Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority
The news that GrapheneOS — the private mobile OS based on AOSP — is partnering with an as-yet-unnamed smartphone maker to officially support a Snapdragon-powered smartphone has the community pondering who the partner will be: Nothing, OnePlus, Xiaomi, or perhaps someone else. In any case, a greater choice in officially supported hardware will be a great thing when it comes to using a privacy-focused OS.
The bad news for Pixel-privacy fans is that after the Pixel 10, there’s no guarantee that GrapheneOS will add support for any of its successors. GrapheneOS has supported every Pixel model so far, following through on promises to support several devices through until end-of-life.
The fate of future Pixels is uncertain, meaning the next officially supported GrapheneOS device could look entirely different. It’s not that the Pixel series is suddenly flawed, but ongoing changes in Google’s approach to security, source availability, and device development could make future Pixels less suitable for privacy-conscious developers and, therefore, users. This could be the last Google phone with the option for GrapheneOS-tier privacy.
More headaches for developers
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Google hasn’t done itself any favors in the past few months to curry the favor of important projects like GrapheneOS. Google has transitioned Android OS development to a fully private internal branch, moving away from public development of AOSP. This change aims to streamline development but has raised concerns about the accessibility of source code for developers. As a result, summer security updates and Android 16 beta source code took far longer to arrive than usual, delaying work on bringing the latest updates to custom ROMs.
In addition, Google used to make it relatively simple for developers to build AOSP for Pixels, handling the painstaking process of various hardware configuration files. However, Google has stopped releasing complete and timely device trees, driver binaries, and kernel sources for Pixels, instead steering developers toward the virtual ‘Cuttlefish’ reference device.
Without developer files and source code, Pixels are less ideal for custom ROMs.
This has turned out to be a big deal. Without easy developer access to source code, Pixels have become a less practical base for custom ROMs — eroding one of the series’ few advantages over other Android devices. With fewer reasons to stick around, projects like GrapheneOS have an excuse to look beyond the limitations of Google’s Tensor project and embrace slightly more cutting-edge hardware.
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