Last I heard, Google discontinued publishing device trees and driver binaries for Pixel devices with their recent changes to their stewardship of the AOSP [0]. Was it something definitive or are they merely delayed? If the practice is being discontinued, what would be the reason why? Doesn't publishing these artifacts create a business case for customer demand for the Pixel devices? Or is there some cost that outweighs the benefits? Is it maintainer overhead?
I didn't bring this up when it was a news story last month because there was a lot of cynicism in the thread, but I am genuinely curious. I am really grateful for both GrapheneOS and Google for creating a phone platform that Just Works for the essential stuff and that I can reasonably recommend to non-technical people!
Android 16 no longer provides device trees for Pixels as part of the Android Open Source Project. It's important to note it doesn't provide those for any other devices. There are no other OEMs providing similar AOSP support. A few OEMs publish more basic device trees for older Android versions. This was Pixels losing one of their advantages compared to non-Pixels but it was never one of our hardware requirements, which are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. It isn't part of why Pixels are the only devices meeting our requirements. We're working with a major Android OEM to change that though, hopefully for 2026 or at least 2027.
GrapheneOS typically ports to new yearly Android releases in a couple days and tends to have it reach the Stable channel in under 2 weeks. We completed our initial port to Android 16 in a similar time period after the release on 2025-06-10. However, we then had to reimplement device support in a similar way to how we would support a non-Pixel device. Our initial production release based on Android 16 was published on June 30th. As usual, we had to spend around a week making a series of releases fixing regressions reported by users. It reached our Stable channel on July 8th.
Since our port to Android 16 took significantly longer than usual, we backported most of the Android 16 firmware, all of the kernel drivers and parts of the userspace device support to our now obsolete Android 15 QPR2 branch and did a few more releases based on Android 15 QPR2 where we were able to provide the full 2025-06-05 patch level which also turned out to be the full 2025-07-05 patch level due to no vulnerability fixes in the July 2025 Android Security Bulletin or Pixel Update Bulletin. This was an unusual approach and not generally a reasonable way of doing things. We were able to do it successfully.
It won't be nearly as much of an issue going forward since we dealt with building the new automation we needed. Our port to Android 16 QPR1, Android 16 QPR2, Android 16 QPR3, Android 17, etc. shouldn't be nearly as difficult and we should get back to our typical porting time for major releases.
It will start out being their regular phones with security and updates improved to meet the requirements of GrapheneOS. When we demonstrate there's a huge demand for it after the products launch, we can have more influence. Our focus would be adding some security features not available on Pixels. The current aim is preserving the security we get from Pixels, but the future goals are more ambitious.
It is so annoying that all current smartphones are so large and heavy. The XZ1 Compact could be even smaller now considering the large case frame around the display. That would be amazing.
The phone I am currently using has the following dimensions: 165.2 x 75.7 x 9.1 mm (6.50 x 2.98 x 0.36 in). I think it is a sweet spot for me. I would not go for larger than this.
I doubt that GOS will be able to move the needle on such a decision. But I'm also someone who'd love to have a small and more light-weight smartphone again. A smaller display of maximum 5.1 inches or so would also be in line with a sentiment of using the smartphone for its core purpose over attempting to turn it into a small PC for playing games and what not. I believe this correlates with a more secure phone.
In some keyboards (like Florisboard) there are options to either left-align or right-align the keyboard, which helps you to do that, even on a big smartphone
Quite a lot of detail on this comment, thanks for that!
But I'm still left a bit confused about the future devices GraphaneOS will support:
Because you said discussion are being done with an OEM, will GraphaneOS switch from pixels to a different device?
You also said that not having the device tree won't be a major hurdle in building GraphaneOS for the future, does that mean we can expect the pixel 10 to have GraphaneOS or it's too early to know ?
> Because you said discussion are being done with an OEM, will GraphaneOS switch from pixels to a different device?
Pixels will be supported until end-of-life. Future Pixels will be supported if they continue meeting our requirements.
> You also said that not having the device tree won't be a major hurdle in building GraphaneOS for the future, does that mean we can expect the pixel 10 to have GraphaneOS or it's too early to know ?
We expect 10th gen Pixels to meet our requirements and we should be able to add support for them. It's not going to happen in 12 to 48 hours from the official launch of the devices as we did for around the Pixel 6a and later. It will be more work. We've automated most of the device support for existing Pixels now and have removed nearly all of the Android 15 QPR2 device trees rather than manually updating them. We're continuing to automate more and will use that approach for supporting new Pixels.
