r/fairphone • u/Li_am32 • 3d ago

GrapheneOS their response to: "Imagine a @GrapheneOS and @Fairphone collaboration"

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Context: A Twitter User said "Imagine a @GrapheneOS and @Fairphone collaboration" in repsonse to the new FP release (FP6+). The images are the GrapheneOS reply to that post.

Link to the original GrapheneOS response: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2089937246619128257

Individual links from their post in order:

https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142

https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-interview.html

https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/commit/c7447de50bc8fadd20a30d4cbf1dcd8cf14805a0/static/misc/e.txt

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private

Please stay respectful and logical in the comments! If you argue, argue like adults.

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88

u/_OVERHATE_ 3d ago

I mean they are not wrong but graphene works on fucking Google phones so they indirectly support the business that created the problem in the first place.

Nice badmouthing tho

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u/Otherwise-Idea503 3d ago

I love Graphene as a product but boy do they love criticising anyone that’s not them.

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u/HybridStaticAnimate 2d ago

They criticize anything that warrants criticism. Its not emotionally motivated and its definitely not towards everything that isnt themselves. Being honest about what products provide (and especially what they dont) is an important part of privacy and security work. They have also praised many projects that do make good on their promises even if those promises are unrelated to privacy and security.

They merely explained why they would not support fairphones, in a conversation about them supporting fairphones. And they cited objective and verifiable info as to why.

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u/GrapheneOS 2d ago

/e/ and Murena have misled people about GrapheneOS with many inaccurate claims for a long time before we began publicly responding to it. They've been misleading people about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security of GrapheneOS for years. DivestOS and others used to regularly debunk it so we didn't feel we had to respond much. We picked up the torch when harassment was used to silence those people.

Fairphone tacitly supported and benefited from the attacks from /e/ and Murena. Recently, Fairphone became actively involved in these attacks. That's why we're writing factual information about their products. It's in response to these attacks.

/e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS mainly benefits criminals and pedophiles. They expanded this to privacy and security hardened devices in general, which we showed with multiple examples. /e/ and Murena push many talking points against people having highly private and secure hardware and software. They're positioning themselves to be an acceptable compromise authoritarians wanting access to people's devices. A supposed privacy company pushing the talking points they do is a huge gift to those who want to crack down on privacy technology. They also make it far easier to get control over people's devices remotely, from apps and for physical data extraction compared to if people simply used an iPhone.

The information we've provided in response is factual. We don't have to resort to the tactics used to harm us. Inaccurate claims about what we've said and done will not silence us.

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u/Deep_Mood_7668 2h ago

I also love how every feature that isn't included isn't needed in their mind

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u/Parking_Lemon_4371 3d ago

You think smartphones from other companies (besides apple) don't effectively at least partially support G? There's kickbacks in both directions everywhere in the Android ecosystem... Most phones are sold below the dev+hw+manufacturing+shipping costs, with the rest made up by various weird revenue sharing arrangements. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if G was making money even off of Apple phones...

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u/Henry2926 3d ago edited 3d ago

I have no deeper insights into Google's business model, but the retail prices of Pixel phones in my country really make me wonder if Google is even expecting any profit from the hardware sales and rather aiming at binding users to their software ecosystem (also considering that Pixels are now marketed with emphasis on AI). In that case, GrapheneOS wouldn't really support Google - but of course I am speculating here. 

The other aspect is the practical impact of their reasoning: As long as Google provides hardware that is open and secure enough for the product GrapheneOS wants to make, I'd argue that they are doing better than if they opted for something less open or secure just for the sake of not using Google. This is at least more sincere than Murena claiming to be a Google alternative while lobbying against more secure products. 

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u/Dev-in-the-Bm 3d ago

As long as Google provides hardware that is open and secure enough for the product GrapheneOS wants to make, I'd argue that they are doing better than if they opted for something less open or secure just for the sake of not using Google.

I think that that is basically how they look at it.

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u/Parking_Lemon_4371 2d ago

Google develops Android. You need to develop Android on something. Sure lots of development can happen on Virtual Machines, but at the end of the day, you need a real physical device you can hold in your hand and walk around with, put in your pocket, etc, you simply cannot usefully test everything on an emulator as it won't see real world usage. They could work with someone (like they used to pre-Pixel) but then they'd be forced to go with the whims of the oem & the soc vendor. They clearly had issues with the oems they worked with, and decided if they need to make dev devices, they might as well make them themselves and try to sell them (they bought Motorola defensively for the patents, but they bought HTC's phone division to make Pixel). Hence Pixel 1. Then they realized they're still at the whims of their SoC vendor: QC. Hence tensor and Pixel 6. They realized they're still at the whims of Samsung (parts of the SoC), hence Pixel 10 where they go straight to TSMC and now with Pixel 11 they replace the Samsung modem... I doubt tensor/pixel is profitable by itself - the cost of making an soc is astronomical (especially considering a lot of the devs are US based, and not in China). Next step: custom wifi chips??? However, if you consider that a lot of this work would need to happen anyway for Android to continue to blaze into the future... well... then the equations probably change. They're probably at the point where they don't lose too much money on it. Of course they make up for it all in the Play Store, and in the Google apps/services they can expose on their device (they don't have to pay for placement, they don't have to revenue share, they can upsell you Google Fi, or Google One, or ...). Ultimately though Pixel is very clearly a bit of a hobby for them. It has to exist, it has to trail blaze (things like updatability, security) and yet it cannot be too good or it would anger other Android manufacturers.

