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Ask HN: Options for Android phone no longer getting security updates?
What can / should I do with an (otherwise perfectly good) Android phone that no longer receives security updates?
Yesterday’s epic thread about blue and green bubbles, which of course branched off into a comparison of iPhones and Androids, made me think about my own phone more than usual. It’s a Moto G Power (2020) running Android 11 that received its last security update in April.
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t realize this, or realize that this is Motorola’s policy (one version upgrade and two years of security updates) until yesterday. I admit that this has given me a new perspective on paying $500 for an iPhone SE that might receive updates for 5+ years vs. $200 for a budget Android phone that might get less than 2 years of support from my date of purchase.
Anyway, I’m otherwise perfectly content with the phone. I bought a budget phone in the first place because I’m not a heavy phone user, which makes the thought of buying a new phone that much more painful. My options seem to be:
1. Stick my head in the sand and don’t worry about the lack of security updates for another couple of years. I’m obviously in good company with millions (billions?) of other Android phone owners, but how foolish would this be?
2. Replace it now with a new phone.
3. Maybe go down the rabbit hole of LineageOS or other custom ROMs? Is this viable for a daily driver that I don’t use much but needs to work when I need it? How mature are these compared to, say, the major desktop Linux distros?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoKeep it, but don't do anything important on it. Don't read your email. Don't read your social media, if you care about your account being taken over. Don't access your bank on it. Use it for phone calls and texting only, and that if you don't care about somebody else reading your texts. And for me, that's good enough. I don't actually care about someone reading my texts. I simply don't access the internet on my phone. (Cataracts made it hard to focus close enough to read a screen that small. Yes, you can enlarge the text, but then I'd be scrolling my fingers off.) My personal life isn't tabloid material. I don't have any stalkers. (So far as I know - if I do, hi!) So someone could read my contacts, read my texts, and see pictures of my granddaughter and my cat. Under these conditions, I see no reason why I should care very much about the security of my phone. Am I missing something in my threat model?
- warner25 4y agoOn this line of thinking, one of my concerns is that SMS (to my Google Voice number, which is the app I exclusively use for phone calls and SMS) is the method that many services use for two-step verification, even if my other texts aren't sensitive.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoGood point. Still... let's say I'm logging on to a website that uses 2FA. They send me an SMS with a one-time code in it. An attacker reads that code. The attacker then has to hijack my browser session on a different device (since I'm not using internet on my phone). For them to do that, they already own my laptop (or maybe my wireless router or my DSL modem), and have been able to correlate them with my phone. That's possible, but at that point I'm pretty much in trouble anyway.
- armajid 4y agoFrom my experience (which isn't worth much but I have had similar thoughts about this) I went with a used iPhone 8 last year for around $180 because I thought it was going to get iOS 16, which it did. It's good until September next year (when the next iOS probably comes out) and at that point I will probably get a newer iPhone albeit probably a used one to save money. On custom ROMS, a security researcher named 'madaidan' states that ROMs such as Lineage are insecure (https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/security-privacy-advice.html#mobile-os https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/security-privacy-ad...) with GrapheneOS being an exception. On the GrapheneOS website, it recommends getting a Pixel 6 and above which has 5 years of guaranteed full security updates (https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices). Louis Rossmann recently released a video talking about GrapheneOS as his daily driver and breaks down some usability misconceptions. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIZmUINSvQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIZmUINSvQ4)
- hedora 4y agoGrapheneOS is OK. The keyboard kind of sucks. Assuming you are unwilling to use google location services, GPS is flaky. As a consequence, Camera image location tagging is flaky. Most apps that use map views are broken. (Third party map apps like Here WeGo and Organic Maps and are generally fine, oddly enough.) Backup is non-existent. (There is a thing. It does not work.) Unless you want to sync documents through google or some other untrustworthy third party, there aren't any competitive "keep a text document synced between N devices" programs. (Standard Notes is the closest on this front.) Phone calls and notifications work. Google Camera can be coerced into working (but geotags are iffy). Google services that normally support anonymous users (especially Meet) aggressively detect android and refuse to work if you are not logged in. Battery life is OK (as advertised) if you install google services in a sandbox. Stellar without them. The pixel wireless fast charger has settings that cannot be changed through graphene. The charger setting app requires kernel level permissions for some reason. Bluetooth support is the best I've seen. No kernel panics, or strange battery drains, in my experience. Always on VPN seems to work. Performance is good. My next phone will not be an android. The tire fire caused by not allowing google location services is the main reason. App ecosystem is number two. Lack of working backup is three. The system keyboard is number four. The over processed aesthetic of the camera is number 5 (this last one comes down to taste). Edit: I shouldn't have said app ecosystem. I meant the lack of non-privacy-invading apps that provide functionality that should be built in: Open PDF/docx/etc, scan + OCR to PDF from camera, print without granting randos permission to send documents to third parties, note sync, photo search, health data, etc... Hope this helps!
- runjake 4y agoUnfortunately, I don't believe your device is supported by GrapheneOS: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices Install LineageOS on it, if it's supported? https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#motorola https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#motorola But read this about LineageOS, et al to understand the risks: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html
- warner25 4y ago:( That page makes me wonder if LineageOS is even worse than my out-of-date Android system.
- gboone 4y agoFrom the last article: >The default updater even allows you to downgrade versions yourself. I think this has changed as I do not see this anymore in my own install. I've read this article in the past and the date is updated but the content may not be?
- too_bad_123 4y ago> 2. Replace it now with a new phone. Buy an iPhone. You do not need this fuss in your life.