The devices with an OEM partner are further in the future than the Pixel 10. We need Qualcomm's new SoC with hardware memory tagging support to launch because a flagship Snapdragon is the best fit other than the current lack of hardware memory tagging. Some things need to be addressed by the OEM including licensing extra things like Qualcomm and filling in some missing features. There needs to be a clear, workable plan for updates including Linux kernel LTS branches.
I've never owned a pixel, but I'm planning on getting the pixel 10 so I can use the new android 16 Linux terminal with graphical support. I hope the pixel 10 will still fit your requirements and it won't be a hurdle to port GOS without the device tree. I see no other OEM supporting the level of virtualization with kvm and vergil Google is bringing to the pixels. Good luck!
Pixel 10 will be supported by GrapheneOS provided it continues to meet our requirements - we'll know when it's out. It'll definitely take us longer than it has before.
A collaboration with an OEM doesn't mean we'll stop providing existing or future Pixels if they continue to meet our requirements.
As you're working with the OEM, I hope you'll consider a model which will come with either an IPS screen or is compatible with a 3rd party IPS replacement.
I bought a Pixel 9 Pro Xl specifically to use with GrapheneOS. Unfortunately, its OLED and my eyes were incompatible. The PWM on the screen was terrible and I had to return it after some headaches.
Of course, none of that was the fault of GrapheneOS. I absolutely loved using it and think your project is vital.
> "As you're working with the OEM, I hope you'll consider a model which will come with either an IPS screen or is compatible with a 3rd party IPS replacement."
Ahaha, don't get your hopes up, friend. The possibility of an adequate, degoogled Android with picky requirements as GOS on good, ultramobile hardware (matte DCI-P3 IPS, 3.5 mm audio, USB-C 3.2 or better, dedicated, ideally quick-access mSD card slot, IP68 rating, good cameras, EMR pen compatibility, changeable battery, non-plastic case) is virtually nil. That would essentially be a modern hybrid between a Samsung XCover Pro 6 and one of the older Samsung Note phones, e. g. the Note 9. Days long gone... :(
I suppose this means that supporting future Pixel devices will be more difficult? If someone has the ear of anyone at Google, especially someone who works with Android, please share this cause with them!
Generic power-user here:
I am going to guess without the backing of Google going forcefully open-source, "niche" hardware such as Google's Tensor will lose their attractiveness.
However one must note also that for now not even Snapdragon fulfills GOS requirements. If/when that changes, Snapdragon devices may have more open-source community momentum than Google's Tensor. Plus all the economy of scale, etc..
In terms of security, Microtek is even more far behind Snapdragon.
Again, not an Android dev here, take the text above with a grain of salt, YMMV, etc..
I heard unsubstantiated rumors that it was somehow antitrust-related. If they are selling off their device business (again), then it makes sense that the device drivers would not be part of AOSP...
Pixels are no longer the Android reference devices. An Android company ending up with the OS, Google Play and Google's OEM partners wouldn't need Pixels. That's a possible reason for the change. However, the simplest explanation is that they're continuing to take cost cutting to an extreme where it negatively impacts their long term revenue far more than the money it saves. A lot of Pixels were sold due to first class support for using other operating systems including it not voiding the warranty.
It may be permanent and I think this was the official indirect response:
"AOSP needs a reference target that is flexible, configurable, and affordable — independent of any particular hardware, including those from Google." [0]
Emphasis on independent of any particular hardware.
Current speculation/inference suggests it is because of the antitrust case against them, preparing for the possibility that they may be divested of Android (or at least to decouple in meaningful ways [1]).
It does not appear to be working for me right now, I get "error loading exercises".
What are your thoughts about the wger project [0]? It is a FLOSS AGPL-licensed self-hosted fitness/workout/nutrition manager that has existed for almost a decade (I think?) It's a django app and has a companion flutter app that runs on android/ios/windows/linux/macos. It supports multiple users and could even be used to run a gym. Body.build [1] is a newer FLOSS project (also browser-based) that is focused around building a weight lifting program. The author of body.build also contributes to wger.