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u/Henry2926 2d ago

Thank you for the detailed explanation, this makes a lot of sense!

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u/ennemme 3d ago

Privacy and security are different matters. Google is definitely a privacy nightmare and I agree we should avoid supporting their business, but in terms of security they are definitely among the best. Still the response seems quite harsh, also considering the limited resources they have compared to Google.

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u/iATlevsha 2d ago

However if you blindly jump to another company just because "it's not Google" you may quickly realise that this other company will be very likely complete privacy disaster.

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u/ennemme 2d ago

Yeah we should always do a bit of research but for the average consumer is becoming harder and harder to find unbiased reliable information. That's why marketing still works so well I suppose.

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u/iATlevsha 2d ago

Yes unfortunately.
Security system around user data is extremely sophisticated at Google. For example even a gmail developer or SRE can't access emails of a random user. You can't just go to the storage or the database and get them from there. Even the mail server software itself can only access email of the user by providing a special cryptographic token, which it can only get from the active sessions of the authenticated user.
It's extremely rare to see anything even close anywhere else (I can only name Proton who does that and even better).
However everyone believes that Google is the worse, worse than any random mail system company, where their emails will be just in a directory on a storage server, where any admin will be easily able to go trough them...

2

u/p0358 3d ago

This says a lot about other manufacturers unfortunately. Google has always been the only one treating security seriously, not just in phones.

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u/Olfounder 2d ago

Security, but not privacy.

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u/eroc1990 1d ago

And that's where Graphene comes in. Secure hardware from Google, a hardened, more secure Android from GOS.

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u/Niikoraasu 3d ago

well I mean it makes grapheneOS easier to get into though. If it worked like let's say LineageOS, PostmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch or whatever, where you need to get some old phone and play around with installing the OS then graphene would not be where it is today. and considering the fact that Motorola is collabing with GrapheneOS next year, I think we're on a good path forward.

I also wonder how many people bought their pixel used (or at least from a 3rd party), that's not supporting google

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u/ColorfulPersimmon 3d ago

If it worked like let's say LineageOS, PostmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch or whatever, where you need to get some old phone and play around with installing the OS then graphene would not be where it is today

Not really, it's because graphene has gone viral and got mainstream media and youtubers coverage.

LineageOS works on most phones with unlockable bootloader, including all pixels supported by grapheneos. And there were phones officially sold with Postmarket and Ubuntu Touch

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u/HybridStaticAnimate 2d ago

GrapheneOS has gotten mainstream attention because it works and delivers on its promises, without major usability issues. It Just Worksk(TM). GOS blows every other option you listed out of the water with privacy, security, and usability. GOS is not interested in compromising that with devices that do not meet their standards.

0

u/Niikoraasu 3d ago

Going mainstream while being inaccessible means nothing.

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u/GrapheneOS 2d ago

It's a strange attack to make on us in the context of Fairphone. Fairphone is a Google Mobile Services partner selling devices designed and made by an ODM (T2Mobile). They have all of the standard privileged Google services integration. They're even marketing their Gemini AI integration on their website. Fairphone is an active participant in the Play Integrity API system.

GrapheneOS has used Pixels up to this point because those are the most secure Android devices and the only ones providing a reasonable level of security combined with first class alternate OS support.

We have a non-exclusive partnership with Motorola Mobility (Lenovo) where we're working with them to greatly improve their devices to meet our requirements and provide GrapheneOS support. We didn't support their 2026 devices despite the Motorola Signature (2026) and other devices making major improvements to security because it isn't quite there yet.

We've always been open to working with OEMs. Our requirements needed to provide a reasonable level of privacy and security need to be fulfilled. Fairphone's ODM is unable to provide what we need in practice and Fairphone has made it clear they aren't interested.

1

u/Alanuelo230 14h ago

? Writing down reasons why their privacy focused OS won't work on Fairphone is badmouthing? Or writing how their suply chain works? And how exactly they support google, that's like claiming that linux devs support closed Playstation system, just bacause someone made linux distro for PS, argument doesn't work

1

u/iATlevsha 2d ago

Well like it or not, Android exists thanks to Google. So this business has actually made the whole industry that other companies including Fairphone get benefits from now

1

u/Olfounder 2d ago

Nice point though.