With the release of Android 16, Google changed how it developed Android. Development is now taking place behind closed doors, with the code dropped after the corresponding version has been released to Pixel devices. Well, it turns out this wasn’t the only thing Google has changed about Android development. As the developers of CalyxOS, a popular de-Googled Android ROM, dove into the Android 16 AOSP source code, they realised something very important was missing: the device-specific source code for modern Pixel devices.
Android 16 was released to AOSP yesterday but with a one big difference than typical releases: Google did not publish any device-specific source code for supported, modern Pixel devices. In previous years, Google released full device trees alongside new Android versions. This allowed developers to build and boot AOSP on Pixel hardware relatively easily. With Android 16, only the platform/framework code has been released. The device trees are missing, at least for now.
This means AOSP 16 cannot currently be built or run on any recent Pixel device easily just using official source. It’s unclear whether this is a delay or a policy change. Either way, it seriously disrupts custom ROM development and our porting efforts.
↫ CalyxOS on Reddit
If this is truly a policy change, it’s a big one that affects custom ROM developers considerably. Pixel devices were “special” among custom ROM developers because support for them was part of AOSP releases, so they were well-supported by projects like CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, and LineageOS, including all the hardware components, and with quick updates. Without access to the Pixel-specific source code for the Pixel 6 to Pixel 9a, these devices will now have to be treated like any other Android phone as far as ROM developers go, meaning it’ll take a lot more work and time to get them to work properly with new major Android releases.
Google did not announce this potential policy change, and this has some in the custom Android ROM community on edge. I’ve been talking to people in the custom ROM community, and the story goes that a few months ago, at least one of these communities was approached by a journalist who wanted to talk to them. This journalist claimed that Google intends to discontinue the Android Open Source Project, with the first step Google would take being no longer releasing the device-specific Pixel source code (something nobody knew would happen until yesterday). The fact that this first step has now become a reality lends some credence to the journalist’s claim that Google is discontinuing AOSP. However, since such tips are not uncommon, and since there was no way to verify, the custom ROM developers in question didn’t really know what to do with it.
During the writing of this article over the past 12 hours, Google itself has also responded to what is apparently a growing, now public concern in the wider Android community. Seang Chau, Google VP and GM of Android Platform, published a Tweet, disclaiming Google has any intentions to close up shop for AOSP.
We’re seeing some speculation that AOSP is being discontinued. To be clear, AOSP is NOT going away. AOSP was built on the foundation of being an open platform for device implementations, SoC vendors, and instruction set architectures.
AOSP needs a reference target that is flexible, configurable, and affordable – independent of any particular hardware, including those from Google. For years, developers have been building Cuttlefish (available on GitHub as the reference device for AOSP) and GSI targets from source. We continue to make those available for testing and development purposes.
↫ Seang Chau
This seems like a solid denial from Google, but it leaves a lot of room for Google to make a wide variety of changes to Android’s development and open source status without actually killing off AOSP entirely. Since Android is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, Google is free to make “Pixel Android” – its own Android variant – closed source, leaving AOSP up until that point available under the Apache 2.0 license. This is reminiscent of what Oracle did with Solaris. Of course, any modifications to the Linux kernel upon which Android is built will remain open source, since the Linux kernel is licensed under the GPLv2.
If Google were indeed intending to do this, what could happen is that Google takes Android closed source from here on out, spinning off whatever remains of AOSP up until that point into a separate company or project, as potentially ordered during the antitrust case against Google in the United States. This would leave Google free to continue developing its own “Pixel Android” entirely as proprietary software – save for the Linux kernel – while leaving AOSP in the state it’s in right now outside of Google. This technically means “AOSP is not going away”, as Chau claims.
Of course, other parties would then be free to continue working on and contributing to AOSP, but AOSP itself would no longer benefit from the work done by Google. Again, this feels very similar to how illumos and OpenIndiana are built atop the last open source release of Solaris from 2010, without any of the additional work Oracle has done on Solaris since then. As you can tell, there’s a lot of speculation here, because even if all of this is true, it seems the ongoing court case and any rulings that come of it will play a major role in Google’s decision-making process.
The Android Open Source Project has been gutted over the years, with Google leaving more and more parts of it to languish, while moving a lot of code and functionality into proprietary components like Google Mobile Services and Google Play Services. Taking “Pixel Android” closed source almost feels like the natural next step in the process of gutting AOSP that’s been ongoing for well over a decade. As it stands today, a default AOSP installation requires a lot of additional components and applications before it can be considered a complete mobile operating system, and if it were to be spun off into a separate, non-Google project to which Google itself contributes nothing, its future seems quite uncertain.
My own perception is that this is just one of the courses of action Google is considering in light of potentially being forced to spin off Android as part of the antitrust case in the United States. I doubt any decisions have been made yet, but if they go through with it, it would allow Google to develop “Pixel Android” in such a way that it wouldn’t benefit any of their Pixel competitors, unless these competitors specifically opt to license “Pixel Android” – assuming Google would even offer such licensing options. Regardless, it seems the Android world might be in for a shock.