I'm using wger in my homelab and while there are a lot of moving pieces to the self-host process, it works well. I'd say the biggest limitation is the comprehensiveness of their exercise database, but that is something that many people have recognized and are steadily expanding. If anyone is willing to contribute exercises (and exercise media) to this AGPL licensed project, they would definitely appreciate it!
I just tried Wget the other month and sadly can't recommend it. The UX of the website is horrible, and their mobile app is a buggy mess (at least on iOS). No matter if I wanted to start a workout, edit weights for an exercise, or browse previous session, the app kept crashing, hanging and logging me out. I am now using LiftLog which does everything that I need. FOSS too. https://github.com/LiamMorrow/LiftLog
It's interesting that fitness and weightlifting are pretty common these days, but there are so few non-commercial applications out there that are usable and well maintained. At least that's my perception after digging through dozens of Github projects.
No. I indeed paid a human to set up a training plan and show me how to correctly execute the exercises. Highly recommend that to anybody starting with weightlifting. There's so much you can do wrong.
Yes I have a gym membership and they offer sessions with a personal trainer for a flat fee per hour. Talked with my trainer, told him what I wanted to achieve and he wrote a basic plan based on that. Then we went around the studio and he explained all exercises and how to do them properly.
> Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]
For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago.
I would not consider asking a question about the impact of current events on a market segment relevant to the discussion topic to be political. The disclaimer is presumably to encourage respondents not to drag things in an off topic direction. Ironic, considering the outcome.
This seems to be using classic formula -> get trivial, ready made component, design 3D printed enclosure and hook it up to Raspberry Pi. Instant Hacker News homepage.
So, where's your hardware project? Have you ever made one? I think you're underestimating the amount of time and effort that went into the linked project.
Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]
Being all polite and non-political and shit is what brought us to this pass.
Never lose an opportunity to make the people who voted for the current state of affairs feel isolated, rejected, guilty, and generally bad. Being nice to them doesn't work.
Please, I don't want to come on to HN to see politics injected into everything. Stay on reddit for that.
I logged in to make a comment regarding something within my area of expertise: the technology present in the parent link and how this technology has been accessible to hobbyists for over 10 years.
>I don't want to come on to HN to see politics injected into everything
If it's political to wonder how tariffs impact the cost of the project we're discussing, then everything is political, and it's pointless to complain about politics being "injected into everything."
>You’re feeding into the confirmation bias I already have about how the opposition thinks
It's wild that you acknowledge your cognitive bias and then blame others for it instead of working on it. If I wrote something like that, I hope I would have the wherewithal to notice that something is seriously wrong with my thinking.
Yes the opposition thinks evil is evil. The opposition also thinks water is wet. Check back here tomorrow for more obvious things rational people think.
The opposition reductively believes this is an existential battle between “good and evil”, they’re the “good”, and that’s a position from which one can justify almost anything to eradicate “evil”.
Well, Trump is the one that almost always frames things in very binary way. If someone contradicts him, it is "fake news". His opposition is typically much less so, and much more rational and thoughtful.
Even many in the opposition agrees with many of his goals (control immigration, protect American industries, shrink the government).
You can always know, if you want to, by actually engaging in constructive dialog. Which probably isn’t going to happen in this thread because it’s ostensibly about a raspberry pi LiDAR scanner, and thus neither really the time nor place.
The MAGA crowd is not even remotely interested in 'constructive dialog' and is so far down the hole of drinking the kool-aide, constructive dialog with them will likely never be possible.
You cannot have constructive dialog about astronomy with someone who thinks the sky is made of green and purple polkadots because that's what someone told them, and dismiss all evidence to the contrary as a massive conspiracy.
They don't even believe in democracy or constitutional rights - at least, for anyone but them.
Please elaborate more, my friend! Let's say that I was^W am a programmer who is seduced by the plain-text accounting / one-database-is-all-you-need notion and I think my needs will be simple, as I can keep the business of my bodega all in the RAM of my brain... Or at least I think I can.
How can this go wrong? What are some of the needs that compel the bodega owner to move on to more sophisticated tools? Is it because of calculating things like taxes and hourly rates and the like?
Imagine it’s the year 1890 at Standard Oil and they have a building full of filing clerks.
It’s run by the great John D Rockefeller, of which you can read more in the fantastic biography Titan. He’s a stickler for accurate accounting at all times.
Now they decide to buy a batch of barrels for all their oil.
- one clerk runs down to the cabinet with a file for all the items SO buys.
