Hey,
i heard that Pixel 9 have more Security Features. Is that true? And does every Pixel have more Security Features? For example should I buy Pixel 8 or 9 instead of 7, because they got more Security Features? And which Security Features are those and on which Pixels? Which have more benefits?
This is from the official GrapheneOS FAQ regarding different Pixel generations:
8th/9th generation Pixels provide a minimum guarantee of 7 years of support from launch instead of the previous 5 year minimum guarantee. 8th/9th generation Pixels also bring support for the incredibly powerful hardware memory tagging security feature as part of moving to new ARMv9 CPU cores. GrapheneOS uses hardware memory tagging by default to protect the base OS and known compatible user installed apps against exploitation, with the option to use it for all apps and opt-out on a case-by-case basis for the few incompatible with it.
Both 7th and 6th generation Pixels have a minimum guarantee of 5 years from launch. 7th generation Pixels are a year newer so they have an extra year of their guarantee remaining.
The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are all around improvements over the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro with a significantly better GPU and cellular radio along with an incremental CPU upgrade. The 7th generation Pixels are far more similar to the previous generation than any prior Pixels.
Pixel 7a is nearly the same as the Pixel 7 other than having slow wireless charging and weaker dust/water protection. Pixel 7a offers the best value when buying a new device.
The Pixel Tablet is a tablet variant of the 7th generation devices and the Pixel Fold is a hybrid phone/tablet. These share the same SoC and are nearly the same as the other 7th generation devices under the hood.
Pixel 6a can still be worth buying if you can get a good deal due to the long support time. It still has just under 3 years of the minimum support guarantee remaining.
It is generally recommended to get an 8/9th gen Pixel if you are looking for the most security (hardware) features.
From a privacy perspective, would the installation of GrapheneOS on a 9 nerf their AI tracking abilities? I use a 6pro grapheneOS with a sandboxes google services on a secondary profile now but am looking to upgrade and am deciding between 8pro and 9pro but the AI element is off putting. Or is that only software deep and not hardware ... Apologies for the noob question and thanks in advance!
Openforum the AI is purely software based and most of the time it's also just a marketing trick used by Google to sell current generation phones. In the past, many of these "AI" features arrived on older Pixel devices or on different phones altogether. The "AI hardware" you have in mind, is just an NPU and other neural accelerators that perform machine learning and neural networking tasks on device, but are useless without the software. So if you are anti-AI, a platform like GrapheneOS (among a few other custom ROMs) is the perfect place, since they either strip the OS of all AI-features or don't include them in the first place (because they're not present in AOSP).
DeletedUser87 awesome exactly what I'd hoped to hear <3 and yeah that was also the hardware stuff I was thinking so thanks for clarifying that too! Appreciate your help!
Dumdum this is great! Thank you! Further alleviated some questions that hadn't even occurred to me yet...! Interesting read!
[deleted] 9th generation Pixels have the most security features. They have more cellular radio hardening than the previous generation, although it will probably get backported:
https://security.googleblog.com/2024/10/pixel-proactive-security-cellular-modems.html
From a privacy perspective, would the installation of GrapheneOS on a 9 nerf their AI tracking abilities? I use a 6pro grapheneOS with a sandboxes google services on a secondary profile now but am looking to upgrade and am deciding between 8pro and 9pro but the AI element is off putting. Or is that only software deep and not hardware ... Apologies for the noob question and thanks in advance!
There's no such thing. It's misinformation from scammers who don't understand AI acceleration means chips for accelerating vector and matrix math, which is something that can be done with a GPU.
DeletedUser87 The hardware acceleration is very real but it's very generic and we can use it too. It could also be used for things other than AI able to leverage the acceleration designed for AI.
We don't have to strip anything to with AI because it's not present in AOSP. Please note GrapheneOS is an operating system and not a custom ROM. The term custom ROM is incorrect.
GrapheneOS Thank you. I will buy one then. Before I buy: Does it make a difference how many Storage it has? (I did read that someone was saying more would be better but I did not understand why)
