/e/OS and security updates

/e/OS Foundation & Community /e/OS Developers Blog
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Hello Manoj,
What will happen to Emerald?

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Will pass to the developer and update once I get a response.

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I checked with the developer and the update was that the Teracube team should push out the firmware. You can post a thread there if not done already. As for /e/OS the plan is eventually move the Emerald to A14. This change is to be planned so no ETA for now.

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Hello Manoj, thank you for your feedback.

You say, ā€œAs for /e/OS, the plan is to upgrade Emerald to A14. This change needs to be planned, so no date is set at this time.ā€

However, the subject of upgrading Emerald was already raised over a year ago:

I hope this will be dealt with more quickly. I find myself with an unsecured, unbootable stable version smartphone purchased from Murena.

Please donā€™t give me the old line about /e/OS not being a hardened system, thatā€™s not the point.

This is not serious. Itā€™s not as if this kind of operation couldnā€™t have been anticipated.

Hoping to trigger a strong reaction on the development side, not on the forum.

Have a nice day.

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I think itā€™s more that they donā€™t have the capacity to support all the devices they say they support. Which is a bit of a problem when the device was bought ā€œto themā€ through Murena (like you did) or before through /e/OS (like I did with my FP3).

It seems hard to justify ā€œbest effort but generally worse than Stock Androidā€ if you make people pay for it.

And the ā€œitā€™s less secure but more privateā€ argument is not only weird (is it really more private if itā€™s more vulnerable?), but it makes it very hard to go ask a bank not to block devices running /e/OS versus the more secure Stock Android. And Iā€™m not even talking about the fact that the secure boot doesnā€™t work with /e/OS at least on the Fairphone 3, but probably many other devices too.

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Hi,

regarding the smartphone-selector and its list of devices there one can read at the bottom: Number of Smartphones officially supported by /e/OS : 253 .

Then for searching/finding official build running smartphones there one can find still 21 (official build) devices.
But ! ,out of those 21 there are 11 running /e/OS-s-(A12 end-of-life) with security patch level March 2025. Thatā€™s a bit more than 52% of the official build devices.
And there are just 2 of these 11 where A13 community builds are shown.

As i understand official builds are depending on developers work on community builds, how will it go on?

Quotation:

  • Builds with the latest development code are called Community builds. They are provided as best effort, without any guarantee and may include known and significant bugs.
  • The Official tag means these builds benefited from a comprehensive testing cycle before release and this version can be used as a daily driver.
  • All Community and Official builds go out OTA or Over The Air to supported devices.
  • Unofficial builds are made by users from our community . Use these builds at your own risk
  • Custom builds are made by users and may have modifications made by the builder. Use these builds at your own risk.
    smartphone_selector_2025-09-15_14-47-13
    smartphone_selector_2025-09-15_14-47-131219Ɨ975 140 KB

Quotation end!

I am not a developer, but an average-user.

How average-users can help the /e/OS/murena team?
(i know: buying phones from the murena shop, donations, payed workspace, releases feedback, suggestions, spread knowledge of murena/e/OS etc. ) What else?

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49

The security update situation may actually get significantly worse soon for all custom ROMs. There are reports that Google wants to withhold code for patches they do not consider high risk.

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Why is disk encryption at all weaker than on AOSP?
Isnā€™t a strong encrypted master key used such as LUKS does?

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Itā€™s not weaker.

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Then it should be easy to refute also this argument from the GrapheneOS party, as Gaƫl has already begun to do in his statement.
For me the update cycle of a distribution is not directly an argument for safety because also a business politial decision, though fast update is always a good thing. But if they argue the local disc encryption is weakend compared to AOSP, LOS, Samsung etc. then this is a more critical part.

The initial statement of this struggle from GrapheneOS, though it was kind of aggressive, is also a good starting point to discuss and compare security topics. I always favor open discussions.

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Be part of the testing team

https://doc.e.foundation/testers

Organising Flash parties in you city

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Thanks for pointing that out.

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