GrapheneOS statement on Mastodon: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114661914197695338

Calyx made an official statement on this development here: https://calyxos.org/news/2025/06/11/android-16-plans/

Concerning stuff. Hopefully a workaround or solution is found at some point, but if not, I’m already thinking of how to manage without them.

I can’t see myself going back to a standard Android phone, so I suppose worse case scenario, I’d have to settle with LineageOS, or potentially abandon Android altogether and see if I can manage with discrete separate devices to fulfill the same needs, such as:

  • a pocketable mini-Linux PC like a MNT Pocket Reform, which has the ability to use cellular networks. Should be able to text, browse web, and maybe GPS? Alternatively, perhaps the Mecha Comet?
  • Small pocket-able dumb camera
  • MP3 player
  • Dumb-phone kept in a faraday bag when not in use?

EDIT:

Update on the situation from GrapheneOS in this thread (using Redlib, a proxy of Reddit)

The biggest problem for GrapheneOS is not the change to AOSP but rather our lead developer since 2022 being forcibly conscripted to fight in a war in April. That’s why we’ve been asking for help since April.

In April, we were contacted by someone about upcoming changes to AOSP impacting us including the removal of device support in Android 16. We talked about it internally but didn’t know if the information was credible. We prepared as much as we could for the Android 16 port but didn’t know exactly what would happen with device support. If we had clearer information on it and knew it was accurate, we could have prepared much more in advanced.

Porting to Android 16 is required to continue shipping full Android privacy/security patches regardless of device. Only the latest stable release gets full privacy/security patches, which was the May release of Android 15 QPR2 and is not Android 16. Older releases only get backports.

Pixels also only have their driver and firmware patches for Android 16, although we’re working on a release within the next 24 hours with backports of the most important firmware patches. We would normally have an experimental Android 16 release out already, if they hadn’t made changes to AOSP.

There are further changes coming to AOSP. It is not only what is talked about there.

In another comment:

We’re going to be continuing GrapheneOS but in the long term we’ll need to shift to our own devices with an OEM partner.

It’s not only Pixels which are going to be impacted. Pixels are still the only devices meeting our hardware requirements (https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices). It’s clear we need our own hardware in partnership with an OEM that’s serious about security and capable of delivering on it. We’ve had several attempts at OEM partnerships but they were unable to provide what we needed. It will cost millions of dollars to get a device meeting our basic requirements. We can do that, but we hoped for an OEM wanting to work with us instead of us needing to pay for everything through raising funds. We didn’t end up finding a good OEM to work with that way so we’ll do it the hard way.

    • who@feddit.orgEnglish
      69·
      2 days ago

      The Calyx statement explains it.

      Google released the Android Open Source Project code for this new version of their OS, but not device-specific code for the new Pixel models. GrapheneOS targets only Pixel devices, so they cannot continue development without access to that code, at least not as they have been so far.

    • Blaster M@lemmy.worldEnglish
      59·
      2 days ago

      Google regretting Android being open source and closing off access to the Pixel hardware source.

    • sturlabragason@lemmy.world
      40·
      2 days ago

      Link says it: “On June 10th, Google released Android 16 to AOSP - but without Pixel device-specific source code.”

      And

      “Why Android 16 is different

      Android 16 was released to AOSP yesterday but with a one big difference than typical releases:

      Google did not publish any device-specific source code for supported, modern Pixel devices. In previous years, Google released full device trees alongside new Android versions. This allowed developers to build and boot AOSP on Pixel hardware relatively easily. With Android 16, only the platform/framework code has been released. The device trees are missing, at least for now. This means AOSP 16 cannot currently be built or run on any recent Pixel device easily just using official source.”

        • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
          26·
          2 days ago

          Why? It’s pretty clear that Google is mostly done with users having choices, particularly indovidual users, and all the more so on Google-branded hardware.

          Manifest V3, Play Integrity, the attempt of introducing Web Integrity. How many more examples do you need to see?

          This seems like a perfectly logical decision in that direction.

                • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  IBM was never engaged in the home like Google. They had a few productivity apps you might have used, and you might have bought early IBM branded hardware, but by the 00s the IBM compatible marketing was unnecessary and they largely and quickly died off in the personal space without making much actual impact or penetration. Nobody ever choose IBM. It was compatible and probably came with your PC.

                  Google has decided to piss off % .05% of their users to simplify development and reduce their costs on one of the most used operating systems on the planet.

                  It’s not really comparable at all.

                  • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    1·
                    2 days ago

                    You kinda have a judgemental disposition that limits your perspective, and should be open to questions and interchange instead of hot take negativity and rude mockery.

                    I’m referring to a larger and more abstract scope than your assumption. No company that attempts to shape the world to their will and company’s ways fairs well in the long run. When they double down, as google is doing, it may seem like a position of leveraged power at the time, but it is the initial convulsion of a death throw. It will take a long time, but just like IBM is an irrelevant shadow of its former self, so will Google after trying to shape the world to its ways instead of changing with the times to align with public demands. The same can be said of the American auto industry, Motorola, HP, or any of the many former giant brands that are nothing more than a sticker placed on foreign contract manufactured mass produced goods. These all failed to shift and adapt to an ever changing and evolving public.

                    If Google had any sense whatsoever, it would not respond to Graphene as a problem but as a sign of their pending irrelevance. The move reflects an aging culture of insular egotism at the top of the company. Such a culture does not innovate or lead by brilliantly following what consumers really want. It tries to dictate the market and in so doing causes its own irrelevance in the long term. It is the monarchy succession crisis playing out to rhyming effect. Meritocracy is hard to create in practice, especially for the seats at the top. Great wealth is rarely meritorious – often inherited, and therefore is incapable of picking effective leadership in succession of those that built something great from the bottom up. Wealth also easily corrodes those that built with the passage of time and a class divide of disproportionate prosperity.