls to data and systems
I don't understand much from MTE/Android or MIE/iOS but the explanation is also confusing when:
- They claim Apple did a great job integrating MIE in iOS
- iOS doesn't encourage to opt into MTE ... Apple's docs warn developers of performance and stability issues
So it seems like even for iOS, this special security feature is only available for Apple own iOS app (at most?).
Then also:
> Even Signal doesn't opt-in. Our approach enables forcing using MTE in the standard allocators regardless.
So does that mean that Signal and any other apps are enrolled in MTE on Graphene?
I see a significant difference between making a security feature available but opt-in during a teething phase, and removing the feature altogether. Am I missing something?
iOS uses MTE for nearly all of the important parts of the OS. It uses MTE within the kernel and for a substantial portion of the base OS processes. They focused on deploying it to the most security relevant processes first but it's deployed for a large portion of the OS beyond those. Apple has done a very good job protecting the OS with it. They've done a very poor job getting the app ecosystem to adopt it. Android has more app ecosystem adoption due to having a better open source app ecosystem where GrapheneOS users have asked apps to enable it by default.
GrapheneOS uses MTE for the kernel and nearly every userspace process including all the base OS apps. We've had to fix many upstream Linux kernel and Pixel kernel driver bugs found by MTE. However, we aren't trying to fix the Pixel userspace drivers code ourselves so we have a few userspace processes excluded from MTE caused by userspace driver library/service bugs.
We recommend users enable our toggle for enabling MTE by default for every user installed app not explicitly marked as incompatible in our compatibility database. GrapheneOS has user-facing notifications for invalid memory accesses caught by MTE providing a traceback to share with the app developers. Users can use the per-app toggle to work around it if it makes an app unusable. We take the same approach for other aggressive exploit protections provided by GrapheneOS. Exploit protections with only rare compatibility issues are enabled by default for apps with a per-app toggle to opt-out and no toggle for the global default.
This isn't terrible development, it's simply that GrapheneOS devs can't do miracles
They can't just continue supporting phones if they have security downgrades, especially if it's an important feature.
Pixel 11 has an incremental upgrade to the CPU, the same underpowered GPU and less RAM for the base Pro models. It has a new major version of the secure element (Titan M3) which likely greatly improves Before First Unlock state security for users without a strong passphrase. It has a better radio from a performance and efficiency perspective but it's still a more than yearly generation behind Qualcomm. The cellular radio firmware is also likely a security downgrade but the userspace code is more secure due to moving to AOSP IMS code. If these devices hadn't removed MTE, then they would have been a sidegrade with marginally better security. Removing MTE ruins these devices for GrapheneOS. We could still support the Pixel 11 series but it would be greatly rolling back overall security to before the Pixel 8. It does at least have PAC and BTI but MTE was the main improvement with the Pixel 8 rather than those.
You keep repeating this everywhere but this is just plainly wrong. They went from an old big.Little (with middle cores) arrangement that everyone abandoned for flagship chips generations ago, with core arches that were 2-3 generations behind competition, to a modern, up to date arrangement. There's literally nothing newer that they could've gotten from Arm, and other CPUs are releasing with C1 generation.
And I don't get your angle on the GPU. GOS is not gaming oriented, Pixels are not gaming oriented, and never were. They have a decent NPU to handle AI, a decent ISP to handle cameras, what more do you need the GPU for? Why would they put in a PC grade monster like Qualcomm?
Same for the modem, it's well known that Qualcomm are way ahead of the game, but they also charge like crazy for their SOCs and are a horrific partner to work with. They treat clients like shit, I get why Google ditched them when they were able to.
And you keep recommending P10 when it's genuinely a non improvement over P9, with worse battery life and running hotter, and the same modem. What the f is your angle? Is Micay back to GOS?
The CPU is 10-15% faster, that’s incremental in use even if it’s technically interesting.
Lots of apps and websites only run smoothly on newer GPUs, too. You can play the “they’re dumb and I just won’t use them” game, but not everybody has your priorities, and it’s a relevant factor either way.
The modem comment, likewise, is simply correct, and evaluating performance is good even when shortcomings are understandable.
They supported Pixel 10 because they supported every new Pixel that wasn’t a security downgrade and shortly preceding a better alternative. The logic isn’t “performance bad therefore no upgrade”, it’s “no upgrade for a bunch of other reasons, and it’s not like we’re missing out on a 3x performance improvement”.
> Lots of apps and websites only run smoothly on newer GPUs, too.
GPU is barely used in non-3D applications. My OP15 runs normal apps and websites just as well as my Pixel 10 Pro did. Speedometer 3.1 returns 10% higher scores in favour of the OP, even though it has the latest and greatest qcom chip.
UI experience is all about scheduler tuning, drawing pipeline optimizations and (to a much lesser degree) single core performance. Anything above Cortex X1 can have perfect 120 fps anywhere, without a major energy penalty, if the software is well optimized. I know because we did experiments like that when I was still doing custom Android kernels.
Not a single time did we need to do anything to the GPU, most of the time it's in 2D clocks and never wakes up.
> They supported Pixel 10 because they supported every new Pixel that wasn’t a security downgrade and shortly preceding a better alternative. The logic isn’t “performance bad therefore no upgrade”, it’s “no upgrade for a bunch of other reasons, and it’s not like we’re missing out on a 3x performance improvement”.
Not my question. I get why P10 was supported, I don't get why it's recommended by the person running the account, when it's objectively just a more expensive P9 with worse battery life and running warmer.
Pixel 10a is the most recently released recommended device. It has the same SoC as the 9th generation Pixels with a far better cellular radio than the Pixel 9a.
Pixel 9 to Pixel 10 had a bigger incremental CPU upgrade than the Pixel 10 to Pixel 11. GPU was initially a downgrade due to poor drivers but that was resolved already.
Pixel 10 has various small but significant security advantages over the Pixel 9. Pixel 11 would similarly have small security advantages if they hadn't ruined the overall security by removing MTE.
We definitely do want better CPU, GPU and radio performance for flagship devices and haven't been happy with those on Pixels. It doesn't outweigh security updates and security features but it matters to us. We're going to be a lot happier with a next gen flagship Snapdragon SoC for many reasons.
