8 ms·

Google Pixels are no longer the AOSP reference device

218 points by tripdout 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago
Lemmie guess, in six month we hear Google is killing Pixel.
- bitpush 1y ago
  From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
  - gsf_emergency 1y ago
    In a better world.. goog could be as helpful towards grOS as aapl towards asahi. But "anything that doesn't detract from selling hw is fine" can't make it into goog's once-aspirational "knowledge economy" business calculus. (Legal considerations contribute further inertia) I think though, "write-only" third-party contributions are a necessary evolutionary step towards a more balanced ecosystem, so lack of an open reference could lead to the needed experimentation, both legal and technical
    - bitpush 1y ago
      I've not kept up with Asahi, but how is Apple helping Asahi? My surface level understanding was Asahi was reverse engineering everything and Apple is offering 0 help/support.
      - seabrookmx 1y ago
        Depends on your definition of "help". Apple doesn't support Asahi specifically but did build in the capability to boot another OS and intentionally does not block it.
        bitpush 1y ago
        If adding a capability to boot another OS is seen as a big gesture, Google providing an entire operating system source code should be a bigger deal yes? One is cracking open a door (Apple) and the other is opening the door wide, and welcoming you into your home.
        gsf_emergency 1y ago
        >welcoming you into your home Didn't mean to imply that Aapl can't be accused of perfidious behaviour on the sw side, but the erstwhile welcomes mean that Goog's betrayal, when it happens, even a minor one that doesn't kill the biz, hurts a lot more?
        seabrookmx 1y ago
        I agree with you. I was just responding to the Asahi comment in isolation. To play devil's advocate though, Darwin is technically open source?
        sobkas 1y ago
        Google doesn't provide "entire operating system source code", it provides some parts, while other they keep closed. Also they are continuously removing parts that are essential from AOSP (that are either open or closed). Removing support for Pixel devices makes AOSP even less useful for developers, because belief that VM will be a good replacement for real hardware test environment is a fairy tale next to sleeping beauty. So no, they don't provide "entire operating system source code", what they provide is a caricature of open source project. So maybe they should call it COSP.
        philodeon 1y ago
        But as of the M4 Macs, Apple is preventing the Asahi team from learning how the drivers work with a “bug” in the bootloader: https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776 https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776
        spookie 1y ago
yellow_lead 1y ago
> Without the Pixel hardware repos (which include the device trees, driver binaries, and more), custom Android ROMs will have a hard time developing their OS updates. This might also have implications for security (vulnerability) researchers. This concerns me as a GrapeneOS user.
- codethief 1y ago
  Yup, especially given what they posted: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1932596516390072669?t=Tw_clEz3uOF_loVJ6vsw-w&s=19 https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1932596516390072669?t=Tw_clE...
  - Freak_NL 1y ago
    Aw man… GrapheneOS makes owning a smartphone bearable. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end.
    - wing-_-nuts 1y ago
      I really haven't kept up with third party roms for smartphones in a while. I take it graphene is a major player? Last one I heard of was lineage os. I guess I probably need to start looking as my pixel 5a has probably lapsed security updates
      - rfoo 1y ago
        > graphene is a major player? No. It is not. Lineage and a lot of others are major players. They just have different focus. GrapheneOS cares about being secure. Others cares about being, well, custom, and "privacy", "privacy" as in "noooooooooo I don't want to install google stuff jfc", instead of being secure against random threat actors.
        umbra07 1y ago
        "and a lot of others" a lot of others is GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is likely the second largest ROM after lineage.
zamalek 1y ago
So Android is now no better than iOS - and Apple has privacy. Any HN'ers out there with an iPhone but no other Apple devices? Do you face any limitations or so forth?
- gumby271 1y ago
  I'm not sure the release of Google Pixel phone binaries is what made Android distinct from iOS. I'm pretty sure I still cant choose what software runs on iOS outside of Apple saying so, and that's one of the largest distinctions that's brought up. If Apple were to change that, then I'd fully agree.
  - zamalek 1y ago
    > I'm pretty sure I still cant choose what software runs on iOS outside of Apple saying so Do you mean sideloading/custom stores (at least in the US)? That's a good point. However, the lack of the binaries makes the situation with the OS effectively the same. Once the device is EOL it's e-waste.
    - gumby271 1y ago
      > However, the lack of the binaries makes the situation with the OS effectively the same. Once the device is EOL it's e-waste. Agreed, I'm definitely disappointed in this. The coupling of the hardware and software makes the Pixel phones worthless outside of Google's supported android version for it. I'd love to see some kind of consumer protection laws against this, mandating at least some level of usefulness of the hardware outside of the vendor sanctioned OS.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      > Once the device is EOL it's e-waste. This was largely true before already. Once the security updates stop, the hardware is best used as a paperweight. And with practically all phone hardware, only the hardware vendor (and all their suppliers!) are the ones capable of updating the device drivers and various chipset firmwares. Blame the hardware that relies on binary blobs and vendor-forked kernels that never contribute to mainline.
