by tripdout on 6/12/25, 4:53 PM with 141 comments
by coffeeenjoyer on 6/12/25, 6:36 PM
And yes, they're not obligated to provide those binary blobs, but since they've been doing it for such a long while, not announcing it well in advance, like they do with the so many services they choose to discontinue, just adds to that list of things I dislike about them.
Yeah, yeah, it's a bit more work to publish those binaries and make sure they work. But they still kind of have to do that, for themselves. So I think it's fair to assume why they did it. Because they made a choice to take a small loss on the devices they would sell for the few GrapheneOS users, and cash in on the walled garden, data mining, ads serving, yada yada, whatever brings the extra money after the initial phone sale.
by tripdout on 6/12/25, 6:18 PM
Cuttlefish, while it may be a more effective reference device, just doesn't accomplish the same thing because Pixels were used for more than just as a reference target (e.g. GrapheneOS).
Plus, there's just something cooler about running your own build of Android on real hardware v.s. a VM.
by bitpush on 6/12/25, 5:15 PM
What is going on is frustration. GrapheneOS has been relying on Google's good faith effort on providing binary blobs to Pixel in addition to AOSP to make their OS. Google was under no obligation to give that, and they stopped doing it for whatever reason.
To make things worse, GrapheneOS mentions legal/anti-trust blah blah blah, which means no engineer will touch / comment / help in the matter, and it gets routed to legal blackhole.
by yellow_lead on 6/12/25, 5:06 PM
This concerns me as a GrapeneOS user.
by captainmisery on 6/12/25, 7:25 PM
by privacyking on 6/12/25, 10:19 PM
by xg15 on 6/12/25, 10:23 PM
> For years, developers have been building Cuttlefish (available on GitHub as the reference device for AOSP) and GSI targets from source. We continue to make those available for testing and development purposes.
I'm a complete noob regarding AOSP, but if someone with more knowledge of the ecosystem reads this: Are those alternative reference targets actually useful for custom ROMs and would allow updating roms for Android 16 on Pixels as well, or is this a smokescreen?
by freedomben on 6/12/25, 5:23 PM
Watching Google's actions on Android over the past many years, they are clearly inching in one strategic direction, and that is toward being more iPhone like (i.e. locked down, user hostile, user distrusting, etc). There might be a few "two steps forward, one step back" points like the new Android terminal, but it feels like clear directional momentum away from user capabilities. It's an absolute shame too, because Google products could be hacker's delights (I mean owner-hackers, not grey/black hat).
In their defense they are far from alone. Since Apple proved that a closed and locked down model wouldn't affect sales (in fact you can use marketing spin to actually convince some people who are plenty tech savvy that they are better off having their own access to their device removed, a feat of mental gymnastics I still can't understand), the whole industry has moved heavily that direction.
The net result has been that I've become almost entirely disinterested in mobile phones and all the IoT things, which is a huge personal loss. It's not just disinterest, but is turning in to active hostility. I've started to hate my phone because of many of the things it can't do now (that it used to), though thanks to the proliferation and expectation of "always connected" I can't get away from it without suffering professional or social consequences that aren't worth it. It's become a required piece of equipment to function in everyday life, because of other parties. If I could go back to the days of a single landline phone in the house with maybe an emergency cell phone in the car, I truly think I would.
It didn't (and doesn't!) have to be this way Google. You have the market power to change this, and you wouldn't even have to do all that much. I get that big money interests (like DRM) are constantly pressuring you to remove user control and give it to them, but if you just said "no, our users are more important" they would just have to take it because they can't turn away 45 or 50% or whatever of the US market and 80+% of the global market.
I just hope that the rising generation of hackers will hear our stories from the glory days when compute was empowering to the owner of it, not restricting.
by neon_me on 6/12/25, 7:13 PM
by npteljes on 6/13/25, 7:28 AM
by shrx on 6/12/25, 5:34 PM
edit: missed a word
by 2chiefk on 6/18/25, 10:35 PM
by honeybadger1 on 6/12/25, 6:57 PM
Too head strong, why is it these product managers build to break, just to build again.
by nixass on 6/12/25, 5:30 PM
by nrclark on 6/12/25, 5:26 PM
by 2chiefk on 6/18/25, 10:36 PM
by 2chiefk on 6/18/25, 10:36 PM
by t1234s on 6/12/25, 6:12 PM
by wmf on 6/12/25, 6:43 PM
by ahtaarra on 6/13/25, 2:44 PM
by skybrian on 6/12/25, 5:48 PM
by zamalek on 6/12/25, 5:14 PM
by ChrisArchitect on 6/12/25, 5:33 PM
AOSP project is coming to an end
by Zigurd on 6/12/25, 8:54 PM
Seang Chau on Wednesday evening posted that broadly “AOSP is NOT going away.” More directly to developers, Google has said it will remain “committed to AOSP updates.”
...are not precisely responsive to questions about build targets. Something like "There's an emulator you can build for," or "You can build for a Raspberry Pi" would be useful or informative, or tell developers why Pixel is no longer a reference device and why there is no apperent replacement.
by nabogh on 6/12/25, 11:01 PM
by andrewmcwatters on 6/12/25, 5:43 PM
by PaulHoule on 6/12/25, 4:55 PM