Everytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).
Everytime I see Fairphone mentioned whenever there's news about GrapheneOS I'm confused as to why people keep on conflating both when they obviously have very different goals.
It's because Fairphone doesn't fulfil GOS's hardware requirements. If Fairphone addresses that, there's no reason for GOS to not support a Fairphone device.
> Fairphone has said they don't plan to add a secure element. It can be seen from their current devices that they don't fully keep up with privacy/security backports and lag a year behind on shipping yearly OS releases. They skip over the monthly and quarterly releases entirely. They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS option in partnership with Murena. They clearly demonstrate that security and even privacy are not the priorities.
They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS
it sounds like they are saying that /e/OS is less secure than fairphone's own OS. with all criticism against /e/OS taken into account, i highly doubt that fairphone would have been able to make their own version of android more secure than /e/OS when they are not even interested in working on that.
I wish they prioritised the call app. It is beyond appalling. You can't even determine when a call happened, beyond the generic low fidelity "[time] ago". It also almost feels like tapping anything makes me accidentally call people. Abhorrent UI/UX to be completely honest.
This is completely false. Tap the call, tap "call details" and its there. Took be 2 second to disprove. This is lazy to the point of being seemingly malicious commentary.
I'm using LineageOS so I have the AOSP Phone app. If Graphene uses the same, then you can actually determine the exact time of call, but you need to jump through a couple of hoops: Go to "Call History" from the three dots then click on the call of interest. You'll see a button called "Call Details". Then you can see the exact time.
I constantly see those projects that would benefit from a screenshot in a readme, but for some reason the thought about adding one doesn't even come to the authors' mind, even though it's pretty obvious. I'd really like to know what's going on.
I think the reason is that you can get quite much of a tunnel vision while developing. Everyone involved already knows what they're building and how it looks, so it's very easy to overlook it.
Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.
That's true as well, especially if you're still developing and changing things - because you tend to realise problems only after you've pushed the new screenshot :P
> I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics.
In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else.
With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
Yeah but see, we're talking about a functionality that is inherently visual. Ergonomics has nothing to do with esthetics, and it's such a dumb excuse to hand wave aside interface issues as of they are just about "making things look pretty"
I'm really hoping they're doing this to pave the way for an RCS implementation. If it can be done, GOS is in the best position to make it happen, and without RCS, chatting with normies is both extremely inconvenient (large group chats straight up do not work) and categorically insecure. If I could convince all my friends and family to use Signal I would, but they just think I'm on about some weird Edward Snowden shit, and they just write me off as crazy. "Why would I checks notes download software to solve a problem when I could use the one that came with my phone?"
particularly if you want to support all of the message-body features, of which there are MANY. it's very business-comms oriented.
I broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?
If you look at the history they have been working on this for a few months. The announcement probably was tied to this public release being cut for testing.
With a seemingly insurmountable workload - maintain an actually secure OS fork - for a small team, I wonder how GrapheneOS prioritizes things like messaging apps? I'm not saying it's wrong at all; I am just interested in the thinking inside a project like that.
I can imagine many reasons to devote resources to it:
* A platform is only as good as its apps. If they want to grow GOS in the general public, it requires a good SMS/MMS messaging app.
* LLM tools greatly reduce development costs, especially for well-known functions like text messaging.
* Without secure messaging (as far as SMS/MMS can be secure), the platform security is greatly reduced.
* GOS got a big donation, or has a volunteer that wants to do messaging ...
But idk what I'm talking about. What is their approach?
Well they're going to be shipping GOS on Motorola and I think some other devices, so basic things like the messaging app need to actually have some polish to them. I really like GrapheneOS overall as-is, but the messaging app felt like baby's first texting app. Not necessarily their fault since it's pretty much straight out of AOSP if I understand correctly. But any time I've installed GrapheneOS, the messaging app is one of two things I must replace every time (the other being the downright bad AOSP keyboard).
If they fix(ed) their messaging app and their keyboard, then they've really eliminated a lot of potential complaints if a less tech-savvy crowd ends up buying future Motorolas.
A bunch of the AOSP apps feel like you have to rewrite them for modern standards now and then you can basically have them in maintenance mode for years. The AOSP messaging app has also lasted for 15+ (?) years and has basically had no maintenance from Google for many years.
Modernizing these apps seems very high-impact. These are the very first things a new user sees and after the initial modernization, they should be relatively cheap to maintain.
I you look at the commits of the new Messages app it's mostly made by 2 people whose Github profiles show them as employees of GrapheneOS and who are mostly committing to different system apps. So I assume they have a separate team of devs whose job it is to make the system apps.
IIRC when they started first announced their replacement for the AOSP camera they said they hired a developer specifically for it.