Getting a 15% increase to CPU performance is an incremental upgrade to the CPU performance. We expected a much better improvement from the new CPU architecture. It's quite disappointing and the removal of MTE support is even more disappointing. Using HWASan instead of MTE would have around 2x CPU overhead, 25% memory overhead and would not provide nearly as much of the security benefits due to only working for code instrumented with it. Compared to doing memory tagging using HWASan, decent MTE support is an incredible performance boost.
GrapheneOS works well for running games and people can toggle off hardened_malloc and MTE for a game to eliminate nearly all of the performance difference. It doesn't usually make any noticeable difference. GrapheneOS is intended to be fully usable by everyone including people who care about GPU performance whether it's for games or other apps. Claiming GrapheneOS isn't gaming focused is your opinion. We care a lot about compatibility with games and have put effort into it. Pixels using a GPU with poor gaming compatibility and performance wasn't our choice and doesn't mean we don't care about it.
> and the same modem
Pixel 10a has a drastically better cellular radio than the Pixel 9a. The 'a' series Pixels are consistently the most popular devices supported by GrapheneOS. Pixel 10a is still the latest one so there isn't going to be any gap in people being able to buy a new device for GrapheneOS if we don't add the Pixel 11 and instead skip right to Motorola flagships and then more Motorola devices. We hope the Pixel 12 adds back MTE support but aren't optimistic.
> back to GOS?
You're directing abusive comments towards our team based on highly inaccurate harassment content.
IMO they peaked with the Nexus 6 - camera has gotten worse and they make up with it in software or try to. You could and can see this at night or stacked shots in N6 vs pixel 4,5,6.
They bought the best phone hardware and software companies (Motorola and Android) and gutted them both.
They purchased Motorola Mobility for the patent portfolio as essentially a nuclear deterrent against Apple and then sold it to Lenovo. They're doing quite well internationally but haven't been a big brand in the US for a while. Their flagship phones are going to have GrapheneOS as a selling point soon and we'll hopefully be able to expand beyond the high end over the next couple years.
The company that Google targeted with their Motorola patents was Microsoft.
Google sought to ban the sale of Microsoft products that used the H.264 video standard on a global basis if Microsoft didn't hand over a literal fortune.
> Microsoft and Motorola are embroiled in a legal spat around the world over the software giant’s alleged use of Motorola industry-standard H.264 patents in its many products. Motorola has argued that Microsoft has used the technology illegally and should have its products banned until it licenses them.
Motorola says that Microsoft should pay $4 billion for the use of its technology, applying a 2.25 percent royalty based on product price.
I have my parents and in laws running Moto phones. They hold up well, are well built, just no big flagship phone that I'm drawn to. I like their flat screens, SD cards, headphone jacks, all that good stuff. I think their cameras are getting better now too so that'll probably tip me over with the icky new Pixel 11's
I had the Galaxy Nexus (Samsung) and the Nexus 6. I may have had the Nexus 4 or 5, I dont remember. I had a few HTC phones before that and the DROID by Moto before that as my original smart phone. The DROID was peak - I miss the slide out keyboard.
...have you tried any of the cameras from the last 5 years or just the pixel 6? My 11 pro's cameras are by far the best cameras I've ever used on a smartphone, my previous iPhone included.
Have you seen the raw images you get out of those cameras? They're still the same grainy low res webcam sensors they were 10 years ago (if not worse), most of the improvement is just AI hallucinating details.
"Pixel 11 series is a lot more expensive for an incremental improvement to the CPU, the same underpowered GPU and reduced RAM for the Pro base models. They finally caught up to the last generation of Qualcomm cellular radio. It's overpriced, the upgrades aren't impressive and losing MTE is appalling."
Lost any remaining respect for Pixel with the decisions they've made for Pixel 11. The product design and hardware teams have both tried to one up each other and who can deliver the bigger pile of steaming crap.
You can get a Pixel 10 or wait for the upcoming Motorola flagship with GrapheneOS support. Pixel 11 only has an incremental CPU upgrade and the same GPU as the Pixel 11 anyway. It isn't much of a hardware upgrade and is even a downgrade for RAM with the base Pro devices. It's more expensive than the Pixel 10 was too.
The upcoming Motorola flagship will have a dramatically better CPU and GPU than the Pixel 11 and competitive cameras. It will still have 7 years of updates, MTE and a secure element with the features used by GrapheneOS. Motorola Signature (2026) is the predecessor not quite meeting our requirements mainly due to lack of MTE but also lack of other features which had to be developed.
They do require unusual security features and they do focus on a small number of devices at a time. It's not just any device that meets the requirements.
GrapheneOS doesn't require any unusual security features. It only requires industry standard security features which are widely acknowledged as being important. There hasn't been a non-Pixel device meeting our listed requirements yet but Motorola's 2026 flagships are close and at least one will meet all our requirements and be officially supported in 2027.
MTE is a standard ARM security feature. Simply using standard ARM cores and cache was enough to provide MTE and that's why the Pixel 8 was able to provide it.
Pixel 8 through Pixel 10a have MTE and so does the iPhone 17. iPhones have above 50% usage share in the US and various other countries along with at least around 30% in most of Europe.
Ah I see but if it's standard in arm why don't other brands have it? As far as I understand Samsung use standard arm cores too, ever since they dropped their mongoose design. Not sure about Qualcomm.
Ps again not trying to make an argument, I'm just interested. Though I do hope for more budget options even if it has to be a lower grade under a different branding. But having the full GOS on an affordable device would be even better.
Apple for me isn't an option due to price and limited access to the system either by the way (like being limited to the app store)
Samsung does have MTE on certain devices. They don't allow us to support their devices by either not allowing another OS or crippling functionality including security for them. Samsung has nearly all of our security requirements on certain devices but that doesn't mean we can support them. Samsung also does decent updates for the drivers and firmware on their flagships too. Samsung is welcome to work with us and have GrapheneOS support for their devices.
GrapheneOS supports 'a' series Pixels and those provide the same security and updates as the higher end devices. A used Pixel 8a is a very affordable device with great overall security nearly as good as a Pixel 10 and plenty of update support remaining. Pixels are not available in enough countries but the 'a' series devices combined with the long support they receive already provides very affordable devices in countries where they've been available for years.
Qualcomm was quite late to providing MTE due to their custom cores. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 does provide MTE, as will the next generation SoC used on the initial Motorola phone with GrapheneOS support.
MTE is supported on a lot of phones, as are the other requirements. Samsung has a bunch of devices providing the required hardware security features. It doesn't mean we can use those devices.
