This is 100% going to require dedicated / custom hardware no matter what. Most phones have multiple important devices that need binary blobs. Most often that includes the cellular radio, so a normal phone with this system is going to be a brick with this.

There have, through history, been a bunch of projects for better / more free / more user owned phones. Fairphone, Purism / Librem / PinePhone and several of them delivered hardware. So far that's always been noticeably more expensive for worse hardware, but it shows it can and will be done. Now that Google looks like they will close off the hardware support for Pixel phones in AOSP, the GrapheneOS project are talking about doing a phone with an OEM so maybe we will end up with something much more competitive soon.

This kind of project can give a focus for getting one of those phones you more or less own actually over the line to the state where you really own it and have all the drivers.

The issue is the modems. If the firmware can be modified, it can be made to exceed legal transmission power limits, or behave badly on the network in a way that affects other users.

The same is true of WiFi, but the damage tends to be more limited. Screwing up a cell tower can affect thousands of people.

> I suspect phone manufacturers

What phone manufacturers? Locking down bootloaders is a thing some do and some don't. Non-manufacturer controlled Operating Systems do exist and are in use on many devices. Additionally some manufacturers exist to provide open options to customers such as FairPhone.

Nothing in the mobile world changes with this announcement. If there's a cat and mouse game to be had then it is already ongoing. An example of everything you list as a problem is right there in TFS, LineageOS which itself has roots that date bac

> I suspect phone manufacturers will attempt to find ways to block installing it on their devices

I suspect they'll just ignore it because no one will want to actually use it.

The problem with these ideology-based projects is that they have no mass appeal. No one out there in userland gives a flying fuck about free software. They want the latest apps. They want a seamless experience. Especially Gen Z who were raised on mobile devices. Tell them that they should give up iPhones and Android phones because "Free as in Freedom is the right way", and they're going to look at you like you're a tentacled thing

GrapheneOS is not GPL, sadly.

> so how about funding

GrapheneOS doesnt' have the same aim. They happily run on Pixel hardware with binary blobs. In principle this project could be good for though because if the binary blobs can be eliminated then it would be possible to provide hardware support after Google has given up, so GrapheneOS could extend the lifetime of devices considerably.

They're talking about LineageOS. Think Graphene but it doesn't just run on Google hardware. Over a hundred devices and they just added mainline kernel and qemu support so it potentially runs on thousands of devices.

Sadly with less hardening. I wish Lineage would take some Graphene patches. The crazy thing is Lineage descended from Cyanogenmod which had many of these patches!

This just sounds like rebranding the Replicant project?

Unless FSF are planning on partnering with hardware projects such Purism, Pinephone or Fairphone, I can't see them making any headway over what postmarketOS has achieved.

"Not having my bank app on Android makes doing anything hard already"

You do realise you can access almost all banks via the web too? And IME the web page is often more functional than the app which is why I don't bother with the banking app. Sure , using a browser is a bit more faff but I don't have to worry about possible theft of my money if my phone is unlocked when lost/stolen as I clear down all cookies on the browser.

All of my banking apps (and I have a bunch) accept working on GrapheneOS. Even if Librephone doesn't themselves attempt to pass verification then a GrapheneOS build for whatever hardware they support would be able to work with their kernel drivers.

I have no idea how this pans out, but I'd imagine their first phone won't be a smart phone. They've got far too many 'low level' issues to work out first, and even getting hardware which doesn't need a manufacturer's binary blob to make it work is already a significant challenge. The subject of apps, app stores and operating systems will likely come later.

As others have said, the low level radios and modems have the capacity to be a real problem for networks. Most networks are held together with sticky tape

Correct, this is the acid test. Can I do everything on a LibrePhone that I could before? NFC credit card tap-to-pay, banking, transit apps, government ID/drivers license, TFA?

All power to FSF and good luck opposing the Leviathan.

The announcement on the FSF web site explicitly mentions Replicant and on the Replicant web site they still seem to be alive, but they are targeting different / older hardware. The announcement also mentions that the project sponsor wants to get rid of binary blobs in his LineageOS install.

My understanding: Replicant is a full AOSP distribution with the binary blobs removed. Librephone is a project trying to eliminate binary blobs in the underlying Linux kernel. When Librephone succeeds it will be easier to move Replicant to more devices.

> android phone that isn't under Google's thumb

Ironically the main choices I can think of are:

- if DIY a Pixel - they most reliably come with unlockable bootloader, no shenanigans at all to unlock it (and lock it back with your system), have most/all hardware well supported and so on

- if you want something off the shelf from any somehow known entity it can't be something with Google Play (as it comes with all Google's restrictions) so you're mostly down to ... drumroll ... Huawei !!!!!

It is mind boggling that

The Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 Pinephone, as well as anything listed as supported currently by Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS are probably good candidates for this. You can already use many of these right now with several different Linux distros as the reverse-engineering work has already largely been done, and the phones are already in the wild, people are using them, and some of them are indeed still available for sale new. By and large, they suck compared to the latest iPhone but you can't have everyt

This isn't the first time somebody has tried to make a not-android open source phone OS. Firefox OS for example got some initial traction and even sold in some markets. But it died on its ass because the reality is that phone buyers want a phone that runs apps and runs the apps they want - games, banking, streaming etc.

It doesn't matter if some other phone OS is built on open source principles or not, or even if it functionally usable in a limited way. If it doesn't have the apps it sucks.