We had a good time. What’s the options now for those who want no Google or Apple on their phone?
– Hard-fork AOSP and run it on the Fairphone?
– Pivot to GNU/Linux phones?
– Just get a Samsung and try to disable Play Services and all the other bloatware with adb and just install apps from F-Droid and Aurora?
I’ve been very happily daily driving a Librem 5 for almost 2 years now. But I am not a social media consumer and I have no patience for mobile gaming.
So if you don’t need any of these, it basically does all I need – however, I must say, I use Waydroid to run Signal a few times a day.
Social media or games I don’t need either – but add banking or even public transport apps to that list, that do not have good workarounds with their web sites, even though they may just be glorified QR code containers and TOTP generators, with lots of tracking thrown on top…
I feel we’ve come back to the bad old times of the late 90s / early 00s where you could have a Linux desktop as a daily driver, but needed a Windows for those bits that were impossible to make work otherwise. Google’s Android is the new Windows, and no one cares. Some European states do not even care that not only do you need the Android for their public transport and other apps, but also a Google account in order to get their app from the Google Play Store, as that’s the only place where they upload them.
Bank works ok. The MFA application works in Waydroid and the mobile view of the standard web page works ok. You can install an extension that makes your desktop firefox behave like an iphone and see if your bank works. If it does, you are gold.
I also live in Europe, and my city transit tickets are linked to my standard bank card via NFC. And I can order single tickets via SMS.
But you are probably right that most places just assume you have a duopoly phone and that’s it.
We are worse than during the 90s because now we have apps using hardware attestation to ensure that they never run on a modded device
I was very disappointed with my librem when it launched (and purism in general for screwing its supporters over). I have apps i need for work like Duo, which wouldn’t work. This is not their fault to be fair, rather just echoes of early. Linux where commercial vendors simply had no desire to support a fringe platform. But i dug the phone out a few days ago and intend to give it another look and perhaps give one of the other mobile Linux variants a spin. Waydroid sounds interesting.
The phone now works way better than back two years ago.
Honestly, Purism would have fared better by advertising the Purism as a pocket PC with a phone rather than a smartphone, because it does not have the comforts of a smartphone. Example, nothing will kill or sleep background tasks, so if theres a program stuck eating 100% CPU, you will find in 2 hours a dead phone and a very warm pocket.
But honestly, having it makes me excited about owning a piece of tech for the first time in years. I wrote a simple app for some field camera calculations in a few hours directly on the phone. It works great on my usb-c screen.
I also improvised a LoRa addon and it was a fun weekend project witb my brother.
Its just fun to own and play around and has not failed me as a phone.
>As it stands today, a default AOSP installation requires a lot of additional components and applications before it can be considered a complete mobile operating system, and if it were to be spun off into a separate, non-Google project to which Google itself contributes nothing, its future seems quite uncertain.
This actually reminds me of Darwin vs MacOS if anything. The fundamentals of the OS remain open source but all the stuff that actually matters is not.
I guess the only saving grace is that Android already has a big repertoire of FOSS apps in F-Droid which are likely to keep compatibility with the last open version of AOSP and its potential forks.
It’s all pretty shit. I used to use Xiaomi until recently because if the phone was Qualcomm based, you could relatively easily ask for a boot unlock and because of that, a lot of custom ROMS were created for Xiaomi phones. But every year Xiaomi made it more difficult and more and more Mediatak CPUs were used (hard to produce a ROM for). So I said farewell to Xiaomi last year (10 years user!) and moved to the Devil Google and now I am on Pixel 8a with GrapheneOS. Google phones are (were?) extremely easy to target for a custom ROM.
Not sure what to do now, Motorola? Nothing? OnePlus? I don’t know yet. I do like Fairphone, but genererally I don’t pay more than 250 euro for phone, I don’t want to.
As a US person, I’d LOVE to get a Fairphone…but they don’t have the latest 5 available for the US, just EU. I understand the challenges with multiple regulatory environments, but it’s still quite a shame. By this point, I’m sure, there’d be sufficient demand to make it worth the cost and effort. At a minimum for whatever v6 they have, whenever it comes out.
Seems like a logical course of action and response to the US governments demands in the anti-trust case.
I don’t understand your statement? How is it logical?
The demand is to spin off Android and Chrome into separate, independent, companies.
If that would be done then said companies would have to sell something to be viable.
The simplest way to get something to sell is to close down sources of Android and Chrome and sell access to that.
Right, but that hasn’t happened. It’s still Google who’s the owner? There is no need (yet)?
Also, I did see reports of people speculating Chrome needs to be sold off but not Android but I might be wrong.
Why would Android be any different?
If anything it’s even easier for Android: they already have the structure of compliance and have “partners” tree (that shares things that couldn’t be legally published in AOSP).
Sure, pressure to separate is higher in Chrome case, but Android is much better prepared for such an outcome thus it sounds prudent to prepare.
Doesn’t mean it would happen, but… “better safe than sorry”, as they say.
I knew this would happen one day. People put way too much energy and trust into Google keeping ASOP open when maybe that work should have went into Tizen or something else.