Good riddance to Google. I'm happy GOS is no longer dependent on their hardware.
My concern is that Motorola is a Chinese company. Sure, Pixel and Apple phones are made in China too, but they're overseen by American companies. How can we know these Motorola phones will not one day be placed on the "do not trust" list like e.g. Huawei phones?
It's funny how much Google lies about Android being 'secure' [1] and how much GrapheneOS, for free, improves the security of everyone with their work. Google should be, immediately, merging all patches/changes GrapheneOS makes and releasing a new build of Android to AOSP. Instead, users are subject to weak efforts to protect their security and privacy. They mention [1] 'This unencrypted data can be used to build user profiles or, in the hands of malicious actors'...And can't see the irony.
Anyone who values Graphene's work will purchase one of their motorola devices, whatever the cost, otherwise it seems your choices are going to be giving up more data and control to Google.
For future readers: This is NOT a direct comparison. The Motorola linked is sold/shipped by a third party (KICKmobiles® London (Worldwide FedEx/DHL Shipping)). The Pixel, whilst a higher cost (£879 vs £795 for the motorola) is sold and shipped by Amazon directly.
And this distinction matters. You are able to hold Amazon to account for when/if things go wrong (CRA2015,S75,courts,etc). With the Signature, it's an import, consumers have vastly fewer rights, and there are no reviews of the product either (can you guess why?)
As Amazon is not directly selling the product (Amazon only facilitates the transaction but isn't the actual buyer or seller), enforcing any rights is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It's sad to see that point not acknowledged as it makes the Pixel vastly more attractive. Morotola will absolutely need to ensure they are able to access the EU market without imports, otherwise I'm afraid the partnership is as good as dead.
It really depends on where you are. Here (NL) the Signature 2026 is 750 Euro from reputable sellers. But yeah, the Signature is not available everywhere, similar to how the Pixel is not available everywhere.
That's not 3 times the price. It's also a flagship device and that's the model with 16GB storage and 512GB memory. Pixel 11 Pro with RAM/storage upgraded is a better comparison and the Motorola Signature (2026) has vastly better CPU and GPU performance with a cheaper price. Regardless, it's clearly not 3x the price of the regular Pixels and is priced similarly to the Pixel 10 Pro series which was cheaper than the Pixel 11 Pro series.
> The thing is, you can buy a Pixel 8a or 9 for a fraction of the price.
Those are still going to be supported. In some countries such as Brazil, those are more expensive than a Signature due to not being officially sold there and high import taxes.
> Well the current Motorola Signature (2026) is 3 times the price of a Pixel.
I understand the sentiment, certainly, but the price difference depends a lot on which model we're comparing to. The Signature will be the flagship from Motorola, and I'll be very, very surprised if it's 3x the price of the Pixel flagship.
Presumably someone who was planning to buy something like the Pixel 10a would be more interested in the non-flagship Motorola devices with GOS support, which are expected to launch later.
Sure. But we're talking about a phone with GrapheneOS. If I need to choose a phone with GrapheneOS, there are cheap to expensive Pixels, and it is not clear at all if there will ever be cheap Motorolas. The Signature is very expensive, just like the most expensive Pixel.
> not clear at all if there will ever be cheap Motorolas
They've indicated that support will eventually be added for midrange Motorola devices, which I believe are historically price-competitive with the a-series Pixels.
I guess it depends where you are. Here the Signature 2026 is 750 Euro, which is about the same price as a Pixel 10 Pro.
They are quite a bit more expensive than the a-series, but I'm sure that the a series will hold up for a few more years, until GrapheneOS support percolates to mid-range Motorola phones. It's even possible, given that Pixel 10a uses the Pixel 9 CPU, that Pixel 11a will use the Pixel 10 CPU, so there might even be a new budget model next year with MTE support.
Yes but all phones coming out now are going to be complete turds really. They're all going to cut corners to offset the exploding cost of storage and ram.
It was removed from the whole non-folding Pixel 10 series in the US. It still has the SIM card slot elsewhere. We had to return a Pixel 10 bricked due to a firmware bug and it was the US model since we'd bought it in the US and sent it overseas with a forwarding service. Google's repair partner shop was quite confused about the lack of a SIM card slot to get the IMEI and we only had a serial number but they figured out using the serial number instead.
There's still dual SIM support either way and you can store dozens of inactive eSIMs. The main downside of eSIMs is widespread lack of transfer support by carriers.
After switching providers with a recent phone with eSIM, I would say I’d never want to go back to physical SIMs ever again.
They’re going to go away worldwide eventually, they’re just more easily removed in the US where the carriers are more bleeding edge on features and there are only 3 providers to think about in a very large homogenous market.
The difference between waiting for a SIM card to arrive in the mail, fiddling with a paperclip, tray, and impossibly tiny nano-SIM versus switching providers in 10 minutes via an app is night and day.
Most SIM/dual SIM solutions also involve removing both SIM cards at once even to swap out one of two, and they tend to require device restarts.
In the past I’ve also had network problems before as a result of bad/damaged SIM cards. There was one time where a bad SIM caused intermittent text messaging failures that were only resolved with a new SIM. Good riddance to that tech.
You seem to forget that moving an eSIM between phones isn't nearly as straightforward as moving a physical SIM, and often must be requested or approved by the carrier. If for some reason you intend to use the same SIM in various phones for one reason or another, it's a huge inconvenience.
Technically, the same thing can happen with a physical SIM. I tried that with a Nexus 5X on Verizon and that's how I learned their network has an allowlist system.
How does the carrier even know what phone you are going to use? My last SIM was bought in store at T Mobile, for cash, and I can freely move between phones. I never buy phones from carriers. My Pixel as bought directly from Google and immediately flashed with Graphene.
I had a testing phone and my regular phone, I kept swapping the same Verizon SIM between them. It worked for maybe 3 swaps, then Verizon blocked my account and sent me an email: suspicious activity detected, the SIM is blocked and cannot be restored, the contract has been terminated, you will receive the refund in mail.
Good riddance, US Mobile is so much cheaper and pleasant to use. I am scared to swap SIMs with them now though.
Can I switch out an eSIM while running an AOSP based ROM yet (ie no proprietary userspace)? Last time I checked (several years ago) it didn't seem to be possible. Did that change?
Why do they do the whole work of designing to separate variants, when they could just ship the single variant and the customers simply never use the slot, if they don't want it?
