Google removed device trees from Android 16, making it harder for GrapheneOS and others to build private, de-Googled phones. These trees were crucial for adapting Android to real devices—now developers must reverse engineer it all.
GrapheneOS is biting the bullet to make this happen despite this challenge. I donated $5,000 to support their work and encourage you to do the same: grapheneos.org/donate
There are few ways to use a phone privately today—and Google is making it harder. The future of private Android depends on supporting open-source alternatives.
Google removed device trees from Android 16, making it harder for GrapheneOS and others to build private, de-Googled phones. These trees were crucial for adapting Android to real devices—now developers must reverse engineer it all.
GrapheneOS is biting the bullet to make this happen despite this challenge. I donated $5,000 to support their work and encourage you to do the same: grapheneos.org/donate
There are few ways to use a phone privately today—and Google is making it harder. The future of private Android depends on supporting open-source alternatives.
"We're seeing really dramatic moves, and it's all really tied to Ukraine right now, and in a secondary way, in terms of interest rates," Octavio Marenzi, CEO of Opimas, told Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday. "This war in Ukraine is going to give the Fed the ammunition, the cover that it needs, to not raise interest rates too quickly. And I think Jay Powell is a very tepid sort of inflation fighter and he's not going to do as much as he needs to do to get that under control. And this seems like an excuse to kick the can further down the road still and not do too much too soon." The next bit isn’t clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Fools’ prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but it’s hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Andrey, a Russian entrepreneur living in Brazil who, fearing retaliation, asked that NPR not use his last name, said Telegram has become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war. The channel appears to be part of the broader information war that has developed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has paid Russian TikTok influencers to push propaganda, according to a Vice News investigation, while ProPublica found that fake Russian fact check videos had been viewed over a million times on Telegram. The gold standard of encryption, known as end-to-end encryption, where only the sender and person who receives the message are able to see it, is available on Telegram only when the Secret Chat function is enabled. Voice and video calls are also completely encrypted.
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