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  • How far are latest Samsung Galaxy s devices (like S24) from meeting rqms of GOS?

Dumdum I'm aware of alternative OS limitations for Samsung. However, beside that, there may be other gaps comparing to the FAQ requirements. I was more focused on those specifically for high-end devices like Galaxy S series latest s24 that also has got official 7 or 8 years support for OS).

So if s24 is 100% compliant except for alternative OS limitation, I would just monitor news for changes in that matter.
If, on the other side it only fulfills requirements for 1/4, then it's totally different story.

  • de0u replied to this.

      mmobder One of the cited posts describes Samsung as "closest", so monitoring for the one giant showstopper might be enough.

      That said, the GrapheneOS team has mentioned the desirability of a second usable hardware platform, so I suspect they are monitoring even if they aren't posting detailed negative reviews for each of the many devices that ships each year.

          mmobder since there is no way to measure that, you're also not gonna get a response in that matter. If you think about buying a Samsung phone with the prospect of it being supported by GOS one day - don't.

              mmobder Let's say that the Samsung S24 meets the requirements at 99%, Samsung would first have to support alternative operating systems, which it doesn't, so giving a precise figure doesn't make much sense and I'm not sure anyone here is able to give it to you except perhaps the official GrapheneOS account.

                mmobder it really isn't, since it is unclear how Samsung will proceed regarding alternate OS support. As long as that criteria isn't met, it's a solid 0%. I do not speak for the GOS team, but they're guys who don't accept compromises and I can assure you they won't either when it comes to Samsung phones being officially supported. And, knowing Samsung, that criteria about alternate OS support isn't going to change any time soon. They've been known to disable features (Fold 3 camera when unlocking bootloader) and utilize hardware-fuses for bootloader unlocks (part of Knox, but rather been used in the past as a convenient deny-all-warranty-claims tool).

                    mmobder oh and one more thing: don't expect any Samsung features to be present on GOS even if it were available. Stuff like DeX is closed source and just like many/most Pixel features can't be ported over. Expect it to have roughly the same feature set as current Pixel devices.

                        DeletedUser87 don't expect any Samsung features to be present on GOS

                        DeletedUser87 lol, tnx for clarification, I'm kinda aware that when one change OS, it's dumb to expect that apps from old SW will be still available. kinda weird

                            mmobder it's a very simple calculation actually. Since alternate OS support is a 100% requirement, the lack thereof means 0%. This "last step" isn't something that can be measured just because the other 20 requirements are already met. It's like building a car without an engine - it might be one missing part, but that part, being one of 10000 is so crucial that you wouldn't label the car as 99,99% there.

                              mmobder I assume my question was kinda clear (1/4, 90%, 99% beside "alternative"). Do you have an answer to that?

                              I agree with DeletedUser87 that the likelihood of Samsung "unlocking" (in the sense of third-party operating systems) any device after it's been sold is very low. I strongly suspect that if Samsung is ever going to ship a device which is genuinely usable by other operating systems then they will need to do a lot of design and implementation while the product is being developed.

                              I also don't think there is a meaningful way to compute a percentage. Certainly I would not just count up how many of the 25 criteria are met and divide by 25. Some of the items are more important than others, and some of them are harder to do than others. Some of them are technical (and need to be built into hardware), but others are marketing/policy/willpower decisions.

                              For example, I think these are marketing/policy/willpower rather than technical challenge:

                              • 5+ years of firmware support
                              • Prompt patching in response to AOSP fixes
                              • Insider attack resistance.

                              Others (e.g., storage decryption keys being isolated from the kernel) are technical/hardware.

                              Which class is easier to fix? Which should be given a heavier weight when calculating a "How close?" percentage? It would be possible to spend a lot of time discussing that, but as long as the key issue is present, namely that Samsung won't allow third-party operating systems to use verified boot or hardware security functions, it's not clear the rest of it matters.

                                  cheeseee, it's so hard to get answers to simple questions...
                                  the answer to that simple question could be just "all rqms but 1st crucial one are met 'Support for using alternate operating systems including full hardware security functionality'"
                                  Ppl just simply can't resist to speak out when they simply don't know...

                                    mmobder I'm sorry if I can't provide you with an answer you understand. I made myself very clear, as have all the others while answering. You can't ask open questions and expect definitive answers. And then additionally attack people if they don't satisfy your wishful thinking. Since you've made up your mind about switching back to Samsung, I wish you the best of luck and this is my final response.

                                        DeletedUser87 no, it's kinda straightforward. The FAQ contains "Non-exhaustive list of requirements" that is 25 items long. Of course they're of different complexity and "non-exhaustive" (but it's fair to assume they're the major ones) , but I'm not asking for weighted completion %.
                                        "24 out of 25 are met, one major #1 is not met" - but it's kinda too difficult as for "definitive answer", isn't it?

                                        • de0u replied to this.

                                            mmobder As a Samsung advocate, perhaps you might post a list of which items you believe are satisfied.

                                            My vague sense is that Samsung is not prompt about shipping upstream security fixes, but maybe I'm wrong. The Android 15 release included security fixes; are Samsung devices shipping A15 yet? If not, when is that projected?

                                            Is Samsung shipping memory/pointer tagging? I don't think so, but I definitely don't have time to do feature research every time Samsung ships a new device.

                                            Perhaps you can look into the issues in the GrapheneOS FAQ entry and report back?

                                                I may be incorrect here, but I think that there may be some confusion. I think OP is asking for a comparison because they're interested in the security features of Samsung phones because they're considering switching back to Samsung, not because they want to install GrapheneOS on a Samsung.

                                                Unless I'm corrected, I'm going to change this to off topic because if that's the cause of the misunderstanding, it's not really related to GrapheneOS and is therefore off topic...

                                                Also, just going to throw this out there for anyone who may need to read through or weren't aware: https://grapheneos.org/code-of-conduct. Some posts here are borderline rude.