GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released(github.com) |
GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released(github.com) |
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.
Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience
It's like we've had this ancient knowledge passed down for generations but people constantly just ignore it.
Your comment is unnecessarily inflammatory.
Unfortunately I think that feature is shutting down.
https://www.verizon.com/support/vtext-vzwpix-shutdown/
I'm still waiting until RCS is supported before I actually use it.
It's not as funny in hindsight, given the unexpected results of that election, but at the time, it felt like top-tier humor.
AFAIUI though GOS does intend on providing an RCS impl eventually even if it takes years to do.
I broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?
In my experience, Graphene OS doesn't make compromises.
So having a bare bones aosp messaging app was never an issue for me. Having said that, I find fossify messages pretty good.
Will try out the new GOS app too.
(sarcasm obvious, but indeed full system backup is sorely missing. Seedvault is crap, not an option)
I can imagine many reasons to devote resources to it:
* A platform is only as good as its apps. If they want to grow GOS in the general public, it requires a good SMS/MMS messaging app.
* LLM tools greatly reduce development costs, especially for well-known functions like text messaging.
* Without secure messaging (as far as SMS/MMS can be secure), the platform security is greatly reduced.
* GOS got a big donation, or has a volunteer that wants to do messaging ...
But idk what I'm talking about. What is their approach?
People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens.
Only in a completely stupid, nonsensically A/B tested notion of "prefer". I'll refer you to this ~~excellent piece of satirical writing~~ actual post from Google design team: https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...
Makes me wonder about all the testing now
And the issue worded/tagged as a feature instead of a regression. Are the devs aware the feature existed before?
later:
It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:
"it's also helping us raise our standards for our own work by pointing it at that to get extremely pedantic criticism catching many things we would miss...We've hired multiple experienced app developers who have spent months working on modernizing the Messaging app and carefully reviewing it"
Other than that -- next year. And this is other companies' choice, not GrapheneOS team, to fix on releasing grossly insecure hardware or NOT releasing patches and fixes.
There's only a handful of critical details in a call history, and absolutely no reason for any UI to implement them as secondary or tertiary details: Whether it was in- or outbound. To/from what contact. The date and time.
2 taps for some other extra info such as call length, or further contact details, would be OK I guess, but for first-level info as these, it's 100% bad design.
I mean come on, design-wise this was already a "Done" thing in the golden Nokia days! https://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/03/02/a-week-with-the-nokia-n...
[*] Ctrl+F to find the image below "miss a call".
Also, GrapheneOS has very recently released automatic call recording for the Dialer.
You mean the perfectly functional (if barebones) AOSP call app? :)
If they fix(ed) their messaging app and their keyboard, then they've really eliminated a lot of potential complaints if a less tech-savvy crowd ends up buying future Motorolas.
They also plan to eventually support RCS in the Messaging app.
That's great. How can a FOSS project afford that? Where does GOS money come from? Did Daniel win the lottery?
Modernizing these apps seems very high-impact. These are the very first things a new user sees and after the initial modernization, they should be relatively cheap to maintain.
Messaging can be replaced with one of the hundreds decent messaging apps.
Unlike the backup app which is utterly unusable, untrustworthy and frankly crap. And CANNOT be replaced by anything else.
As it stands it's impossible to have reliable backups in GOS.
IIRC when they started first announced their replacement for the AOSP camera they said they hired a developer specifically for it.
People sometimes.
Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process.
> People sometimes.
I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in GrapheneOS the past few years, without complaint to the developers. And have submitted bug reports and logs. I'm "in the trenches", not just slinging mud from the outside. If I were in a better financial situation right now, I would be donating too.
Why? Using an LLM as an additional reviewer seems like a good use of LLMs? Personally I have found LLMs very useful for that and they catch issues that other experienced programmers do not always find. It’s not like they are vibecoding a messages app.
> shame an obvious regression happened for one of my primary use-cases: copying one-time codes
Then the "later" is that even with frontier AI review tools, it was still missed
I am not alleging vibe coding - that's a strawman.
Clearly.
>There's only a handful of critical details in a call history
And they're all there: profile pic, contact name, indicators that show incoming/outgoing + missed/connected, which SIM, a redial button, how long ago (which after about a week shows the date), Tapping the middle expands the row (no obstructive pop-up) to show Block, Message, & Details buttons.
The reason it has 'human times' is because multiple calls with the same contact are grouped, so a precise time doesn't always make sense. Tapping the Details will show all calls in that group, whether it's one or seven, with their full dates, times, durations, and further options. It's never been a difficult UX.
I might be mistaken but I seem to recall it being a done thing for android prior to several years ago when it was "improved" with an update. Although it's possible I'm confusing the call apps from AOSP and various vendors. Either way several of my past android devices had a significantly better address book, dialer, and call history.
Are you this … poorly informed
TIL that RCS was designed as a fairly decentralized protocol where every carrier could run their own RCS servers, but it didnt get adoption. So Google stepped in and built their own routing infrastructure, and now mostly all RCS is centralized on Google's servers (even if you use an iPhone, because the RCS server is mandated by your carrier)
I suspect there are fewer regressions per release on graphenes alpha messenger than there are in googles message's app.
Just because RCS can't be done without metadata doesn't mean it's a fruitless endeavor. Why not have someone use RCS to then get on Signal? That is so much better than plaintext SMS to Signal.
And for most people, RCS between Android <-> iOS is the biggest advancement in encrypted communication for the layman that I've seen since Let's Encrypt.
