Comment by edent

Comment by edent 2 days ago

11 replies

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BQ tried that with Cyanogen (the precursor to Lineage) https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/bq-aquaris-x5

As did WileyFox - https://www.xda-developers.com/wileyfox-to-issue-update-to-m...

They were both budget brands with niche offerings. For most people, the source of the OS is immaterial. There's very little competitive advantage to selling a forked OS, and a rather large downside in terms of support costs.

I'm mostly happy with my GrapheneOS device - but it is absolutely not suitable for mass market.

drnick1 2 days ago

> I'm mostly happy with my GrapheneOS device - but it is absolutely not suitable for mass market.

What makes you say that? I run GrapheneOS on a Pixel and had to go through the relative simple flashing process, but if GOS came preinstalled on a device anybody familiar with Android (or even iOS) would be able to use it. Compatibility with Android apps is great too.

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  • edent 2 days ago

    Off the top of my head:

    Lots of banking apps don't work.

    RCS has only just started working.

    No "Find My Device" support.

    Permissions model is difficult to understand - even I struggle with it.

    Standard launcher has tiny icons which can't be adjusted.

    Pop on to https://discuss.grapheneos.org/ and see the struggles which users have.

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    • drnick1 2 days ago

      > No "Find My Device" support.

      "Find My Device" means the location of your device is constantly sent to and stored on someone else's computer (the "cloud"), and it is something that shouldn't exist unless that someone else's computer happens to be yours.

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      • izacus 2 days ago

        You ordering the rest of the world which features should exist isn't how anything works.

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        • drnick1 a day ago

          I am not ordering anything. I was merely explaining that "Find My Phone" is not a feature -- it is an anti-feature that enables surveillance by a third party. The lack of such an anti-feature should be viewed as an advantage of Graphene, rather than a disadvantage.

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    • strcat a day ago

      Most banking apps work on GrapheneOS. Around 10% ban using any alternate OS, but a small subset of those specifically permit GrapheneOS now in addition to Google certified devices with the stock OS.

      It's nearly the same permission model as Android 16 beyond having Storage Scopes and Contact Scopes as easy to use alternatives with fine-grained control along with Sensors and Network toggles. It's otherwise the same.

      If you're talking about the exploit protection features with toggles, that's not part of the permission model and the defaults don't break any apps without serious bugs. Apps with memory corruption bugs can be broken by the defaults, which only requires turning on the compatibility toggle for the app. People don't need to understand the finer grained settings.

      The default 4x5 icon grid has the same icon sizes as the stock Pixel OS, which can't be adjusted there either.

      The vast majority of issues people have with GrapheneOS are issues with Android and Android apps which are not specific to GrapheneOS.

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    • mbananasynergy 2 days ago

      What is the issue with the permission model. It's basically the AOSP permission model. The changes made by GrapheneOS is the user-facing toggle for the INTERNET permission, and the sensors permission.

      If people do not want to interface with those features, they can simply skip them, and the permission model will be the exact same as it is on Android.

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    • shim__ 2 days ago

      > No "Find My Device" support.

      I don't have any issues with it

      Reply View 0 replies
jsheard 2 days ago

OnePlus also shipped Cyanogen in their early days. They're still around, but they've long since pivoted to their own proprietary Android distro.

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  • thaumasiotes 2 days ago

    Given that Cyanogenmod was discontinued shortly after the OnePlus One released, it's hard to blame them.

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