- another cross-references each item and fetches the files of the vendors for each of those items
- another cross-references with past invoices to get the most recent price for each item
- another gets a list of locations SO uses to store barrels
Now the purchasing manager looks at all this and decides which barrels to buy, from which vendor, how many, and where its getting delivered. So he writes out a purchase order / PO.
So back to the clerks:
- one runs along to file the PO in the PO filing cabinet. Remember, uncle John is watching and he wants to go to any cabinet or any manager at any time and get up-to-date details of what's going on.
- another one goes to the Items cabinet, finds the barrels we ordered, and notes on them that a PO was issued for this many barrels on such and such a date.
- one actually sends a copy of the PO to the vendor.
Skipping over some steps for simplicity, the barrels arrive one day with their invoice attached.
An Invoice! Now the army of clerks swing back into action. They get their guy at the warehouse to send them the original invoice that came stapled to the barrels. Then:
- one runs to the PO cabinet, finds the PO that was issued, marks it as done, and writes the invoice number on it.
- another one runs to the accounting department. There they make the double-entry bookkeeping entries to account for the money that is now owed to the vendor, and for the inventory value that has gone up.
- another one runs to the vendor cabinet and records the purchase on their file
- another one goes to the inventory cabinet and files a record updating the inventory balance for the barrel item
- someone files a copy of the invoice for future reference
Eventually we pay the invoice:
- a clerk keeps an eye on the payment terms for this and other vendors and calculates how much cash we have to send to each vendor each month
- another runs around to each paid invoice marking them as paid
- another one actually writes the cheques and mails them off
- someone has to tell the accounting department how much money we just paid, to which vendors, out of which bank accounts
Things get fun when these barrels eventually get sent to a production facility and filled with oil. Now the clerks have to do the correct filings to destroy the barrel items along with a quantity of oil, and create a new filled-barrel item. The cost of this depends on all of the cost of the barrel item, the oil, the labour, and some other things, all of which is determined using past entries.
This is a toy example and the complexity spirals from here. For example another invoice can arrive from the people who transported the barrels. Depending on your CFO, or the current accounting laws, you might want to include that in the cost of the barrels, or record it as a business expense.
You might have different departments who do their accounting separately, so now each transaction has to be split correctly. You might want to track the hourly rates of each employee and factor that into the cost of each finished-barrel item, and also tracking what everybody should get paid.
Add to this any idiosyncratic business rules stemming from management decisions, laws, unique physical constraints, or whatever.
An ERP system is all of these cabinets and their rules put into a relational database with a front-end.
MAJORITY of the world businesses are small shops. Mom and pop businesses or family run shops. They need accounting to track if their customers have paid them, if they have to pay to suppliers and any taxes are due.
Erp systems are wayyyyy too much work for them.
I work with small businesses and they would rather themselves keep half baked records than hire a pro because that saves them cash in the ongoing basis.
Simple accounting helps them. Thats like bringing a shotgun to a knife fight.
Thank you for the excellent reply! I think I understand now... Once a business starts transacting in things other than a single type of money (say durable goods, consumables, services, or say other types of money) it becomes necessary to reconcile these non-money-denominated accounts. And for that, you need more than a single database, or single spreadsheet. You need a suite of persons or softwares that can __account__ for these stocks and flows, and the rules that come along with them.
And that is called ERP, of which "simple" money accounting is but one component of.
So root commenter's objection was more along the lines of: "those are some bold claims for mere money-accounting program. if you used a _real_ accounting program (as in an ERP) then you'd understand how complex peoples' needs can be". And the tone they phrased it elicited the downmods :)
I guess I understand. I still admire the OP and the frustration that fueled their desire to create a tool that works for them. And the tone of the readme is very endearing, it reminds me of the things my IRC friends would say to kick-off a lively discussion...
To add to your point, there's also other complexities like multiple currencies, keeping track of tax owed, and probably the biggest one: multiple people of all skill levels entering data into the system at the same time.
Like the other commenters have mentioned, if the premise is to prevent the child from going online, I am not sure if I agree with this approach...
But to answer your question as stated: it looks like the Sony Walkman models NWZ-Z1040/Z1050/Z1060 runs (ran?) android and has a GPS receiver, but no cellular capability.
I can't find any newer Walkmans that have GPS receivers, but you might want to look there. I know everyone is telling you to use a old phone, but I am sure that you can find a device to suit your needs. Good luck!