bitpush 1y ago
GrapheneOS made an unforced error by exaggerating the situation. ("Boy who cried wolf"). When you're generic and obviously false in your criticism, it makes it easy for the company to counter it. "Google is killing AOSP" catches eye, but it is sooo easy for the company to counter. 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.
- oharapj 1y ago
  How is he exaggerating the situation? What is false about the criticism? Are you referring to a previous time where they cried wolf? I read through the Twitter thread and GrapheneOS seemed pretty even keeled and above board about it to me (even if that is uncharacteristic)
  - bitpush 1y ago
    Graphene's claim of "AOSP is dead" is easily verifiable. > This also marks the availability of the source code at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). You can examine the source code for a deeper understanding of how Android works, and our focus on compatibility means that you can leverage your app development skills in Android Studio with Jetpack Compose to create applications that thrive across the entire ecosystem. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/android-16-is-here.html#:~:text=availability%20of%20the%20source%20code https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/android-16... This was posted 2 days back.
    - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
      But you don't have any ability to run AOSP on any devices? Free as in literally unrunnable? AOSP feels incomplete without there being some flagship way to use it.
freedomben 1y ago
Warning: Complete shots in the dark here so take with a truckload of salt 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.
- bitpush 1y ago
  > 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. This is part that is unfortunate. You'd expect hacker types (folks who hang out here on HN) would be 100% behind an open-source operating system, and would freely allow a corporation burning money to make improvements to it. Instead what you see is an odd (and counterintuitive) behavior of saying alternate app stores are bad, side loading is bad - mostly because of Apple's unique PR/Marketing spin.
nrclark 1y ago
A question for any Android folks in the thread: how performant is Cuttlefish? Would I get good performance if I ran it in KVM on something like a Raspberry Pi 5? I've been thinking about a design that runs some robotic services natively, with a user-facing Android inside of a resource-constrained VM.
- moonshot5 1y ago
  Android can run natively on x86_64. The ART folks spent quite a bit of time getting this to work. A lot of our CI targets run android in this configuration.
  - nrclark 1y ago
    Understood. I'm actually thinking about a product design for an aarch64-based industrial controller. I'd want to run all of the machine interfaces directly on Linux, but am interested in using Android for everything user-facing. Could I get away with running Cuttlefish in KVM (on an aarch64 SOC) and get OK performance? I'm thinking that it could be a good way to keep the important stuff isolated.
    - moonshot5 1y ago
      Only one way to find out. :)
    - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      You might also consider waydroid for that
nixass 1y ago
Kinda dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related: AOSP project is coming to an end https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540
shrx 1y ago
Ah so I guess this is the reason that GrapheneOS just works on Pixels? Maybe after the initial hurdle this change has introduced will actually lead to a wider device support once the necessary changes are better understood. Let's hope. edit: missed a word
- thayne 1y ago
  Or it leads to GrapheneOS not supporting any new devices.
- fph 1y ago
  In part. The stated reasons[1] are: (1) best hardware security features, such as memory tagging (2) quick patches (3) many years of official device support. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
- fluidcruft 1y ago
  Back in the day I was maintainer of a CyanogenMod device. Back then you could pull the device trees and basebands and proprietary parts off the OTAs and phones directly after rooting them. Has that changed? LineageOS still exists. I haven't been in that scene for... over a decade but is Lineage freaking out to this extent? Yes, it takes effort to maintain a port and it's not as easy, but how much of GrapheneOS is actually implemented in the kernel vs post-init things (which are easy to modify).
andrewmcwatters 1y ago
Just put GNU/Linux on a phone already.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  People already do and it's not very good.
- ZenoArrow 1y ago
  Has already been done, many times over many years, by both companies and enthusiasts. If you want to look at the latest developments in the space, I'd recommend following the development of postmarketOS and Jolla / SailfishOS.
  - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
    Ah, thank you!
- tyre 1y ago
  It's the year of the linux smartphone!
- sundbry 1y ago
  The device tree files are the data which configure the Linux kernel how to interface with the hardware...
skybrian 1y ago
I'm wondering how a "reference target" could be "independent of any particular hardware." Is it some kind of virtual device? How do developers run it?
- MishaalRahman 1y ago
