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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Google Pixels are no longer the AOSP reference device
(9to5google.com)213 points by tripdout 12 June 2025 | 127 comments
Comments
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.
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.
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.
This concerns me as a GrapeneOS user.
> 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?
edit: missed a word
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540
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.
Too head strong, why is it these product managers build to break, just to build again.
AOSP project is coming to an end
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254540