Android
DROID DOES
Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.
2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.
4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.
5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.
6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.
7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.
8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.
Community Resources:
We are Android girls*,
In our Lemmy.world.
The back is plastic,
It's fantastic.
*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.
Our Partner Communities:
view the rest of the comments
A solution is to use GrapheneOS, a privacy focused and security hardened android ROM. They support some very old phones (like some almost a decade old), and continue to support all google pixels going forward. With GrapheneOS you will continue to get security upgrades ported over for a lot longer, and the phone will run better than ever de-googled!
GrapheneOS kills support when Google kills security updates, I believe. Source: my Pixel 4a came out in 2020, and Graphene already strongly recommends against using it and dropped updates entirely a few months ago.
Lineage and Pixel Experience ROMs are better at long-term support. But any custom ROM on older non-officially-supported phones is vulnerable to firmware exploits, since those fixes are typically distributed as binaries by the hardware manufacturer (Qualcomm etc). So I understand why Graphene drops support so quick, since they want all Graphene users to benefit from strong security practices.
That was a great explanation, much appreciated thank you!
That explains why when I looked at Graphene later it didn’t support the Pixel 2
Same problems as ever with custom roms though, Cameras don't work as properly, BT/Wifi issues, have to run old unsecure kernels, etc.
Respectfully, this is not true anymore. GrapheneOS works like a charm for most that use it. There are some issues regarding push notifications (if you decide not to install Google Play Services on your phone), but other than that the phones retain their usual functionality.
Additionally, the part of your comment regarding running old insecure kernels is not at all the case for GrapheneOS. The whole point with the OS is to run the latest security updates/patches and kernel. Take a look at the part on their website regarding patches for more information: https://grapheneos.org/features#more-complete-patching