  Seang is referring to Cuttlefish, which is indeed a virtual Android device that can be run on PCs.
t1234s 1y ago
I've been a cyanogenmod/lineageos user for many years on different google nexus/pixel devices. Will this impact this in the future?
tripdout 1y ago
The fact that you could buy a Pixel (or Nexus), real hardware sold to consumers as a phone, download AOSP (and proprietary blobs), and get a working build with all hardware supported with no additional work was super appreciated. 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.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  > 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). The article mentions that they're also supporting GSI's as a reference target of sorts, and that's way closer to real hardware. GSI's are annoying for other reasons though - for example, there isn't a single "GSI" build type, they vary according to low-level device features (such as partitioning) and what version of Android they first came out with. Still, it's better than nothing. These days there's also GKI, a "generic kernel build" (minus custom modules and blobs) that's supposed to work on any recent device. Note, this is not a "mainline" Linux kernel at all, it's still very much a downstream fork with lots of custom patches. But it too is supposed to enable testing and development in a unified way, regardless of the actual device.
coffeeenjoyer 1y ago
Judge me if you must, but the only reason I recently bought a Pixel was because of the intention on sticking GrapheneOS on it the second I got it out of the box. And it really worked great for me so far... Unless it's something to do with work, I don't (intentionally) touch anything that has to do with Google, as I dislike too many things about them. 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.
- bitpush 1y ago
  > 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. This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed". If you're a software engineer, you know not to depend on these kind of things, and there's no way to expect the library / framework author to reason about how people are using it. What if someone else came up and said I'm using Pixel as a doorstop, and now that Pixel has a camera bump, it doesnt work anymore - I hate the company. Strange indeed.
  - JeremyNT 1y ago
    > This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed". Their support of Pixels with AOSP has been well documented! This has always been one of their selling points, as a sort of reference device. I've exclusively bought Pixel phones in recent years and this is one of the primary reasons. Of course Google never made any guarantees, and a rug pull was always possible, but it's absolutely still disappointing and well worth commenting upon.
wmf 1y ago
Can anyone explain how Treble and GSIs fit into this situation? Can GrapheneOS or other distros build GSIs that will run on Pixel devices?
honeybadger1 1y ago
Sigh, it was only a matter of time. But they are not helping themselves down the road when they are broken up into pieces. Let's just hope if they do get smashed into pieces that mobile breaks off and they aim to please the techno community that has made them who they are today. Too head strong, why is it these product managers build to break, just to build again.
neon_me 1y ago
GraphenOS was the only reason to buy pixel.
captainmisery 1y ago
Without GrapheneOS im probably going to iPhone. Been using Graphene for years, its so light and simple without all the Google cruft. Pixels with Google is not for me anymore.
temptemptemp111 1y ago
[dead]
Zigurd 1y ago
Statements like... 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.
privacyking 1y ago
Another one for the google graveyard. There's no benefit at this point to owning a pixel if you can't control it. I'm going to trial iPhone again and try to live with the few downsides, and the many upsides.
xg15 1y ago
Sounds like "No, AOSP is not dead. You can still run it in an emulator if you want. Have fun..." > 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?
nabogh 1y ago
Okay so we just need another company to release a nice phone and release the device tree right?
npteljes 1y ago
A key takeaway from this situation is that "alternative Android ROMs" are merely remixes of the original Android effort, and not genuine alternatives standing on their own. Absolutely at mercy of Google. Similar to browsers, how we only have like 3 engines for the myriad of browsers that we have. I am a graphene user currently, and I guess Graphene is safe on the current devices, as long as Google and the maintainer does security updates for them, we will just not get Android 16 at worst. And have to figure out what to use after the security support runs out in <7 years. So there is plenty of time still, no matter how they rock the boat.
ahtaarra 1y ago
This is such a shame. As a Pixel 6a user, I was always bothered by the battery situation of the phone but happily ran GrapheneOS on the device since buying. Recently the model had a battery combustion incident and now this. And there I was thinking of getting another Pixel phone down the line.
2chiefk 1y ago
It might have something to do with the person the individual. How long have you been a developer? If you haven't been a developer for like 10, -15 years that could have something to do with it. I've been a developer for at least. Let's just put this way 2001. I've been a developer for Google. They kind of owe me that respect
2chiefk 1y ago
As a developer since 2001 I am not seeing any issues except for I'm denied access to s** I should be allowed in on okay everybody. That's all I'm seeing at My end
2chiefk 1y ago
I apologize, I've been a developer for since 2001. I don't see an issue in my end but maybe that's why

