Week 11 2024: Development and Testing Updates

@Manoj: There is probably a mistake
merlin → marlin
or
Motorola Moto G3 Turbo merlin

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Thanks for pointing that out… It was marlin. Have corrected it.

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The images server has been revamped. Will share more details later.

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@manoj Anything known yet about the fate of /e/OS for the Fairphone 2 – given the end of support from LineageOS?

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Hi Manoj, on my moto edge 20 pro still no v1.20 update, I have the v1.19.1, is right?

Response from the build team:
For now we will continue building A11, but probably not for so long (and without security patches).

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Edge 20 pro is on T now and v1.20 has been released.

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Reported to developers with Issue in gitlab details. Will update in case there are any inputs.

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Thanks for highlighting the issue. The team is working on it. Updates will be available on the gitlab issue.

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I just noticed the OTA buiilds page (here: FP3-dev) has changed significantly as well. OTA update files are now easier to find and directly clickable. :slight_smile: The individual download URLs have been shortened a little bit (“builds/full/” has been dropped out of the URLs), so some links used before are now outdated (example).

Thank you :+1:

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As Android 11 is unsupported since the beginning of February, what are the plans of moving the Galaxy S9 and S9+ to a newer Android version? I have bought the S9+ from Murena in the hope of having a Google-free but still secure device. Already the upgrades to Android 10 and 11 came quite some time (more like a year than a few weeks) after the previous Android versions were out of support.

I was planning to buy another phone from Murena when my current one is no longer usable but with what I have been and still am experiencing, I doubt it (unless it improves in the future). I get that the team is small and there is a lot of work to be done but using an operating system without current security patches is just a very stupid idea for anyone using the device for anything that requires internet access (let alone anything like banking). Already having security updates a month late as it usually is the case with /e/OS is bad but I put that down to it being difficult to apply them and the team being small.

I get that /e/OS has a vision of delivering a complete ecosystem similar to the one of Google or Apple with a unified design and the complete set of applications etc. but all these things should not come at the price of offering an insecure product – especially not if it is marketed as being for everyone.

As I see it at the moment, it would have been a better idea not to buy a device from Murena and to flash a device bought elsewhere myself as the dev-branch already is on a newer version of Android for quite some time.

That being said, I am otherwise quite happy with /e/OS (except for a few smaller things which do not compare to delivering out-of-date Android versions in the stable branch).

The device bought from Murena is not limited to the stable release channel, you could still install dev if you prefer it.

But as I understand it, there is no OTA-upgrade for it, so I would prefer it to upgrade it while being on stable. (As I paid more by buying from Murena I also hope to be able to use the “premium” features as well.) This is why I am asking for an official statement so that I can decide on facts.

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I understand where you’re coming from.

I’ll just add that the stable release channel is not a “premium” feature anymore. The Easy Installer installs stable on devices supported by it, bought wherever (S9/S9+ among them), and users can install stable manually if they want to.

The net effect of you buying from Murena is that you supported them financially in what they do, thank you for doing so, and that you get vendor support by them and not by whoever else to buy from (most probably not supporting /e/OS on the phone).

Your question of how they want to proceed with stable on your device remains interesting, of course, especially in light of …

I feel update frequency requires perspective. A new update could have vulnerability. I think Dr. E hits the issue on the head.

To my knowledge, and i hope /e/ posts stats, no /e/ users have been hacked. If you are a high risk, targeted individual then a different device and ROM are more ideal.

Both of your arguments are pseudo-arguments:

If you have a broken part, you replace it, even if the replacement might also be broken in a way unknown yet. So yes, updates can introduce new vulnerabilities. But the parts they replace are known to have vulnerabilities. So you are improving the security of the device. (But I do not think that this has to be reiterated. I think everyone should know by now that using up-to-date software is one of the easiest and most effective ways of improving online security. And coincidentally, “hacks” using open vulnerabilities in private devices has gone down as automatic updates became standard.)

Also, the vulnerabilities the updates address are present in all Android devices of that version, not only /e/OS or a specific model. Thus, the set of /e/-users is just an arbitrary small subset of Android-users of a specific version and thus it is less likely for their devices to be hacked than for those of a larger subset – but not less likely than for any other subset of the same size. So even if no /e/-user had been hacked (which you cannot know because they, the user, would not necessarily announce that publically) your argument would only state that probably there are not many /e/-users, or, that timely Android updates are indeed vital for secure devices.

But I am not here to discuss the merits of IT-security but rather to know whether I have to start fiddling with my phone (to upgrade to the dev channel) after only two years which is exactly what I wanted to avoid by buying a phone that was praised by Murena as being supported for a long time.

So, @Manoj, what are the plans for the Samsung Galaxy S9+ bought at Murena?

The team is planning on upgrading the official or stable builds for s9/s9+ to /e/OS S , OTA. Dev or Community builds are already on T. The upgrades are one OS at a time and take time as it requires detailed testing to check for any issues. Will share ETAs once the plans are in place.

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Thanks, I hope all goes to plan!

Is “Community” now more or less a synonym for “dev” – or does there remain some distinction, thanks.

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But is the upgrade to Android 13 feasible in the Updater in Settings via OTA update? Because on the Moto edge 20 pro I have the v1.19.1 and on the OnePlus Nord I have the v1.20. Both are Android 12 and there are no updates available.