- webmobdev 4y agoIf you prefer Android devices, always seek out phones whose bootloader can be unlocked so that you can install another OS on it. This way, you can be assured of Android fork / ports being available for the phone even if the manufacturer stops releasing updates. I highly recommend Sony Open Devices - https://static.developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-started/supported-devices-and-functionality/ https://static.developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-s... ... Or checkout the list of supported devices that can run LineageOS (a popular fork of Android) - https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
- drpixie 4y agoUnfortunately, the Sony Open devices seem to be hard to get (at least in Oz). I use LineageOS but there it's only available for a limited set of devices :(
- throwaway67743 4y agoXiaomi are pretty good, many of their mid range models are pretty cheap and they do have manufacturer supported unlocking (I have 2, Poco X3 pro and the Poco f3, because the f4 is trash) Both are well supported by lineage and co (I don't use lineage because they refuse to include signature spoofing so microg doesn't work properly) but otherwise fine.
- kccqzy 4y agoYou can buy a Pixel 6a and it will get security updates until 2027: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpixel-later-pixel-phones https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z... It costs quite a bit less than an iPhone ($349 as of this writing).
- gboone 4y agohttps://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ocean/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ocean/ A Moto G7 Power like above? Motorola devices can be bootloader unlocked I think. We have a couple Moto G7 Plus devices and use microG, I use VPN and have a firewall app. Works great. Even notifications can work with apps you choose. I have been a LineageOS user for awhile. There's no guarantee a particular device will always be maintained but if is, it's not that hard to install. The instructions are pretty clear. I've used it on a old Samsung 3, an Honor5x, Samsung S5, and now Moto G7.
- Pukkeh 4y agoI've used LineageOS to revive a Samsung Galaxy S4 and a Note 3, they work pretty well. The installation is easy. That said, you might encounter bugs on your particular device which may or may not be a big deal for you. I have had some issues with GPS accuracy and Bluetooth connections from the S4 to a certain device occasionally dropping out, but I haven't done careful before/after tests so these may be hardware problems. I would recommend giving the LineageOS a try, at least before replacing the phone, if that's the path you want to take.
- netsharc 4y agoThe problem with custom ROMs is that a lot of banking apps try to detect if the phone's bootloader is unlocked or it's rooted, and these apps then refuse to work. There are workarounds but they're not bulletproof.
- VTimofeenko 4y agoPixels have relockable bootloaders, so banking apps can run on CalyxOS (and, maybe, GrapheneOS)
- vivab0rg 4y agoThis is just not true. I've been using my banking apps succesfully since last year across 3 rooted cheap phones with 4 distinct custom LineageOS ROMs with just some Magisk modules.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago2, and get an iPhone so you don't have this problem again in 2024. I even got security updates on my Windows Phone years after Microsoft abandoned the entire platform, Android is mostly just a joke we all tell ourselves isn't one.
- daviddever23box 4y agoKeep it, to play around with LineageOS, but get an inexpensive iPhone. #u€k these handset manufacturers like Moto whose lack of mainline support feeds our trash heaps - they know exactly what they're doing.
- brundolf 4y agoLineageOS in general is very mature, I used it as a daily driver for years. Though it will partially depend on model; there's an upstream that all the different builds share, but individual builds have to be made for individual devices and support was entirely community-based last I checked. So depending on the popularity of your phone, you eg. might only get nightlies and not stables Assuming this is your phone, looks like you might have to use nightlies: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ocean/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ocean/ Still, I've used nightlies for significant stretches of time without any major issues. You'll probably see a significant speed boost too vs the OEM software You will need to follow a guide and do a little tinkering to set up the OS, but I think this is a viable path forward for you
- tacoman 4y agoThat's a pretty lousy policy from Moto, even more so considering it has a decent Qualcomm SoC in it. Android 9 got its last regular security update in January of 2022. If Google's pattern continues, Android 11 itself should continue to get regular security updates until Q1 2024. What a waste.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoAirgap it or install Lineage or one of the other open source replacements, it's not usually hard, but I don't know anything about your particular phone. On Pixels you can literally just go to a webpage and start the rooting and install from there.
- dnissley 4y agoNo one's going option 1? Are there any stories of people getting pwned because of old android vulnerabilities?
- timonoko 4y agoMy bank-app decided not to work on android 6 and below. So the answer 1#, dont worry about it, somebody else does the worrying for you.
- Hackbraten 4y agoAirgap it, remove all apps, install Navit [1] and mount the phone on your bicycle to turn it into a sleek, hackable, premium(-ish) offline GPS. [1]: https://www.navit-project.org/ https://www.navit-project.org/
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago/me sings: I'm riding in the rain, la la laaa. All the powers of my smartie are washed away, by the showers from above. Hey! Laa la la.
- tarakat 4y agoA related question: How secure is an Android phone that does receive security updates from its vendor? I vaguely recall hearing that it can take months before a security patch makes it from mainline Android to consumer devices.
- warner25 4y agoYes, this and several other comments have made me realize it's easy but probably wrong to think in black-and-white that: "getting updates => secure; no more updates => insecure." I guess there are no obvious relationships between "up-to-date" Android (for the reason you gave), "old" Android, up-to-date LineageOS, and the acceptable level of security for a common user.
- yakak 4y agoFor a similar moto one I saw two problems trying to use microg/lineageos: 1. Bluetooth headset audio had some kind of bug. Something like this is a deal breaker or something you would never notice depending on what you do on the phone I suppose. 2. There's no sign of a key partition to support orange(?) booting. I just see N/A for the keys of whatever OS I might have booted.