218 points by tripdout 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago

Lemmie guess, in six month we hear Google is killing Pixel.

bitpush 1y ago
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
- gsf_emergency 1y ago
  In a better world.. goog could be as helpful towards grOS as aapl towards asahi. But "anything that doesn't detract from selling hw is fine" can't make it into goog's once-aspirational "knowledge economy" business calculus. (Legal considerations contribute further inertia) I think though, "write-only" third-party contributions are a necessary evolutionary step towards a more balanced ecosystem, so lack of an open reference could lead to the needed experimentation, both legal and technical
  - bitpush 1y ago
    I've not kept up with Asahi, but how is Apple helping Asahi? My surface level understanding was Asahi was reverse engineering everything and Apple is offering 0 help/support.
    - seabrookmx 1y ago
      Depends on your definition of "help". Apple doesn't support Asahi specifically but did build in the capability to boot another OS and intentionally does not block it.
      - bitpush 1y ago
        If adding a capability to boot another OS is seen as a big gesture, Google providing an entire operating system source code should be a bigger deal yes? One is cracking open a door (Apple) and the other is opening the door wide, and welcoming you into your home.
        gsf_emergency 1y ago
        >welcoming you into your home Didn't mean to imply that Aapl can't be accused of perfidious behaviour on the sw side, but the erstwhile welcomes mean that Goog's betrayal, when it happens, even a minor one that doesn't kill the biz, hurts a lot more?
        seabrookmx 1y ago
        I agree with you. I was just responding to the Asahi comment in isolation. To play devil's advocate though, Darwin is technically open source?
        sobkas 1y ago
        Google doesn't provide "entire operating system source code", it provides some parts, while other they keep closed. Also they are continuously removing parts that are essential from AOSP (that are either open or closed). Removing support for Pixel devices makes AOSP even less useful for developers, because belief that VM will be a good replacement for real hardware test environment is a fairy tale next to sleeping beauty. So no, they don't provide "entire operating system source code", what they provide is a caricature of open source project. So maybe they should call it COSP.
      - philodeon 1y ago
        But as of the M4 Macs, Apple is preventing the Asahi team from learning how the drivers work with a “bug” in the bootloader: https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776 https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776
        spookie 1y ago

yellow_lead 1y ago

> Without the Pixel hardware repos (which include the device trees, driver binaries, and more), custom Android ROMs will have a hard time developing their OS updates. This might also have implications for security (vulnerability) researchers. This concerns me as a GrapeneOS user.