If my phone were lost, stolen or destroyed, I would simply revoke its Wireguard key, buy a new Pixel, flash Graphene, and provision a new Wireguard key. Essentially no data of value would be lost, and restoring my apps and settings manually would take an hour tops. Admittedly, I don't use many apps, so YMMV.
> Fairphone has said they don't plan to add a secure element. It can be seen from their current devices that they don't fully keep up with privacy/security backports and lag a year behind on shipping yearly OS releases. They skip over the monthly and quarterly releases entirely. They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS option in partnership with Murena. They clearly demonstrate that security and even privacy are not the priorities.
it sounds like they are saying that /e/OS is less secure than fairphone's own OS. with all criticism against /e/OS taken into account, i highly doubt that fairphone would have been able to make their own version of android more secure than /e/OS when they are not even interested in working on that.
In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else.
With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
Device support code updated to new monthly, quarterly and yearly releases of AOSP within several months to provide new security improvements (Pixels receive these in the month they're released)
Fairphone's hardware and software is developed by a Chinese ODM (T2Mobile), who even have difficulty pushing out monthly patches very timely. They don't even do QPR2s, major Android updates are very late (usually almost a year), they rarely do driver firmware or kernel updates. There is no way they could fulfill this guarantee unless they started doing software development in-house and paid Qualcomm for monthly firmware updates.
Forking GOS and porting it to a new device is a huge and unreasonable ask for an individual user. Even less so when you include the fact that you'll need to keep it up to date.
I wonder if fable or astra could wire everything up.
https://www.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-plus-e-operati...
[1] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-lineageos-23-for-the-...
[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
And why would Meta even do that?
I really think COVID shutdowns did the mini in. People couldn’t go to the store and try holding a phone where they could use it comfortably one-handed again. And then by the time they could, Apple axed it.
- remind you that the phone is in your pocket, to initiate the infinite scroll
For one, the sales were still perfectly respectable. "Versus the rest of the lineup" is doing a ton of work here, because the rest of the iPhone models sell like crazy. For two, it is still bizarre that manufacturers refuse to make small phones even with that in mind. If you wear very small clothes (or very large clothes) that won't sell as many units, your options are limited, you have to pay more, but you aren't forced to go naked. But there's nobody out there doing the equivalent strategy for phones.
They have 14 devs 13 are payed in ETH and 1 in CAD.
Iirc they said something like 2 million in donations in 2025. Vitalik Buterin may have donated at least some time ago.
Proton donates double digits.
Cape has donated around 100k https://www.cape.co/blog/cape-supports-grapheneos and plans to donate 100k this year.
There's estimated 500k users so if 25% donated 10 dollars a year that's 1.25 million.
> Iirc they said something like 2 million in donations in 2025.
That's not enough for 14 devs, plus infrastructure, etc.
> There's estimated 500k users so if 25% donated 10 dollars a year that's 1.25 million.
Unfortunately, 25% would be extraordinary for any project.
They should make their financing public (and maybe they do), being a non-profit and also asking people to trust them with their security. Funding provides influence: if 50% came from adtech or public surveillance companies (e.g., Flock, Palantir, etc.), then people would have questions.
>plus infrastructure
A lot must be sponsored. https://xprivate.lol/GrapheneOS/status/2070298479897833725#m
I expect the official account will give you a reply besides my speculation.
They've stated that all money comes from donations.
Most of what they earn is public as a result of the donation method, like crypto. And most donors are completely anonymous.
GrapheneOS does not accept any funding with strings attached.
I think people get the wrong estimation about the size of the contingent that want small phones. It is a vocal minority, similar to people ranting every time about headphone jacks. Most people do not care about these things. If they want to hook a wired headphone, they'll get a 10 Euro dongle and most people use Bluetooth. My wife uses a wired headphone for listening audio books at night and I never heard her complain about the stereo jack going away.
For a small company sure it could be considered a success.
I don’t think tech can be compared to the fashion industry. Also that example doesn’t really work. Because you basically have a locked in group who needs the clothes. Just also culturally there’s reasons why these clothing sizes exist. Nobody needs a small phone.
But across the board it makes no sense for any OEM to make small phones when the data all shows that bigger screens sell more. That’s just absorbing an unnecessary opportunity cost.
I think the only real way small phones will reach the market at this point in time is via a private company that’s basically run as a passion project.
Honestly in this case the consumers do share the blame. They begged for the mini and didn’t show up. If apple couldn’t do it it’s unlikely that the android oems could.
...in tech forums where people hold strong opinions about tech and the people who have their pet peeves come out. IRL I have rarely heard somebody wanting Apple to bring the Mini back. Or the stereo jack for that matter.
And no, the clothes analogy is not flawed. The point is that in other markets, niche tastes and needs get served even if it isn't as cheap or plentiful. It's only the phone manufacturers which refuse to try to get sales from a smaller (but still quite extant) market.
It's all about scale. Yes 10B is a lot for most companies, but for Apple 5% is just a blip on the radar. They probably also did their market research and found that the vast majority of Mini users would buy another iPhone model if they discontinued the Mini. Those facts combined give Apple little incentive to continue the lineup.
Another thing that further clouds the 5% discussion is that some Mini purchasers may have bought it not because of the size, but because it was $100 cheaper while still getting the same SoC. Maybe those buyers were disappointed by the worse battery life, and Apple could choose to axe it or make it the same price as the regular iPhone and it would drop way below 5%.