It was removed from the non-Fold devices in the US. They kept it for other countries due to only considering the US carriers to be ready for eSIM-only.
Pixel 10 was so bad I had to trade it in after using for a month. The version I got was 128GB for a whopping $600. This was my first Google device after Nexus days and I was bitterly disappointed with weird performance bugs and battery drain issues. The software does little to make up for the issues.
The replacement I got is a Motorola razr ultra folding phone.. similar perf point with 16G RAM and 512G storage. This phone is legit.
Definitely. This is great considering our family Google One plan has 100GB storage which is more than 60% full, but I don't really need to sweat it because I can back up most things on this phone and ignore Google photos backup alerts.
32GB is pretty common for new laptops, especially if you’re looking to utilize your integrated graphics (shared memory). Also keep in mind that modern integrated graphics can be really good, and therefore play games that demand more memory (e.g., Panther Lake X7).
The 24GB MacBook Air is the sweet spot of that model lineup in my opinion. Even if you’re a true “web browsing only” user, you can definitely find a sale or refurbished model with 24GB and that’s a much more wise purchase for long term ownership than being stuck with 16GB.
Especially considering most laptops have soldered memory, I’d have a hard time recommending a new laptop purchase with 16GB if your intention is to keep it many years.
Even though RAM is expensive, there are deals and sales out there.
> keep in mind that modern integrated graphics can be really good
Sort of but not really? Without the wider bus (and various drawbacks) of GDDR any iGPU is very severely memory bandwidth constrained compared to a dGPU from an equivalently recent generation. It's just that a 3 or 4 generation old dGPU is sufficient for an ever increasing number of titles.
TBF it entirely depends on what is meant by "really good".
> I’d have a hard time recommending a new laptop purchase with 16GB if your intention is to keep it many years.
One of my devices still has only 8GB and I use it daily. It's really not an issue for most things.
Don’t forget that all MacBook models are “integrated graphics.” If you start doing graphical stuff or gaming you’ll need more RAM. If you’ve got a Windows laptop with an RTX 5050/5060 with its own dedicated memory, then yeah, you don’t really need more than 16GB unless you’re doing something specific.
Integrated graphics are constrained but often sufficient to play AAA games.
Panther Lake laptops are roughly equivalent to an RTX 4050, which is only a single generation old. Obviously not the strongest GPU to compare against but you’re also pulling a lot less wattage doing it.
I’m sure your 8GB device is working great, but someone buying a brand new device really should avoid that since the implication is that they’re going to keep that device for somewhere between 3-7 years.
Do those laptops not have on the order of ~64 GB/s bandwidth? Meanwhile your example of an RTX 4050 is a mobile SKU with 192 GB/s while the lowest entry level dGPU from that generation, the RTX 4060, boasts 272 GB/s. The RTX 4070 range ups that to 500 GB/s and the high end breaks 1 TB/s.
tl;dr iGPU vs dGPU memory bandwidth is a >10 year difference.
So now to double check my guestimate of 3 to 4 generations from earlier. Entry level RTX 30 448 GB/s in 2020, eventually downgraded to 168 GB/s in 2024. Entry level RTX 20 448 GB/s in 2018 eventually downgraded to 336 GB/s in 2019. You have to go all the way back to the GeForce 10 series to dip below 100 GB/s and even then that's due to some highly unusual configurations introduced many years after the initial launch. At launch in 2016 the lowest end GTX 1050 pulled 112 GB/s which is nearly 2x Panther Lake IIUC.
I wasn’t very specific at first but a lot of my purchase decisions are around “productivity laptop that can game on the side.”
I wouldn’t say gaming is constrained by GPU memory bandwidth or SSD performance. As long as you have an SSD of any kind, you’re generally fine. Only a few specialized titles like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart were specifically designed to show off the technical capabilities of fast SSD storage. Most everything else runs just fine without bleeding edge SSD performance, you’re even generally fine running off of a microSD card or SATA III SSD.
Gaming mostly wants to have sufficient GPU RAM capacity and overall 3D rendering performance (for a lack of a precise technical definition of what that means on my part).
Gaming doesn’t tend to move data in and out of VRAM at a particularly fast speed.
Gaming is also generally designed around being able to be released on the latest generation of home consoles, which is now essentially a 6 year old mid-range desktop GPU with 16GB of total system memory.
Gaming is highly constrained by memory bandwidth in the general case. It scales with things like resolution, framerate, and number of textures.
But of course in practice it depends on the details of what you're doing. This is why I acknowledged up front that it depends on what is meant by "really good". I think iGPUs are sufficient for a huge number of titles in the exact same way that an entry level dGPU from 2018 also is. But I don't think most people would consider that "really good" as you'll generally be stuck in the ballpark of 1080@60 and don't even think about photorealistic VR.
I think it's interesting to note that a while back GPU horsepower reached a point similar to that of CPU horsepower and system RAM capacity that's "good enough" for most common tasks. You don't need (and presumable never will) 32 cores or 64 GB of RAM to check your email or watch youtube. Similarly 1080@60 is sufficient to enjoy most game concepts.
Yeah I totally agree with what you’re saying. Basically, that “good enough”-ness for my use case does involve things like not playing photorealistic VR and very much accepting 1080p render resolutions or sometimes even lower (thanks, XeSS/FSR/DLSS!)
The main point with it is that it’s not a matter of “oh I can’t play the games I want to play reasonably” and that is very much not how integrated graphics used to be.
Ah, I understand where you’re coming from now. You’re really heavily focused on memory transfer speed. That’s really not the only measure of GPU performance and certainly not the one I’m interested in for my workloads. (I do not care for local LLM work for one thing)
For example, the ThinkPad X9 15p with Panther Lake integrated graphics will do 80FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 while the RTX5060 in a Legion 7a will do 109FPS on the same settings (1920x1200, quality up scaling, no frame gen).
So what that means is you can get a super quiet thin and light laptop that gets double digit hours of productivity battery life and has roughly the same tier of gaming experience as a thicker, heavier, power-hungry gaming PC that is pumping 115 watts into the GPU.
To answer your question, LPDDR5x should be more close to 100GB/s so I think you are underestimating the memory bandwidth of Panther Lake laptops.
We plan to support future versions of the Motorola Signature, Razr Fold and Razr Ultra. We'll have at least a non-folding Signature successor in 2027 but aren't yet sure if the folding devices will provide what we need.
