All of the major OEM shave access to the internal source with a _very_ small delay. OEMs don't ship these intermediate releases because they choose not to, not because Google witholds the source for them.
So now everybody is off worse. Not only are OEMs still slow with security updates, while CVEs float around for months among those within the know (or reverse engineering skills) for months.
Nobody buys a Pixel because of this minute software advantage.
Maybe get Motorola or Samsung to support security updates for six years and get back to Pixel users.
There are currently around 400k to 600k active Pixels with GrapheneOS. There have been far more than that when including the past devices our users have purchased. Pixels are a small segment of the overall market and that's substantial. If you add in people on other operating systems such as LineageOS then there are even more people using Pixels with another OS. A significant portion of people who bought Pixels did so because they were AOSP reference devices.
Samsung provides 7 years of support with monthly updates for their flagship devices. Unlike the Pixel OS, Samsung ships a lot of the security preview patches early.
Motorola Signature (2026) has 7 years of support. The upcoming successor to it is the first non-Pixel meeting all of the update and hardware security feature requirements for GrapheneOS.
Pixel 11 currently doesn't meet our security requirements due to at least temporary lack of MTE support which may get added in Android 17 QPR2. The upcoming Motorola device is also going to be using a 6.18 kernel at launch rather than 6.12. We would have launched Pixel 11 series support already if they met our security requirements. It's likely they will down the road but it's not clear why they omitted firmware and software support for a major security feature at launch. It's the firmware part which impacts us.
Did they though? Or is this just conjecture? Because, honestly, Pixels are not even available worldwide so a few AOSP enthusiasts dropping off and going to Graphene hardly seems concerning for the mighty G.
AOSP reference was a tagline for a few nerds that still wanted the Nexus devices of yore, but it was clear from day one that Google wanted their Pixel phones to be their iPhones.
> I did
Precisely my point.
My first phone was a Motorola that shipped with Eclair. Froyo had already been released and Motorola had a release date for Froyo scheduled in their website. They changed their mind. I don't trust Motorola one iota. Google has never lied to me they way they Motorola has. Good luck.