NitroPhone – Pixel 4a phone with GrapheneOS

Re:NitroPhone – Pixel 4a phone with GrapheneOS by est31 on Thursday September 02, 2021 @11:49AM (#28393573)

Qualcomm supplies the entire SoC and this includes drivers and firmware for way more than just the CPU. You can get Lineage OS onto Pixel phones outside of Google's support, but that only includes the OS layer and not the driver/firmware/baseband layer.

I don't think Google can change anything about this really. Qualcomm is the only non vertically integrated vendor of SoCs with the wanted features and quality Google needs (apple is vertically integrated). They don't have any buying power towards Qualcomm. In the hardware business, they are a niche provider. 2% market share in North America, world wide even less.

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Re:NitroPhone – Pixel 4a phone with GrapheneOS by depingus on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:59PM (#28394480)

With the Pixel 6 Google is introducing their own SoC called Tensor. https://blog.google/products/pixel/google-tensor-debuts-new-...

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Re:NitroPhone – Pixel 4a phone with GrapheneOS by est31 on Thursday September 02, 2021 @08:00PM (#28398899)

Google said they want to support the phones for 5 years, definitely an improvement. Note that it's not a sole Google product but a collaboration with Samsung, so will likely build on their Exynos IP.

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