We're confident it's going to be much better hardware than Pixels and that our users will be happy with it. Our initial goal was only providing competitive security with Pixels but it's now clear we can do better in most areas. Google will likely have a significantly better secure element for a while but that can change too.
What's the point of the Pixel 11 and later now that they aren't supported by AOSP and are no longer going to be best in class for security? The updates and security features are why GrapheneOS uses them. We have ~500k users on the Pixel 6 through Pixel 10a and many of those users had multiple previous Pixel and Nexus devices for GrapheneOS. Our userbase is rapidly growing at an increasing rate and was already significant for Pixels.
Does this mean we might finally get a phone with 3.5mm jack, microSD slot and GrapheneOS support? I believe I've been asking for that for 10 years now.
Historically Motorola is a solid product. The Nothing Phone 4 pro looks interesting. Is grapheme in an official relationship with above phone? You can ship them your phone and they set it up for you.
I worked with Moto on simple security improvements a few years ago and while they understood the competitive advantage they would get, being a now-small player - I also wasn't convinced that they were fully committed, their support apps and base image were still full of software i wouldn't recommend to say the least.
It was removed from the non-Fold devices in the US. They kept it for other countries due to only considering the US carriers to be ready for eSIM-only.
True, here in Europe they're definitely not. Especially on prepaid. I wouldn't buy a phone without dual physical sim. eSIM is nice for travelling but I want physical for my daily numbers. This way I can stick them in any phone I want and even in my 4G backup modem.
Concur. I purchased the 9 pro fold specifically for the mutli physical/ esim and profile features to compartmentalize tools. Solid construction and material. Runs a lil hot but I push it. Its also through Above phone so a few extra bells and whistles.
Because most of them don't really design their own phones, but instead sell what (mostly Chinese) ODMs give them with some small customizations.
I don't know about ShiftPhone, but e.g. Volla just sells rebranded Daria and Gigaset phones, typically marked up by a few hundred Euros to sell some EU-made/privacy/degoogling dream. In reality they are just cheap phones that the ODM does not really care about with Linux kernel and firmware trees that haven't seen any (security) updates in years.
T2Mobile is likely unable to meet our requirements. T2Mobile are not only designing the phone but even building/signing the firmware and device support code. Fairphone is putting together what they're given by Google (AOSP and GMS) and T2Mobile.
Fairphone gets to make high level decisions among the choices T2Mobile is willing to offer. For example, their move to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 coincided with the removal of the 3.5mm audio jack.
For consistency, given all the phones GrapheneOS refused to support for not meeting their requirements, the Pixel 11 should not be supported, to my eyes.
It does suck for those who already got one expecting GrapheneOS support
Pixel 11 does meet our past requirements and is more secure than the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 which are still supported. Other devices don't meet the past requirements.
We don't want to have an overall downgrade in security from the Pixel 8, Pixel 9 and Pixel 10. One approach would be using HWASan within the OS instead of MTE but the overhead is extreme and it only works for code instrumented with it.
When browsing through all the smartphone options, if you want something outside of Apple that gives you peace of mind, isn't bloated with strange apps, and takes security seriously, the Pixel is pretty much your only choice.
Personally, I’d suggest avoiding Chinese smartphones as much as possible. Setting aside the cybersecurity risks for a moment, just look at how they cheat and manipulate benchmark scores—they will do whatever it takes just to look good on paper.
Also, consider how phones in China can't use GMS (Google Mobile Services), so they build in countless "workaround" backdoors. Do you really think buying the global version makes it safe? As a software developer, let me tell you: we rarely maintain two completely different codebases for what is essentially the same OS. Those backdoors are still there—they're just disabled. That alone should set off alarm bells.
If anyone is interested in diving deeper into the software issues behind Chinese phones, I can talk about that next time.
Pixel’s raw performance is honestly terrible. But if you don't game, its day-to-day fluidity easily blows other brands—including Samsung—out of the water. It’s a phone you can actually use with peace of mind: practically no backdoors, near-stock Android, timely security updates, and an advanced OS. It really is the best option for daily use.
That said, Google, I’m begging you: can you please take your hardware seriously? The current performance and overall state of Pixel phones are just embarrassing.
Reasons I always bought pixels is because it's better to deal with one vendor bloat than two, the ease of installing OS-es like graphene (never had a bricked phone) and knowing that the hardware security is decent.
Glad the people behind graphene are creating this discourse I probably would have ordered a new pixel because I was used to the reasons I give above.
Disappointing news to say the least. this doesn't save that much space and power.
Pixel series aren't the fastest- they're far behind. They're also not the cheapest, they're amongst the most expensive.
The reason people still buy it is that they get a certain level of software quality and UX features, as well as security commitments that make Pixel and all of Android safer as it allows for fixing vulnerabilities quickly for everyone. MTE was one of these.
When Google stops doing this, what's the point of buying a Pixel? I'm also not confident that Motorola will pick up the slack in practice.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadI'm optimistic about the Motorola partnership and when my 9 Pro is EOL I'll definitely look at how that's played out.
It's a completely different story for GrapheneOS where it means losing one of the main kernel and userspace security protections. This is one of the only ways we can significantly harden the Linux kernel with existing security features. The Linux kernel has always been a huge security liability for Android and AI models are making that much more obvious to everyone.
Google will likely end up heavily using MTE in the future. Pixel 11 devices won't be able to benefit from it. They're at the start of 7 years of updates but they won't be getting the benefit of future updates enabling MTE. Pixel 8 and later will benefit from Google likely expanding use of MTE for AAPM and eventually beginning to use it by default. It's unlikely Google will stop working on expanding MTE due to the Pixel 11 hardware decision. Multiple other OEMs are interested in MTE for devices made for businesses and governments even if Google decided it wasn't worth the cost for Pixels.
- They claim Apple did a great job integrating MIE in iOS - iOS doesn't encourage to opt into MTE ... Apple's docs warn developers of performance and stability issues
So it seems like even for iOS, this special security feature is only available for Apple own iOS app (at most?).
Then also:
> Even Signal doesn't opt-in. Our approach enables forcing using MTE in the standard allocators regardless.
So does that mean that Signal and any other apps are enrolled in MTE on Graphene?
GrapheneOS uses MTE for the kernel and nearly every userspace process including all the base OS apps. We've had to fix many upstream Linux kernel and Pixel kernel driver bugs found by MTE. However, we aren't trying to fix the Pixel userspace drivers code ourselves so we have a few userspace processes excluded from MTE caused by userspace driver library/service bugs.
