> GrapheneOS has officially confirmed a major new hardware partnership—one that marks the end of its long-standing Pixel exclusivity. According to the team, work with a major Android OEM began in June and is now moving toward the development of a next-generation smartphone built to meet GrapheneOS’ strict privacy and security standards.

axelthegerman 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh that's one of the best news in the smartphone world in a long time.

It's impossible to escape the Apple/Google duopoly but at least GrapheneOS makes the most out of Android regarding privacy.

I still wish we could get some kind of low resource, stable and mature Android clone instead of Google needlessly increasing complexity but this will over time break app compatibility (Google will make sure of it)

Edit: I do think Pixel devices used to be one of the best but still I'd like to choose my hardware and software separately interoperating via standards

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tenthirtyam 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

I'm imagining a future where you buy a smartphone and when you do the first configuration, it asks you which services provider you want to use. Google and Apple are probably at the top of the list, but at the bottom there is "custom..." where you can specify the IP or host.domain of your own self-hosted setup.

Then, when you download an app, the app informs the app provider of this configuration and so your notifications (messenger, social media, games, banking, whatever) get delivered to that services provider and your phone gets them from there accordingly.

Is there anything like that in the world today?

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JoshTriplett 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

At this point? Reliable emulation that can run 99% of Android apps, to provide a bridge until the platform is interesting enough for people to develop for it "natively".

I think the easiest way to do that would be to run Android in a VM.

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charcircuit 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Why not run Android directly, such as using Graphene OS. It's decades ahead in both OS architecture, developer tools, and developers compared to non Android based Linux operating systems.

	▲	fsflover a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		Graphene uses the Google codebase, so Google is choosing its long-term development strategy and standards it will support. It's like choosing Chromium to escape Chrome.

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gunalx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can go the waydroid style with namespacing, or native containers if using the linux kernel. No need to do a full vm

	▲	JoshTriplett an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You could, but using containers requires that your kernel directly provide and secure Android-compatible functionality, such as binder. A VM gives you more options for abstracting that functionality. If you expect to be "essentially android, but a little different", containers make sense. If you want to build an entirely different mobile OS, but provide Android compatibility, I think a VM is much more likely to give you the flexibility to not defer to Android design decisions.
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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lawn an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Similar to how Valve is managing the transition from Windows to Linux.

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immibis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Any one of us here could learn the skills to design a smartphone. It won't necessarily be good, but I remember that years ago, someone made one with a touchscreen hat and GSM hat atop a Raspberry Pi, rubber-banded to a power bank. I'm sure any one of us HN users could do this. And it worked. Quality only goes up from there.

The problem is it won't run any apps, so you'll need to carry this open-source secure phone in addition to your normal phone.

	▲	zdc1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Or use everything via the web browser; but yes, I think apps are the main reason we can't just have a generic Linux phone OS on an open hardware platform

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Kuraj 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You might also be interested in Jolla Phone https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162368

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Klonoar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you're stateside and want a shipping Linux phone today, [FuriLabs](http://furilabs.com) is another option.

Graphene is in a class of its own compared to both of these though and there's frankly no reason to bother unless you're trying to improve those ecosystems.

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embedding-shape an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Stateside - being in, going to, coming from, or characteristic of the 48 conterminous states of the U.S.

In case others, like me, weren't aware.

	▲	Klonoar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I admit to being shocked that such a common phrase isn’t widely understood, but this site has plenty of international traffic so I can only say thanks for the context comment. :)

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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matheusmoreira an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is excellent news. Google doesn't sell Pixels in my country for some reason. Hopefully the new phones will be easier to obtain.

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getpokedagain an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess my 8a is gonna have to do for a bit longer. This one is very exciting.

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YY876438726 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has the OEM in question been revealed yet? Likely not one of the major OEMs because they all lock their bootloaders. I'm crossing my fingers it's Fairphone but that's because I love my FP5. The GrapheneOS devs have been pretty harsh towards Fairphone because of their slow updates.

	▲	moooo99 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They seem to refuse that they're working with fairphone, so it seems unlikely. https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1o3vmn5/comment... My guess is that its either HMD or Nothing. Will probably still take a while until we learn about this

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bloqs an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I literally just bought a pixel this week. Just my luck.

	▲	muyuu an hour ago \| parent [-]
		probably good timing this will take a while and RAM prices will be out of control for a while as well