First off: Thanks for putting in time and effort into such an important project!
I don’t know much about Android eco in General, so some of these questions might seem naive - please answer them anyway. I could’t find clear info on them:
I now have a Pixel 5, which is end of support from Google. I would love to get out of their ecosystem, but not waste much time on installation and crashing apps - that’s why a pre-installed phone would be great for me.
The Pixel 5 is fine and does everything I need, probably for years to come: call, email, browse, open image files, be able to set display to black-and-white system wide, some apps, no gaming, no heavy use.
Does Murena support phones longer with up to date systems and/or security than the original manufacturers? Website says “aim for five years”, Gael claims “longevity is resistance” - but five years is much less than googles eight. And Lineage even still supports the original Pixel from years earlier with the latest OS version, if I understand correctly. Ideally I would just install eos onto my pixel and run it for another few years, if the installation process is easy enough. Or I would by a preinstalled phone now (not top of the line), knowing that it will still be supported 5+ years.
I might need some Apps that are not on F-Droid, but in the Google App Store. Can I install them? If yes, at what cost data-privacy wise? If I have to fully connect to google again the whole system switch would be useless
What if Google decides not to open source Android anymore. Does that mean e/os will be dead?
If Google pushes a security update, how long does it usually take for eos to update?
Does eos support Dual Sim, with one physical one e-sim?
How realistic is it anyway to get attacked if I keep using my pixel without security updates for a few more years (and switch to e/os when my phone is absolutely too old)?
Opinion: why not call Murena OS Version the same as Androit, instead of letters. Took me a while to understand what the letter refer to.
#1 If you check the list of supported devices some of the devices are more than 5 years old. The attempt is to keep them running as long as possible . Usually we reach a stage when the device firmware would not be able to handle the newer OS versions. Then we have to drop the device.
#2 You can install Google app store apps as well. When using popular social media apps your information is going through the google world so it is up to you how much of these apps you want to use.
#3 The Open source world would come with an alternate in such a scenario I guess.
#4 We usually try to get it on our device by the next month. It is not as simple as copy pasting the code …we need to test it with our application to ensure every thing work before releasing it.
#5 Yes on some of the devices. You can check the list in the link of supported devices.
#6 Ideally do not try to avoid security patches. In case you flash the /e/OS build it would be the latest and that may be the next OS version. This requires careful planning and in all cases take backups.
We are calling it /e/OS V which is the Android V or /e/OS U which means the Android U version. Let me pass on the suggestion to the team to check if we can add the Android version number as well.
Regarding end of support from e/OS, what’s your educated guess in years on average?
Helps me decide wether to try and squeeze some more life out of my current phone until FP6 or Pixel 8 get cheaper - want to avoid making the switch and after a year having to switch again.
no social media except maybe Twitter. Apps like a timer app or a metrics conversion app or weather and so on. Also Google Autheticator for some 2FAs
yes, want to avoid trouble, so would much prefer to use the phone a bit longer with google and then make the switch to P8 or FP6. In case I buy P8 and don’t like it after a while, I can flash it with original Google Android, right? (loosing the warranty)
Regarding Names and numbers, I now had to research on wikipedia to even understand your sentence and now I think i understand: The letters refer to the letters of the Sweets-Names (V for Vanilla). Totally unintuitive for someone outside of the Android world
Well /e/os/ still supports the FP3 which is 6 years old and the Pixel 2 which is 8 years old. I think any new (ish) model Pixel or Fairphone would be supported longer than you would want to keep the phone. For example you could get a Pixel 7a second hand for under 200 USD and you probably wouldn’t ever have to be concerned about end of /e/os support. I imagine the Pixel 5 still has a fair number of years with /e/os support as well.
Many Google play apps have open source equivalents (available using the F-Droid store). Open source apps are better because they don’t have trackers. I only run one Google Play app and that’s my Weather app. There is a nice open source one (Breezy Weather) and I’ve tried it. It’s really good, but I use the Play Store app only because it has a really nice widget.
Pixels have some big advantages. For one they are easy to flash back and forth between Google Android and any other ROM (operating system) you want to run. Google makes all of their factory images readily available and you can flash them easily.
One note about the Pixel 6 and 8, in the May 2025 security patch there’s an “anti-rollback” bootloader due to a security issue. It means there’s some extra considerations when flashing to avoid a boot failure. I would suggest a Pixel 7 or 9 to avoid that issue. Or just stick with your Pixel 5, don’t see any reason not to.
I read up a bit on things and still have two questions:
I don’t understand how e/OS or others claim to support phones longer than official eol, while graphene stops supporting, because they say security patches are no longer delivered. So if e/OS still supports the old Pixel 2 with what Android Version would that be and how recent would the security patches be?
On some reddits people claim that e/OS is badly delayed or even skipping some security updates from AOSP. True/not/reasonable because?
for vendor EoL’d devices, for roundabout a third of code that the device runs outside Android on them many lil chips (gpu, modem, peripherals - increasingly not the linux kernel itself) you’ll never see a security patch again unless you contract Qualcomm and suppliers for 1M for another year or two. Within Android “the framework”, you’re free to rebuild from fresh sources at any time to get patches, unrelated to vendor support. That is what’s Lineages and /e/OS meaning of support is. Once AOSP or “the framework” drops the Android major, then too it’s “legacy” for them. Crafty maintainers do ASB (android security bulletin) backports to deprecated Androids framework versions or even vendor kernels - but that is best effort. Exploits are released for AOSP and vendor firmware roughly half half, so EoL’d devices by the vendor inevitably rank up numbers of possible vulnerabilities. Strict device support projects as Calyx and Graphene axe those devices. The meaning framework vs vendor security paches in Android is represented by two different dates, one on the 1st of month, the other the 5th. The Pixels 2 vendor patch level date never moved beyond Oct’ 2020 - but it does get those 1st of month AOSP patches still. If you want to stay in the vendor support window, prepare to buy new.
it used to be delayed in previous years, got better. Others are more regular (lineageos does weekly builds) - and for the strict projects it’s a source of pride to both update both aosp and vendor firmware quickly