We recommend users enable our toggle for enabling MTE by default for every user installed app not explicitly marked as incompatible in our compatibility database. GrapheneOS has user-facing notifications for invalid memory accesses caught by MTE providing a traceback to share with the app developers. Users can use the per-app toggle to work around it if it makes an app unusable. We take the same approach for other aggressive exploit protections provided by GrapheneOS. Exploit protections with only rare compatibility issues are enabled by default for apps with a per-app toggle to opt-out and no toggle for the global default.
So basically they say don't buy it, wait for the Motorola phones.
You keep repeating this everywhere but this is just plainly wrong. They went from an old big.Little (with middle cores) arrangement that everyone abandoned for flagship chips generations ago, with core arches that were 2-3 generations behind competition, to a modern, up to date arrangement. There's literally nothing newer that they could've gotten from Arm, and other CPUs are releasing with C1 generation.
And I don't get your angle on the GPU. GOS is not gaming oriented, Pixels are not gaming oriented, and never were. They have a decent NPU to handle AI, a decent ISP to handle cameras, what more do you need the GPU for? Why would they put in a PC grade monster like Qualcomm?
Same for the modem, it's well known that Qualcomm are way ahead of the game, but they also charge like crazy for their SOCs and are a horrific partner to work with. They treat clients like shit, I get why Google ditched them when they were able to.
And you keep recommending P10 when it's genuinely a non improvement over P9, with worse battery life and running hotter, and the same modem. What the f is your angle? Is Micay back to GOS?
Lots of apps and websites only run smoothly on newer GPUs, too. You can play the “they’re dumb and I just won’t use them” game, but not everybody has your priorities, and it’s a relevant factor either way.
The modem comment, likewise, is simply correct, and evaluating performance is good even when shortcomings are understandable.
They supported Pixel 10 because they supported every new Pixel that wasn’t a security downgrade and shortly preceding a better alternative. The logic isn’t “performance bad therefore no upgrade”, it’s “no upgrade for a bunch of other reasons, and it’s not like we’re missing out on a 3x performance improvement”.
GPU is barely used in non-3D applications. My OP15 runs normal apps and websites just as well as my Pixel 10 Pro did. Speedometer 3.1 returns 10% higher scores in favour of the OP, even though it has the latest and greatest qcom chip.
UI experience is all about scheduler tuning, drawing pipeline optimizations and (to a much lesser degree) single core performance. Anything above Cortex X1 can have perfect 120 fps anywhere, without a major energy penalty, if the software is well optimized. I know because we did experiments like that when I was still doing custom Android kernels.
Not a single time did we need to do anything to the GPU, most of the time it's in 2D clocks and never wakes up.
> They supported Pixel 10 because they supported every new Pixel that wasn’t a security downgrade and shortly preceding a better alternative. The logic isn’t “performance bad therefore no upgrade”, it’s “no upgrade for a bunch of other reasons, and it’s not like we’re missing out on a 3x performance improvement”.
Not my question. I get why P10 was supported, I don't get why it's recommended by the person running the account, when it's objectively just a more expensive P9 with worse battery life and running warmer.
Pixel 9 to Pixel 10 had a bigger incremental CPU upgrade than the Pixel 10 to Pixel 11. GPU was initially a downgrade due to poor drivers but that was resolved already.
Pixel 10 has various small but significant security advantages over the Pixel 9. Pixel 11 would similarly have small security advantages if they hadn't ruined the overall security by removing MTE.
We definitely do want better CPU, GPU and radio performance for flagship devices and haven't been happy with those on Pixels. It doesn't outweigh security updates and security features but it matters to us. We're going to be a lot happier with a next gen flagship Snapdragon SoC for many reasons.
GrapheneOS works well for running games and people can toggle off hardened_malloc and MTE for a game to eliminate nearly all of the performance difference. It doesn't usually make any noticeable difference. GrapheneOS is intended to be fully usable by everyone including people who care about GPU performance whether it's for games or other apps. Claiming GrapheneOS isn't gaming focused is your opinion. We care a lot about compatibility with games and have put effort into it. Pixels using a GPU with poor gaming compatibility and performance wasn't our choice and doesn't mean we don't care about it.
> and the same modem
Pixel 10a has a drastically better cellular radio than the Pixel 9a. The 'a' series Pixels are consistently the most popular devices supported by GrapheneOS. Pixel 10a is still the latest one so there isn't going to be any gap in people being able to buy a new device for GrapheneOS if we don't add the Pixel 11 and instead skip right to Motorola flagships and then more Motorola devices. We hope the Pixel 12 adds back MTE support but aren't optimistic.
> back to GOS?
You're directing abusive comments towards our team based on highly inaccurate harassment content.
They bought the best phone hardware and software companies (Motorola and Android) and gutted them both.
By Apple, you mean Microsoft.
The early Android device makers had to pay patent licensing fees to Microsoft.
Google sued Microsoft using video standards essential patents they purchased from Motorola, but it didn't work out well for them in court.
Google sought to ban the sale of Microsoft products that used the H.264 video standard on a global basis if Microsoft didn't hand over a literal fortune.
> Microsoft and Motorola are embroiled in a legal spat around the world over the software giant’s alleged use of Motorola industry-standard H.264 patents in its many products. Motorola has argued that Microsoft has used the technology illegally and should have its products banned until it licenses them.
Motorola says that Microsoft should pay $4 billion for the use of its technology, applying a 2.25 percent royalty based on product price.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/microsoft-wins-big-o...
The nexus 5 also by LG was bulls eye though. Except for the ceramic letters constantly falling off.
Nexus 4-6 were manufactured by LG IIRC.
I guess that's a thumbs down then?
Google just can't help being a fucking disappointment at every single opportunity!
The upcoming Motorola flagship will have a dramatically better CPU and GPU than the Pixel 11 and competitive cameras. It will still have 7 years of updates, MTE and a secure element with the features used by GrapheneOS. Motorola Signature (2026) is the predecessor not quite meeting our requirements mainly due to lack of MTE but also lack of other features which had to be developed.
I applaud you guys aiming high but it is high IMO.
Pixel 8 through Pixel 10a have MTE and so does the iPhone 17. iPhones have above 50% usage share in the US and various other countries along with at least around 30% in most of Europe.