codethief 1y ago
Yup, especially given what they posted: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1932596516390072669?t=Tw_clEz3uOF_loVJ6vsw-w&s=19 https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1932596516390072669?t=Tw_clE...
- Freak_NL 1y ago
  Aw man… GrapheneOS makes owning a smartphone bearable. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end.
  - wing-_-nuts 1y ago
    I really haven't kept up with third party roms for smartphones in a while. I take it graphene is a major player? Last one I heard of was lineage os. I guess I probably need to start looking as my pixel 5a has probably lapsed security updates
    - rfoo 1y ago
      > graphene is a major player? No. It is not. Lineage and a lot of others are major players. They just have different focus. GrapheneOS cares about being secure. Others cares about being, well, custom, and "privacy", "privacy" as in "noooooooooo I don't want to install google stuff jfc", instead of being secure against random threat actors.
      - umbra07 1y ago
        "and a lot of others" a lot of others is GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is likely the second largest ROM after lineage.

zamalek 1y ago

So Android is now no better than iOS - and Apple has privacy. Any HN'ers out there with an iPhone but no other Apple devices? Do you face any limitations or so forth?

gumby271 1y ago
I'm not sure the release of Google Pixel phone binaries is what made Android distinct from iOS. I'm pretty sure I still cant choose what software runs on iOS outside of Apple saying so, and that's one of the largest distinctions that's brought up. If Apple were to change that, then I'd fully agree.
- zamalek 1y ago
  > I'm pretty sure I still cant choose what software runs on iOS outside of Apple saying so Do you mean sideloading/custom stores (at least in the US)? That's a good point. However, the lack of the binaries makes the situation with the OS effectively the same. Once the device is EOL it's e-waste.
  - gumby271 1y ago
    > However, the lack of the binaries makes the situation with the OS effectively the same. Once the device is EOL it's e-waste. Agreed, I'm definitely disappointed in this. The coupling of the hardware and software makes the Pixel phones worthless outside of Google's supported android version for it. I'd love to see some kind of consumer protection laws against this, mandating at least some level of usefulness of the hardware outside of the vendor sanctioned OS.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    > Once the device is EOL it's e-waste. This was largely true before already. Once the security updates stop, the hardware is best used as a paperweight. And with practically all phone hardware, only the hardware vendor (and all their suppliers!) are the ones capable of updating the device drivers and various chipset firmwares. Blame the hardware that relies on binary blobs and vendor-forked kernels that never contribute to mainline.

bitpush 1y ago

GrapheneOS made an unforced error by exaggerating the situation. ("Boy who cried wolf"). When you're generic and obviously false in your criticism, it makes it easy for the company to counter it. "Google is killing AOSP" catches eye, but it is sooo easy for the company to counter. 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.

oharapj 1y ago
How is he exaggerating the situation? What is false about the criticism? Are you referring to a previous time where they cried wolf? I read through the Twitter thread and GrapheneOS seemed pretty even keeled and above board about it to me (even if that is uncharacteristic)
- bitpush 1y ago
  Graphene's claim of "AOSP is dead" is easily verifiable. > This also marks the availability of the source code at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). You can examine the source code for a deeper understanding of how Android works, and our focus on compatibility means that you can leverage your app development skills in Android Studio with Jetpack Compose to create applications that thrive across the entire ecosystem. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/android-16-is-here.html#:~:text=availability%20of%20the%20source%20code https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/android-16... This was posted 2 days back.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
    But you don't have any ability to run AOSP on any devices? Free as in literally unrunnable? AOSP feels incomplete without there being some flagship way to use it.

