GrapheneOS is often around 4 to 6 months ahead on merging Linux kernel LTS releases. We used to handle this ourselves but switched to the Android GKI LTS branch maintained by Greg KH. Unfortunately, it was often struggling to keep up even before the absolutely massive increase in Linux kernel security patches this year. AI models have rapidly accelerated vulnerability discovery and it's an ongoing crisis for the Linux kernel. We want to be on the latest LTS revision within days and want to be using the latest LTS branch within months of it being released. We're not at all happy with how Android is handling things and plan to fix that ourselves. We'll get things back to how they should be.
We also ship all the AOSP userspace patches months before Pixels due to shipping all of the security preview patches as soon as possible. There are sometimes minor regressions but we find and fix them ourselves downstream. The security preview system has a terrible design especially considering that frontier AI models can reverse engineer the patches. There should at least only be a source embargo for around 24 to 72 hours rather than pretending as if it can work with the patches available 2 to 6 months in advance.
Perfect is the enemy of good. What's better for privacy, an old but inexpensive smartphone running Android 11, or the same smartphone running an up-to-date third-party rebuild of Android 16 or newer with as many privacy-improving bells and whistles as the hardware can support?
> Soon there will be two different phone brands which you can install it on.
...will they be available in my country (Brazil)? I don't think I've ever seen a Google Pixel phone in person.
I see your point, but it would be very misleading, since the phone would still have a lot of known holes. Only the OS would get updated, typically not the drivers, driver firmware, possibly not the kernel. The phone would still be easily compromised through all the known RCEs. So you tie up non-profit projects in a lot of extra work to get an improvement that does not really matter.
This is a mess created by the OEMs and they will continue to create this mess until people will stop buying from OEMs that only give lip service to security updates (roll out Android Security Bulletins to show a high patch level, while in reality the phone the phone has many known CVEs).
Not sure if you have any experience with eBay. I looked it up and people had problems selling to Brazil [1] but there are various listings that offer to ship. So maybe not a great option.
KaBuM!, Intec Store, Performance Solutions all charge significantly more with a 10a being more than double than from Google.
Motorola officially sells the Signature in Brazil [2] at the same price or cheaper than in the UK. It will be supported by GrapheneOS in 2027 on the 2027 version. From then on, hopefully Qualcomm brings MTE to the non-flagship chips and Motorola and GrapheneOS support budget or midrange devices.
>perfect is the enemy of good
I don't consider that relevant when users deserve ≥ security than an iPhone. GrapheneOS is not purpose-built to avoid big-tech's services although it does that more completely than any other alternative mobile operating system, the focus is privacy.
GrapheneOS on the state of privacy and security for their ethos: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2044440381803069778
[0] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=google+pixel+9
[1] https://reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/1d92pyn/
https://community.ebay.com/forum/shipping-57923/topic/diffic...
[2] https://www.motorola.com.br/smartphone-motorola-signature/p?...
Do these phones have ANATEL certification? Because if they don't, they will be rejected by customs. It's not simply a case of the item being held until you pay a 60% import tax.
Edit: September update for 8a has a kernel build from July. I believe it's still vulnerable but the exploit will need its offsets adjusting etc.
It'd be interesting to see which one is happening here.