Ps again not trying to make an argument, I'm just interested. Though I do hope for more budget options even if it has to be a lower grade under a different branding. But having the full GOS on an affordable device would be even better.
Apple for me isn't an option due to price and limited access to the system either by the way (like being limited to the app store)
GrapheneOS supports 'a' series Pixels and those provide the same security and updates as the higher end devices. A used Pixel 8a is a very affordable device with great overall security nearly as good as a Pixel 10 and plenty of update support remaining. Pixels are not available in enough countries but the 'a' series devices combined with the long support they receive already provides very affordable devices in countries where they've been available for years.
Qualcomm was quite late to providing MTE due to their custom cores. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 does provide MTE, as will the next generation SoC used on the initial Motorola phone with GrapheneOS support.
My concern is that Motorola is a Chinese company. Sure, Pixel and Apple phones are made in China too, but they're overseen by American companies. How can we know these Motorola phones will not one day be placed on the "do not trust" list like e.g. Huawei phones?
Anyone who values Graphene's work will purchase one of their motorola devices, whatever the cost, otherwise it seems your choices are going to be giving up more data and control to Google.
[1]: https://blog.google/security/new-android-network-security-pr...
Well the current Motorola Signature (2026) is 3 times the price of a Pixel. Not everyone can afford "whatever the cost".
I hope Motorola will just get more and more phones to support GrapheneOS.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Google-Pixel-11-Unlocked-Smartphone...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Signature-XT2603-2-SIM-Fre...
That's the 16GB variant of the Signature. There's also a cheaper 12GB variant. Here's an example:
https://www.motorola.in/smartphones-motorola-signature/p?sku...
And this distinction matters. You are able to hold Amazon to account for when/if things go wrong (CRA2015,S75,courts,etc). With the Signature, it's an import, consumers have vastly fewer rights, and there are no reviews of the product either (can you guess why?)
As Amazon is not directly selling the product (Amazon only facilitates the transaction but isn't the actual buyer or seller), enforcing any rights is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It's sad to see that point not acknowledged as it makes the Pixel vastly more attractive. Morotola will absolutely need to ensure they are able to access the EU market without imports, otherwise I'm afraid the partnership is as good as dead.
My hope is that Motorola will have cheaper phones that work with GrapheneOS.
Those are still going to be supported. In some countries such as Brazil, those are more expensive than a Signature due to not being officially sold there and high import taxes.
I understand the sentiment, certainly, but the price difference depends a lot on which model we're comparing to. The Signature will be the flagship from Motorola, and I'll be very, very surprised if it's 3x the price of the Pixel flagship.
Presumably someone who was planning to buy something like the Pixel 10a would be more interested in the non-flagship Motorola devices with GOS support, which are expected to launch later.
They've indicated that support will eventually be added for midrange Motorola devices, which I believe are historically price-competitive with the a-series Pixels.
They are quite a bit more expensive than the a-series, but I'm sure that the a series will hold up for a few more years, until GrapheneOS support percolates to mid-range Motorola phones. It's even possible, given that Pixel 10a uses the Pixel 9 CPU, that Pixel 11a will use the Pixel 10 CPU, so there might even be a new budget model next year with MTE support.
But it's easy to say 'whatever the cost' if you're wealthy :) For many people especially outside the US it's not that simple.
The 10 dropped the physical SIM slot and Google started with their device tree shenanigans that year, with little to no improvements in exchange.
I've got 16GB of RAM and 512GB in an ecosystem that shows every sign of regressing in capacities due to component price inflation.
Very interested to see what Motorola does next year, however.
Sticking with a 9 Pro or 10 Pro is the smart move right now. I’m actually considering spending $400 to get a broken 9 Pro XL fixed…
Not sure about the 10, but at least the 10 Pro still has one.
There's still dual SIM support either way and you can store dozens of inactive eSIMs. The main downside of eSIMs is widespread lack of transfer support by carriers.
They’re going to go away worldwide eventually, they’re just more easily removed in the US where the carriers are more bleeding edge on features and there are only 3 providers to think about in a very large homogenous market.
The difference between waiting for a SIM card to arrive in the mail, fiddling with a paperclip, tray, and impossibly tiny nano-SIM versus switching providers in 10 minutes via an app is night and day.
Most SIM/dual SIM solutions also involve removing both SIM cards at once even to swap out one of two, and they tend to require device restarts.
In the past I’ve also had network problems before as a result of bad/damaged SIM cards. There was one time where a bad SIM caused intermittent text messaging failures that were only resolved with a new SIM. Good riddance to that tech.
I had a testing phone and my regular phone, I kept swapping the same Verizon SIM between them. It worked for maybe 3 swaps, then Verizon blocked my account and sent me an email: suspicious activity detected, the SIM is blocked and cannot be restored, the contract has been terminated, you will receive the refund in mail.
Good riddance, US Mobile is so much cheaper and pleasant to use. I am scared to swap SIMs with them now though.
The most common versions (in the "west) are AFIK:
- US version vs. international version
(just the most common divide of Phones you will see "in the west", e.g. if a brand sell to China, that also is normally it's own sub-versions.)
the most common differences include:
- different modems
- US phones being carrier locked (which is not normal outside of the US and a few other countries)
- US phones not having sim card slots, the international version of the same (Android) Phones, often still has a physical sim card slot
The replacement I got is a Motorola razr ultra folding phone.. similar perf point with 16G RAM and 512G storage. This phone is legit.
The 24GB MacBook Air is the sweet spot of that model lineup in my opinion. Even if you’re a true “web browsing only” user, you can definitely find a sale or refurbished model with 24GB and that’s a much more wise purchase for long term ownership than being stuck with 16GB.
Especially considering most laptops have soldered memory, I’d have a hard time recommending a new laptop purchase with 16GB if your intention is to keep it many years.
Even though RAM is expensive, there are deals and sales out there.
Sort of but not really? Without the wider bus (and various drawbacks) of GDDR any iGPU is very severely memory bandwidth constrained compared to a dGPU from an equivalently recent generation. It's just that a 3 or 4 generation old dGPU is sufficient for an ever increasing number of titles.
TBF it entirely depends on what is meant by "really good".
> I’d have a hard time recommending a new laptop purchase with 16GB if your intention is to keep it many years.
One of my devices still has only 8GB and I use it daily. It's really not an issue for most things.
Integrated graphics are constrained but often sufficient to play AAA games.