freedomben 1y ago

Warning: Complete shots in the dark here so take with a truckload of salt 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.

bitpush 1y ago
> 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. This is part that is unfortunate. You'd expect hacker types (folks who hang out here on HN) would be 100% behind an open-source operating system, and would freely allow a corporation burning money to make improvements to it. Instead what you see is an odd (and counterintuitive) behavior of saying alternate app stores are bad, side loading is bad - mostly because of Apple's unique PR/Marketing spin.

nrclark 1y ago

A question for any Android folks in the thread: how performant is Cuttlefish? Would I get good performance if I ran it in KVM on something like a Raspberry Pi 5? I've been thinking about a design that runs some robotic services natively, with a user-facing Android inside of a resource-constrained VM.

moonshot5 1y ago
Android can run natively on x86_64. The ART folks spent quite a bit of time getting this to work. A lot of our CI targets run android in this configuration.
- nrclark 1y ago
  Understood. I'm actually thinking about a product design for an aarch64-based industrial controller. I'd want to run all of the machine interfaces directly on Linux, but am interested in using Android for everything user-facing. Could I get away with running Cuttlefish in KVM (on an aarch64 SOC) and get OK performance? I'm thinking that it could be a good way to keep the important stuff isolated.
  - moonshot5 1y ago
    Only one way to find out. :)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    You might also consider waydroid for that

nixass 1y ago

Kinda dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related: AOSP project is coming to an end https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540

shrx 1y ago

Ah so I guess this is the reason that GrapheneOS just works on Pixels? Maybe after the initial hurdle this change has introduced will actually lead to a wider device support once the necessary changes are better understood. Let's hope. edit: missed a word

thayne 1y ago
Or it leads to GrapheneOS not supporting any new devices.
fph 1y ago
In part. The stated reasons[1] are: (1) best hardware security features, such as memory tagging (2) quick patches (3) many years of official device support. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
fluidcruft 1y ago
Back in the day I was maintainer of a CyanogenMod device. Back then you could pull the device trees and basebands and proprietary parts off the OTAs and phones directly after rooting them. Has that changed? LineageOS still exists. I haven't been in that scene for... over a decade but is Lineage freaking out to this extent? Yes, it takes effort to maintain a port and it's not as easy, but how much of GrapheneOS is actually implemented in the kernel vs post-init things (which are easy to modify).

andrewmcwatters 1y ago

Just put GNU/Linux on a phone already.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ChocolateGod 1y ago
People already do and it's not very good.
ZenoArrow 1y ago
Has already been done, many times over many years, by both companies and enthusiasts. If you want to look at the latest developments in the space, I'd recommend following the development of postmarketOS and Jolla / SailfishOS.
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago
  Ah, thank you!
tyre 1y ago
It's the year of the linux smartphone!
sundbry 1y ago
The device tree files are the data which configure the Linux kernel how to interface with the hardware...

skybrian 1y ago

I'm wondering how a "reference target" could be "independent of any particular hardware." Is it some kind of virtual device? How do developers run it?

MishaalRahman 1y ago
Seang is referring to Cuttlefish, which is indeed a virtual Android device that can be run on PCs.

t1234s 1y ago

I've been a cyanogenmod/lineageos user for many years on different google nexus/pixel devices. Will this impact this in the future?

tripdout 1y ago

The fact that you could buy a Pixel (or Nexus), real hardware sold to consumers as a phone, download AOSP (and proprietary blobs), and get a working build with all hardware supported with no additional work was super appreciated. 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.