But here we are, people will fork it but eventually Android apps won’t work etc and it’s going to get really messy.
Let’s see how things go. I hope things can stay open or fork but I don’t trust Google or Apple or Microsoft or any big company to look out for the public since their main goal is to make a profit.
Unfortunately there is no open source phone and no open hardware is existence. Slapping together bunch of proprietary components is like calling Windows open source because there’s Microsoft documentation for their OS. Try re-creating any of the chips used by “open hardware”. I wonder how many minutes are going to pass until you receive cease and desist letter, because the hardware is “open”.
To which I reply: Why should it exist? ARM is a mess of incompatible bootloaders and platforms, there is no common reference like x86 has UEFI and the PC platform. An open-source smartphone OS would have to support every ARM logic board individually.
And yet, you still have FOSS people thinking that moving from x86 to ARM on desktops and laptops is a good idea.
Yup, a lot of techie people love to hate x86 but have no clue when you ask them how they intend to replace all the compatibility that x86 has provided.
How to install an OS on x86:
Step one: grab hold of pretty much any x86 device
Step two: get any old generic x86 installation ISO
Step three: answer yes to a couple of questions on an installer
How to install an OS on ARM:
Step one: Purchase an exact ARM device and version that many people say they have been able to get unlocked and install their OS on
Step two: Somehow get your expensive new (although probably expensive used) ARM device unlocked if it isn’t already without bricking it
Step three: find the exact OS image for your exact version of your ARM chip and product
Step four: get some cables and install a bunch of stuff on a computer and hope that you can get the computer and the ARM device to talk
Step five: type about 8,000 esoteric and archaic installation commands into an ARM device using a computer and cables and the volume rocker and power button on your ARM device
Step six: pray that you don’t brick your ARM device and waste the hundreds of dollars you spend on it
Step seven: pray that the developers for the specific ARM device image you are using don’t run off to college or get married or get a job or somehow get a life so that they lose interest in continuing to update it
Step eight:
Step nine: Profit!
andyprough,
It’s completely arbitrary for x86 to be more servicable and ARM to be less servicable, but this is where the battle lines ended up being draw. x86 owners are extremely fortunate that manufacturers abide by the grandfathered norms, but behind closed doors I suspect many of them are proponents of the apple approach, a future where owners are stripped of alternative choices/empowerment/serviceability: non upgradable cpu/ram/gpus, proprietary disks, etc. It sucks that new architectures aren’t following the x86 model, we may never get another opportunity at open computing with new architectures. Openness is a mistake and manufacturers can make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It unironically was. IBM gave up the patents for the ISA bus to encourage manufacturers of expansion cards to make expansion cards for their IBM PC product on a royalty-free basis, not to encourage clones, they thought the proprietary BIOS was enough to prevent the clones (it wasn’t).
Without that mistake, x86 would have been yet another legendary instruction set architecture of the 80s, much like the Z80, the 6502, or the Motorola 68000, but would never have become the instruction set architecture of an open industry-standard platform.
And as you correctly say, manufacturers will make sure that mistake doesn’t happen again, so take the once-in-a-lifetime gift that is the PC standard and stop nitpicking things (or even worse promote ARM on desktops and laptops).
The instruction set architecture isn’t even that important, are we supposed to forget how Apple went RISC -> x86 -> RISC purely on who has the best fabs and the best design teams (IBM and Motorola -> Intel -> Apple and TSMC). Because fabs and design are more important than the instruction set architecture (I am willing to make an exception for truly wretched instruction set architectures like VAX or iAPX 432, but x86 is not in that category despite what the RISC purists say).
kurkosdr,
We can all see the problems for FOSS on ARM are very real, but you aren’t doing justice to the motivations. Just because someone wants openness, it doesn’t follow that x86 is the best architecture for every application. Also the monoculture aspect is troubling as well, even though it’s a two company duopoly, failure to diversify is still problematic especially given geopolitical tensions with world leaders strategically controlling market access. I’d go as far as to say it’s irresponsible not to diversify.
ARM is also a duopoly on smartphones, you have the ARM Ltd CPU cores (aka the Cortex series) and the Qualcomm CPU cores. That’s it. Nvidia also makes their own CPU cores, but they aren’t meant for smartphones, and it has been a long time since an Nvidia CPU core powered a smartphone.
And that’s despite the fact anyone can theoretically buy a license from ARM Ltd and make their own core. It’s as if the market for CPU cores naturally drifts towards a “duopoly with a third outsider/specialized player” status.
kurkosdr
My interests in alternatives to x86 is greater than smartphones. Regardless I do welcome more competition.
I agree, market consolidation is a problem. Antitrust regulation is meant to mitigate this, but it’s typically decades too late with few preventative measures in the first place.
The uncomfortable truth here is that Android is like Darwin. Technically open source, but without the services layers by the parent (Google/Apple) has been completely unable to to hold its own.
Yes, there are ROMs but all 3rd party with basically no option to buy in store. Even the might of Amazon and Nokia couldn’t make a viable competitor. The loss of open source Android will probably impact less people than when Google shuttered their RSS reader.