I’ve been of a similar opinion for some time now such that I’ve been experimenting with Droidian on an xperia 5 that is now usable as a daily driver but (big BUT here), that is mainly because I’m already ungoogled in terms of my IT activities. Whether we like it or not the Android ecosystem is owned by google despite the claims to AOSP still being an open source project. The other big tech players such as Meta are always going to be on the screwgle side of the fence when it comes to the adoption of protocols, but who in their right mind without a spoofing phone signs up for a wotsapp account anyway?
For me ‘unandroiding’ has to be the next step and it’s not that difficult a step to take when you have already disposed of all the crap.
after reading this entire thread, I really hope it’s Motorola.
most here maybe don’t know but, here in South America (at least where I live) if you’re not getting an iPhone (which is WAY too expensive) the only phone options available you can buy and get official support are: Samsung, Motorola and Xiaomi (I wanna say LG too but I feel they’ve shrink a lot recently) and honestly, this how it is in a lot of the world it seems.
While I’ve imported a Pixel 7a to run Graphene on, it wasn’t cheap (was still cheaper than flagship) and I only did this cause I’m serious about online privacy, but, if even people here (which I will assume all come from first world countries) complain about the pricing of Pixel devices, imagine here down in South America where people are severely underpaid. (and, I really wanna say it seems a lot of people outside Europe/North America/developed world are often forgotten on privacy talks ngl)
Regardless, I will only move after the support for 7a dies but, this is great news and let’s wait for more info in the coming future
It will likely be in 2027. The latest Snapdragon SoC that’s being used doesn’t quite meet our security requirements. It has been addressed but not in time to be in 2026 devices.
We’re working with a major Android OEM on their devices meeting our requirements and official GrapheneOS support for those devices. It’s going well but it very likely won’t be available in 2026 despite being very close to meeting the requirements already. It wasn’t enough time.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports MTE/EMTE, but it seems to me that for one reason or another[1] the OEM is using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 (non-elite for their 2026 devices, which lacks security features and support timeframe of the Elite SOC). That would mean the GrapheneOS device will probably use the 8 Elite Gen 6, which should be released in Q3 of 2026, in time for a device in 2027.
which could be anything from the Elite Gen 5 not meeting GrapheneOS’s security requirements to something else entirely ↩︎
I missed that memory tagging support was confirmed for the Elite Gen 5, although I have always been under the impression this was implemented across a generation of processor cores (like how the M5 Macbook is also EMTE enabled) so Gen 5 using the same cores probably implies memory tagging support also.
I also didn’t realise it didn’t have the same eight-year support promise as the Elite. The fixation on the Elite SoC makes a bit more sense if that’s the case.