Pixel phones and updates / privacy

/e/OS Foundation & Community
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I am considering getting a Pixel 4 from Murena. There are a couple things I don’t understand. One is wrt to security vulnerabilities. There’s a really bad one for all Pixel phones right now (for example) involving the Exynos (sp?) chip itself and they all need to be patched. Does Google contact the phone and patch it if I buy from Murena or does Murena or do I miss out on the patch all together ? Does anyone know?

The second question I have is , the Pixels are created to Google’s specification. How do we know that Google hasn’t included some firmware or hardware in every phone with hard-coded instructions to divulge stuff like the GPS coordinates and IMEI number to Google? Do we know that they don’t for sure and if so how ? To me, that’s exactly the type of thing Google would do and I don’t see anything technical stopping them. I realize this may be perhaps paranoid in some people’s view but it seems plausible to me. Does anyone have an educated opinion or guess here?

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

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  1. no, Google won’t contact your phone to patch it. Those who release the ROM either need to include the firmware that carries the patches or ask users to get them via a stockrom install (or extraction). Murena aims to include the firmware, it’s done for some devices already and you can be sure they’ll do it for devices they sell. Pixel 4 is already close to EoL, though those exynos baseband issues got updated in march in firmware. If you care about the modem firmware you must get a newer Pixel. Replied to a Pixel 4 lifetime question here - Pixel 4XL "support" lifespan - #2 by tcecyk
  2. you can be reasonably sure by watching the network traffic over a longer time period after you modified the places in AOSP that reach for connectivity. See the studies - https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-degooglisation.pdf - if I’d be paranoid as an individual I’d worry about carriers and the modem firmware rather than Google. Google doesn’t care if some AOSP mods drop out the ginormous data pool
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Such excellent answers to both my questions !!! Thank you so much !

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