zozbot234 1y ago
> 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). The article mentions that they're also supporting GSI's as a reference target of sorts, and that's way closer to real hardware. GSI's are annoying for other reasons though - for example, there isn't a single "GSI" build type, they vary according to low-level device features (such as partitioning) and what version of Android they first came out with. Still, it's better than nothing. These days there's also GKI, a "generic kernel build" (minus custom modules and blobs) that's supposed to work on any recent device. Note, this is not a "mainline" Linux kernel at all, it's still very much a downstream fork with lots of custom patches. But it too is supposed to enable testing and development in a unified way, regardless of the actual device.

coffeeenjoyer 1y ago

Judge me if you must, but the only reason I recently bought a Pixel was because of the intention on sticking GrapheneOS on it the second I got it out of the box. And it really worked great for me so far... Unless it's something to do with work, I don't (intentionally) touch anything that has to do with Google, as I dislike too many things about them. 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.

bitpush 1y ago
> 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. This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed". If you're a software engineer, you know not to depend on these kind of things, and there's no way to expect the library / framework author to reason about how people are using it. What if someone else came up and said I'm using Pixel as a doorstop, and now that Pixel has a camera bump, it doesnt work anymore - I hate the company. Strange indeed.
- JeremyNT 1y ago
  > This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed". Their support of Pixels with AOSP has been well documented! This has always been one of their selling points, as a sort of reference device. I've exclusively bought Pixel phones in recent years and this is one of the primary reasons. Of course Google never made any guarantees, and a rug pull was always possible, but it's absolutely still disappointing and well worth commenting upon.

wmf 1y ago

Can anyone explain how Treble and GSIs fit into this situation? Can GrapheneOS or other distros build GSIs that will run on Pixel devices?

honeybadger1 1y ago

Sigh, it was only a matter of time. But they are not helping themselves down the road when they are broken up into pieces. Let's just hope if they do get smashed into pieces that mobile breaks off and they aim to please the techno community that has made them who they are today. Too head strong, why is it these product managers build to break, just to build again.

neon_me 1y ago

GraphenOS was the only reason to buy pixel.

captainmisery 1y ago

Without GrapheneOS im probably going to iPhone. Been using Graphene for years, its so light and simple without all the Google cruft. Pixels with Google is not for me anymore.

temptemptemp111 1y ago

[dead]

Zigurd 1y ago

Statements like... 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.

privacyking 1y ago

Another one for the google graveyard. There's no benefit at this point to owning a pixel if you can't control it. I'm going to trial iPhone again and try to live with the few downsides, and the many upsides.

xg15 1y ago

Sounds like "No, AOSP is not dead. You can still run it in an emulator if you want. Have fun..." > 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?

nabogh 1y ago

Okay so we just need another company to release a nice phone and release the device tree right?

npteljes 1y ago

A key takeaway from this situation is that "alternative Android ROMs" are merely remixes of the original Android effort, and not genuine alternatives standing on their own. Absolutely at mercy of Google. Similar to browsers, how we only have like 3 engines for the myriad of browsers that we have. I am a graphene user currently, and I guess Graphene is safe on the current devices, as long as Google and the maintainer does security updates for them, we will just not get Android 16 at worst. And have to figure out what to use after the security support runs out in <7 years. So there is plenty of time still, no matter how they rock the boat.

ahtaarra 1y ago

This is such a shame. As a Pixel 6a user, I was always bothered by the battery situation of the phone but happily ran GrapheneOS on the device since buying. Recently the model had a battery combustion incident and now this. And there I was thinking of getting another Pixel phone down the line.

2chiefk 1y ago

It might have something to do with the person the individual. How long have you been a developer? If you haven't been a developer for like 10, -15 years that could have something to do with it. I've been a developer for at least. Let's just put this way 2001. I've been a developer for Google. They kind of owe me that respect

2chiefk 1y ago

As a developer since 2001 I am not seeing any issues except for I'm denied access to s** I should be allowed in on okay everybody. That's all I'm seeing at My end

2chiefk 1y ago

I apologize, I've been a developer for since 2001. I don't see an issue in my end but maybe that's why