(If you are handy, you can also use an old phone, open it up, and physically destroy the antennas, although this might hurt the battery life if the firmware decides to crank up the transmission power to maximum, if it cannot "see" any networks or towers).
But for maximum street cred, I'd go with two devices: a 'vintage' mp3 player and a 'vintage' or rugged GPS receiver. The more obscure the better. Those things are cool now!
Edit: The Garmin iQue were also Palm PDAs that had a GPS receiver and a headphone jack. They also look pretty rad and turn-of-the-century :) But remember, at some point children establish their own tastes and identities partially defined /against/ their parents, so just because you might think that something is cool doesn't mean that they would.
Just for everyone's reference, there is a rich community of third-party packages [0] ("apps") and launchers for rM and rM2, so it's possible to add on any number of sync (syncthing), encryption (gocrpytfs), epub (koreader), web browsing (netsurf), vnc (vnsee), wacom driver and more. The user get's root shell access from the beginning, and you can automate all sorts of things using systemd and standard shell utilities.
The out-of-the-box software may be a bit barebones for some power users, but you can certainly add-on the functionality that you desire.
I don't like being negative, but I feel like I am obligated to pipe up every time I see Onyx products hit the front page here[0], because I was one of the people who politely requested that Onyx abide by the terms of the licenses for the Free Software that they use in their products. To this day, they refuse to do so.
- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.
- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux
- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])
- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.
- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud
And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].
Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?
Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.
I'd say it's likely not due to any shenanigans, but simply because HN readers in general love eInk devices.
That said, I do which there were more players in the market. If you want an Android powered e-Ink device, you don't have a lot of options at the moment.
I don’t think flagging a post for that is a good use of that system, because the submission isn’t breaking the rules. But a comment in this thread as a reminder seems reasonable.
Since you seem well informed: what about Ratta, the maker of Supernote? Their software seems pretty good, and they are about to release another product.
They are also a Chinese company, I believe, which does make me so what nervous about writing down any IP...
How cool! I have over a decade of notes taken in xournal and other digital tablets and was considering taking a short sabbatical to type them all out. Might not need to after all! I will definitely try this.
Oh that's so exciting to hear! Please do let me know if you need help when trying to use the plugin! I am happy to help you until the plugin works for you.
Every now and again, I see stories about Onyx and their tablets pop up and I have to dust off this old comment of mine [0]. I've since sold the tablet and picked up a remarkable that I am very happy with and have modified in many ways.
Long story short:
- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources
- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux
- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC.
- Their digitizer API is still hostile to developers.
- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud
And even worse, they are using "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL. This company is shit and no one should give them any money. And yet, all of these "review sites" (full of every kind of affiliate link imaginable) can't help themselves from riding the gravy train of free product from this company.
Edit: And then there are large threads like this [2] where people recognize all the problems and try to "secure" their devices. （ ´_ゝ`）
> I've since sold the tablet and picked up a remarkable that I am very happy with and have modified in many ways.
Could you elaborate a bit more about the modifications you've done to the remarkable?
After looking at all these devices, I always come back to the remarkable, but then things like their cloud subscription thing and the weird ways to get files to/from it steer me away.
It's just linux under the hood and they give you root access. So you can install anything that you can compile, and you have access to all the compiled packages in entware [0].
For sync, I have wireguard and syncthing. For backups, I use rsync. For epubs, I have koreader. I even installed netsurf for fun, but I don't use it often. I was even using gocryptfs at one point, but that workflow kept breaking with updates so I stopped using that.
All of the tablets that I have seen perform handwriting recognition via a cloud service, so that doesn't interest me and I haven't come across any local solutions for rM (although it's been over a year since I last checked).
It's an unusually nice experience for such an open platform.
I have the same experience with a Onyx Boox. No more updates after 1 year. As (european) consumers rights require a working product for at least 2 years, and security updates are an essential part of a 'working product', it's easy to return it to the seller (not Onyx).
Also switching over to maildirs (which is a one-time inconvenience) means that you can share the same maildir with mu et al. Sharing your maildir is definitely not supported though! :)
I didn't bring this up when it was a news story last month because there was a lot of cynicism in the thread, but I am genuinely curious. I am really grateful for both GrapheneOS and Google for creating a phone platform that Just Works for the essential stuff and that I can reasonably recommend to non-technical people!
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259921