I had a scary bug on an older version where for months the contact names didnt match the actual senders/recipients. I have received SMS from my WISP under the same contact as Github MFA codes but also send mssages to relatives that never where received...
Seeing "Material 3/Material You" is a negative point for me, not a positive. It's almost comical just how atrocious the UI is. Yes let's make all phones 20% huge-er and all whitespace 40% wider, said no sane person ever.
Looks prettier but a shame an obvious regression happened for one of my primary use-cases: copying one-time codes. Long pressing on a link selects the entire SMS instead of bringing up a menu for the link. [0]
Makes me wonder about all the testing now
And the issue worded/tagged as a feature instead of a regression. Are the devs aware the feature existed before?
later:
It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:
"it's also helping us raise our standards for our own work by pointing it at that to get extremely pedantic criticism catching many things we would miss...We've hired multiple experienced app developers who have spent months working on modernizing the Messaging app and carefully reviewing it"
Alpha lowers the expected level of polish and stability - it doesn't make every regression equally acceptable. It is a reasonable criticism even when released to the alpha channel.
Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process.
> People sometimes.
I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in GrapheneOS the past few years, without complaint to the developers. And have submitted bug reports and logs. I'm "in the trenches", not just slinging mud from the outside. If I were in a better financial situation right now, I would be donating too.
It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:
Why? Using an LLM as an additional reviewer seems like a good use of LLMs? Personally I have found LLMs very useful for that and they catch issues that other experienced programmers do not always find. It’s not like they are vibecoding a messages app.
Other than that -- next year. And this is other companies' choice, not GrapheneOS team, to fix on releasing grossly insecure hardware or NOT releasing patches and fixes.
Go down to literally any 2nd hand phone store and buy a refurb. None of your money will go to Google and you'll have your phone at a fraction of the new price.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
it sounds like they are saying that /e/OS is less secure than fairphone's own OS. with all criticism against /e/OS taken into account, i highly doubt that fairphone would have been able to make their own version of android more secure than /e/OS when they are not even interested in working on that.
You mean the perfectly functional (if barebones) AOSP call app? :)
Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.
Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience
In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else.
With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
It's like we've had this ancient knowledge passed down for generations but people constantly just ignore it.
AFAIUI though GOS does intend on providing an RCS impl eventually even if it takes years to do.
I broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?
In my experience, Graphene OS doesn't make compromises.
I can imagine many reasons to devote resources to it:
* A platform is only as good as its apps. If they want to grow GOS in the general public, it requires a good SMS/MMS messaging app.
* LLM tools greatly reduce development costs, especially for well-known functions like text messaging.
* Without secure messaging (as far as SMS/MMS can be secure), the platform security is greatly reduced.
* GOS got a big donation, or has a volunteer that wants to do messaging ...
But idk what I'm talking about. What is their approach?
If they fix(ed) their messaging app and their keyboard, then they've really eliminated a lot of potential complaints if a less tech-savvy crowd ends up buying future Motorolas.
Modernizing these apps seems very high-impact. These are the very first things a new user sees and after the initial modernization, they should be relatively cheap to maintain.
Messaging can be replaced with one of the hundreds decent messaging apps.
Unlike the backup app which is utterly unusable, untrustworthy and frankly crap. And CANNOT be replaced by anything else.
As it stands it's impossible to have reliable backups in GOS.
IIRC when they started first announced their replacement for the AOSP camera they said they hired a developer specifically for it.
(sarcasm obvious, but indeed full system backup is sorely missing. Seedvault is crap, not an option)
People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens.
Makes me wonder about all the testing now
And the issue worded/tagged as a feature instead of a regression. Are the devs aware the feature existed before?
later:
It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:
"it's also helping us raise our standards for our own work by pointing it at that to get extremely pedantic criticism catching many things we would miss...We've hired multiple experienced app developers who have spent months working on modernizing the Messaging app and carefully reviewing it"
[0] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Messaging/issues/292
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49592770
People sometimes.
Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process.
> People sometimes.
I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in GrapheneOS the past few years, without complaint to the developers. And have submitted bug reports and logs. I'm "in the trenches", not just slinging mud from the outside. If I were in a better financial situation right now, I would be donating too.
Why? Using an LLM as an additional reviewer seems like a good use of LLMs? Personally I have found LLMs very useful for that and they catch issues that other experienced programmers do not always find. It’s not like they are vibecoding a messages app.
> shame an obvious regression happened for one of my primary use-cases: copying one-time codes
Then the "later" is that even with frontier AI review tools, it was still missed
I am not alleging vibe coding - that's a strawman.
Other than that -- next year. And this is other companies' choice, not GrapheneOS team, to fix on releasing grossly insecure hardware or NOT releasing patches and fixes.