Panther Lake laptops are roughly equivalent to an RTX 4050, which is only a single generation old. Obviously not the strongest GPU to compare against but you’re also pulling a lot less wattage doing it.
I’m sure your 8GB device is working great, but someone buying a brand new device really should avoid that since the implication is that they’re going to keep that device for somewhere between 3-7 years.
tl;dr iGPU vs dGPU memory bandwidth is a >10 year difference.
So now to double check my guestimate of 3 to 4 generations from earlier. Entry level RTX 30 448 GB/s in 2020, eventually downgraded to 168 GB/s in 2024. Entry level RTX 20 448 GB/s in 2018 eventually downgraded to 336 GB/s in 2019. You have to go all the way back to the GeForce 10 series to dip below 100 GB/s and even then that's due to some highly unusual configurations introduced many years after the initial launch. At launch in 2016 the lowest end GTX 1050 pulled 112 GB/s which is nearly 2x Panther Lake IIUC.
The Macs? No, they go up to 614 GB/s, nearly an order of magnitude more.
I wouldn’t say gaming is constrained by GPU memory bandwidth or SSD performance. As long as you have an SSD of any kind, you’re generally fine. Only a few specialized titles like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart were specifically designed to show off the technical capabilities of fast SSD storage. Most everything else runs just fine without bleeding edge SSD performance, you’re even generally fine running off of a microSD card or SATA III SSD.
Gaming mostly wants to have sufficient GPU RAM capacity and overall 3D rendering performance (for a lack of a precise technical definition of what that means on my part).
Gaming doesn’t tend to move data in and out of VRAM at a particularly fast speed.
Gaming is also generally designed around being able to be released on the latest generation of home consoles, which is now essentially a 6 year old mid-range desktop GPU with 16GB of total system memory.
But of course in practice it depends on the details of what you're doing. This is why I acknowledged up front that it depends on what is meant by "really good". I think iGPUs are sufficient for a huge number of titles in the exact same way that an entry level dGPU from 2018 also is. But I don't think most people would consider that "really good" as you'll generally be stuck in the ballpark of 1080@60 and don't even think about photorealistic VR.
I think it's interesting to note that a while back GPU horsepower reached a point similar to that of CPU horsepower and system RAM capacity that's "good enough" for most common tasks. You don't need (and presumable never will) 32 cores or 64 GB of RAM to check your email or watch youtube. Similarly 1080@60 is sufficient to enjoy most game concepts.
The main point with it is that it’s not a matter of “oh I can’t play the games I want to play reasonably” and that is very much not how integrated graphics used to be.
For example, the ThinkPad X9 15p with Panther Lake integrated graphics will do 80FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 while the RTX5060 in a Legion 7a will do 109FPS on the same settings (1920x1200, quality up scaling, no frame gen).
So what that means is you can get a super quiet thin and light laptop that gets double digit hours of productivity battery life and has roughly the same tier of gaming experience as a thicker, heavier, power-hungry gaming PC that is pumping 115 watts into the GPU.
To answer your question, LPDDR5x should be more close to 100GB/s so I think you are underestimating the memory bandwidth of Panther Lake laptops.
We're confident it's going to be much better hardware than Pixels and that our users will be happy with it. Our initial goal was only providing competitive security with Pixels but it's now clear we can do better in most areas. Google will likely have a significantly better secure element for a while but that can change too.
What's the point of the Pixel 11 and later now that they aren't supported by AOSP and are no longer going to be best in class for security? The updates and security features are why GrapheneOS uses them. We have ~500k users on the Pixel 6 through Pixel 10a and many of those users had multiple previous Pixel and Nexus devices for GrapheneOS. Our userbase is rapidly growing at an increasing rate and was already significant for Pixels.
I hope they are now. There is a void to fill.
I'm assuming that's a country specific/dependent thing?
(My pixel 10 does have a physical sim slot).
GrapheneOS has 500k users and growing, and most GrapheneOS users would be more than happy to leave the Pixels because of Google's bullshit.
I don't know about ShiftPhone, but e.g. Volla just sells rebranded Daria and Gigaset phones, typically marked up by a few hundred Euros to sell some EU-made/privacy/degoogling dream. In reality they are just cheap phones that the ODM does not really care about with Linux kernel and firmware trees that haven't seen any (security) updates in years.
I think they probably have the sales volume where they could negotiate a compatible device with their ODM, but their priorities clearly lie elsewhere.
Fairphone gets to make high level decisions among the choices T2Mobile is willing to offer. For example, their move to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 coincided with the removal of the 3.5mm audio jack.
It does suck for those who already got one expecting GrapheneOS support
We don't want to have an overall downgrade in security from the Pixel 8, Pixel 9 and Pixel 10. One approach would be using HWASan within the OS instead of MTE but the overhead is extreme and it only works for code instrumented with it.
Personally, I’d suggest avoiding Chinese smartphones as much as possible. Setting aside the cybersecurity risks for a moment, just look at how they cheat and manipulate benchmark scores—they will do whatever it takes just to look good on paper.
Also, consider how phones in China can't use GMS (Google Mobile Services), so they build in countless "workaround" backdoors. Do you really think buying the global version makes it safe? As a software developer, let me tell you: we rarely maintain two completely different codebases for what is essentially the same OS. Those backdoors are still there—they're just disabled. That alone should set off alarm bells.
If anyone is interested in diving deeper into the software issues behind Chinese phones, I can talk about that next time.
Pixel’s raw performance is honestly terrible. But if you don't game, its day-to-day fluidity easily blows other brands—including Samsung—out of the water. It’s a phone you can actually use with peace of mind: practically no backdoors, near-stock Android, timely security updates, and an advanced OS. It really is the best option for daily use.
That said, Google, I’m begging you: can you please take your hardware seriously? The current performance and overall state of Pixel phones are just embarrassing.
Glad the people behind graphene are creating this discourse I probably would have ordered a new pixel because I was used to the reasons I give above.
The moterola alternatives are noted thanks guys
Pixel series aren't the fastest- they're far behind. They're also not the cheapest, they're amongst the most expensive.
The reason people still buy it is that they get a certain level of software quality and UX features, as well as security commitments that make Pixel and all of Android safer as it allows for fixing vulnerabilities quickly for everyone. MTE was one of these.
When Google stops doing this, what's the point of buying a Pixel? I'm also not confident that Motorola will pick up the slack in practice.