treble_experimentations

I find it difficult to evaluate an Android for my phone. Currently running AOSP (actually phh-treble) rather than any fork that adds any significant features. In particular it's hard to tell if any particular fork is just a one man hobby project, a fork of a fork, or has any significant work behind it. Of course the big one is LineageOS, but they seem to make specific phone images, mostly for high-end phones, rather than generic system images for my low-end phone. The list of generic system images is extremely long and not all that helpful: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Gen... I ended up chosing phh-treble because it doesn't add any BS, promises quick updates, and serves as a base for many other roms, lending it some reliability. It's pretty much AOSP with hardware fixes. That said, it doesn't do some pretty bas

Becauses the cost of doing a CI of Android is astronomical. (Especially for students) For my own ROM [1] I spent days and a hundred of euros optimizing the cost of building by trying various cloud providers (fwiw my current best spot is scaleway GP instance with 600GB local SSD). As of today, I'm still at 6€ per builds (For standard ROM devs, that should be cut down to 2€ I'd say). There is simply no way I can afford a CI. (well if someone wants to give me money for that, please do!) I do my best to isolate components and have at least some kind of CI where I can, but that's hard work (And doing CI is my day job, and I consider myself rather good in it) Even android's own CI is very far from what you'd call a modern CI. They basically just build master once every hour and pray for the best, and let the build cop fix that. They do have a m

Different approaches: Daniel Micay's https://grapheneos.org is a step in the direction you're looking for. With Android 8 Google introduced Project Treble which kind of enforces that AOSP work out-of-the-box on every (!) Google Certified device. This has kick-started a popular project, phh-treble, by a senior XDA developer that I keep a keen eye on. You could flash AOSP today on any (!) Google certified android phone that launched with Oreo+ with very few quirks, if any. https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Fre...

With device-independent ROMs and unlockable bootloaders, this is quite easy to do in a large set of recent phones. See [1] for a detailed list. There are some model-specific glitches, though. Some manufacturers haven't implemented Treble HAL properly. So, for the time being, I prefer running pure AOSP on a Pixel. Paradoxically, the best way to use Android but avoid Google is buying a Google phone. [1] https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki

IMHO, the best alternative to Android that can be used right now is pure AOSP, or an Android distribution that tracks AOSP closely. In the past, that was CopperheadOS. Now, GrapheneOS. The downside is pretty limited hardware choice. Basically, Pixel (and Nexus for legacy releases). Plus some Sony Xperia (if you can cope with a few non-critical hardware glitches). The upside is very good security, and not being tracked. F-Droid is, for me, a surprisingly nice ecosystem. Firefox, Termux, Conversations, Signal, OsmAnd, Haven, etc. I don't need much else. Your needs might be different, but you can always install MicroG and sideload things from Google Play if you ever require propietary applications. LineageOS is nice, but I don't like excessive hackiness and lack of focus in security. I understand it's partly something given by their goal of

> [...] but are the current Google phones any less usable than other Androids for people who are keen to avoid going all in on Google services? Paradoxically, they are way more usable. They are the only phones (on some Sony too, but with several caveats) where it's easy to compile and install your own AOSP. Lots of security focused efforts aim at Pixels for this reason. See CopperheadOS and its successor [1]. With the advent of device independent ROMs (thanks to Treble) it will be a bit easier to run generic ROMs on any phone. But there are still many glitches [2]. [1] https://grapheneos.org/ [2] https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki

I would be a bit reluctant to run CopperheadOS now. Sadly the main developer left after somewhat hostile actions from the CEO, and there have been lots of changes in the organization. IMHO the best option for a secure phone is pure Android without Google blobs. That is, AOSP on a Pixel phone. Plus an F-Droid userland. If a Pixel is too expensive, you can always try to get an AOSP device-independent image on a new phone that supports Treble. For example, the super cheap Nokia 1 seems to work well [1]. [1] https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki

You can run GSI (generic system image) ROMs as I explained above, but there are still many glitches. And some Android One devices don't have unlockable bootloaders, so you can't even flash a GSI. See https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki for the list of supported devices and bugs.

AndroidHardening is quite interesting. I think that since AOSP is getting better, it's also more sustainable for a single developer to maintain a smaller project rather than a full blown distro. It's a shame no other phones aside from Pixels are able to run AOSP without significant limitations. Some Sony are quite capable to run AOSP, but there are several hardware glitches [1]. Aside, hardware independent ROMs enabled by Treble are also promising, but there are many pitfalls too [2]. Android would be a much more interesting ecosystem if a significant portion of the phones were capable of running AOSP. [1] https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-started/... [2] https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki